Night-time safety · Baltimore · data through October 2026

Is Baltimore safe at night?

52% of Baltimore's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 20% of them fall between midnight and 6am. That share swings from 43% to 64% 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 incidents after dark

Area	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Downtown/Seton Hill	1,634	51%	20/100
2 Harbor East/Little Italy	1,415	55%	26/100
3 Patterson Park North & East	1,408	57%	26/100
4 Madison/East End	1,292	53%	27/100
5 Highlandtown	1,119	57%	35/100
6 Unassigned -- Jail	1,101	50%	27/100
7 Midtown	1,038	52%	29/100
8 Fells Point	1,008	57%	35/100
9 Oldtown/Middle East	1,007	52%	30/100
10 Upton/Druid Heights	949	49%	29/100
11 Greater Charles Village/Barclay	853	49%	36/100
12 Inner Harbor/Federal Hill	839	64%	39/100
13 Poppleton/The Terraces/Hollins Market	826	50%	34/100
14 Greenmount East	823	52%	33/100
15 Southwest Baltimore	816	53%	34/100
16 Canton	764	59%	46/100
17 Sandtown-Winchester/Harlem Park	714	48%	34/100
18 Greater Rosemont	654	52%	37/100
19 Clifton-Berea	538	50%	43/100
20 The Waverlies	532	48%	44/100
21 Midway/Coldstream	517	44%	42/100
22 Washington Village/Pigtown	490	56%	50/100
23 Greater Govans	458	54%	49/100
24 Southern Park Heights	432	43%	44/100
25 Greater Mondawmin	426	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 51%. 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	64%	1,305	39/100
Northwood	60%	354	70/100
Canton	59%	1,303	46/100
Fells Point	57%	1,767	35/100
Highlandtown	57%	1,973	35/100
Patterson Park North & East	57%	2,486	26/100
Orangeville/East Highlandtown	56%	440	68/100
Washington Village/Pigtown	56%	874	50/100
Cherry Hill	56%	645	54/100
Claremont/Armistead	56%	249	75/100
Southeastern	55%	113	91/100
Harbor East/Little Italy	55%	2,569	26/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Area	Night share	Incidents
Southern Park Heights	43%	1,014
Midway/Coldstream	44%	1,187
Glen-Fallstaff	44%	800
Mount Washington/Coldspring	45%	78
Pimlico/Arlington/Hilltop	47%	782
Dorchester/Ashburton	47%	795
Greater Roland Park/Poplar Hill	47%	63
Greater Mondawmin	48%	889

Common questions

Is Baltimore safe to walk at night?

52% of Baltimore's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 20% 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 43% to 64% 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 1,634 reported incidents between 6pm and 6am — 51% 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: 64% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a Baltimore median of 51%. 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.

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.