Dalton, MA has a A safety grade (88/100) with a violent crime rate of 114 per 100,000, 68% below the national average.
Dalton is a small municipal reporter (6,161 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MA and U.S. context.
Dalton, MA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 68% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Dalton, MA shows violent crime at 113.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 81.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 68% 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
Dalton earns an A safety grade: violent crime runs 68% below the U.S. average, placing it close to the national middle for violent crime.
Based on 7 reported violent incidents in a population of 6,161. 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 58.3% of the 12 Part I offenses reported in Dalton for 2024, against a median of 21.4% across comparable Massachusetts cities — a gap of 37.0 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.
Small-count caution
Dalton reported 7 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 6,161. 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 261.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 113.6 in 2024 (-56.6%). The highest observed value was 294.5 in 2021 and the lowest 113.6 in 2024. 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 Dalton's 113.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are West Boylston (112.6), Berkley (114.8), Duxbury (115.0), Holland (115.0). 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 60.0% of reported property offenses in Dalton, against a cohort median of 78.1%. The remainder is burglary (1) and motor vehicle theft (1). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 113.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Dalton ranks 190 of 317 — above 127 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -21.7% against the cohort median of 145.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Violent counts are the sharper signal on Dalton's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Based on 7 reported violent incidents in a population of 6,161. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 7 | 113.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 7 | 113.6 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
| Property Crime | 5 | 81.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 3 | 48.7 |
| Burglary | 1 | 16.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1 | 16.2 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 6,500 | 261.5 | 323.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 6,452 | 294.5 | 434 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,273 | 271 | 589.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,196 | 209.8 | 371.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,161 | 113.6 | 81.2 |
Dalton's crime figures on this page originate from Dalton 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 Dalton in population. Their populations run from 5,871 to 6,486, against 6,161 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Massachusetts cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Dalton's 113.6/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Small-city read: Dalton 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 Dalton's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Dalton, 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. Dalton is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,161 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.