Chelsea, MA has a F safety grade (17/100) with a violent crime rate of 979 per 100,000, 178% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Chelsea (38,307 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then MA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Chelsea, MA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 178% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Chelsea, MA shows violent crime at 978.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,435.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 178% 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 978.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Chelsea ranks 3 of 317 — above 314 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +580.7% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 627.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 978.9 in 2024 (+56.0%). The highest observed value was 978.9 in 2024 and the lowest 627.6 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 40.5% of the 925 Part I offenses reported in Chelsea for 2024, against a median of 21.4% across comparable Massachusetts cities — a gap of 19.2 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Chelsea's 978.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Holyoke (1041.0), Springfield (891.4), North Adams (1194.0), Fall River (742.9). 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.
Property counts dominate Chelsea'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.
Chelsea leans on larceny-theft at 48% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,403.
Violent offenses are 41% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a mid-size city.
Chelsea 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 | 550 | 1435.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 441 | 1151.2 |
| Burglary | 57 | 148.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 52 | 135.7 |
| Arson | 3 | 7.8 |
| Violent Crime | 375 | 978.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 296 | 772.7 |
| Robbery | 46 | 120.1 |
| Rape | 31 | 80.9 |
| Murder | 2 | 5.2 |
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 | 39,995 | 627.6 | 1432.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 39,971 | 730.5 | 1658.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 37,590 | 806.1 | 1817 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 37,837 | 970 | 1630.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 38,307 | 978.9 | 1435.8 |
Chelsea Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Chelsea's 925 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 Chelsea in population. Their populations run from 35,885 to 41,270, against 38,307 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Chelsea sits at 978.9/100K violent (grade F); the Massachusetts cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Chelsea at 978.9/100K violent and 1,435.8/100K property - matched below outside Massachusetts (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
978.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,435.8/100K 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, Chelsea reported 375 violent crimes and 550 property crimes, for a total of 925 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Chelsea's violent crime rate increased by 0.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 12%.
The most common crime type in Chelsea is larceny-theft, accounting for 47.7% of all reported crimes (441 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Chelsea 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 Chelsea's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Chelsea, MA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Chelsea, MA 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. Chelsea is scored in the mid-size municipal band (38,307 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.