Lake Charles Crime Rates and Statistics (2024)

With a crime rate of 36 per one thousand residents, Lake Charles has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 27. Within Louisiana, more than 86% of the communities have a lower crime rate than Lake Charles.

Importantly, when you compare Lake Charles to other communities of similar population, then Lake Charles crime rate (violent and property crimes combined) is quite a bit higher than average. Regardless of how Lake Charles does relative to all communities in America of all sizes, when NeighborhoodScout compared it to communities of similar population size, its crime rate per thousand residents stands out as higher than most.

Now let us turn to take a look at how Lake Charles does for violent crimes specifically, and then how it does for property crimes. This is important because the overall crime rate can be further illuminated by understanding if violent crime or property crimes (or both) are the major contributors to the general rate of crime in Lake Charles.

For Lake Charles, we found that the violent crime rate is one of the highest in the nation, across communities of all sizes (both large and small). Violent offenses tracked included rape, murder and non-negligent manslaughter, armed robbery, and aggravated assault, including assault with a deadly weapon. According to NeighborhoodScout's analysis of FBI reported crime data, your chance of becoming a victim of one of these crimes in Lake Charles is one in 163.

Significantly, based on the number of murders reported by the FBI and the number of residents living in the city, NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that Lake Charles experiences one of the higher murder rates in the nation when compared with cities and towns for all sizes of population, from the largest to the smallest.

In addition, NeighborhoodScout found that a lot of the crime that takes place in Lake Charles is property crime. Property crimes that are tracked for this analysis are burglary, larceny over fifty dollars, motor vehicle theft, and arson. In Lake Charles, your chance of becoming a victim of a property crime is one in 33, which is a rate of 30 per one thousand population.