Lancaster, TX has a D safety grade (32/100) with a violent crime rate of 410 per 100,000, 16% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Lancaster (40,486 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then TX and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Lancaster, TX carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 16% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Lancaster, TX shows violent crime at 410 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,127 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 16% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Lancaster's 410.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Waller (413.6), La Grulla (414.3), Jacksonville (405.4), La Feria (415.9). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 410.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Lancaster ranks 111 of 686 — above 575 of the 685 other Texas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +129.1% against the cohort median of 178.9. 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 528.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 410.0 in 2024 (-22.3%). The highest observed value was 627.8 in 2022 and the lowest 410.0 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 55.1% of reported property offenses in Lancaster, against a cohort median of 71.6%. The remainder is burglary (353) and motor vehicle theft (216). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Lancaster'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.
Across 33.1 Census sq mi, Lancaster logged 38.3 property and 5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Lancaster leans on larceny-theft at 49% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,275.
Violent offenses are only 12% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Lancaster offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (33.1 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 | 1,266 | 3127 |
| Larceny-Theft | 697 | 1721.6 |
| Burglary | 353 | 871.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 216 | 533.5 |
| Arson | 5 | 12.3 |
| Violent Crime | 166 | 410 |
| Aggravated Assault | 116 | 286.5 |
| Robbery | 28 | 69.2 |
| Rape | 16 | 39.5 |
| Murder | 6 | 14.8 |
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 | 39,587 | 528 | 2417.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 39,235 | 570.9 | 2681.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 40,615 | 627.8 | 3107.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 40,292 | 516.2 | 3092.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 40,486 | 410 | 3127 |
Lancaster Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Lancaster's 1,432 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 Texas cities closest to Lancaster in population. Their populations run from 38,939 to 41,549, against 40,486 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Lancaster sits at 410/100K violent (grade D); the Texas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Lancaster at 410/100K violent and 3,127/100K property - matched below outside Texas (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
410/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,127/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-20.6% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Lancaster reported 166 violent crimes and 1,266 property crimes, for a total of 1,432 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Lancaster's violent crime rate decreased by 20.6%, and the property crime rate increased by 1.1%.
The most common crime type in Lancaster is larceny-theft, accounting for 48.7% of all reported crimes (697 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Lancaster 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 Lancaster's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Lancaster, TX 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. Lancaster is scored in the mid-size municipal band (40,486 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.