Memphis touts the worst crime rate in the nation. Here’s how it compares to other cities
By: Lucas Finton
“Memphis has the worst crime rate in the country.”
The sentence has been repeated by officials ranging from the president to local representatives and the media as the National Guard and a flurry of other federal agencies have begun flooding into Memphis in an attempt to curb crime.
Meanwhile, local officials are pointing to a 25-year low in crime overall. While that is technically accurate, the City of Memphis records crime based on incidents. This means five car break-ins that happened in the same lot, around the same time, are usually written as one incident since police believe the same suspect carried all of them out.
The FBI and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, however, track crime differently. Instead of tracking incidents, FBI and TBI data look at victims. FBI and TBI data would show the above-described scenario as five car break-ins since there were five instances of a car being broken into.
Both are accurate depictions of crime, and can show a clearer picture of crime in Memphis when used in conjunction, but FBI and TBI data are where crime is most easily compared across cities and states.
So, does Memphis actually have the worst crime rate in the country?
Comparing crime rates is a tricky business
In looking at all 8,987 city agencies that submitted data to the FBI last year, Memphis did not crack the top 50 in its overall crime rate in 2024. From the FBI’s own data, Memphis found itself at 57 on that list for the overall crime rate. The city with the worst reported crime rate in 2024 was Lakeside, Colorado.
And therein lies the issue with general crime rates.
Lakeside had an estimated population of 16 people in 2024. FBI tracks eight major crimes in tallying overall crime: murders and non-negligent manslaughters, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, thefts and larcenies, motor vehicle thefts, and arsons. Lakeview reported 228 offenses of that nature in 2024.
Memphis, by contrast, reported 57,643 total offenses that fell into those categories.
To account for this, the FBI will break cities down into specific groups based on population sizes. In the past, the first group would feature the most populous cities in America, defined as those with a population of more than 250,000 people. It would also break that into three subsets of 1,000,000 people or more, a population between 500,000 and 999,999, and a population of 250,000 to 499,999.
For the purposes of this article, The Commercial Appeal compared the 40 most populous cities and metro areas in America, based on population estimates from 2024. The list includes some of the most-populated cities in the country ― including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston ― as well as cities closer to Memphis’ population, including Detroit, Portland, Oregon, and El Paso, Texas.
Memphis, despite ranking 29th in estimated population, had the highest crime rate overall, the highest violent crime rate and the highest property crime rate of all the cities on the list. And the margin was wide.
In 2024, FBI data showed Memphis had an overall crime rate of 9,400 crimes per 100,000 residents. Portland had the second-highest overall crime rate at 6,246 crimes per 100,000 residents.
The large gap between Memphis and the other cities continued in both the city’s violent and property crime rates in 2024. Last year, Memphis reported 2,501 violent crimes per 100,000 people and 6,899 property crimes per 100,000 people.
Detroit had the second-highest violent crime rate last year at 1,781 crimes per 100,000 people. For property crime, Portland was in second with 5,526 crimes per 100,000 people.
What does that look like in real life?
It can be difficult to contextualize 100,000 people, which is the number commonly used to show crime rates in large cities. So, for the sake of imagining what these crime rates look like, we will use the FedExForum at capacity.
Both the University of Memphis athletics department website and Flintco, LLC ― the firm that consulted on the FedExForum’s construction ― cite 18,400 as the stadium seating capacity for the arena.
If the arena were to be at that capacity for a basketball game, a crime would have been committed against 1,730 (about 9%) of those attending, based on Memphis’ overall crime rate. Crimes would have been committed against 1,149 (about 6%) people based on Portland’s crime rate.
Los Angeles and Mesa, Arizona, were at the bottom of the list in terms of overall crime rates. Using the FedExForum at capacity as we did above, 407 (about 2%) people would be victims of a crime in Los Angeles, and 358 (1.9%) people would be victims of a crime in Mesa.
This does not mean Memphis had a higher raw number of crimes committed in 2024, though. Memphis had the seventh-most crimes committed in 2024, according to FBI data, at 57,643 overall crimes. New York City (252,239 crimes), Houston (126,200 crimes) and Chicago (105,871 crimes) were the top three cities in raw crime statistics last year, but with lower overall crime rates than Memphis due to much larger populations.
The trend continued with murders and non-negligent homicides in Memphis. Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel called Memphis the “homicide capital” of the United States in per capita homicides. According to 2024 data, he was correct.
Memphis topped the list at 40.6 homicides per 100,000 residents. Baltimore was second with 34.8 homicides per 100,000 people and Detroit was third with 31.2 homicides per 100,000 people.
Similarly to the overall crime rates, though, Memphis did not top that list when it came to raw homicide numbers. Chicago reported the most homicides last year, with 461, according to FBI data. New York City (325) and Houston (320) were the next two on the list. Memphis was sixth with 249 homicides in 2024.
Despite topping this list in several categories, crime in Memphis is down. TBI provides a broader list of reported crimes, which showed an 11% decrease in major crime. That decrease was driven by a 20% decrease in property crime, even as violent crime rose by 0.5% compared to 2023.
Memphis exceeded the nationwide decrease in property crime, which the FBI reported to be down 8.1% between 2023 and 2024. But Memphis did not follow the same trend with violent crime. The FBI reported a nationwide decrease in violent crime of 4.5% between 2023 and 2024.
About Post Author
