County crime profile · 2024 · mid-size county · property-led
Lake County (31,134 people) sits in the mid-size county band in Montana. This page opens with reported offense counts, then rates where a Census join exists.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Lake County, MT reported 251 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Lake County, MT agencies reported 78 violent and 189 property offenses. That equals about 251 violent and 607 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 433.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 250.5 in 2024 (-42.2%). The highest observed value was 440.0 in 2023 and the lowest 250.5 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 250.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Lake County ranks 14 of 56 — above 42 of the 55 other Montana counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +84.6% against the cohort median of 135.7. Counties that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 57.1% of reported property offenses in Lake County, against a cohort median of 72.0%. The remainder is burglary (24) and motor vehicle theft (57). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 29.2% of the 267 Part I offenses reported in Lake County for 2024, against a median of 33.3% across comparable Montana counties — a gap of 4.1 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.
Mid-size county rows still aggregate voluntary UCR submissions. Per-100,000 rates need a matched 2020 Census population; unmatched stay count-only. County-wide totals rarely describe any single town inside the line.
| Category | Count |
|---|---|
| Property Crime | 189 |
| Burglary | 24 |
| Larceny-Theft | 108 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 57 |
| Arson | 2 |
| Violent Crime | 78 |
| Murder | 1 |
| Rape | 12 |
| Robbery | 2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 63 |
Lake County's crime figures on this page originate from Lake County Sheriff's Office's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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.
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the Montana counties closest to Lake County in population. Their populations run from 16,309 to 44,174, against 31,134 here. Or launch the side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
State atlas: Montana · Compare · Rankings
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, Crime in the United States (CIUS) Table 10.
FBI Table 10 supplies county offense counts but no resident population. Where this page shows a per-100,000 rate, the denominator is a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census Bureau county population; unmatched county rows remain count-only. Statewide comparisons draw on the state UCR program. Verify with FBI.gov UCR and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Read our methodology , how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Put this to use
Use the Lake County, MT FBI UCR county record to open cities inside the county, compare the state file, or look up another place.
County Table 10 totals are voluntary agency filings: incomplete coverage is not a county crime measure, and a countywide figure is not a neighbourhood verdict.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on FBI Uniform Crime Reporting source data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.