Crime incident reports are provided by Boston Police Department (BPD) to document the initial details surrounding an incident to which BPD officers respond. This is a dataset containing records from the new crime incident report system, which includes a reduced set of fields focused on capturing the type of incident as well as when and where it occurred. Records in the new system begin in June of 2015.

The Analyze Boston Data Exports posted now are the updated incident data from the Mark43 RMS Database which launched in September of 2019 and is complete through present with the exclusion of data that falls under MGL ch.41 s.98f. The 2019 data that was originally posted contained combined exports from the Intergraph RMS and the Mark43 RMS during 2019 but the Extract/Transfer/Load process was not updated during the transition.

This map shows a comparable measure of crime in the United States. The crime index compares the average local crime level to that of the United States as a whole. An index of 100 is average. A crime index of 120 indicates that crime in that area is 20 percent above the national average.The crime data is provided by Applied Geographic Solutions, Inc. (AGS). AGS created models using the FBI Uniform Crime Report databases as the primary data source and using an initial range of about 65 socio-economic characteristics taken from the 2000 Census and AGS’ current year estimates. The crimes included in the models include murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft. The total crime index incorporates all crimes and provides a useful measure of the relative “overall” crime rate in an area. However, these are unweighted indexes, meaning that a murder is weighted no more heavily than a purse snatching in the computations. The geography depicts states, counties, Census tracts and Census block groups. An urban/rural "mask" layer helps you identify crime patterns in rural and urban settings. The Census tracts and block groups help identify neighborhood-level variation in the crime data.------------------------The Civic Analytics Network collaborates on shared projects that advance the use of data visualization and predictive analytics in solving important urban problems related to economic opportunity, poverty reduction, and addressing the root causes of social problems of equity and opportunity. For more information see About the Civil Analytics Network.

In 2023, the District of Columbia had the highest reported violent crime rate in the United States, with 1,150.9 violent crimes per 100,000 of the population. Maine had the lowest reported violent crime rate, with 102.5 offenses per 100,000 of the population. Life in the District The District of Columbia has seen a fluctuating population over the past few decades. Its population decreased throughout the 1990s, when its crime rate was at its peak, but has been steadily recovering since then. While unemployment in the District has also been falling, it still has had a high poverty rate in recent years. The gentrification of certain areas within Washington, D.C. over the past few years has made the contrast between rich and poor even greater and is also pushing crime out into the Maryland and Virginia suburbs around the District. Law enforcement in the U.S. Crime in the U.S. is trending downwards compared to years past, despite Americans feeling that crime is a problem in their country. In addition, the number of full-time law enforcement officers in the U.S. has increased recently, who, in keeping with the lower rate of crime, have also made fewer arrests than in years past.

The Boston Police Department’s Homicide Investigation Unit investigates all homicides occurring within Boston Police jurisdiction. According to FBI standards, the annual homicide clearance rate is calculated using the total number of new homicides in a calendar year, and the total number of homicides that are cleared that calendar year – regardless of the year the homicide occurred within. The reason for this is that homicide investigations can span multiple calendar years. In addition, incidents that happened in previous years can be ruled a homicide years later and added to the current year’s total.

In recent years, gun violence in the United States has become an alarmingly common occurrence. From 2016, there has been over 10,000 homicides by firearm in the U.S. each year and firearms have been found to make up the majority of murder weapons in the country by far, demonstrating increasing rates of gun violence occurring throughout the nation. As of 2025, Mississippi was the state with the highest gun violence rate per 100,000 residents in the United States, at 29.4 percent, followed by Louisiana, at 28.1 percent. In comparison, Massachusetts had a gun violence rate of 3.7 percent, the lowest out of all the states. The importance of gun laws Gun laws in the United States vary from state to state, which has been found to affect the differing rates of gun violence throughout the country. Fewer people die by gun violence in states where gun safety laws have been passed, while gun violence rates remain high in states where gun usage is easily permitted and even encouraged. In addition, some states suffer from high rates of gun violence despite having strong gun safety laws due to gun trafficking, as traffickers can distribute firearms illegally past state lines. The right to bear arms Despite evidence from other countries demonstrating that strict gun control measures reduce rates of gun violence, the United States has remained reluctant to enact gun control laws. This can largely be attributed to the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which states that citizens have the right to bear arms. Consequently, gun control has become a highly partisan issue in the U.S., with 80 percent of Democrats believing that it was more important to limit gun ownership while 74 percent of Republicans felt that it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns.

