Most Dangerous Cities in North Carolina

FBI UCR Highest-Crime Snapshot: North Carolina

North Carolina's 50 highest-crime cities for 2024 range from Laurinburg at the top with a violent crime rate of 1894.1/100K down to Havelock at 205.1/100K — all sitting above most US municipal averages. The list draws on FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program Table 8 submissions and restricts inclusion to cities of 10,000 residents or more so that per-capita rates reflect enough underlying offenses to be statistically meaningful. Across these 50 North Carolina cities the average violent crime rate reaches 626.2 per 100,000 residents, a figure that typically exceeds the US national violent crime benchmark by a wide margin.

At the top of the ranking, Laurinburg recorded 284 violent crimes and 756 property crimes against a reporting population of 14,994 in 2024. That produces a property crime rate of 5042 per 100,000 residents alongside the 1894.1/100K violent rate, with both Part I crime categories elevated compared to state and national benchmarks. The five most dangerous North Carolina cities on this list are Laurinburg, Henderson, Lumberton, Goldsboro, Shelby, each submitting Part I offense counts to the FBI UCR Program for 2024.

Elevated per-capita rates can reflect multiple factors beyond raw crime volume: small reporting populations amplify year-to-year rate volatility, transient or tourist populations dilute resident denominators, and municipal boundaries sometimes exclude higher-income suburbs that would otherwise balance the total. UCR figures also reflect offenses reported to and submitted by local law enforcement and can miss unreported crime entirely, so rankings measure visible, recorded crime rather than absolute community conditions. Readers comparing these cities with others across North Carolina can use the A-F safety grades page or national rankings to contextualize how 2024 figures stack up against peers nationwide.