Night-time safety · Boston · data through October 2026

Is Boston safe at night?

45% of Boston's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 17% of them fall between midnight and 6am. That share swings from 37% to 62% depending on which neighborhood you are in — which is the whole point: the question worth asking is not whether Boston 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

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Downtown	1,080	49%	31/100
2 Beacon Hill	1,055	47%	31/100
3 Bay Village	944	42%	33/100
4 Leather District	933	49%	34/100
5 South End	880	39%	31/100
6 Chinatown	863	48%	36/100
7 Dorchester	804	42%	36/100
8 Back Bay	731	39%	42/100
9 West End	555	50%	47/100
10 Mattapan	534	46%	47/100
11 Roxbury	508	49%	47/100
12 North End	463	51%	51/100
13 Fenway	353	48%	61/100
14 Jamaica Plain	345	39%	54/100
15 Brighton	323	40%	57/100
16 Mission Hill	295	48%	61/100
17 Longwood	293	47%	65/100
18 East Boston	257	46%	64/100
19 Hyde Park	229	37%	63/100
20 South Boston	215	44%	67/100
21 Allston	157	45%	75/100
22 Charlestown	132	47%	78/100
23 South Boston Waterfront	117	62%	82/100
24 Roslindale	65	37%	86/100
25 West Roxbury	50	42%	91/100

Changes most after dark

Ranked by the share of reported incidents that fall between 6pm and 6am, against a Boston median of 46%. A high share is not a high total — a quiet neighborhood whose few incidents mostly happen at night sits near the top — so the count is shown beside it.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents	Index
South Boston Waterfront	62%	189	82/100
North End	51%	900	51/100
West End	50%	1,118	47/100
Leather District	49%	1,899	34/100
Downtown	49%	2,200	31/100
Roxbury	49%	1,042	47/100
Mission Hill	48%	611	61/100
Fenway	48%	737	61/100
Chinatown	48%	1,803	36/100
Charlestown	47%	280	78/100
Beacon Hill	47%	2,235	31/100
Longwood	47%	625	65/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
Roslindale	37%	173
Hyde Park	37%	610
Back Bay	39%	1,899
Jamaica Plain	39%	890
South End	39%	2,249
Brighton	40%	805
West Roxbury	42%	118
Bay Village	42%	2,237

Common questions

Is Boston safe to walk at night?

45% of Boston's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 17% 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 neighborhoods than it does between cities, from 37% to 62% here. The useful question is which neighborhood and which route, not whether a whole city is safe.

Which neighborhood in Boston has the most reported crime at night?

Downtown, with roughly 1,080 reported incidents between 6pm and 6am — 49% 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 neighborhood changes most after dark?

South Boston Waterfront is the most night-concentrated in Boston: 62% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a Boston median of 46%. A high share does not mean a high total — a quiet neighborhood 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 Boston 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 Boston 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 neighborhood'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 neighborhood 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 Boston Police Department (via Analyze Boston) is weighted by severity — violence counts for more than shoplifting. For every neighborhood 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 the BPDA's official neighborhood set; the Harbor Islands are excluded because the uninhabited park has no reported crime and would read as falsely "safe". Because Boston is compact and densely built, neighborhood centers sit close together and their 1 km circles overlap — adjacent areas will show similar figures. Time-of-day charts use BPD incident timestamps, severity-weighted. Pages regenerate as new data is published.