County crime profile · 2024 · large county · property-led
At 69,919 residents, Ward County is a large county in North Dakota. FBI UCR county totals below are read before any per-100,000 rate (Census denominator when matched).
Data updated 2026-07-13
Ward County, ND reported 49 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Ward County, ND agencies reported 34 violent and 49 property offenses. That equals about 49 violent and 70 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 41.0% of the 83 Part I offenses reported in Ward County for 2024, against a median of 11.6% across comparable North Dakota counties — a gap of 29.4 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 64.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 48.6 in 2024 (-24.4%). The highest observed value was 64.4 in 2020 and the lowest 34.3 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 48.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Ward County ranks 11 of 30 — above 19 of the 29 other North Dakota counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +55.1% 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 57.1% of reported property offenses in Ward County, against a cohort median of 66.7%. The remainder is burglary (10) and motor vehicle theft (11). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
On a 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 | 49 |
| Burglary | 10 |
| Larceny-Theft | 28 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 11 |
| Arson | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 34 |
| Murder | 0 |
| Rape | 9 |
| Robbery | 1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 24 |
Ward County's crime figures on this page originate from Ward 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 Ward County in population. Their populations run from 33,291 to 98,458, against 69,919 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 Ward 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.