West Lafayette, IN has a A safety grade (80/100) with a violent crime rate of 94 per 100,000, 73% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
West Lafayette (44,906 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IN and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
West Lafayette, IN carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 73% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, West Lafayette, IN shows violent crime at 93.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,204.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 73% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A 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 53.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 93.5 in 2024 (+74.0%). The highest observed value was 106.9 in 2022 and the lowest 53.7 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to West Lafayette's 93.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Danville (93.0), Elwood (94.9), Highland (98.4), Franklin (84.3). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 93.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, West Lafayette ranks 74 of 113 — above 39 of the 112 other Indiana cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -41.9% against the cohort median of 161.0. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 7.2% of the 583 Part I offenses reported in West Lafayette for 2024, against a median of 13.6% across comparable Indiana cities — a gap of 6.3 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 90.2% of reported property offenses in West Lafayette, against a cohort median of 81.4%. The remainder is burglary (28) and motor vehicle theft (25). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate West Lafayette'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 13.6 Census sq mi, West Lafayette logged 39.9 property and 3.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
West Lafayette's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (84% of 583 offenses; mix index 7,089).
Violent offenses are only 7% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
West Lafayette offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (13.6 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 | 541 | 1204.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 488 | 1086.7 |
| Burglary | 28 | 62.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 25 | 55.7 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 42 | 93.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 37 | 82.4 |
| Rape | 3 | 6.7 |
| Robbery | 2 | 4.5 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 52,104 | 53.7 | 631.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 52,675 | 74 | 808.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 44,891 | 106.9 | 1026.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 45,221 | 64.1 | 1191.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 44,906 | 93.5 | 1204.7 |
West Lafayette Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind West Lafayette's 583 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 Indiana cities closest to West Lafayette in population. Their populations run from 37,174 to 53,357, against 44,906 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
West Lafayette sits at 93.5/100K violent (grade A); the Indiana cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
West Lafayette at 93.5/100K violent and 1,204.7/100K property - matched below outside Indiana (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
93.5/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,204.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+45.9% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, West Lafayette reported 42 violent crimes and 541 property crimes, for a total of 583 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, West Lafayette's violent crime rate increased by 45.9%, and the property crime rate increased by 1.1%.
The most common crime type in West Lafayette is larceny-theft, accounting for 83.7% of all reported crimes (488 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: West Lafayette 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 West Lafayette's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 West Lafayette, IN 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. West Lafayette is scored in the mid-size municipal band (44,906 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.