Wausau, WI has a B safety grade (62/100) with a violent crime rate of 295 per 100,000, 16% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Wausau (39,949 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then WI and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Wausau, WI carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 16% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Wausau, WI shows violent crime at 295.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,008.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 16% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 295.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Wausau ranks 25 of 222 — above 197 of the 221 other Wisconsin cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +175.9% against the cohort median of 107.1. 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 Wausau's 295.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Glendale (295.1), Bloomer (296.0), Elk Mound (304.6), Kenosha (285.7). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 470.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 295.4 in 2024 (-37.2%). The highest observed value was 470.2 in 2020 and the lowest 295.4 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 22.6% of the 521 Part I offenses reported in Wausau for 2024, against a median of 12.0% across comparable Wisconsin cities — a gap of 10.6 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 counts dominate Wausau'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 19.2 Census sq mi, Wausau logged 21 property and 6.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Wausau's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (64% of 521 offenses; mix index 4,447).
Violent offenses are 23% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Wausau offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (19.2 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 | 403 | 1008.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 334 | 836.1 |
| Burglary | 43 | 107.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 26 | 65.1 |
| Arson | 8 | 20 |
| Violent Crime | 118 | 295.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 69 | 172.7 |
| Rape | 42 | 105.1 |
| Robbery | 6 | 15 |
| Murder | 1 | 2.5 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 38,492 | 470.2 | 1470.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 38,435 | 413.7 | 1654.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 39,349 | 393.9 | 1293.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 39,743 | 415.2 | 1147.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 39,949 | 295.4 | 1008.8 |
Wausau Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Wausau's 521 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 Wisconsin cities closest to Wausau in population. Their populations run from 36,231 to 44,164, against 39,949 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Wausau sits at 295.4/100K violent (grade B); the Wisconsin cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Wausau at 295.4/100K violent and 1,008.8/100K property - matched below outside Wisconsin (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
295.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,008.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-28.9% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Wausau reported 118 violent crimes and 403 property crimes, for a total of 521 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Wausau's violent crime rate decreased by 28.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 12.1%.
The most common crime type in Wausau is larceny-theft, accounting for 64.1% of all reported crimes (334 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Wausau 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 Wausau's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Wausau, WI 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. Wausau is scored in the mid-size municipal band (39,949 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.