Safety Score By Address — How It Is Calculated, Line By Line

Any tool that gives you a safety score should be willing to show its work. Here is the exact calculation we run when you enter an address on Find A Safe Place. Every source is named. Every weight is disclosed. Nothing is proprietary black box.

Step 1: Pull all three data sources for the address's radius

For a given address, we pull:

• FBI UCR — Uniform Crime Reporting summary data for the reporting agency (usually city or county police). Historical baseline. Free public data.
• NIBRS — National Incident-Based Reporting System, individual incident records with type, time, and location precision. Where available (most cities in 2026).
• Local police blotter / open data portal — for cities that publish real-time or near-real-time incidents. Most major US cities do in 2026.

All three are cross-referenced to avoid double-counting.

Step 2: Split into three severity tiers

Each incident classified as violent, property, or quality-of-life per FBI Part I/Part II definitions:

• Violent: homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, rape
• Property: burglary, motor vehicle theft, larceny, arson
• Quality-of-life: public intoxication, disorderly conduct, minor drug possession, vandalism

Step 3: Weight by severity and recency

Weights (public formula):

• Violent × 4.0
• Property × 1.5
• Quality-of-life × 0.3

Then recency multiplier: this year = 1.0, last year = 0.75, two years ago = 0.5, three years ago = 0.25, older = dropped.

Step 4: Normalize per 1,000 residents

Divide by census population within the calculation radius. This produces a per-capita weighted incident rate that is comparable across neighborhoods of different sizes.

Step 5: Compare against city + national median

We compute the same weighted-per-capita number for the whole city and for a national benchmark. Your address's score is expressed as a percentile against city and against national median.

Step 6: Overlay family-specific factors

For the family-friendly boost/penalty, we layer in walkability to elementary schools, park density within 800m, share of households with kids under 18, and 3-year property-crime trend. These do not change the crime numbers — they add context to the score.

Step 7: Return a single number with the breakdown

You see the headline score plus the components. Click any component to see the underlying incidents on a map. Every raw incident is sourced back to its origin (FBI table, NIBRS record ID, or blotter URL).

What we do not do

• We do not use anecdotal Nextdoor posts as data inputs.
• We do not use insurance claim data (privacy + methodology issues).
• We do not sell your address queries or attach them to any identity.

A safety score is only trustworthy if you can audit it. Ours is auditable end to end.