Crime in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Major crime in Chapel Hill is 38% above the U.S. rate per resident: 63% lower for persons crimes and 1.6 times for property crimes. Expected major crimes are down 3.0% from a year earlier.
Modeled estimates per resident, not counts of incidents. How we calculated this
Index: crimes per resident compared with the U.S., where 100 is the U.S. rate and 200 is twice it.
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Theft from vehicle stands out most, at 2.4 times the U.S. rate
Expected crimes per year in Chapel Hill for each type, and the index against the U.S. rate per resident.
Citywide indexWhere the middle half of residents live
Property crimes
Social disorder
How crime varies across Chapel Hill
The middle half of Chapel Hill residents live in neighborhoods with a major-crime index between 73 and 170; the typical (median) resident's is 114. The citywide figure (138) is higher than that because crime concentrates in a smaller set of areas.
- 0–5018.2%
- 50–10024.0%
- 100–20033.6%
- 200–40023.1%
- 400+1.1%
Share of residents by the index of their census block group, a neighborhood of roughly 600 to 3,000 people.
Lowest on Friday and Saturday nights
Major-crime index by time of week, against the U.S. rate for the same hours.
Major crime fell 3.0% in a year; across North Carolina it fell 9.0%
Change in expected crimes, with North Carolina as a whole in gray. The past year uses the reporting agencies' year-to-date FBI data; 2031 is the model's projection.
Chapel Hill against U.S. places with 50,000 to 100,000 residents
114 of the 540 other places of this size have a higher major-crime index than Chapel Hill; the middle of the group is 92. The 9 nearest in population:
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; residents in gray.
Chapel Hill has a higher major-crime index than 4 of its 8 nearest neighbors
The 8 nearest cities and towns we cover, by major-crime index. The closest, Carrboro (2 mi), is 5% below Chapel Hill's rate.
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; distances between where residents live, in miles.
Questions about crime in Chapel Hill
What are the most common crimes in Chapel Hill?
By expected count, the most common persons and property crimes are other larceny (about 552 a year), theft from vehicle (about 403 a year) and shoplifting (about 224 a year). Compared with the U.S., theft from vehicle stands out most: 2.4 times the U.S. rate per resident.
How we calculated this
Each police agency's crimes, as reported to the FBI, are spread across the census block groups it serves using population, jobs, points of interest and, where available, local incident records. Chapel Hill's figures add up its 44 block groups. The index compares crimes per resident with the U.S. rate.
- Chapel Hill's published incident records inform the estimate for every neighborhood.
- 31.5% of residents live in block groups whose estimate has high confidence (80% interval within about 5x).
- Rates are per resident, so places where many people work or visit but few live, such as downtowns, airports and stadiums, can read high.
- Disorderly conduct and trespassing are modeled, because the FBI records them only through arrests.
- Residents: 63,577. Model updated Oct 20, 2026. Release 2026-2026-10-20-2
Full method and validation·Data sources
CrimeMetric. "Crime in Chapel Hill, North Carolina." Vorp Labs, model updated Oct 20, 2026. https://crimemetric.com/nc/chapel-hill
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Major-crime index, U.S. = 100
- Carrboro2 mi130
- Durham9 mi237
- Hillsborough9 mi143
- Morrisville13 mi138
- Pittsboro15 mi105
- Cary15 mi49
- Apex16 mi44
- Mebane17 mi150