Crime in Washington, District of Columbia
Major crime in Washington is 1.8 times the U.S. rate per resident: 2.5 times for persons crimes and 1.6 times for property crimes. Expected major crimes are down 20.2% from a year earlier.
How we did this
We start from police agencies' crime reports to the FBI (estimated where an agency doesn't report), model how they spread across the census block groups each agency serves, then add up Washington's 571 block groups. Numbers are estimates with a range of uncertainty, not counts of individual incidents.
Rates are per resident, so areas where many people work or visit but few live, such as downtowns, airports and stadiums, can look high. More on the method
Index: crimes per resident compared with the U.S., where 100 is the U.S. rate and 200 is twice it.
Robbery is highest, at 5.9 times the U.S. rate
Expected crimes per year in Washington for each type, and the index against the U.S. rate per resident.
Citywide indexWhere the middle half of residents live
Property crimes
Social disorder
How crime varies across Washington
Half of Washington residents live in neighborhoods with a major-crime index between 96 and 193, and half live where it is below 138. The citywide figure (180) is higher than that because crime concentrates in a smaller set of areas.
- 0–503.0%
- 50–10024.0%
- 100–20049.4%
- 200–40019.5%
- 400+4.0%
Share of residents by the index of their census block group, a neighborhood of roughly 600 to 3,000 people.
Highest on Friday and Saturday nights
Major-crime index by time of week, against the U.S. rate for the same hours.
Trend and outlook
Change in expected crimes. The past year uses the reporting agencies' year-to-date FBI data; 2031 is the model's projection.
Washington against U.S. places with 500,000 to 1 million residents
16 of the 25 other places of this size have a higher major-crime index than Washington; the middle of the group is 190. The 9 nearest in population:
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; residents in gray.
How we calculated this
Each police agency's crimes, as reported to the FBI, are spread across the census block groups it serves using population, jobs, points of interest and, where available, local incident records. Washington's figures add up its 571 block groups. The index compares crimes per resident with the U.S. rate.
- Washington's published incident records inform the estimate for every neighborhood.
- 81.5% of residents live in block groups whose estimate has high confidence (80% interval within about 5x).
- Disorderly conduct and trespassing are modeled, because the FBI records them only through arrests.
- Residents: 706,013. Model updated Oct 20, 2026. Release 2026-2026-10-20-2
Full method and validation·Data sources
CrimeMetric. "Crime in Washington, District of Columbia." Vorp Labs, model updated Oct 20, 2026. https://crimemetric.com/dc/washington
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Get a free API keyNearest cities we publish
Major-crime index, U.S. = 100
- Philadelphia, PA125 mi281
- New York, NY206 mi154
- Columbus, OH328 mi156
- Charlotte, NC331 mi208
- Boston, MA390 mi146
- Indianapolis, IN491 mi189
- Nashville-Davidson, TN566 mi223
- Chicago, IL597 mi179