Boston, MA has a F safety grade (20/100) with a violent crime rate of 628 per 100,000, 78% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · very large city
At 659,049 residents, Boston is a very large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against MA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Boston, MA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 78% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Boston, MA shows violent crime at 627.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,021.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 78% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 627.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Boston ranks 10 of 317 — above 307 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +336.6% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Boston's 627.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Webster (637.7), Brockton (599.2), Lynn (574.6), Tisbury (681.4). 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.
Share of the state cohort
The 17,462 Part I offenses reported here are 18.6% of the 94,025 reported across all 317 comparable Massachusetts cities in 2024. A city this large moves the statewide municipal total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 659,049 rather than as a uniform shift.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 637.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 627.9 in 2024 (-1.4%). The highest observed value was 637.0 in 2020 and the lowest 564.3 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Boston'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.
On a very large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Boston's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (64% of 17,462 offenses; mix index 4,477).
Violent offenses are 24% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Boston offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (when validated); 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 | 13,324 | 2021.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 11,121 | 1687.4 |
| Burglary | 1,171 | 177.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1,032 | 156.6 |
| Arson | 20 | 3 |
| Violent Crime | 4,138 | 627.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 3,112 | 472.2 |
| Robbery | 833 | 126.4 |
| Rape | 169 | 25.6 |
| Murder | 24 | 3.6 |
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 | 697,323 | 637 | 1899.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 704,758 | 564.3 | 1670.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 638,925 | 635.6 | 1831.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 642,823 | 633.6 | 1965.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 659,049 | 627.9 | 2021.7 |
Boston Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Boston's 17,462 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 Massachusetts cities closest to Boston in population. Their populations run from 102,491 to 212,425, against 659,049 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Boston sits at 627.9/100K violent (grade F); the Massachusetts cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Boston at 627.9/100K violent and 2,021.7/100K property - matched below outside Massachusetts (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
627.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,021.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-0.9% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Boston reported 4,138 violent crimes and 13,324 property crimes, for a total of 17,462 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Boston's violent crime rate decreased by 0.9%, and the property crime rate increased by 2.9%.
The most common crime type in Boston is larceny-theft, accounting for 63.7% of all reported crimes (11,121 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Boston's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (very large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Boston's very large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Boston, 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. Boston is scored here as a very large city UCR reporter (659,049 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.