Webster, MA has a D safety grade (30/100) with a violent crime rate of 638 per 100,000, 81% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Webster (17,876 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
Webster, MA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns a D PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 81% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Webster, MA shows violent crime at 637.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 800 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 81% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 637.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Webster ranks 9 of 317 — above 308 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +343.4% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 44.4% of the 257 Part I offenses reported in Webster for 2024, against a median of 21.4% across comparable Massachusetts cities — a gap of 23.0 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Webster's 637.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Boston (627.9), Brockton (599.2), Tisbury (681.4), Greenfield (694.6). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 687.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 637.7 in 2024 (-7.2%). The highest observed value was 725.1 in 2021 and the lowest 619.5 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Webster'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 3 Census sq mi, Webster logged 48.1 property and 38.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Webster leans on larceny-theft at 41% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,366.
Violent offenses are 44% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a mid-size city.
Webster 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 | 143 | 800 |
| Larceny-Theft | 106 | 593 |
| Burglary | 19 | 106.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 18 | 100.7 |
| Arson | 2 | 11.2 |
| Violent Crime | 114 | 637.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 101 | 565 |
| Rape | 10 | 55.9 |
| Robbery | 3 | 16.8 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 16,876 | 687.4 | 1114 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 16,963 | 725.1 | 1002.2 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 17,651 | 691.2 | 1195.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 17,596 | 619.5 | 966.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 17,876 | 637.7 | 800 |
Webster Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Webster's 257 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 Webster in population. Their populations run from 17,419 to 18,360, against 17,876 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Webster sits at 637.7/100K violent (grade D); the Massachusetts cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Webster at 637.7/100K violent and 800/100K property - matched below outside Massachusetts (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
637.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
800/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Webster reported 114 violent crimes and 143 property crimes, for a total of 257 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Webster's violent crime rate increased by 2.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 17.2%.
The most common crime type in Webster is larceny-theft, accounting for 41.2% of all reported crimes (106 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Webster 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 Webster's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Webster, MA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Webster, 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. Webster is scored in the mid-size municipal band (17,876 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.