Data quality and coverage
Crime data, explained plainly.
CrimeScore separates long-term modeled Safety Scores from recent incident context. The numbers below come from the current generated coverage files, not a hardcoded marketing estimate.
Score release 2.0 · Census context 2024 · Published July 11, 2026
Source families
Different data supports different product questions
Safety Scores, geographic boundaries, validation benchmarks, and recent incidents do not share one refresh schedule.
| Source family | How CrimeScore uses it | Published cadence |
|---|---|---|
| US Census ACS 5-year estimates | Nationwide population and location context used by the modeled score and county profiles. | Updated when a validated score release adopts a newer complete vintage. |
| US Census geographic boundaries | Block-group, county, state, and ZCTA geography used for lookup, rollups, maps, and coverage. | Updated with a validated geography release. |
| Municipal and county open-data records | Standardized reported-crime observations used to build and evaluate the neighborhood model. | Varies by the publishing jurisdiction and score release. |
| BJS/FBI national benchmark tables | Independent state-level reasonableness checks; these are not presented as block-group ground truth. | Reviewed with model evaluation releases. |
| Recent Citizen incident context | Bounded, recent activity for eligible product experiences; it does not rewrite the stored Safety Score. | Ingested on a 12-hour schedule when the source is available. |
From records to product context
One national scoring convention
Standardize
Source categories, timestamps, and geography are normalized so jurisdictions can be evaluated consistently.
Model
Validated national location signals produce component estimates for block-group coverage.
Normalize
Scores use a 0-100 higher-is-safer convention with stable A-F boundaries.
Publish
The same release feeds API records, public profiles, map tiles, and ZIP/ZCTA rollups.
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/ZCTA
ZIP searches use Census ZCTAs and population-weighted block-group rollups. They are area estimates, not USPS delivery-route boundaries.
Counties
County pages combine a broad public map with ACS profile context. They should not be interpreted as one property-level score.
States
State representation indicates national coverage and browsing availability, not uniform recent-incident reporting density.
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.
- ACS 5-year estimates are intentionally stable and can lag rapid neighborhood change.
- Recent incident availability and density vary by location and source.
- 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.