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.

The Uniform Crime Reports National Time-Series Data, 1967-1980, include detailed criminal offense and clearance information submitted monthly by over 3,000 consistently reporting law enforcement agencies in the United States. These data, provided in annually pooled cross-sections, were processed at the Center for Applied Social Research, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts to produce easily accessible and highly reliable time-series data on officially reported crime. Originally provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), these data exclude Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data from infrequently reporting law enforcement agencies. In general, only those agencies that submitted ten or more monthly reports in every year during 1967 through 1980 are included in this collection. The data include detailed breakdowns of offenses and clearances taken from disaggregated UCR Return A tapes. Of particular interest are weapon-specific robbery and assault variables, types of rape, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft, and clearances by arrest (or other exceptional means) of adults and juveniles for each offense sub-type. Both monthly and annual counts of these are available. Finally, as an aid to the user, each agency is identified by its FBI "ORI Code" as well as a sequential case number produced and documented by ICPSR in the codebook's appendix. Cases also may be identified by geographic region, state, SMSA, county, population size and group, and frequency of reporting.

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 District of Columbia had the highest robbery rate in the United States in 2023, with 614.2 robberies per 100,000 inhabitants. The lowest robbery rate in the country was found in Idaho, with 9.5 robberies per 100,000 inhabitants. Crime in the District of Columbia The violent crime rate in the District of Columbia was found to be the highest in the United States, with there being a few reasons for this: Firstly, the population of the District of Columbia is quite low (causing a higher rate of crime), and secondly, issues such as the crack epidemic of the 1990s exacerbated the prevalence of crime in the District. As rising rents and gentrification force more people out of the District, crime is moving into neighboring Maryland and Virginia suburbs, as poorer residents seek more affordable living conditions. Crime in the United States Overall, violent crime in the United States and the District of Columbia today is far below the violent crime rate of the 1990s. While some may feel that crime is on the rise, due in part to media sensationalism in fact, the opposite is true, and the United States is becoming safer over time.

There were over 7.55 million arrests for all offenses in the United States in 2023. This figure is a decrease from 1990 levels, when the number of arrests was over 14.1 million. Arrest rate in the U.S. Along with the declining number of arrests, the arrest rate for all offenses in the United States has also decreased since 1990, from 5691.6 arrests per 100,000 of the population down to 2232.1 per 100,000 in 2023. Additionally, South Dakota had the highest arrest rate in the country in 2023 while Massachusetts had the lowest. High numbers of arrests and unsolved crimes A high number of arrests does not necessarily correlate to a high number of solved cases, and in the U.S., many cases remain unsolved. The crime clearance rate, or rate of closed cases, was less than half for violent crimes in the U.S., and less than 20 percent for property crimes.

California reported the largest number of homicides to the FBI in 2023, at 1,929 for the year. Texas recorded the second-highest number of murders, with 1,845 for the year. Homicide victim demographics There were a total of 19,252 reported homicide cases in the U.S. in 2023. When looking at murder victims by gender and ethnicity, the vast majority were male, while just over half of the victims were Black or African American. In addition, homicide victims in the United States were found most likely to be between the ages of 20 and 34 years old, with the majority of victims aged between 17 to 54 years old. Are murders up? In short, no – since the 1990s the number of murders in the U.S. has decreased significantly. In 1990, the murder rate per 100,000 people stood at 9.4, and stood at 5.7 in 2023. It should be noted though that the number of homicides increased slightly from 2014 to 2017, although figures declined again in 2018 and 2019, before ticking up once more in 2020 and 2021. Despite this decline, when viewed in international comparison, the U.S. murder rate is still notably high. For example, the Canadian homicide rate stood at 1.94 in 2023, while the homicide rate in England and Wales was even lower.

Alaska saw the highest rape rate in the United States in 2023, with 118.4 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants. The lowest rate was found in New Jersey, with 17.9 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants. Sexual assault in Alaska Fighting sexual assault in Alaska is particularly difficult due to small, isolated, close-knit communities who can be wary of airing their dirty laundry to outsiders, as well as a low number of law enforcement employees in the state. In addition, Alaska’s low population is spread out over a large land area, meaning that in the event of an assault being reported to police, it can take law enforcement hours, or even days, to reach the most isolated communities. The victims of sexual assault There tends to be more reported female victims of sexual assault than male victims. However, since sexual assault is typically an underreported crime, especially among males, these figures could be, and probably are, much higher. In addition, many victims of sexual offenses tend to be young, although sexual assault can occur at any age.

As of September 2024, California had the most mass shootings in the United States, with 26 total shootings since 1982. The source defines a mass shooting as a shooting where three or more people were killed. Recently, a mass shooting occurred in the state of Maine on October 26, 2023, during which one of the highest number of fatalities from a mass shooting was recorded after Robert Card opened fire in a bowling alley and a bar, killing 18 and injuring 13 others. Firearms in the U.S. Mass shootings in the United States are disturbingly common. In comparison with other Western countries, there are significantly more shootings in the U.S., which some theorize is due to the relatively lax gun control laws. Gun control laws in the U.S. are dependent on the state, and the right to own a firearm is enshrined in the United States Constitution. Mass shootings The worst mass shooting in the U.S. was the Las Vegas Strip massacre in 2017, which resulted in 58 deaths and 546 injuries. 13 of the worst mass shootings in the United States have occurred since 2015 and the vast majority of these incidents in the U.S. have been carried out by shooters who are White and male.