Washington'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
Washington's violent crime rate rose 16.5% from 2014 to 2024; its property crime rate fell 32.9%. A single combined label would hide that split, so the evidence below keeps the two series separate.
Full-window endpoints
Violent crime moved from 282.7 to 329.3 per 100,000 (+16.5%). Property crime moved from 3723.1 to 2498.3 (-32.9%). These are endpoint comparisons, not proof that every intervening year followed the same direction.
Peak and trough
The highest observed violent-crime rate was 379.2 in 2022; the lowest was 282.7 in 2014. The latest value lies 48% 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.
Recent direction check
From 2021 to 2024, the violent-crime rate fell 2.2%, compared with +16.5% across the full 2014-2024 window. That difference is why the latest few observations should be read separately from the decade-scale endpoints.
Rate denominator
The reported population changed from 7,061,530 to 7,958,180 (+12.7%). 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.
Year-to-year movement
The largest annual change ran from 2021 to 2022: +12.6%. Across the full sequence, 5 year-to-year steps rose by more than 1% and 4 fell by more than 1%. A single sharp step can reflect participation or reporting changes as well as a real change in recorded offenses.
Latest national comparison
For 2024, the state rate was 329.3 per 100,000 versus 352.0 across the state records in this dataset, a gap of 6.4% below. This is a state-level benchmark, not a neighborhood-safety conclusion.
Washington's property rate fell 14.3% (-416.4 per 100K) from 2023 to 2024 (2914.7 → 2498.3) — the sharpest comparable year-to-year step in this window. The largest move the other way was jumped 10.9% from 2021 to 2022 (3048.4 → 3380.2).
Washington's property gap vs the US aggregate moved from 47.7% above in 2014 to 46.0% above in 2024 (-1.7 pp).
| Year | Coverage | Population | Property | Rate | YoY | Violent | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Comparable | 7,958,180 | 198,816 | 2498.3 | ↓ 14.3% | 26,204 | 329.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 7,812,880 | 227,720 | 2914.7 | ↓ 13.8% | 28,215 | 361.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 7,785,786 | 263,174 | 3380.2 | ↑ 10.9% | 29,522 | 379.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 7,738,692 | 235,907 | 3048.4 | ↑ 9.1% | 26,057 | 336.7 |
| 2020 | Comparable | 7,693,612 | 215,008 | 2794.6 | ↑ 2.5% | 23,038 | 299.4 |
| 2019 | Comparable | 7,614,893 | 207,633 | 2726.7 | ↓ 7.4% | 23,186 | 304.5 |
| 2018 | Comparable | 7,535,591 | 221,844 | 2943.9 | ↓ 7.4% | 23,631 | 313.6 |
| 2017 | Comparable | 7,405,743 | 235,472 | 3179.6 | ↓ 8.9% | 22,516 | 304 |
| 2016 | Comparable | 7,288,000 | 254,370 | 3490.3 | ↑ 0.0% | 21,892 | 300.4 |
| 2015 | Comparable | 7,170,351 | 250,195 | 3489.3 | ↓ 6.3% | 20,275 | 282.8 |
| 2014 | Comparable | 7,061,530 | 262,911 | 3723.1 | - | 19,962 | 282.7 |
More in Washington: overview, safest cities, most dangerous, compare. Methodology — FBI UCR / Crime Data Explorer rates per 100,000 for Washington (2014–2024); Census population where FBI denominators are missing.