Lancaster, WI has a D safety grade (27/100) with a violent crime rate of 668 per 100,000, 90% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Lancaster is a small municipal reporter (3,891 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with WI and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Lancaster, WI carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 90% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Lancaster, WI shows violent crime at 668.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 745.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 90% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 47.3% of the 55 Part I offenses reported in Lancaster for 2024, against a median of 12.0% across comparable Wisconsin cities — a gap of 35.2 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 353.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 668.2 in 2024 (+89.3%). The highest observed value was 1745.8 in 2023 and the lowest 353.1 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 668.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Lancaster ranks 5 of 222 — above 217 of the 221 other Wisconsin cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +524.2% against the cohort median of 107.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Small-count caution
Lancaster reported 26 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,891. 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Lancaster's 668.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Adams (616.2), Hayward (730.8), Wisconsin Rapids (532.2), Green Bay (495.1). 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 96.6% of reported property offenses in Lancaster, against a cohort median of 88.2%. The remainder is burglary (0) and motor vehicle theft (1). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Lancaster's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. 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 26 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,891. 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.
Across 3 Census sq mi, Lancaster logged 9.6 property and 8.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Lancaster's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (51% of 55 offenses; mix index 4,377).
Violent offenses are 47% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Lancaster offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (3 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 | 29 | 745.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 28 | 719.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1 | 25.7 |
| Arson | 1 | 25.7 |
| Burglary | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 26 | 668.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 23 | 591.1 |
| Rape | 3 | 77.1 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 3,682 | 353.1 | 516 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 3,683 | 733.1 | 1683.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,911 | 920.5 | 1252.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,895 | 1745.8 | 949.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,891 | 668.2 | 745.3 |
Lancaster Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Lancaster's 55 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 Wisconsin cities closest to Lancaster in population. Their populations run from 3,768 to 4,037, against 3,891 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Lancaster sits at 668.2/100K violent (grade D); the Wisconsin cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Lancaster reported 26 violent crimes and 29 property crimes, for a total of 55 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Lancaster's violent crime rate decreased by 61.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 21.5%.
The most common crime type in Lancaster is larceny-theft, accounting for 50.9% of all reported crimes (28 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Lancaster 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 Lancaster's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Lancaster, WI 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 as a small-city UCR reporter (3,891 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.