Special: Dorchester among Boston neighborhoods with lowest crime rate

Dorchester, Dot, the largest neighborhood in Boston, had a 10 percent drop in crime rate in 2017 compared to 2016, according to official data that were recently released by the Boston Police Department. Nearly 200 fewer crimes were reported last year in the neighborhood, with cases of burglary and robbery decreased as well as cases of domestic and non-domestic aggravated assault. On the other hand, Dorchester also experienced an increase in the number of homicides and non-motor-vehicle larceny.

As the report also shows other neighborhoods’ data, we wanted to compare to see what is the state of the crime in our community. A total of 2,034 crimes were reported in Dorchester, compared with surrounding neighborhoods like the South End with 3,627 crimes, Roxbury with 2,710, Downtown with 2,595,  Mattapan with 1,590, and South Boston (Southie) with 1,368 crimes… but this comparison is really not fair especially because Dorchester has a big-way-larger population than any of these neighborhoods.

Apples to apples

Let’s make a quick comparison between Dorchester and Southie.

Yes, yes, there were more crimes in total in Dorchester (2,034) than in Southie (1,368)… but, does that mean the crime rate in Dorchester is worse than the Southie? Does that mean that Dorchester is less safe than Southie? Actually, no, because Dorchester has almost four times the population of Southie. Saying that, if Dorchester had the same crime rate as Southie, more than 5,000 crimes would have to happen. Do we explain ourselves?

If we want to be fair and compare “apples to apples,” the best way to understand the data that come from the Police would be to compare crimes by a similar amount of people, so we get a crime rate. In this case, what we decided was to compare the data with a crime rate by 1,000 people, and the results are very impressive.

Data cannot be influenced by stereotypes

When we calculated the crime rate by 1,000 people, we realized that Dorchester’s crime is very low.

According to the Boston Planning and Development Agency, Dorchester has a population of 124,000, and the total reported crimes were 2,034. Doing the simple math, we get that Dorchester’s crime rate by 1,000 people is 16.34. This means that Dorchester is the second lower crime rate neighborhood, just behind East Boston, with a crime rate of 1,000 people of 14.16.

On the other hand, the highest crime rate neighborhood in Boston is Downtown, with a crime rate of 1,000 of 153.52, followed by the South-end (114.78), Mattapan (65.52), Roxbury (52.88), and Southie, with a crime rate by 1,000 of 38.36.

Boston crime as a whole

Crime went down 7 percent in Boston as a whole, according to the report. Boston had 1,276 fewer reported crimes than the year before. Residential burglary and larceny from motor vehicles went down significantly.

However, the number of total homicides rose from 47 in 2016 to 57 in 2017. The number of reported rapes and attempted rapes stayed the same in the past two years. Commercial burglary also went up.

Homicides are on the rise in some neighborhoods

While almost all districts saw a drop in crime in general, many of them also saw a rise in homicides.

Southie had five more homicides in 2017 than in the previous year, an increase of 600%, a homicide rate per 100,000 of 17.04. While Dorchester had a 10 percent drop in crime in general, it had six more homicides in 2017, going from 10 to 16 in just one year (12.85 rate by 100,000). Roxbury also had a 10 percent drop in crime but had 17 homicides in 2017 compared to 14 in the year before.

Charlestown and Brighton were the only neighborhoods to report zero homicides in both 2016 and 2017. Hyde Park reported two homicides in 2016 but also reported zero in the past year.

Check out our Boston Crime infographic

Post scriptum

Skeptical about these numbers? Check here the official data from the Boston Police that we used for this article. For the population data, we used the most updated information from the Boston Planning and Development Agency, check it here.

We want to highlight what the City of Boston says about the data they provide:

“Although the City has made reasonable efforts to provide accurate data, the City makes no representations or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or currency of the information provided. The City of Boston provides this data as is and with all faults, and makes no warranty of any kind. Each user is responsible for determining the suitability of the data for their intended use or purpose.”

Note also that -for data coherency- we based our analysis on the way the Boston Police divide neighborhood districts, something that may bring discrepancies with other ways how Boston neighborhoods are structured.

By Juan Perfetti with the collaboration of Jacqueline Contreras.