Wakefield, MA has a A safety grade (79/100) with a violent crime rate of 175 per 100,000, 50% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Wakefield (28,594 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 2026-08-24
Wakefield, MA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 50% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Wakefield, MA shows violent crime at 174.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 409.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 50% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 107.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 174.9 in 2024 (+63.5%). The highest observed value was 174.9 in 2024 and the lowest 107.0 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 Wakefield's 174.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Chatham (175.4), Methuen (175.8), Ludlow (173.7), Boylston (176.2). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 29.9% of the 167 Part I offenses reported in Wakefield for 2024, against a median of 21.4% across comparable Massachusetts cities — a gap of 8.6 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 174.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Wakefield ranks 121 of 317 — above 196 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +21.6% 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.
Property counts dominate Wakefield'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 7.4 Census sq mi, Wakefield logged 15.8 property and 6.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Wakefield leans on larceny-theft at 50% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,195.
Violent offenses are 30% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Wakefield offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (7.4 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 | 117 | 409.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 84 | 293.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 20 | 69.9 |
| Burglary | 13 | 45.5 |
| Arson | 1 | 3.5 |
| Violent Crime | 50 | 174.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 32 | 111.9 |
| Rape | 16 | 56 |
| Robbery | 2 | 7 |
| Murder | 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 | 27,114 | 107 | 586.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 27,470 | 112.9 | 342.2 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 27,263 | 150.4 | 443.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 27,175 | 110.4 | 529.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 28,594 | 174.9 | 409.2 |
Wakefield Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Wakefield's 167 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 Wakefield in population. Their populations run from 28,375 to 29,784, against 28,594 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Wakefield sits at 174.9/100K violent (grade A); the Massachusetts cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Wakefield at 174.9/100K violent and 409.2/100K property - matched below outside Massachusetts (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
174.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
409.2/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+58.4% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Wakefield reported 50 violent crimes and 117 property crimes, for a total of 167 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Wakefield's violent crime rate increased by 58.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 22.8%.
The most common crime type in Wakefield is larceny-theft, accounting for 50.3% of all reported crimes (84 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Wakefield 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 Wakefield's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Wakefield, 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. Wakefield is scored in the mid-size municipal band (28,594 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.