Memphis touts the worst crime rate in the nation. Here’s how it compares to other cities

“Memphis has the worst crime rate in the country.”

This punishment was echoed by officials ranging from the president to local representatives to the media, as the National Guard and other federal agencies descended on Memphis to prevent crime.

Meanwhile, local officials point to an overall crime rate that is at its lowest level in 25 years. While this is technically true, the City of Memphis records crimes on a case-by-case basis. This means that five car thefts that occur in the same location, around the same time, are often written off as a single incident because police believe the same suspect committed them all.

But the FBI and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation pursue crimes differently. FBI and TBI data look at victims rather than tracking events. FBI and TBI data would show the scenario described above as five car break-ins, as there are five instances of a car break-in.

Both are accurate depictions of crime and when used together can show a clearer picture of crime in Memphis, but FBI and TBI data are where crime is most easily compared across cities and states.

So does Memphis really have the worst crime rate in the country?

Comparing crime rates is a difficult task

Looking at all 8,987 city agencies that submitted data to the FBI last year, Memphis failed to crack the top 50 in overall crime rate in 2024. According to the FBI’s own data, Memphis found itself 57th on this list in terms of overall crime rate. The city with the worst crime rate in 2024 was Lakeside, Colorado.

Therein lies the problem with overall crime rates.

Lakeside’s estimated population in 2024 was 16 people. In tallying overall crime, the FBI tracks eight major crimes: murders and non-negligent manslaughters, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries and burglaries, motor vehicle thefts, and arsons. Lakeview reported 228 crimes of this nature in 2024.

Memphis, by contrast, reported a total of 57,643 crimes that fell into these categories.

To explain this, the FBI will divide cities into specific groups based on their population size. In the past, the first group included America’s most populous cities with populations greater than 250,000. It will also divide it into three subgroups: 1,000,000 or more people, 500,000 to 999,999 population, and 250,000 to 499,999 population.

For the purposes of this article, The Commercial Appeal compared America’s 40 most populous cities and metropolitan areas based on 2024 population estimates. The list includes the most populous 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.

Despite ranking 29th in estimated population, Memphis had the highest overall crime rate, highest violent crime rate, and highest property crime rate of all cities on the list. And the margin was wide.

In 2024, FBI data showed that Memphis had a crime rate of 9,400 per 100,000 residents. Portland had the second highest overall crime rate, with 6,246 crimes per 100,000 people.

The large gap between Memphis and other cities continued in 2024 in both the city’s violent and property crime rates. 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, with 1,781 crimes per 100,000 people. In terms of property crime, Portland ranked second with 5,526 crimes per 100,000 people.

What does this look like in real life?

100,000 people, the number commonly used to indicate crime rates in major cities, can be difficult to contextualize. We’re going to take full advantage of FedExForum to imagine what these crime rates look like.

Both University of Memphis athletics department website And Flintco, LLC The company that provides consultancy on the construction of FedExForum states that the stadium seating capacity of the arena is 18,400.

If the court were at this capacity for a basketball game, a crime would have been committed against 1,730 (about 9%) of those in attendance, based on Memphis’ overall crime rate. Based on Portland’s crime rate, crimes would have been committed against 1,149 (about 6%) people.

Los Angeles and Mesa, Arizona, were at the bottom of the list for overall crime rates. If we use FedExForum to its full capacity as we did above, 407 (about 2%) people in Los Angeles and 358 (1.9%) people in Mesa would be victims of a crime.

However, this does not mean that the number of crimes committed in Memphis in 2024 is higher. According to FBI data, Memphis had the seventh most crimes committed in 2024, with 57,643 total 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 overall crime rates were lower than Memphis due to a much larger population.

This trend continued with the murders and non-negligent homicides in Memphis. Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel called Memphis the “murder capital” of the United States in terms of murders per capita. According to 2024 data, he was right.

Memphis topped the list with 40.6 homicides per 100,000 people. Baltimore came in second with 34.8 murders per 100,000 people, and Detroit came in third with 31.2 murders per 100,000 people.

Similar to overall crime rates, Memphis did not top this list when it came to raw homicide numbers. Chicago reported the most homicides last year, with 461, according to FBI data. The next two cities on the list were New York City (325) and Houston (320). Memphis ranked sixth with 249 homicides in 2024.

Despite being at the top of this list in many categories, the crime rate in Memphis has decreased. TBI provides a broader list of reported crimes, showing an 11% decrease in major crimes. This decline was driven by a 20% decline in property crime, although violent crime increased by 0.5% from 2023.

Memphis crossed the border nationwide decline Property crime, which the FBI reports is down 8.1% between 2023 and 2024. But Memphis hasn’t followed the same trend in violent crime. The FBI reports a 4.5% decrease in violent crime nationwide between 2023 and 2024.

Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, prisons, courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: (901)208-3922 and can be followed at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and X @LucasFinton.

This article was first published in the Memphis Business Appeal: How does Memphis’ crime rate compare to other US cities?