Night-time safety · Philadelphia · data through September 2026

Is Philadelphia safe at night?

38% of Philadelphia's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 12% of them fall between midnight and 6am. That share swings from 15% to 53% depending on which neighborhood you are in — which is the whole point: the question worth asking is not whether Philadelphia 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 North Central	1,942	51%	28/100
2 Upper Kensington	1,735	32%	23/100
3 Center City East	1,712	37%	26/100
4 Washington Square West	1,660	36%	26/100
5 Yorktown	1,451	48%	35/100
6 Chinatown	1,421	37%	29/100
7 Rittenhouse	1,389	37%	31/100
8 Stanton	1,375	46%	31/100
9 Hartranft	1,154	43%	34/100
10 McGuire	1,097	34%	32/100
11 Haddington	1,002	40%	34/100
12 Sharswood	994	44%	38/100
13 Hawthorne	983	38%	40/100
14 Glenwood	963	44%	38/100
15 Franklinville	947	38%	37/100
16 Strawberry Mansion	876	46%	40/100
17 Harrowgate	876	36%	38/100
18 Dunlap	860	39%	38/100
19 Carroll Park	856	40%	38/100
20 Fairhill	855	34%	38/100
21 Ludlow	845	42%	43/100
22 Brewerytown	821	43%	42/100
23 East Kensington	804	34%	39/100
24 Haverford North	798	42%	42/100
25 Callowhill	791	33%	40/100

Changes most after dark

Ranked by the share of reported incidents that fall between 6pm and 6am, against a Philadelphia median of 37%. 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
Stadium District	53%	271	85/100
Fox Chase	51%	512	78/100
North Central	51%	3,836	28/100
Holmesburg	48%	432	76/100
Yorktown	48%	2,998	35/100
Strawberry Mansion	46%	1,908	40/100
Stanton	46%	3,008	31/100
Elmwood	44%	1,747	45/100
Glenwood	44%	2,201	38/100
Sharswood	44%	2,279	38/100
University City	43%	1,076	60/100
Bartram Village	43%	525	73/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
Byberry	15%	29
Parkwood Manor	26%	418
Chestnut Hill	28%	105
Hunting Park	28%	1,822
Dearnley Park	28%	100
Feltonville	29%	1,568
Upper Roxborough	29%	192
Normandy Village	30%	199

Common questions

Is Philadelphia safe to walk at night?

38% of Philadelphia's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 12% 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 15% to 53% here. The useful question is which neighborhood and which route, not whether a whole city is safe.

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

North Central, with roughly 1,942 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 neighborhood changes most after dark?

Stadium District is the most night-concentrated in Philadelphia: 53% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a Philadelphia median of 37%. 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 Philadelphia 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 Philadelphia 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 Philadelphia Police Department (via OpenDataPhilly) 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 158 neighborhoods the city publishes, grouped by the 18 Planning Districts the City Planning Commission uses; seven are not scored because nobody lives in them — both halves of Fairmount Park, Wissahickon and Pennypack Parks, the two airports, and the Southwest refinery belt labelled "Industrial" — where near-zero reported crime would read as falsely "safe" rather than as empty land. Time-of-day charts use PPD dispatch timestamps, severity-weighted. Locations are published at block level for privacy. Pages regenerate as new data is published.