Iowa: The Best and Worst Cities for Crime

Property Crime in Iowa

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

• Iowa’s total property crime rate per 100,000 people is 1,332, which is about 32 percent lower than the overall U.S. rate of 1,954 per 100,000. The state ranks 44th.
• In addition to a rate below the overall national level for property crime, Iowa has the Midwest’s lowest rate, about four percentage points below the next-highest state, in neighboring Wisconsin.
• Larceny is the most common property crime in Iowa, as it is everywhere else in the country, with 965 incidents per 100,000 people.

Violent Crime in Iowa

Violent crimes include murder/non-negligent homicide, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery, and they are considerably less common than property crimes.

• Iowa’s violent crime rate is 287 per 100,000 people, which is about 25 percent lower than the overall U.S. rate of 381 per 100,000. That places Iowa 31st in the U.S.
• As it does with property crime, Iowa ranks near the bottom of the Midwest region for violent crime. It comes in fourth-lowest, just behind neighboring Illinois. It’s important to note, however, that Illinois crime data reported to the FBI is incomplete.
• Iowa has the nation’s second-lowest rate of murder, just a fraction of a point behind Rhode Island. It also has the seventh-lowest robbery rate.

Crime in Iowa Cities

Cities have more permanent residents and tend to draw more visitors, which means they usually have higher crime rates than more remote communities. That holds true in many of Iowa’s biggest metro areas. Davenport, Dubuque, and Sioux City — which includes portions of Nebraska and South Dakota — all have violent crime rates higher than the state’s rate.

Iowa’s biggest cities have higher rates than the state, but, notably, they generally don’t have higher rates than the over 300 metro areas in the U.S. with available data.

Iowa metro area crime rates per 100,000 people (rank among over 300 metro areas)

We’ve touched on the sad story behind Eldora, which leads Iowa in violent crime rate, but it isn’t the only small community with a high crime rate. Clinton, a city of about 24,000, has the highest property crime rate outside the metro areas listed above. The rate could be partially due to some of the city’s corporate residents, since Archer Daniels Midland and Nestle Purina both have major production hubs in the city.

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.