Data quality and coverage
Crime data, explained plainly.
CrimeScore turns public crime, geographic, and community information into comparable neighborhood Safety Scores.
Public data categories
Public information, made consistent
CrimeScore brings together broad categories of public information and organizes them for consistent area-level comparison.
| Data category | What it helps explain | Public reference |
|---|---|---|
| Public community data | Adds broad context for comparing communities. | Census Data & Maps |
| Official geographic boundaries | Keeps locations, maps, and coverage consistent across geographic levels. | Census Geography Program |
| Public reported-crime records | Supports a consistent view of reported safety patterns across communities. | FBI UCR overview |
| Independent public benchmarks | Provides an outside reference point when reviewing published results. | — |
| Recent incident context | Shows newer activity separately in some product views. It does not change the stored Safety Score. | — |
From records to product context
One national scoring convention
Organize
Public records and location context are prepared for consistent area-level comparison.
Score
Covered locations receive a Safety Score and component scores on a 0-100, higher-is-safer scale.
Compare
The shared convention helps teams compare areas while keeping reporting limitations in view.
Publish
Versioned releases identify the scores and coverage used by each product view.
Geographic precision
Use the smallest geography your workflow actually knows
Coordinates
Coordinate requests resolve to a Census block group and are the preferred API workflow when a property or address location is known.
ZIP codes
ZIP code searches use Census-defined ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) to represent ZIP areas. Results are area estimates, not USPS delivery-route or property boundaries.
Cities
City scores summarize the scored neighborhoods that lie at least partly within city limits. They are not an average of ZIP scores. A city with at least three ZIP codes lying mostly inside its limits, two of them with three or more scored block groups, ranks those ZIPs; other city pages list the ZIPs where at least 1% of the city's estimated residents live. Map views may extend outside city limits.
Counties
County scores use a separate national ranking for the wider county area. They are not an average of ZIP scores or displayed neighborhood scores. County pages also include community statistics for context.
States
State representation indicates national coverage and browsing availability, not uniform recent-incident reporting density.
Unavailable information
An unavailable score or statistic is not zero and does not indicate that an area is safer. Some locations lack the information needed to publish a value.
Limitations and non-claims
What the product does not promise
- Reported crime reflects local reporting and enforcement practices. It is not a complete count of every event.
- Government estimates are released on a schedule and can lag rapid neighborhood change.
- Recent incident availability and density vary by location and source.
- Safety Scores are modeled estimates, not reported incident counts. Different geographic summaries should not be treated as interchangeable.
- A Safety Score is comparative location context, not a guarantee about a person, property, or future event.
- CrimeScore should not be the sole basis for housing, lending, insurance, employment, or another high-impact decision.
Coverage and sources
Release and source details
Public profiles show a short release label. The identifiers and source periods below provide context for maps, scores, and community statistics.
View release identifiers and source periods
- Map release
- Map release v2 (v2-20260816-refined). This identifies the map tiles; it is separate from the ZIP model version.
- ZIP scores
- Model version 2.0. ZIP coverage exported August 16, 2026. Census context vintage: 2024.
- City profiles
- Profiles generated October 15, 2026. City limits and the population basis used for city scores come from the 2020 Census. Displayed city populations use 2024 Census population estimates.
- County community statistics
- ACS 5-year, 2020–2024, summarized from block-group records. Community profiles generated June 15, 2026; this is not a score refresh date.
- ZIP variation study
- The historical chart on some ZIP profiles comes from a separate research snapshot generated July 14, 2026. Its methods and publication date are available in the ZIP variation study.
Source periods describe the underlying reference data, not a location-specific crime reporting period.