Wilmington, DE has a F safety grade (2/100) with a violent crime rate of 1127 per 100,000, 220% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 71,958 residents, Wilmington is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against DE and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Wilmington, DE is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 220% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Wilmington, DE shows violent crime at 1,127 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,158.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 220% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 1127.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Wilmington ranks 4 of 38 — above 34 of the 37 other Delaware cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +283.0% against the cohort median of 294.2. 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 Wilmington's 1127.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Seaford (1133.6), Dover (1012.8), Laurel (1451.2), Milford (791.3). 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.
Share of the state cohort
The 3,084 Part I offenses reported here are 28.6% of the 10,777 reported across all 38 comparable Delaware cities in 2024. A city this large moves the statewide municipal total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 71,958 rather than as a uniform shift.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 26.3% of the 3,084 Part I offenses reported in Wilmington for 2024, against a median of 13.4% across comparable Delaware cities — a gap of 12.9 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1603.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1127.0 in 2024 (-29.7%). The highest observed value was 1603.4 in 2020 and the lowest 1127.0 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 63.4% of reported property offenses in Wilmington, against a cohort median of 81.2%. The remainder is burglary (350) and motor vehicle theft (483). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Wilmington'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.
On a large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 10.9 Census sq mi, Wilmington logged 208.6 property and 74.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Wilmington leans on larceny-theft at 47% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,966.
Violent offenses are 26% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Wilmington offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (10.9 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 | 2,273 | 3158.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,440 | 2001.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 483 | 671.2 |
| Burglary | 350 | 486.4 |
| Arson | 2 | 2.8 |
| Violent Crime | 811 | 1127 |
| Aggravated Assault | 598 | 831 |
| Robbery | 183 | 254.3 |
| Murder | 25 | 34.7 |
| Rape | 5 | 6.9 |
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 | 70,100 | 1603.4 | 3710.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 70,331 | 1458.8 | 3644.2 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 70,625 | 1200.7 | 3385.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 71,934 | 1310.9 | 3629.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 71,958 | 1127 | 3158.8 |
Wilmington Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Wilmington's 3,084 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 Delaware cities closest to Wilmington in population. Their populations run from 7,883 to 40,087, against 71,958 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Wilmington sits at 1,127/100K violent (grade F); the Delaware cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Wilmington at 1,127/100K violent and 3,158.8/100K property - matched below outside Delaware (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
1,127/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,158.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-14% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Wilmington reported 811 violent crimes and 2,273 property crimes, for a total of 3,084 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Wilmington's violent crime rate decreased by 14%, and the property crime rate decreased by 13%.
The most common crime type in Wilmington is larceny-theft, accounting for 46.7% of all reported crimes (1,440 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Wilmington's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Wilmington's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Wilmington, DE rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Wilmington, DE 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. Wilmington is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (71,958 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.