Arrests in Tennessee
Agencies in Tennessee reported 253,569 arrests to the FBI in 2025, broken down here by the arrestee’s race, sex and age.
American Factbook Research
Read these figures with these
- An arrest is an event, not a person. One person arrested three times in a year is three arrests, so these are not counts of individuals and a rate is not the share of a population that was arrested.
- Race is recorded by the arresting agency, not reported by the person arrested.
- The FBI publishes no ethnicity field with these arrests, so no Hispanic or Latino figure can be derived from them. Hispanic arrestees are recorded under a race, which is why the population each rate divides by is that race across all origins rather than the non-Hispanic part of it.
- The FBI’s “Multiple” category is an arresting officer’s classification of one person. The Census Bureau’s “two or more races” is what a person says about themselves. They are not the same population, so that row carries a count and no rate.
- Reporting to the FBI is voluntary and coverage varies by agency and by year, so a change in an arrest count can be a change in which agencies reported.
- A rate is not published where fewer than 20 arrests lie behind it. That is the convention US federal vital statistics use for an unreliable rate, and it matters most in the smallest groups: nineteen arrests among a few hundred residents produces a figure that one or two arrests would move by a third. The count is always shown.
- Comparing the composition of arrestees with the composition of a population assumes equal offending and equal likelihood of arrest across groups. This data supports neither assumption, and nothing here implies either.
- 344 arrests in 2025 carry no race at all — not even “unknown” — so the race rows total slightly less than the arrests recorded.
By race · 2025
Arrests per 100,000 residents of that group in Tennessee, using Census Bureau estimates for the same year. The FBI’s legacy grouping, “Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander”, contains two of the rows below and is left out rather than counted twice.
1 more column on a wider screen
| Race | Arrests | Share of arrests | Per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | 170,329 | 67.2% | 3,036 |
| Black or African American | 79,952 | 31.5% | 6,973 |
| Asian | 1,242 | 0.5% | 703 |
| Unknown | 1,219 | 0.5% | — |
| American Indian or Alaska Native | 545 | 0.2% | 798 |
| Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander | 282 | 0.1% | 4,014 |
| Multiple | 0 | 0.0% | — |
| Not Specified | 0 | 0.0% | — |
By sex · 2025
- 178,130
- Male
- 5,001 per 100,000 residents
- 75,439
- Female
- 2,010 per 100,000 residents
By age · 2025
| Age | Sex | Arrests | Per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 10 | Female | 53 | 6 |
| Under 10 | Male | 187 | 22 |
| Under 11 | Female | 0 | — |
| Under 11 | Male | 0 | — |
| 10-12 | Female | 518 | 195 |
| 10-12 | Male | 992 | 373 |
| 11-12 | Female | 0 | — |
| 11-12 | Male | 0 | — |
| 13-14 | Female | 1,310 | 739 |
| 13-14 | Male | 2,378 | 1,341 |
| 15 | Female | 921 | 1,015 |
| 15 | Male | 1,907 | 2,101 |
| 16 | Female | 1,002 | 1,081 |
| 16 | Male | 2,358 | 2,545 |
| 17 | Female | 965 | 1,002 |
| 17 | Male | 2,552 | 2,649 |
| 18 | Female | 1,377 | 1,490 |
| 18 | Male | 3,644 | 3,942 |
| 19 | Female | 1,379 | 1,531 |
| 19 | Male | 3,752 | 4,165 |
| 20 | Female | 1,455 | 1,586 |
| 20 | Male | 3,856 | 4,203 |
| 21 | Female | 1,524 | 1,659 |
| 21 | Male | 4,187 | 4,559 |
| 22 | Female | 1,565 | 1,675 |
| 22 | Male | 4,001 | 4,282 |
| 23 | Female | 1,750 | 1,757 |
| 23 | Male | 4,132 | 4,149 |
| 24 | Female | 1,855 | 1,703 |
| 24 | Male | 4,409 | 4,048 |
| 25-29 | Female | 9,637 | 1,880 |
| 25-29 | Male | 22,038 | 4,300 |
| 30-34 | Female | 11,415 | 2,317 |
| 30-34 | Male | 24,881 | 5,050 |
| 35-39 | Female | 11,412 | 2,376 |
| 35-39 | Male | 23,973 | 4,992 |
| 40-44 | Female | 9,745 | 2,130 |
| 40-44 | Male | 20,831 | 4,553 |
| 45-49 | Female | 6,737 | 1,560 |
| 45-49 | Male | 16,328 | 3,781 |
| 50-54 | Female | 4,601 | 1,059 |
| 50-54 | Male | 11,735 | 2,701 |
| 55-59 | Female | 2,941 | 668 |
| 55-59 | Male | 8,761 | 1,991 |
| 60-64 | Female | 1,874 | 406 |
| 60-64 | Male | 6,371 | 1,381 |
| 65 and over | Female | 1,403 | 103 |
| 65 and over | Male | 4,857 | 357 |
| Juvenile Other | Female | 0 | — |
| Juvenile Other | Male | 0 | — |
| Adult Other | Female | 0 | — |
| Adult Other | Male | 0 | — |
Related
Sources
- FBI Crime Data Explorer — Arrests — Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division · U.S. Government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. 105) · retrieved September 19, 2026
- Census Population Estimates — state characteristics — U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program
Data retrieved
Tennessee elsewhere on the Factbook
- Reported crimeCrime and justice
Offenses reported to police by type, the trend, and the reporting coverage.
- Prison populationCrime and justice
People held under the state’s correctional authority, and the imprisonment rate. A different publisher counting a different thing.
- Hate crimeCrime and justice
Incidents reported to the FBI by bias motivation, as counts — the collection publishes no participation share, so there is no rate to compare states on.
- Federal obligationsFederal spending
What federal agencies obligated against a place of performance in the state, per resident and by agency.
- The Tennessee Factbook entryAcross the Factbook
Every measure the Factbook publishes for this state in one place, each with where it ranks among the others and the record it came from.
The immigration hub has no page for a state: CBP publishes by sector and field office, which are its own areas of responsibility rather than a geography, so assigning them to states would be a claim the data does not make. Immigration and the border.