>Hover on a crime type to highlight its incidents on the map.
>Click on crime type(s) to filter for their incidents.**
>Click on district(s) on the map to add/remove their demographic data to the bar chart.***
Boston’s 684,379 residents are divided between 23 neighborhoods, as shown on this map.
These neighborhoods are contained inside Boston’s 12 police districts, as shown by the orange outlines.
Hover over each police district to view the neighborhoods inside of it.
Note how some neighborhoods cover more than 1 police district.
The Boston Police Department gives crime incident reports detailing the location and description of each incident BPD officers respond to.
Shown on the map is the distribution of crimes per police district that occurred from June 15, 2015 to July 15, 2015.
Note, we include only severe crimes, such as larceny (theft), disorderly conduct, assault, and more.
View our data hereCertain crimes occur more often than others.
Shown on the pie chart is Boston’s overall crime distribution for the types we chose to include.
However, some districts are more susceptible to certain types of crimes than others.
Shown on these two maps are the portion a given crime type makes up of each district’s total crimes.
Click on the crime types to explore and compare their distributions.
Map 1
Map 2
To understand more about the neighborhoods inside of these police districts, we can explore their demographics.
Shown on the pie chart is the distribution of races in Boston.
This data was collected from the 2015 American Community Survey conducted by the US Census.
View our data hereAlthough Boston has an overall diverse population, some of its neighborhoods are highly segregated.
Shown on these two maps are the portion a given race makes up of each district’s population.
Click on the races to explore and compare their distributions.
Map 1
Map 2
Boston continues to suffer from segregation caused by discriminatory housing policies from the pre-civil rights era.
In fact, the Boston-Cambridge-Newton area ranks 15th in terms of segregation among the 51 large metro areas with significant black populations.
Read more hereTo understand the long-lasting effects of Boston’s past policies, we can explore other neighborhood demographics data.
Shown on the table are the 3 richest and poorest neighborhoods and the race that makes up the largest portion of its residents.
Richest Neighborhoods*
Beacon Hill - $205,960
83.7% White
Back Bay - $197,348
73.4% White
South Boston Waterfront - $191,822
82.7% White
Poorest Neighborhoods*
Roxbury - $40,207
50.3% Black
East Boston - $56,426
56.5% Hispanic
Dorchester - $59,966
44.0% Black
*by median family income
Both crimes and resource inequity affect the lives of Boston residents today.
To understand the correlation between these two factors, we can explore them side by side.
>Hover on a crime type to highlight its incidents on the map.
>Click on crime type(s) to filter for their incidents.**
>Click on district(s) on the map to add/remove their demographic data to the bar chart.***
**If all filters are unselected, all crime types are shown on the map.
***To analyze the demographics of each police district, we aggregate the demographics data of each neighborhood contained within it. For neighborhoods that don’t fit into a single police district, we assign them to the district that covers the majority of their area.