Crime & Safety in Decatur
Decatur's crime picture shows a real disagreement between its two most-cited third-party sources, in a less common direction than typically seen in this dataset: CrimeGrade.org reads Decatur as higher-crime than the national average, while NeighborhoodScout reads its violent crime specifically as close to the national average. Both are disclosed by name rather than resolved into one verdict.
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Learn moreCrimeGrade.org's less favorable read
CrimeGrade.org cites an overall Decatur crime rate of 38.17 incidents per 1,000 residents in a typical year, assigning a D grade and placing Decatur in the 20th percentile for safety nationally -- meaning CrimeGrade reads Decatur as higher-crime than roughly 80% of U.S. communities in its dataset. Its violent-crime-specific rate is cited at 4.798 per 1,000 residents.
NeighborhoodScout's more favorable read on violent crime specifically
NeighborhoodScout cites an overall crime rate of 24 per 1,000 residents for Decatur -- "not among the communities with the very highest crime rate" by its own framing -- with a roughly 1-in-42 annual chance of being a victim of violent or property crime. Its violent-crime rate specifically is cited at 1 per 1,000 residents, described as "about average for all communities in America."
A real disagreement, reflecting a common overall-vs-violent-crime split
CrimeGrade's overall figure (38.17/1,000) reads meaningfully worse than NeighborhoodScout's overall figure (24/1,000) -- and CrimeGrade's D-grade, 20th-percentile framing is a notably less favorable overall picture than NeighborhoodScout's "about average" violent-crime characterization. This likely reflects each site's different geographic scope, crime-category weighting, and normalization methodology rather than one source simply being wrong; the honest takeaway is that Decatur's overall crime rate (driven substantially by property crime, common in dense, mixed commercial-residential downtown areas) reads worse than its violent-crime-specific rate, which lands closer to average by at least one source.
Check a specific address directly, and expect real block-level variance
As with any city, block-level variance is real and can be masked by any citywide statistic from either source. Local reporting cites the northwest part of the city as generally considered safer by residents, though no specific area is characterized as higher-risk here, per site policy. Check a specific address directly with both CrimeGrade.org and NeighborhoodScout before drawing conclusions.
Key takeaways
- CrimeGrade.org cites Decatur's overall crime rate at 38.17 per 1,000 residents (D grade, 20th percentile nationally) and violent crime at 4.798 per 1,000 -- a less favorable overall read.
- NeighborhoodScout cites Decatur's overall crime rate at 24 per 1,000 (1-in-42 annual victimization odds) and violent crime specifically at 1 per 1,000, described as "about average for all communities in America" -- a more favorable violent-crime-specific read.
- These two sources genuinely disagree on the overall picture, likely reflecting a real split between Decatur's property-crime rate (driving the worse CrimeGrade overall figure, plausibly tied to its dense downtown commercial core) and its closer-to-average violent-crime rate specifically.
- Check a specific address directly with both sources before drawing a conclusion; local reporting cites the northwest part of the city as generally considered safer by residents, though this dataset names no specific higher-risk area per site policy.
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