Waynesboro, MS has a F safety grade (16/100) with a violent crime rate of 929 per 100,000, 164% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Waynesboro is a small municipal reporter (4,521 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MS and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Waynesboro, MS is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 164% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Waynesboro, MS shows violent crime at 929 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,636.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 164% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 481.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 929.0 in 2024 (+93.0%). The highest observed value was 971.3 in 2022 and the lowest 481.3 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 36.2% of the 116 Part I offenses reported in Waynesboro for 2024, against a median of 10.1% across comparable Mississippi cities — a gap of 26.1 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 929.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Waynesboro ranks 2 of 63 — above 61 of the 62 other Mississippi cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +397.4% against the cohort median of 186.8. 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 Waynesboro's 929.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Laurel (1051.9), Forest (707.2), Amory (630.3), Vicksburg (616.6). 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 counts dominate Waynesboro'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 12.7 Census sq mi, Waynesboro logged 5.8 property and 3.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Waynesboro leans on larceny-theft at 47% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,103.
Violent offenses are 36% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Waynesboro offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (12.7 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 | 74 | 1636.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 55 | 1216.5 |
| Burglary | 12 | 265.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 7 | 154.8 |
| Arson | 2 | 44.2 |
| Violent Crime | 42 | 929 |
| Aggravated Assault | 30 | 663.6 |
| Murder | 5 | 110.6 |
| Rape | 5 | 110.6 |
| Robbery | 2 | 44.2 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 4,779 | 481.3 | 1548.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 4,847 | 618.9 | 1629.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 4,530 | 971.3 | 1898.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 4,510 | 620.8 | 1640.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 4,521 | 929 | 1636.8 |
Waynesboro Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Waynesboro's 116 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 Mississippi cities closest to Waynesboro in population. Their populations run from 3,119 to 5,966, against 4,521 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Waynesboro sits at 929/100K violent (grade F); the Mississippi cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Waynesboro reported 42 violent crimes and 74 property crimes, for a total of 116 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Waynesboro's violent crime rate increased by 49.6%, and the property crime rate decreased by 0.2%.
The most common crime type in Waynesboro is larceny-theft, accounting for 47.4% of all reported crimes (55 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Waynesboro 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 Waynesboro's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Waynesboro, MS rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Waynesboro, MS 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. Waynesboro is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (4,521 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.