ZIP code profile · 2024 county data
ZIP Code 56281
Kandiyohi County, Minnesota: Census demographics for this ZIP plus the containing county's FBI UCR crime rate.
Data updated 2026-09-05
- 306
- Property rate /100K (county)
- 642
- Population (ZIP)
- 76
- Violent rate /100K (county)
Is ZIP code 56281 safe? Honest data snapshot
ZIP code 56281 sits within Kandiyohi County, MN, a county whose reported crime runs below the national average (see the county-level FBI figures below, not a ZIP-specific calculation).
Reported crime here runs well below the national average: 76 violent incidents and 306 property incidents per 100,000 residents in 2024, per county-level agency submissions.
With 642 residents, ZIP 56281 is among the smaller ZIPs in Kandiyohi County (#10 of 11 by population), spread across 12.92 square miles (50/sq mi). For a full breakdown of Kandiyohi County's crime categories and year-over-year trend, see the Kandiyohi County crime page linked below.
ZIP 56281 has no FBI-native crime rate (postal codes are not police jurisdictions). The property-led county proxy above is from Kandiyohi County agency submissions; see methodology for the ZCTA plurality map. Methodology.
ZIP 56281 Census context
These are ZIP/ZCTA demographic estimates, separate from the county-level FBI proxy above. They describe the local settlement, not a crime rate.
- Median household income
- $99,167
- Median age
- 32.4 years
- Owner-occupied homes
- 91%
- Occupied homes
- 238
- Median home value
- $164,100
- Bachelor's degree or higher
- 33.7%
- Poverty rate
- 7.2%
- Unemployment rate
- 0.3%
ZIP 56281's median home value of $164,100 sits higher than 31% of the 840 MN ZIPs with a reported value, roughly mid-range for the state.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2022 5-year ZCTA estimates (income, age, housing tenure, home value, education, and unemployment).
How useful is the county proxy for ZIP 56281?
Within the participating-agency records for Kandiyohi County, reported violent and property crime rates both sit below their U.S. benchmarks: violent crime is 78% below and property crime is 82% below. The two submitted measures point in the same direction, but they do not establish complete county coverage or turn the result into a ZIP-level rating for 56281. Both comparisons use the same 2024 county reporting population and FBI-submitted counts, so the two directions are internally comparable for this release, not evidence about a different year.
Within the county, 56281 is among the smaller ZIPs by population (#10 of 11). County-wide counts are especially coarse context for a smaller postal area because most of the denominator and reported incidents may sit elsewhere in the county.
Kandiyohi County UCR book ZIP 56281 inherits
ZIP 56281 itself is about 50 people per Census sq mi across 12.9 sq mi (642 residents), a postal settlement fact independent of the county UCR proxy.
ZIP 56281 is about 1.5% of the county reporting population (642 of 43,732), so most of the denominator and submitted incidents sit outside this postal code.
Kandiyohi County's 2024 UCR book concentrates in larceny-theft (61% of 167 offenses; mix index 4,215). ZIP 56281 inherits that county mix, not a postal-native split.
Kandiyohi County 2024 vs 2023: violent counts +57% vs 2023; property counts -5% vs 2023. Year-over-year moves are county agency submissions, still not ZIP-native.
Kandiyohi County offense mix (2024)
Mix index is HHI × 10,000 on county offense-type shares. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero; still county-agency data, not a ZIP-native FBI table.
Read with ZIP 56281
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau (ZIP population, land area, 2020 ZCTA-to-county relationship file, ACS 5-year estimates) and FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, Crime in the United States (CIUS) Table 10 (county-level crime, attributed via ZIP-to-county crosswalk).
Verify with Census.gov Geography and FBI.gov UCR.
Read our methodology , how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
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 combines Census ZIP-level figures with a ZIP-to-county crosswalk to attribute FBI UCR crime data honestly, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.