County crime profile · 2024 · mid-size county · property-led
Sanders County (12,400 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
Sanders County, MT reported 169 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Sanders County, MT agencies reported 21 violent and 29 property offenses. That equals about 169 violent and 234 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 56.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 169.4 in 2024 (+200.0%). The highest observed value was 282.3 in 2023 and the lowest 56.5 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Small-count caution
Sanders County reported 21 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 12,400. 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 42.0% of the 50 Part I offenses reported in Sanders County for 2024, against a median of 33.3% across comparable Montana counties — a gap of 8.7 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 58.6% of reported property offenses in Sanders County, against a cohort median of 72.0%. The remainder is burglary (7) and motor vehicle theft (5). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 169.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Sanders County ranks 27 of 56 — above 29 of the 55 other Montana counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +24.8% 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.
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 | 29 |
| Burglary | 7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 17 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 5 |
| Arson | 1 |
| Violent Crime | 21 |
| Murder | 0 |
| Rape | 5 |
| Robbery | 0 |
| Aggravated Assault | 16 |
Sanders County's crime figures on this page originate from Sanders 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 Sanders County in population. Their populations run from 11,446 to 13,124, against 12,400 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 Sanders 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.