Sterling, MA has a A safety grade (88/100) with a violent crime rate of 95 per 100,000, 73% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Sterling is a small municipal reporter (8,437 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Sterling, MA is safer than most U.S. cities, and earns an A PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 73% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Sterling, MA shows violent crime at 94.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 272.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 73% 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.
Small-count caution
Sterling reported 8 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 8,437. 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 61.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 94.8 in 2024 (+55.0%). The highest observed value was 97.0 in 2023 and the lowest 61.2 in 2020. 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 Sterling's 94.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Franklin (94.9), North Attleboro (95.0), Longmeadow (94.5), Williamstown (95.4). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 94.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Sterling ranks 217 of 317 — above 100 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -34.6% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 25.8% of the 31 Part I offenses reported in Sterling for 2024, against a median of 21.4% across comparable Massachusetts cities — a gap of 4.4 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.
Property counts dominate Sterling'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.
Based on 8 reported violent incidents in a population of 8,437. 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 30.6 Census sq mi, Sterling logged 0.8 property and 0.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Sterling's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (58% of 31 offenses; mix index 4,058).
Violent offenses are 26% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Sterling offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (30.6 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 | 23 | 272.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 18 | 213.3 |
| Burglary | 5 | 59.3 |
| Arson | 1 | 11.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 8 | 94.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 6 | 71.1 |
| Rape | 2 | 23.7 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 8,172 | 61.2 | 379.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 8,270 | 84.6 | 266 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 8,372 | 95.6 | 298.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 8,250 | 97 | 254.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 8,437 | 94.8 | 272.6 |
Sterling Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Sterling's 31 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 Sterling in population. Their populations run from 8,291 to 8,597, against 8,437 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Sterling sits at 94.8/100K violent (grade A); the Massachusetts cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Sterling reported 8 violent crimes and 23 property crimes, for a total of 31 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Sterling's violent crime rate decreased by 2.3%, and the property crime rate increased by 7.1%.
The most common crime type in Sterling is larceny-theft, accounting for 58.1% of all reported crimes (18 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Sterling 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 Sterling's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Sterling, MA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Sterling, 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. Sterling is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (8,437 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.