County crime profile · 2024 · small county · property-led
Nelson County is a small county (3,015 people) in North Dakota. FBI Table 10 county totals lead; rates appear only with a verified Census population join.
Data updated 2026-07-13
Nelson County, ND reported 133 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Nelson County, ND agencies reported 4 violent and 5 property offenses. That equals about 133 violent and 166 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
Small-count caution
Nelson County reported 4 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,015. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 44.4% of the 9 Part I offenses reported in Nelson County for 2024, against a median of 11.6% across comparable North Dakota counties — a gap of 32.9 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 132.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Nelson County ranks 1 of 30 — above 29 of the 29 other North Dakota counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +323.2% against the cohort median of 31.4. 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 40.0% of reported property offenses in Nelson County, against a cohort median of 66.7%. The remainder is burglary (3) and motor vehicle theft (0). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Small-county UCR rows are especially sensitive to which agencies filed. Per-100,000 rates use a matched 2020 Census population when available; otherwise counts only. Do not treat the county total as a town-level crime level.
| Category | Count |
|---|---|
| Property Crime | 5 |
| Burglary | 3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 |
| Arson | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 4 |
| Murder | 0 |
| Rape | 1 |
| Robbery | 0 |
| Aggravated Assault | 3 |
Nelson County's crime figures on this page originate from Nelson 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 North Dakota counties closest to Nelson County in population. Their populations run from 2,162 to 3,862, against 3,015 here. Or launch the side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
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.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 10 county crime · 2024 Nelson County, ND figures cover participating agencies only.
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.