The FIO program encompasses a wide range of interactions between the Boston Police Department (BPD) and private individuals. By releasing the records of these interactions, BPD hopes to add transparency to the execution of the program while still protecting the privacy of the individuals involved. These records are now sourced from three different record management systems titled: (OLD RMS) (NEW RMS) and (MARK43). The differences between the resulting files are described below.

About the FIO Records (Mark43) Files (Sept 29 2023 - Dec 31 2024)

These records are compiled from the BPD’s new Records Management System (RMS) on the BPD's FIO program. MARK43 went live September 29, 2019 and the FIO information has been structured into two separate tables. These tables are the same titles as (NEW RMS) but include new or different data points as retrieved from MARK43.

• FieldContact, which lists each contact between BPD and one or more individuals
• FieldContact_Name, which lists each individual involved in these contacts.

A FIO Data Key has also been created and posted to help distinguish the data categories (Data Key (Mark43)).

Lastly, FIOs are maintained in a live database and information related to each individual may change overtime. The data provided here should be considered a static representation of the Field Interaction and/or Observation that occurred in 2019.

NULL indicates no entry was made for an optional field.

About the FIO Records 2015 (New RMS) and 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 (Jan 1 - Sept 29 2020) Files

These records are compiled from the BPD’s new Records Management System (RMS) on the BPD's FIO program. The new RMS, which went live in June, 2015, structures the FIO information into two separate tables:

• FieldContact, which lists each contact between BPD and one or more individuals
• FieldContact_Name, which lists each individual involved in these contacts

While these two tables align on the field contact number (fc_num) column, it is not methodologically correct to join the two datasets for the purpose of generating aggregate statistics on columns from the FieldContact table. Doing so would lead to incorrect estimates stemming from contacts with multiple individuals. As noted in the Data Key (New RMS) file, several of the columns in the FieldContact table apply to the contact as a whole, but may not necessarily apply to each individual involved in the contact. These include:

• frisked
• searchperson
• summonsissued
• circumstances
• basis
• contact_reason

For example, the frisked column contains a value of Y if any of the individuals involved in a contact were frisked, but it would be inaccurate to assume that all individuals were frisked during that contact. As such, extrapolating from the frisked column for a contact to each individual and then summing across them would give an artificially high estimate of the number of people frisked in total. Likewise, the summonsissued column indicates when someone involved in a contact was issued a summons, but this does not imply that everyone involved in a contact was issued a summons.

For a detailed listing of columns in each table, see both tables of the Data Key (New RMS) file below.

About the FIO Records 2011 - 2015 (Old RMS) File

These records are sourced from BPD's older RMS, which was retired in June, 2015. This system (which stored all records in a single table, rather than the two tables in the newer system) captures similar information to the new RMS, but users should note that the fields are not identical and exercise care when comparing or combining records from each system.

Additional Notes

• The data provided is FIO information entered into the new system from June, 2015 through December, 2016, which includes some interactions which occurred before June, 2015 which were entered after the transition from the old system. For comprehensive analyses of interactions prior to the introduction of the new RMS, users will need to include data on interactions prior to June, 2015 from the 2015 (New RMS) file.
• These files are extracted from live databases which may have records added or updated at any time. As such, the number and content of records shared here may differ slightly from versions used to produce analyses such as those linked below, due to subsequent revisions to the underlying database records.
• A contact can consist of an observation of a vehicle, without direct contact with a person. This would create a record where no person-level details are recorded.

For more information on the FIO Program, please visit:

Boston Police Commissioner Announces Field Interrogation and Observation (FIO) Study Results

Commissioner Evans Continues Efforts to Increase Transparency and Accountability of Policing Activities to the Public

Boston Police Department Releases Latest Field Interrogation Observation Data