Crime rates for Houston, TX

With a crime rate of 77 per one thousand residents, Houston 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 13. Within Texas, more than 90% of the communities have a lower crime rate than Houston.

How does the crime rate in Houston compare to similar sized city across America? When NeighborhoodScout compared Houston with other communities its size, we found that the crime rate was near the average for all other communities of similar size. So, whether Houston's crime rate is high or low compared to all places in the US, when we control for population size and compare it to places that are similar in size, it is near the middle of the pack in crime rate – not much more or less dangerous, and about what we would expect from the statistics.

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 Houston 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 Houston.

For Houston, we found that the violent crime rate is one of the highest in the nation, across communities of all sizes (both large and small). Violent offenses tracked included forcible rape, murder and non-negligent manslaughter, armed robbery, and aggravated assault, including assault with a deadly weapon. According to NeighborhoodScout's analysis of FBI reported crime data, your chance of becoming a victim of one of these crimes in Houston is one in 83.

Significantly, based on the number of murders reported by the FBI and the number of residents living in the city, NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that Houston experiences one of the higher murder rates in the nation when compared with cities and towns for all sizes of population, from the largest to the smallest.

In addition, NeighborhoodScout found that a lot of the crime that takes place in Houston is property crime. Property crimes that are tracked for this analysis are burglary, larceny over fifty dollars, motor vehicle theft, and arson. In Houston, your chance of becoming a victim of a property crime is one in 15, which is a rate of 65 per one thousand population.