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The Short Answer
What Percentage of Americans Are Recent Crime Victims?
The Short Answer

What Percentage of Americans Are Recent Crime Victims?

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Each year since 2017, 15% of U.S. adults have indicated they were victimized by crime in the past year. A subset of that, between 1% and 3%, have reported being the victim of a violent crime.

Line graph, 2000 to 2019. Percentage of Americans victimized by crime (total) and violent crime each year.

These victimization rates are based on a ºÚÁÏÍø question asking Americans about their experiences with seven types of conventional crimes that ºÚÁÏÍø has tracked each year since 2000, spanning theft, vandalism and physical violence. ºÚÁÏÍø documents Americans' experience with cybercrime separately, typically finding about one in four victimized in the past year.

Seniors Half as Likely as Others to Be Victimized

Conventional crime victimization rates are fairly uniform by gender, but differ in certain ways by age (seniors are less likely to be victimized), household income, race/ethnicity and community size.

Violent crime is more common among younger and middle- to lower-income Americans than it is among their counterparts.

Crime Victimization Among Major U.S. Subgroups
Based on 2017-2019 average
  Crime victim (total) Violent crime victim
  % %
U.S. adults 15 2
Gender  
Men 14 2
Women 15 2
Age  
18-29 17 3
30-49 17 2
50-64 16 2
65+ 8 1
Household income  
$75,000+ 13 1
$30,000-$74,999 15 3
<$30,000 17 3
Race/Ethnicity  
Non-Hispanic white 14 2
Non-Hispanic black 20 1
Hispanic 12 2
Community size  
Big city 18 3
Small city 15 1
Suburb 14 2
Town 15 3
Rural area 11 2
2001-2019 results based on polls conducted in October of each year; 2000 results based on poll conducted in August/September
ºÚÁÏÍø

ºÚÁÏÍø measures crime victimization each October as part of its Crime poll -- one of 12 surveys that make up the .

ºÚÁÏÍø's full trend on crime victimization is available on the Crime "Topics A to Z" page.

Explore ºÚÁÏÍø articles about crime on the Crime topic page.


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