Steelton, PA has a F safety grade (17/100) with a violent crime rate of 838 per 100,000, 138% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Steelton is a small municipal reporter (6,322 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with PA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Steelton, PA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 138% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Steelton, PA shows violent crime at 838.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,471.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 138% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 36.3% of the 146 Part I offenses reported in Steelton for 2024, against a median of 10.0% across comparable Pennsylvania cities — a gap of 26.3 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 838.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Steelton ranks 11 of 838 — above 827 of the 837 other Pennsylvania cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +1183.5% against the cohort median of 65.3. 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 Steelton's 838.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Arnold (839.8), Plymouth (834.1), Bradford (843.3), Darby (831.3). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 67.7% of reported property offenses in Steelton, against a cohort median of 85.9%. The remainder is burglary (4) and motor vehicle theft (26). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 805.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 838.3 in 2024 (+4.1%). The highest observed value was 962.2 in 2023 and the lowest 400.9 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Steelton'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.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 1.9 Census sq mi, Steelton logged 49.1 property and 28 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Steelton leans on larceny-theft at 43% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,231.
Violent offenses are 36% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Steelton offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (1.9 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 | 93 | 1471.1 |
| Larceny-Theft | 63 | 996.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 26 | 411.3 |
| Burglary | 4 | 63.3 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 53 | 838.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 47 | 743.4 |
| Robbery | 4 | 63.3 |
| Murder | 1 | 15.8 |
| Rape | 1 | 15.8 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · fell across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,959 | 805.5 | 1678.1 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 5,954 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,236 | 400.9 | 433 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,236 | 962.2 | 1603.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,322 | 838.3 | 1471.1 |
Steelton Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Steelton's 146 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
This agency reports via the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS): aggregate monthly offense counts rather than incident-level detail.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Pennsylvania cities closest to Steelton in population. Their populations run from 6,177 to 6,458, against 6,322 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Steelton sits at 838.3/100K violent (grade F); the Pennsylvania cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Steelton reported 53 violent crimes and 93 property crimes, for a total of 146 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Steelton's violent crime rate decreased by 12.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 8.3%.
The most common crime type in Steelton is larceny-theft, accounting for 43.2% of all reported crimes (63 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Steelton is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Steelton's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Steelton, PA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Steelton, PA FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Steelton is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,322 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.