Memphis Crime Rate 2024: The City That Leads the Nation in Murders

41 murders per 100,000. That is the number. Not a projection. Not a model. FBI data, published annually, drawn from law enforcement submissions across every major American city. Memphis, Tennessee — a city of roughly 620,000 people on the east bank of the Mississippi — posted the highest murder rate among large US cities in 2024. 8.2 times the national average. No asterisks. No comparably sized city came close.

250 people were murdered in Memphis in 2024. One every 35 hours. 56% of those cases will go unsolved. Six out of ten families will never see anyone held accountable. [FBI UCR 2023 clearance data · City of Memphis 2024 Crime Report]

This post covers the data: what the FBI numbers actually say, how Memphis compares to the national average across crime categories, and what any of this means if you are evaluating an address in Memphis or Shelby County.

The Number That Defines It

The FBI Uniform Crime Report is the primary federal mechanism for tracking crime across US cities. It compiles data from local law enforcement agencies and publishes city-level crime rates annually. The violent crime rate and the murder rate are the most reliable single metrics for comparing severity across cities of different sizes.

In 2024, Memphis posted a violent crime rate of 2,501 per 100,000 — the highest among large US cities, per FBI UCR and USAFacts. The national violent crime rate is 359 per 100,000. [FBI UCR, 2024] Memphis is 7 times the national average. Among cities with populations above 300,000 — the standard definition of a "large" US city — no other city posted a higher number across the board.

The murder rate compounds that picture. 41 per 100,000. The national rate is 5.0. That is 8.2 times the national average. Among the largest, most-scrutinized cities in the country — cities with significantly larger police forces, more federal resources, and more national media attention — Memphis leads.

Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting — fbi.gov/cjis/ucr · USAFacts — usafacts.org

250 murders in 2024. 1 in 2,439 residents killed. That volume — sustained over years — is what produces a murder rate that stands alone at the top of national rankings. This is not a one-year anomaly. It is a documented pattern.

The Full Picture: Memphis Crime Statistics 2024

Murder is the most severe crime category and the one Memphis leads nationally, but it is not the only category where Memphis ranks at the top. FBI UCR 2024 data places Memphis among the highest-ranked large US cities for aggravated assault and motor vehicle theft as well. [FBI UCR, 2024]

Aggravated assault — defined as an attack with a weapon or with intent to cause serious bodily injury — is the most common form of violent crime nationally. Memphis's position at the top of large-city aggravated assault rates means the violence problem is not limited to the homicide figure. It reflects an underlying environment where violent confrontation is substantially more common than in comparable cities. Every day. Today included.

Motor vehicle theft at scale is both a property crime and an indicator of organized criminal activity. When a city ranks first among large cities in vehicle theft, it reflects not just individual opportunistic incidents but networks and infrastructure that sustain high-volume auto crime over time. The number on record is a floor — 52% of violent crimes go unreported, and property crime underreporting rates are even higher.

Sources: FBI UCR 2024 — fbi.gov/cjis/ucr · USAFacts — usafacts.org · City of Memphis 2024 Crime Report · BJS — bjs.gov

Cumulative Risk Across Time

A 1-in-40 annual violent crime victimization rate does not feel like a sentence in any single year. Stack it and it does. Over a 3-year period in Memphis, cumulative probability of violent crime victimization reaches approximately 7.3%. Over a 5-year tenancy, roughly 11.9%. Over a 30-year mortgage, the math compounds to a certainty that violent crime touches most households directly. The national equivalents over those same windows are 1.1%, 1.8%, and approximately 10%. Living in Memphis is not an abstract risk. It is a compounding exposure with a measurable personal impact timeline. [FBI UCR, 2024]

Memphis's population of approximately 620,000 puts it in a meaningful peer group: it is larger than cities like Baltimore, New Orleans, and St. Louis — all of which have elevated violent crime profiles. Memphis sits above all of them on both the violent crime rate and the murder rate. This is not a small outlier being distorted by low population. The rate reflects real event volume across a substantial urban population.

What the Numbers Mean for Your Decision

2,501 violent crimes per 100,000 is the city average. It conceals enormous variance at the address level. Crime in Memphis is not uniformly distributed — there are areas of the city with substantially lower incident rates than the citywide figures, and areas where the citywide figures are understated relative to local patterns. The 1-in-40 annual odds are a citywide weighted average. Your specific address determines whether you sit above or below that figure. [FBI UCR, 2024]

56% of violent crimes in Memphis go unsolved. Six out of ten victims never see anyone held accountable. That clearance gap is not a minor administrative detail — it is a signal about deterrence, about repeat offenders who remain active, and about the realistic consequences an attacker faces at any given address. Unsolved crimes accumulate. They do not disappear from the risk calculation. [FBI UCR 2023 clearance data]

76% of sexual assaults nationally go unreported, per BJS NCVS 2024. The official record for any crime category in any city is structurally incomplete. The number on record is a floor, not a ceiling. Any honest risk assessment of Memphis starts with that fact.

What Address-Level Data Captures That Citywide Stats Cannot

City-level statistics answer one question: how does Memphis compare to other cities? Address-level data answers the question that matters for an actual decision — how does this specific property compare to the blocks around it, relative to the distribution of incidents across the city? Those are different questions with different answers. A 2,501 per 100,000 rate does not mean every block in Memphis carries that rate. It means the city-level aggregate sits there. Some blocks are well above it. Many are well below. Knowing where a specific address falls in that distribution is the actionable information.