This page includes statistics on crime in Santa Cruz from the past decade. Uniform Crime Reporting Part I Crime totals for Santa Cruz from 2008 through 2023 appear below. Part I Crimes are those that occur with sufficient frequency to provide adequate basis for comparison from year-to-year and across jurisdictions.  

UNIFORM CRIME REPORTING

This section summarizes all Part I crimes in the City of Santa Cruz. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program to classify crime into two groups: Part I and Part II offenses, and each participating agency is required to report Part I crime statistics on a monthly basis to the California Department of Justice (DOJ), which is then forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

What is Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)?
UCR is a statewide law enforcement program designed to provide a nationwide view of crime based on the submission of statistics by law enforcement agencies throughout the country. Each agency is required to report monthly crime statistics to the California Department of Justice, which will in turn forward the information to the FBI. The FBI then uses this information to publish their annual Uniform Crime Report.

Changing how we report crime in 2024:

The Santa Cruz Police Department is currently transitioning from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Summary Reporting System (SRS) to UCR National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) / California Incident-Based Reporting System (CIBRS). NIBRS is now the FBI’s statistical guideline for the entire nation which captures a higher standard of data reporting, better informing both the public and agencies on crime in general. A few key benefits of this change will be that SRS used the hierarchy rule to only count the highest offense in each incident, whereas NIBRS/CIBRS counts up to 10 offenses per incident and reports on more offense categories than SRS. NIBRS captures detailed and meaningful information on victims, relationships between victims and offenders, property, arrestees, attempted versus completed crimes, and known offenders. This information provides greater insight into incidents holistically.

As an agency, we are learning this new reporting system in real time, and we have encountered some unique challenges. Our report management vendor has worked closely with our agency to fix these problems, and we are slowly finalizing our first few months in NIBRS reporting. The Santa Cruz Police Department is currently working to create these updated statistics for 2024, which we hope to publish soon. Below is a chart showing the expanded categories in CIBRS/NIBRS compared to SRS.

2020 UCR Totals

Quarterly and Monthly Crime Statistics: City Wide