Crime in Boston, Massachusetts
Major crime in Boston is 46% above the U.S. rate per resident: 1.9 times for persons crimes and 37% higher for property crimes. Expected major crimes are about flat 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 Boston's 580 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.
Intimidation is highest, at 3.0 times the U.S. rate
Expected crimes per year in Boston 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 Boston
Half of Boston residents live in neighborhoods with a major-crime index between 69 and 154, and half live where it is below 100. The citywide figure (146) is higher than that because crime concentrates in a smaller set of areas.
- 0–5010.3%
- 50–10039.7%
- 100–20032.9%
- 200–40013.4%
- 400+3.6%
Share of residents by the index of their census block group, a neighborhood of roughly 600 to 3,000 people.
Highest on weekend daytimes
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.
Boston against U.S. places with 500,000 to 1 million residents
22 of the 25 other places of this size have a higher major-crime index than Boston; 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. Boston's figures add up its 580 block groups. The index compares crimes per resident with the U.S. rate.
- Boston has no published incident records in our data, so its estimate relies on agency totals and neighborhood characteristics.
- 59.6% 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: 680,418. Model updated Oct 20, 2026. Release 2026-2026-10-20-2
Full method and validation·Data sources
CrimeMetric. "Crime in Boston, Massachusetts." Vorp Labs, model updated Oct 20, 2026. https://crimemetric.com/ma/boston
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Major-crime index, U.S. = 100
- New York, NY184 mi154
- Philadelphia, PA265 mi281
- Washington, DC390 mi180
- Columbus, OH639 mi156
- Charlotte, NC718 mi208
- Indianapolis, IN803 mi189
- Chicago, IL850 mi179
- Nashville-Davidson, TN939 mi223