Ashland, OH has a B safety grade (70/100) with a violent crime rate of 173 per 100,000, 51% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Ashland (18,552 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then OH and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Ashland, OH carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 51% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Ashland, OH shows violent crime at 172.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,417.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 51% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 113.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 172.5 in 2024 (+51.8%). The highest observed value was 172.5 in 2024 and the lowest 110.4 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Ashland's 172.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Northwood (172.2), Cuyahoga Falls (173.8), Botkins (169.2), Fostoria (168.7). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 172.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Ashland ranks 111 of 340 — above 229 of the 339 other Ohio cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +52.5% against the cohort median of 113.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 11.4 Census sq mi, Ashland logged 23 property and 2.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Ashland's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (78% of 295 offenses; mix index 6,263).
Violent offenses are only 11% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Ashland offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (11.4 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 263 | 1417.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 231 | 1245.1 |
| Burglary | 27 | 145.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 5 | 27 |
| Arson | 1 | 5.4 |
| Violent Crime | 32 | 172.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 14 | 75.5 |
| Rape | 13 | 70.1 |
| Robbery | 5 | 27 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 20,247 | 113.6 | 1570.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 19,919 | 110.4 | 1089.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 19,193 | 130.3 | 1375.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 18,912 | 116.3 | 1591.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 18,552 | 172.5 | 1417.6 |
Ashland Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Ashland's 295 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
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 Ohio cities closest to Ashland in population. Their populations run from 17,957 to 19,057, against 18,552 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Ashland sits at 172.5/100K violent (grade B); the Ohio cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Ashland at 172.5/100K violent and 1,417.6/100K property - matched below outside Ohio (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
172.5/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,417.6/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Ashland reported 32 violent crimes and 263 property crimes, for a total of 295 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Ashland's violent crime rate increased by 48.3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 10.9%.
The most common crime type in Ashland is larceny-theft, accounting for 78.3% of all reported crimes (231 incidents in 2024).
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, OH 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 (18,552 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.