How to Calculate a Crime Rate per 100,000

The short answer

Divide the number of crimes reported in a year by the population of the area, then multiply by 100,000. That is the whole formula, and it is the one the FBI uses for every reported crime rate it publishes.

reported crimes ÷ population × 100,000 = reported crime rate per 100,000

Step 1: get a crime count

You need the number of offenses one police agency reported for one year and one category. The FBI publishes these for about 18,000 agencies in its Crime Data Explorer. Violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) and property crime (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft) are reported as separate totals. Pick one; do not add them together, because the larger total would bury the smaller one.

Step 2: get the matching population

Use the population the FBI lists for that agency in that same year. It is the population of the area the agency polices, which is not always the city's census count: a county sheriff's figure leaves out the cities inside the county that have their own police. A count from one source and a population from another gives a rate that is not comparable with anyone else's.

Step 3: divide, then multiply by 100,000

In 2025, the Burlington Police Department in Vermont reported 214 violent crimes to the FBI, and the FBI lists 44,354 people for its area.

214 ÷ 44,354 × 100,000 = 482.5

The reported violent crime rate is 482.5 per 100,000 people. Done the same way, the department's 1,808 reported property crimes work out to 4,076.3 per 100,000. You can run these exact numbers through the calculator to see the arithmetic laid out.

Why 100,000 and not a percent

A percent is a rate per 100. Nearly every place reports well under one crime per 100 people a year, so a percent would be a string of zeros after the decimal point. Scaling to 100,000 turns the same fraction into a readable number, and it lets a village and a city be read on one scale. It is only a scale: a rate of 482.5 does not mean 482.5 crimes happened. The count was 214.

Watch the count behind a small agency's rate

The formula does not care how big the inputs are, but you should. The Dover Police Department in Vermont reported 7 violent crimes in 2025 for a population of 1,844, a rate of 379.6 per 100,000. One more or one fewer reported crime moves that rate a long way. When the count is small, read it alongside the rate, and look at several years rather than one.

Three ways the math goes wrong

• A partial year. Many agencies report fewer than 12 months to the FBI. A rate built from 9 months of crimes and a full year's population is not a yearly rate, and stretching the 9 months to 12 is a guess. CrimeTally shows no rate for a partial year, and this guide follows the same rule.
• A mismatched population. A city department's crimes over the county's population, or 2025 crimes over a 2020 census figure, gives a number that looks like a rate and compares with nothing.
• A rate for a part of the area. The count covers everything the agency polices. It cannot be split down to a neighborhood, a street or a school without a count and a population for exactly that area, from the same source.

What the rate leaves out

The number you get is a reported crime rate. It counts crimes that were reported to police and passed on to the FBI, so it misses crime nobody reported, and it moves with how readily people report and how the agency records as well as with crime itself. It describes the whole area the agency polices, not the risk to any one person. The FBI lists more than a dozen things that shape crime from place to place and advises against ranking places by its data.

What this guide does not cover

It does not cover how an offense is classified, clearance or arrest rates, or how the FBI estimates a state or national total when agencies are missing. It does not say whether any rate is high or low.

Do the math on your own numbers

The Crime Rate Calculator takes any crime count and population and shows the division and the result, for any place, year or category. For an agency the FBI already covers, the Crime Rate Lookup has the count, the population and the rate on one page.

This guide is for informational purposes only and is not professional advice. A reported crime rate describes what one police agency reported to the FBI. It says nothing certain about any one home, street or school.

Last reviewed: October 2026 · Against the FBI Crime Data Explorer, September 2026 refresh.