Bolton, MA has a A safety grade (80/100) with a violent crime rate of 170 per 100,000, 52% below the national average.
Bolton is a small municipal reporter (5,871 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MA and U.S. context.
Bolton, MA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 52% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bolton, MA shows violent crime at 170.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 340.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 52% 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
Bolton earns an A safety grade: violent crime runs 52% below the U.S. average, placing it close to the national middle for violent crime.
Based on 10 reported violent incidents in a population of 5,871. 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
Bolton reported 10 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 5,871. 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 91.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 170.3 in 2024 (+85.8%). The highest observed value was 170.3 in 2024 and the lowest 17.9 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 Bolton's 170.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Brookfield (170.6), Dunstable (172.0), Eastham (168.6), Douglas (168.4). 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 33.3% of the 30 Part I offenses reported in Bolton for 2024, against a median of 21.4% across comparable Massachusetts cities — a gap of 12.0 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 170.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bolton ranks 125 of 317 — above 192 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +18.4% against the cohort median of 143.8. 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 Bolton'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 10 reported violent incidents in a population of 5,871. 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-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 20 | 340.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 15 | 255.5 |
| Burglary | 5 | 85.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 10 | 170.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 9 | 153.3 |
| Rape | 1 | 17 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 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 | 5,455 | 91.7 | 458.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 5,579 | 17.9 | 501.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,710 | 87.6 | 455.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,778 | 34.6 | 380.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,871 | 170.3 | 340.7 |
Bolton's crime figures on this page originate from Bolton 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 Bolton in population. Their populations run from 5,645 to 6,161, against 5,871 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Massachusetts cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Bolton's 170.3/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Small-city read: Bolton 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 Bolton's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bolton, 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. Bolton is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,871 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.