Utah data on violent crime and arrests

Violent crime in Utah

In 2022, 242 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents were reported to police in Utah. This is 16 percent higher than the violent crime rate in 2012.

The crime rate in Utah in 2022 was 36 percent lower than the United States average.

Data regarding crime and unsolved rates come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Violent crime includes homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and rape. Crime rates are calculated by dividing the number of estimated incidents by the total population for a given geography. For more information, see the data sources and methodology section below.

Unsolved violent crime in Utah

In 2022, 47 percent of violent crimes reported to police in Utah were not solved. This is 2 percentage points lower than the unsolved rate in 2012.

Unsolved rates are the number of reported crimes not cleared by arrest or by exceptional means divided by the number of reported crimes. For more information, see the data sources and methodology section below.

Unsolved violent crime by county in Utah

Unsolved violent crime by agency in Utah

In the following table, violent crime incident rates, as well as unsolved violent crime rates, are included for each of the 91 law enforcement agencies that reported data in Utah in 2022. Please note that rates calculated for agencies with smaller jurisdiction populations, as well as fewer overall incidents, are less reliable than those for larger jurisdictions and should be interpreted with caution.

Data regarding crime and unsolved rates come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Counts of reported violent crime between 2012 and 2022 are derived from the Summary Reporting System (SRS) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The FBI generated national estimates for reported crime and clearances based on agency-level reports, and these estimates were published through 2022 in the FBI’s annual report, Crime in the U.S. and on the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer.

The FBI stopped SRS data collection after data year 2020 and required law enforcement agencies to use NIBRS to report crime statistics to the FBI. This change decreased the number of agencies that submitted their crime data and thus reduced the reliability of state estimates in 2021. In 2022, the FBI allowed agencies who were unable to submit NIBRS data to submit SRS data again. Ninety-four percent of the U.S. population was covered in the 2022 crime data submissions to the FBI, with most states providing close to complete data. However, the population upon which the estimates were derived decreased by over 10 percent in three states: Florida, Hawaii, and Illinois, so conclusions about crime changes in those states should be interpreted with additional caution.

Crime rates are calculated by dividing the number of estimated incidents by the total U.S. population. Population data come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 1-year estimates (table B01003) and the 2020 Decennial Census Redistricting Data (table P1).

Unsolved rates are the number of reported crimes not cleared by arrest or by exceptional means divided by the number of reported crimes. A reported crime incident is cleared by exceptional means if a law enforcement agency is unable to arrest or formally charge a person with a crime, but the agency has met the following conditions:

  1. Identified the person who committed the crime
  2. Gathered enough evidence to support an arrest, make a charge, and turn over the person to the court for prosecution
  3. Identified the suspect’s exact location so that the person could be taken into custody immediately
  4. Encountered a circumstance outside the control of law enforcement that prohibits the agency from arresting, charging, and prosecuting the person

Examples of exceptional clearances include the death of the person who committed the crime; the victim’s refusal to cooperate with the prosecution after the person who committed the crime has been identified; or the denial of extradition.

In some instances, the unsolved rate and number of unsolved crimes may be less than 0. This is due to the fact that the number of reported crimes cleared in a year can include incidents reported in prior years. For this reason, it is possible to have more cleared crimes than new reported incidents in a given year.

Agency- and county-level violent crime and unsolved rate data presented above are restricted to agencies reporting data for all 12 months in 2022. The calculation of population covered by reporting agencies, as well as the number of reporting agencies by county, is also based on agencies with violent crime data for all 12 months.

Counties with fewer than 25 reported violent incidents in 2022 are excluded from the map, as calculations of unsolved rates are not reliable.