County crime profile · 2024 · mid-size county · violent-led
Union County (12,138 people) sits in the mid-size county band in Iowa. This page opens with reported offense counts, then rates where a Census join exists.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Union County, IA reported 74 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Union County, IA agencies reported 9 violent and 7 property offenses. That equals about 74 violent and 58 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 56.3% of the 16 Part I offenses reported in Union County for 2024, against a median of 24.0% across comparable Iowa counties — a gap of 32.3 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.
Small-count caution
Union County reported 9 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 12,138. 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 74.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Union County ranks 25 of 86 — above 61 of the 85 other Iowa counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +60.3% against the cohort median of 46.3. Counties that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 65.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 74.1 in 2024 (+12.5%). The highest observed value was 82.4 in 2023 and the lowest 49.4 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
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 |
|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 9 |
| Murder | 0 |
| Rape | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 |
| Aggravated Assault | 9 |
| Property Crime | 7 |
| Burglary | 3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 |
| Arson | 0 |
Union County's crime figures on this page originate from Union 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 Iowa counties closest to Union County in population. Their populations run from 11,746 to 12,329, against 12,138 here. Or launch the side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
State atlas: Iowa · 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 Union County, IA 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.