Night-time safety · Baltimore · data through August 2026

Is Baltimore safe at night?

52% of Baltimore's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 21% of them fall between midnight and 6am. That share swings from 41% to 66% depending on which area you are in — which is the whole point: the question worth asking is not whether Baltimore is safe after dark, but where and by which route.

These figures describe when reported incidents happen, not how dangerous a street is. Somewhere with a night-time crowd reports more after dark because more people are there — that is a fact about footfall as much as about risk, and it is why the tables below show the count and the share side by side.

Most reported reported incidents after dark

Area	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Downtown/Seton Hill	1,204	52%	21/100
2 Patterson Park North & East	1,085	57%	26/100
3 Harbor East/Little Italy	1,033	56%	27/100
4 Madison/East End	975	54%	27/100
5 Highlandtown	855	57%	35/100
6 Unassigned -- Jail	828	52%	28/100
7 Oldtown/Middle East	794	53%	30/100
8 Midtown	779	54%	30/100
9 Fells Point	718	56%	36/100
10 Upton/Druid Heights	710	49%	29/100
11 Greenmount East	665	52%	32/100
12 Poppleton/The Terraces/Hollins Market	620	52%	35/100
13 Southwest Baltimore	613	53%	35/100
14 Greater Charles Village/Barclay	587	48%	38/100
15 Inner Harbor/Federal Hill	580	66%	42/100
16 Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park	551	48%	33/100
17 Canton	533	56%	47/100
18 Greater Rosemont	493	53%	38/100
19 Clifton-Berea	432	50%	41/100
20 The Waverlies	374	47%	45/100
21 Midway/Coldstream	364	42%	42/100
22 Greater Govans	360	55%	48/100
23 Washington Village/Pigtown	354	57%	52/100
24 Southern Park Heights	333	44%	44/100
25 Greater Mondawmin	320	48%	47/100

Changes most after dark

Ranked by the share of reported incidents that fall between 6pm and 6am, against a Baltimore median of 52%. A high share is not a high total — a quiet area whose few incidents mostly happen at night sits near the top — so the count is shown beside it.

Area	Night share	Incidents	Index
Inner Harbor/Federal Hill	66%	877	42/100
Northwood	61%	276	70/100
Washington Village/Pigtown	57%	616	52/100
Cherry Hill	57%	494	54/100
Patterson Park North & East	57%	1,906	26/100
Highlandtown	57%	1,513	35/100
Canton	56%	951	47/100
Fells Point	56%	1,283	36/100
Harbor East/Little Italy	56%	1,854	27/100
Claremont/Armistead	55%	200	74/100
Belair-Edison	55%	556	51/100
Greater Govans	55%	657	48/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Area	Night share	Incidents
Glen-Fallstaff	41%	609
Midway/Coldstream	42%	876
Greater Roland Park/Poplar Hill	44%	46
Southern Park Heights	44%	753
Cross-Country/Cheswolde	44%	271
Mount Washington/Coldspring	45%	60
Lauraville	45%	160
Pimlico/Arlington/Hilltop	45%	564

Common questions

Is Baltimore safe to walk at night?

52% of Baltimore's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 21% fall in the small hours between midnight and 6am. That is a description of when incidents are reported, not a verdict on the city: the figure varies far more between areas than it does between cities, from 41% to 66% here. The useful question is which area and which route, not whether a whole city is safe.

Which area in Baltimore has the most reported crime at night?

Downtown/Seton Hill, with roughly 1,204 reported incidents between 6pm and 6am — 52% of its total. Somewhere busy usually tops this list because more people are out, so read it alongside the daytime picture on its own page rather than on its own.

Which area changes most after dark?

Inner Harbor/Federal Hill is the most night-concentrated in Baltimore: 66% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a Baltimore median of 52%. A high share does not mean a high total — a quiet area whose few incidents mostly happen at night will rank high here — which is why the table shows the count beside it.

How does SafeRoute use this at night?

The app scores each walking route against the same Baltimore Police data, and can weight it toward the time you are actually walking rather than a flat all-day average. It also shows how much of each route runs on lit streets, and lets you share a walk and check in on arrival.

Methodology

Every incident reported to the Baltimore Police carries an occurrence time, which is bucketed into daytime (6am–6pm), evening (6pm–midnight) and the small hours (midnight–6am), split weekday against weekend, and weighted by severity so violence counts for more than shoplifting. A area's night share is the weighted proportion falling between 6pm and 6am; its night count is that share applied to its total. The city-wide chart weights each area by its own volume, so a busy centre is not averaged against a quiet suburb as though they were the same size.

Each incident reported to the Baltimore Police Department (via Open Baltimore) is weighted by severity — violence counts for more than shoplifting. For every area we sum weighted incidents within 1 km of its center, and normalize against citywide crime rates onto a 0–100 index, higher = safer. Boundaries are BNIA-JFI's 56 Community Statistical Areas rather than Baltimore's 256 neighborhood statistical areas: the neighborhood set is finer than the 1 km radius this index measures over, so neighboring pages would describe almost the same circle. CSAs group those neighborhoods on census-tract lines — the same geography the city uses for its own indicator reporting — so each page covers a distinct part of the city. Time-of-day charts use BPD incident timestamps, severity-weighted. Pages regenerate as new data is published.