Delaware: The Best and Worst Cities for Crime

The “Nation’s Summer Capital,” Rehoboth Beach, is also the property crime capital of Delaware.
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Derek Prall
July 24, 2024 Derek Prall Derek Prall , Home Security Expert | July 24, 2024
Statewide Crime Trends in Delaware Property Crime in Delaware Violent Crime in Delaware

While Delaware has a very average crime rate compared to other states, that’s not necessarily the case in all of its cities and towns. Crime tends to be a bigger issue in major cities than in rural or sparsely populated areas, and that also holds true in Delaware.

Only one major metro area, Dover, falls entirely within Delaware's borders. Compared to the 300-plus metro areas with available data, Dover does not have particularly high rates of most crimes. However, all counties in Delaware fall in a metro area, such as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or Salisbury, Maryland. Philadelphia, the larger of the two, does have the 10th highest robbery rate of any big city in the country.

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When looking at the data on a city level, other localities emerge as the most crime-ridden.

Rehoboth Beach has a full-time population of just over 1,100 people, but during the warmer months, this coastal town expands to welcome thousands of tourists. This spike has earned the town the nickname of the Nation’s Summer Capital. President Joe Biden and his family are among those tourists, as the Bidens have a summer home in a Rehoboth Beach neighborhood. Rehoboth has the state’s highest property crime rate (1,025 per 100,000), putting it in the top 25 among all cities nationwide with available data.

Rehoboth’s violent crime rate was also the third-worst in the state, behind the tiny town of Laurel in Delaware’s southmost county, and Wilmington, a larger city near the state’s northern border. Despite Wilmington’s high rate of violent crime overall, murders in the city have recently reached a 20-year low according to the mayor’s office.

Property Crime in Delaware

When determining property crime rates in Delaware, we looked at larceny theft, burglary, and motor vehicle theft incidents.

  • Delaware’s total property crime rate per 100,000 people is 1,964, which is barely above the overall U.S. rate of 1,954 per 100,000. With just a one-point difference from the national rate, Delaware ranks 20th for its property crime rate.
  • In Delaware, as in every other state, larceny is the most common type of property crime, occurring in Delaware at a rate of 1,591 per 100,000 people:

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Violent Crime in Delaware

Violent crimes include murder/non-negligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery. Violent crimes are much less common than property crimes, both in Delaware and across the country.

  • The total violent crime rate in Delaware is 384 per 100,000 people, again, just one percentage point above the overall U.S. rate of 381 per 100,000, which puts the state in 21st place.
  • Aggravated assault is the most common type of violent crime in Delaware, as in every other state.

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Our data

Our data comes from comprehensive reporting compiled by the FBI and accessed via the Crime Data Explorer website. Property and violent crime state figures were drawn from Table 5 of the 2022 Crime in the U.S. Report. Metropolitan figures were found in Table 6, Crime in the U.S. by Metropolitan Statistical Area. City-level figures were drawn from Table 8, Offenses Known to Law Enforcement by State by City. The population figures in that table are U.S. Census Bureau provisional estimates as of July 1, 2020.

Limitations: According to the FBI, the data in the publication tables may differ from those released on the Explorer Pages of the CDE. These variations are due to the difference in methodologies between the publication tables and data displayed on the CDE. Please note that crime statistics are not the sole measure of a city’s safety.

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