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.

These victimization rates are based on a Gallup question asking Americans about their experiences with seven types of conventional crimes that Gallup has tracked each year since 2000, spanning theft, vandalism and physical violence. Gallup 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 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
Gallup

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

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

Explore Gallup articles about crime on the Crime topic page.