Night-time safety · Boston · data through August 2026

Is Boston safe at night?

46% 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 58% 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 reported incidents after dark

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Downtown	856	50%	32/100
2 Beacon Hill	832	47%	32/100
3 Bay Village	753	43%	33/100
4 Leather District	733	50%	35/100
5 South End	709	40%	31/100
6 Dorchester	691	43%	35/100
7 Chinatown	686	48%	37/100
8 Back Bay	601	39%	43/100
9 West End	438	50%	48/100
10 Mattapan	412	46%	48/100
11 Roxbury	411	49%	47/100
12 North End	366	52%	51/100
13 Fenway	293	49%	61/100
14 Jamaica Plain	283	40%	55/100
15 Brighton	252	40%	58/100
16 Longwood	243	48%	66/100
17 Mission Hill	236	50%	62/100
18 East Boston	209	46%	64/100
19 Hyde Park	184	39%	64/100
20 South Boston	173	46%	67/100
21 Allston	117	44%	75/100
22 Charlestown	110	47%	77/100
23 South Boston Waterfront	83	58%	83/100
24 Roslindale	49	37%	86/100
25 West Roxbury	39	43%	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	58%	144	83/100
North End	52%	701	51/100
Mission Hill	50%	472	62/100
West End	50%	877	48/100
Downtown	50%	1,726	32/100
Leather District	50%	1,479	35/100
Roxbury	49%	833	47/100
Fenway	49%	596	61/100
Chinatown	48%	1,419	37/100
Longwood	48%	503	66/100
Beacon Hill	47%	1,758	32/100
Charlestown	47%	237	77/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
Roslindale	37%	131
Hyde Park	39%	470
Back Bay	39%	1,525
Brighton	40%	633
South End	40%	1,770
Jamaica Plain	40%	701
Bay Village	43%	1,767
West Roxbury	43%	91

Common questions

Is Boston safe to walk at night?

46% 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 58% 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 856 reported incidents between 6pm and 6am — 50% 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: 58% 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 and check in on arrival.

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.