County crime profile · 2024 · very large county · property-led
At 270,861 residents, Santa Cruz County is a very large county in California. FBI UCR county totals below are read before any per-100,000 rate (Census denominator when matched).
Data updated 2026-08-24
Santa Cruz County, CA reported 104 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Santa Cruz County, CA agencies reported 282 violent and 995 property offenses. That equals about 104 violent and 367 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 22.1% of the 1,277 Part I offenses reported in Santa Cruz County for 2024, against a median of 29.6% across comparable California counties — a gap of 7.5 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 76.2% of reported property offenses in Santa Cruz County, against a cohort median of 65.6%. The remainder is burglary (216) and motor vehicle theft (21). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 116.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 104.1 in 2024 (-10.5%). The highest observed value was 137.0 in 2022 and the lowest 104.1 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 104.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Santa Cruz County ranks 32 of 56 — above 24 of the 55 other California counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is -19.8% against the cohort median of 129.8. Counties that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
On a very large county row, county figures aggregate every participating agency inside the county. Participation is voluntary. Per-100,000 rates use a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census county population, never a Table 10 field; unmatched counties stay count-only. A large county line encloses very different communities.
| Category | Count |
|---|---|
| Property Crime | 995 |
| Burglary | 216 |
| Larceny-Theft | 758 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 21 |
| Arson | 19 |
| Violent Crime | 282 |
| Murder | 3 |
| Rape | 27 |
| Robbery | 30 |
| Aggravated Assault | 222 |
Santa Cruz County's crime figures on this page originate from Santa Cruz 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 California counties closest to Santa Cruz County in population. Their populations run from 211,632 to 282,424, against 270,861 here. Or launch the side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
State atlas: California · 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.
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.