Ashland, MA has a A safety grade (85/100) with a violent crime rate of 95 per 100,000, 73% below the national average.
Ashland (18,861 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then MA and national benchmarks.
Ashland, MA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 73% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Ashland, MA shows violent crime at 95.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 678.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 73% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
The verdict
Ashland earns an A safety grade: violent crime runs 73% below the U.S. average, placing it safer than most U.S. cities.
Based on 18 reported violent incidents in a population of 18,861. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Small-count caution
Ashland reported 18 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 18,861. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 34.4% of reported property offenses in Ashland, against a cohort median of 78.1%. The remainder is burglary (51) and motor vehicle theft (33). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Ashland's 95.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Williamstown (95.4), North Attleboro (95.0), Franklin (94.9), Sterling (94.8). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 12.3% of the 146 Part I offenses reported in Ashland for 2024, against a median of 21.5% across comparable Massachusetts cities — a gap of 9.2 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Position in the state cohort
At 95.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Ashland ranks 213 of 317 — above 104 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -34.2% against the cohort median of 145.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 106.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 95.4 in 2024 (-10.4%). The highest observed value was 106.5 in 2020 and the lowest 77.1 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Ashland's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Based on 18 reported violent incidents in a population of 18,861. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 128 | 678.6 |
| Burglary | 51 | 270.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 44 | 233.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 33 | 175 |
| Arson | 1 | 5.3 |
| Violent Crime | 18 | 95.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 15 | 79.5 |
| Rape | 2 | 10.6 |
| Robbery | 1 | 5.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 17,842 | 106.5 | 448.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 18,160 | 77.1 | 341.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 18,373 | 103.4 | 228.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 18,356 | 98.1 | 359.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 18,861 | 95.4 | 678.6 |
Ashland's crime figures on this page originate from Ashland Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Massachusetts cities closest to Ashland in population. Their populations run from 18,335 to 19,232, against 18,861 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Massachusetts cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Ashland's 95.4/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Mid-size read: Ashland figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Ashland's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Ashland, MA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Ashland is scored in the mid-size municipal band (18,861 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.