South St. Paul, MN has a C safety grade (54/100) with a violent crime rate of 349 per 100,000, 1% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
South St. Paul (20,648 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then MN and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
South St. Paul, MN carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 1% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, South St. Paul, MN shows violent crime at 348.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,322.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 1% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 179.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 348.7 in 2024 (+94.2%). The highest observed value was 408.1 in 2022 and the lowest 179.5 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 348.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, South St. Paul ranks 25 of 276 — above 251 of the 275 other Minnesota cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +256.4% against the cohort median of 97.8. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to South St. Paul's 348.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Roseau (336.2), Isle (361.4), Mountain Lake (362.9), Moorhead (365.4). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 20.9% of the 345 Part I offenses reported in South St. Paul for 2024, against a median of 10.6% across comparable Minnesota cities — a gap of 10.3 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 76.9% of reported property offenses in South St. Paul, against a cohort median of 85.7%. The remainder is burglary (30) and motor vehicle theft (33). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate South St. Paul's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 5.6 Census sq mi, South St. Paul logged 48.5 property and 12.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
South St. Paul's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (61% of 345 offenses; mix index 4,201).
Violent offenses are 21% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
South St. Paul offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (5.6 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 273 | 1322.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 210 | 1017 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 33 | 159.8 |
| Burglary | 30 | 145.3 |
| Arson | 4 | 19.4 |
| Violent Crime | 72 | 348.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 62 | 300.3 |
| Rape | 7 | 33.9 |
| Robbery | 3 | 14.5 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 20,053 | 179.5 | 2528.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 19,895 | 361.9 | 2744.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 20,337 | 408.1 | 2320.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 20,403 | 323.5 | 1602.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 20,648 | 348.7 | 1322.2 |
South St. Paul Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind South St. Paul's 345 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Minnesota cities closest to South St. Paul in population. Their populations run from 19,845 to 22,022, against 20,648 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
South St. Paul sits at 348.7/100K violent (grade C); the Minnesota cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
South St. Paul at 348.7/100K violent and 1,322.2/100K property - matched below outside Minnesota (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
348.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,322.2/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, South St. Paul reported 72 violent crimes and 273 property crimes, for a total of 345 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, South St. Paul's violent crime rate increased by 7.8%, and the property crime rate decreased by 17.5%.
The most common crime type in South St. Paul is larceny-theft, accounting for 60.9% of all reported crimes (210 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: South St. Paul figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how South St. Paul's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 South St. Paul, MN rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. South St. Paul is scored in the mid-size municipal band (20,648 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.