Night-time safety · Philadelphia · data through November 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 20% 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 incidents after dark

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 North Central	2,442	50%	28/100
2 Upper Kensington	2,428	33%	22/100
3 Center City East	2,181	37%	25/100
4 Washington Square West	2,116	36%	26/100
5 Yorktown	1,866	48%	34/100
6 Chinatown	1,808	37%	29/100
7 Rittenhouse	1,784	37%	30/100
8 Stanton	1,778	46%	31/100
9 Hartranft	1,489	43%	33/100
10 McGuire	1,448	34%	31/100
11 Haddington	1,279	41%	34/100
12 Glenwood	1,249	44%	37/100
13 Hawthorne	1,246	38%	39/100
14 Sharswood	1,228	43%	38/100
15 Franklinville	1,201	39%	37/100
16 Harrowgate	1,150	37%	38/100
17 Ludlow	1,127	41%	41/100
18 Strawberry Mansion	1,108	46%	40/100
19 East Kensington	1,089	35%	37/100
20 Dunlap	1,077	39%	38/100
21 Fairhill	1,072	34%	38/100
22 Carroll Park	1,065	40%	38/100
23 Callowhill	1,032	34%	39/100
24 Logan Square	1,016	32%	39/100
25 Brewerytown	1,016	42%	42/100

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%	345	84/100
North Central	50%	4,878	28/100
Holmesburg	49%	550	75/100
Fox Chase	49%	612	79/100
Yorktown	48%	3,891	34/100
Stanton	46%	3,847	31/100
Strawberry Mansion	46%	2,399	40/100
Glenwood	44%	2,818	37/100
Bridesburg	44%	438	82/100
Packer Park	44%	341	87/100
Bartram Village	43%	670	72/100
Torresdale	43%	146	93/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
Byberry	20%	39
Chestnut Hill	25%	162
West Mount Airy	27%	332
Hunting Park	28%	2,308
Feltonville	29%	1,989
Parkwood Manor	29%	552
Normandy Village	30%	252
Upper Roxborough	30%	245

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 20% 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 2,442 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?

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.

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.