Ware, MA has a D safety grade (28/100) with a violent crime rate of 695 per 100,000, 97% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Ware (10,076 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 2026-09-05
Ware, MA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns a D PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 97% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Ware, MA shows violent crime at 694.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 357.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 97% 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 66.0% of the 106 Part I offenses reported in Ware for 2024, against a median of 21.4% across comparable Massachusetts cities — a gap of 44.7 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 371.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 694.7 in 2024 (+87.1%). The highest observed value was 740.4 in 2023 and the lowest 371.4 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 694.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Ware ranks 6 of 317 — above 311 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +383.1% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Ware's 694.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Greenfield (694.6), Tisbury (681.4), Fall River (742.9), Webster (637.7). 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.
Violent counts are the sharper signal on Ware'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 6.2 Census sq mi, Ware logged 5.8 property and 11.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Ware's 2024 book concentrates in aggravated assault (63% of 106 offenses; mix index 4,778).
Violent offenses are 66% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a mid-size city.
Ware offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (6.2 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 70 | 694.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 67 | 664.9 |
| Rape | 3 | 29.8 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
| Property Crime | 36 | 357.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 29 | 287.8 |
| Burglary | 5 | 49.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 2 | 19.8 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
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 | 9,694 | 371.4 | 381.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 9,900 | 515.2 | 414.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 10,295 | 621.7 | 388.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 10,535 | 740.4 | 351.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 10,076 | 694.7 | 357.3 |
Ware Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Ware's 106 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 Ware in population. Their populations run from 9,643 to 10,600, against 10,076 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Ware sits at 694.7/100K violent (grade D); the Massachusetts cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Ware at 694.7/100K violent and 357.3/100K property - matched below outside Massachusetts (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
694.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
357.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Ware reported 70 violent crimes and 36 property crimes, for a total of 106 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Ware's violent crime rate decreased by 6.2%, and the property crime rate increased by 1.7%.
The most common crime type in Ware is aggravated assault, accounting for 63.2% of all reported crimes (67 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Ware 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 Ware's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Ware, MA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Ware, 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. Ware is scored in the mid-size municipal band (10,076 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.