Crime rates for Las Cruces, NM

With a crime rate of 60 per one thousand residents, Las Cruces has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 17. Within New Mexico, more than 80% of the communities have a lower crime rate than Las Cruces.

Importantly, when you compare Las Cruces to other cities of similar population, the Las Cruces crime rate (violent and property crimes combined) is quite a bit higher than average. Regardless of how Las Cruces does relative to all communities in America of all sizes, when NeighborhoodScout compared it to communities of similar population size, its crime rate per thousand residents stands out as higher than most.

The crime data that NeighborhoodScout used for this analysis are the seven offenses from the uniform crime reports, collected by the FBI from 17,000 local law enforcement agencies, and include both violent and property crimes, combined.

Now let us turn to take a look at how Las Cruces does for violent crimes specifically, and then how it does for property crimes. This is important because the overall crime rate can be further illuminated by understanding if violent crime or property crimes (or both) are the major contributors to the general rate of crime in Las Cruces.

From our analysis, we discovered that violent crime in Las Cruces occurs at a rate higher than in most communities of all population sizes in America. The chance that a person will become a victim of a violent crime in Las Cruces – such as armed robbery, aggravated assault, rape or murder – is 1 in 212. This equates to a rate of 5 per one thousand inhabitants.

In addition, NeighborhoodScout found that a lot of the crime that takes place in Las Cruces is property crime. Property crimes that are tracked for this analysis are burglary, larceny over fifty dollars, motor vehicle theft, and arson. In Las Cruces, your chance of becoming a victim of a property crime is one in 18, which is a rate of 56 per one thousand population.