Wisconsin Crime Trends

Wisconsin's comparable FBI window (2014–2024, 11 years) shows declines on both major offense rates — charts below keep the larger |endpoint| move first.

Property Crime Rate (2024) · lead
1156.8/100K
Property Crime Change · lead
-43.4%
2014–2024

Declining-window verdict

Both statewide crime rates ended the window lower

Wisconsin's violent crime rate fell 1.4% from 2014 to 2024; its property crime rate fell 43.4%. The endpoints agree on the broad direction, but the intervening years still matter.

What stands out in Wisconsin

Full-window endpoints

Both statewide crime rates ended the window lower

Violent crime moved from 283.5 to 279.6 per 100,000 (-1.4%). Property crime moved from 2043.9 to 1156.8 (-43.4%). These are endpoint comparisons, not proof that every intervening year followed the same direction.

Latest national comparison

Wisconsin finished below the aggregated US violent-crime rate

For 2024, the state rate was 279.6 per 100,000 versus 352.0 across the state records in this dataset, a gap of 20.6% below. This is a state-level benchmark, not a neighborhood-safety conclusion.

Recent direction check

The recent pace differs from the full-window move

From 2021 to 2024, the violent-crime rate fell 12.8%, compared with -1.4% 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 latest violent-crime rate sits near the series low

The highest observed violent-crime rate was 325.7 in 2020; the lowest was 279.6 in 2024. The latest value lies 0% 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.

Year-to-year movement

The sharpest one-year move was an increase

The largest annual change ran from 2019 to 2020: +10.6%. Across the full sequence, 4 year-to-year steps rose by more than 1% and 6 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 population denominator grew across the series

The reported population changed from 5,757,564 to 5,960,975 (+3.5%). 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.

Wisconsin property inflection desk (2018)

Wisconsin's property rate fell 13.2% (-239.8 per 100K) from 2017 to 2018 (1814.8 → 1575.0) — the sharpest comparable year-to-year step in this window.

Wisconsin's property gap vs the US aggregate moved from 18.9% below in 2014 to 32.4% below in 2024 (-13.5 pp).

Wisconsin Property Crime Rate Over Time (lead series)

2630 1048 20142017202020232024
Wisconsin property rate US property average

Wisconsin Violent Crime Rate Over Time

399 271 20142017202020232024
Wisconsin violent rate US violent average

Year-by-Year Crime Data (property-led)

Year Coverage Population Property Rate YoY Violent Rate
2024 Comparable 5,960,975 68,956 1156.8 ↓ 6.7% 16,669 279.6
2023 Comparable 5,910,955 73,255 1239.3 ↓ 9.7% 17,695 299.4
2022 Comparable 5,892,539 80,844 1372 ↓ 9.1% 17,934 304.4
2021 Comparable 5,895,908 88,960 1508.8 ↑ 1.5% 18,914 320.8
2020 Comparable 5,832,655 86,684 1486.2 ↑ 2.0% 18,999 325.7
2019 Comparable 5,822,434 84,858 1457.4 ↓ 7.5% 17,149 294.5
2018 Comparable 5,813,568 91,561 1575 ↓ 13.2% 17,374 298.9
2017 Comparable 5,795,483 105,179 1814.8 ↓ 6.3% 18,601 321
2016 Comparable 5,778,708 111,906 1936.5 ↑ 1.2% 17,464 302.2
2015 Comparable 5,771,337 110,430 1913.4 ↓ 6.4% 17,080 295.9
2014 Comparable 5,757,564 117,677 2043.9 - 16,325 283.5

More in Wisconsin: overview, safest cities, most dangerous, compare. Methodology — FBI UCR / Crime Data Explorer rates per 100,000 for Wisconsin (2014–2024); Census population where FBI denominators are missing.