Ashland, VA has a F safety grade (22/100) with a violent crime rate of 595 per 100,000, 69% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Ashland is a small municipal reporter (7,903 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with VA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Ashland, VA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 69% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Ashland, VA shows violent crime at 594.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,100.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 69% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F 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 213.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 594.7 in 2024 (+178.0%). The highest observed value was 600.4 in 2022 and the lowest 213.9 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 594.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Ashland ranks 7 of 125 — above 118 of the 124 other Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +215.1% against the cohort median of 188.7. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Ashland's 594.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Fredericksburg (603.9), Roanoke (620.4), Pulaski (567.0), Farmville (548.3). 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 22.1% of the 213 Part I offenses reported in Ashland for 2024, against a median of 10.4% across comparable Virginia cities — a gap of 11.7 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.
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.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 7.2 Census sq mi, Ashland logged 23.1 property and 6.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Ashland's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (69% of 213 offenses; mix index 5,163).
Violent offenses are 22% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Ashland offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (7.2 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 | 166 | 2100.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 146 | 1847.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 15 | 189.8 |
| Burglary | 5 | 63.3 |
| Arson | 1 | 12.7 |
| Violent Crime | 47 | 594.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 43 | 544.1 |
| Robbery | 3 | 38 |
| Rape | 1 | 12.7 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 7,947 | 213.9 | 1673.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 7,976 | 476.4 | 1692.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 7,661 | 600.4 | 2219 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 7,834 | 434 | 2604 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 7,903 | 594.7 | 2100.5 |
Ashland Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Ashland's 213 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 Virginia cities closest to Ashland in population. Their populations run from 7,312 to 8,469, against 7,903 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Ashland sits at 594.7/100K violent (grade F); the Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Ashland reported 47 violent crimes and 166 property crimes, for a total of 213 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Ashland's violent crime rate increased by 37%, and the property crime rate decreased by 19.3%.
The most common crime type in Ashland is larceny-theft, accounting for 68.5% of all reported crimes (146 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Ashland is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Ashland's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Ashland, VA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Ashland, VA FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
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 as a small-city UCR reporter (7,903 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.