Montana's comparable FBI window (2014–2024, 11 years) splits: one major offense rate rose while the other fell — the lead series is the larger |endpoint %| move.
Split-window verdict
Montana's violent crime rate rose 34.7% from 2014 to 2024; its property crime rate fell 33.1%. A single combined label would hide that split, so the evidence below keeps the two series separate.
Full-window endpoints
Violent crime moved from 316.5 to 426.4 per 100,000 (+34.7%). Property crime moved from 2459.1 to 1645.6 (-33.1%). These are endpoint comparisons, not proof that every intervening year followed the same direction.
Recent direction check
From 2021 to 2024, the violent-crime rate fell 9.9%, compared with +34.7% across the full 2014-2024 window. That difference is why the latest few observations should be read separately from the decade-scale endpoints.
Peak and trough
The highest observed violent-crime rate was 485.9 in 2020; the lowest was 316.5 in 2014. The latest value lies 65% of the way from that low to that peak, which shows whether the endpoint is close to an extreme or near the middle of the observed range.
Latest national comparison
For 2024, the state rate was 426.4 per 100,000 versus 352.0 across the state records in this dataset, a gap of 21.1% above. This is a state-level benchmark, not a neighborhood-safety conclusion.
Year-to-year movement
The largest annual change ran from 2019 to 2020: +15.8%. Across the full sequence, 6 year-to-year steps rose by more than 1% and 3 fell by more than 1%. A single sharp step can reflect participation or reporting changes as well as a real change in recorded offenses.
Rate denominator
The reported population changed from 1,023,579 to 1,137,233 (+11.1%). Rates account for that denominator change; raw offense counts do not. This is one reason a count and a per-100,000 rate can move by different percentages over the same years.
Montana's property rate fell 11.1% (-205.0 per 100K) from 2023 to 2024 (1850.6 → 1645.6) — the sharpest comparable year-to-year step in this window. The largest move the other way was jumped 6.8% from 2014 to 2015 (2459.1 → 2625.2).
Montana's property gap vs the US aggregate moved from 2.5% below in 2014 to 3.8% below in 2024 (-1.4 pp).
| Year | Coverage | Population | Property | Rate | YoY | Violent | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Comparable | 1,137,233 | 18,714 | 1645.6 | ↓ 11.1% | 4,849 | 426.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 1,132,812 | 20,964 | 1850.6 | ↓ 5.9% | 5,076 | 448.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 1,122,867 | 22,084 | 1966.8 | ↓ 3.5% | 4,821 | 429.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 1,105,574 | 22,537 | 2038.5 | ↓ 6.1% | 5,234 | 473.4 |
| 2020 | Comparable | 1,080,577 | 23,469 | 2171.9 | ↓ 3.1% | 5,250 | 485.9 |
| 2019 | Comparable | 1,068,778 | 23,961 | 2241.9 | ↓ 10.9% | 4,486 | 419.7 |
| 2018 | Comparable | 1,062,305 | 26,728 | 2516 | ↓ 3.8% | 4,044 | 380.7 |
| 2017 | Comparable | 1,050,493 | 27,482 | 2616.1 | ↓ 3.4% | 3,997 | 380.5 |
| 2016 | Comparable | 1,042,520 | 28,247 | 2709.5 | ↑ 3.2% | 3,873 | 371.5 |
| 2015 | Comparable | 1,032,949 | 27,117 | 2625.2 | ↑ 6.8% | 3,582 | 346.8 |
| 2014 | Comparable | 1,023,579 | 25,171 | 2459.1 | - | 3,240 | 316.5 |
More in Montana: overview, safest cities, most dangerous, compare. Methodology — FBI UCR / Crime Data Explorer rates per 100,000 for Montana (2014–2024); Census population where FBI denominators are missing.