What’s up — or down — with crime in Asheville?

Posted on by Mark Barrett

Whether one characterizes Asheville’s crime rates as good, bad or indifferent depends a lot on one’s frame of reference. Here are some figures and comparisons.

Recent years

Crime appears to have been on the rise in the city until recently. These figures, calculated from FBI data and population estimates, show the city’s crime rates from 2015-20, expressed as the number of reported crimes per 100,000 residents.

Recent months

However, the FBI figures don’t capture a more recent downturn in Asheville crime. These figures, from an Xpress analysis of APD data, show the raw number of crimes reported to police and therefore are not directly comparable to the older FBI numbers.

Historically

Crime rates in Asheville have still not reached levels seen as recently as the 1990s. The city’s violent crime rate was higher in seven out of 10 years in that decade than it was in 2020. Property crimes were higher in nine out of 10 years in the 1990s than in 2019, the city’s most recent peak.

Among NC cities

Asheville’s violent crime rate in 2020, the last year for which full figures are available, was the seventh highest among North Carolina’s 20 largest cities reporting to the FBI. Asheville’s rate was 810 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with an average rate of 561. (It is unclear why there is a small difference between this rate and the one in the “Recent years” section. Figures for Winston-Salem were not available.)

The city’s property crime rate in 2020 was easily the highest among the 20 largest cities reporting at 5,395 per 100,000. The average rate for the 20 cities was 2,788.

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