Niche uses the FBI Uniform Crime report and CDC data for our Crime and Safety Grade. You can view the full Crime and Safety Methodology on Niche.
We gather our crime data from the FBI: Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The crime data is then put on a standardized scale of x/100,000 people so that all data/crime can be compared across towns. An example of the data standardization can be seen below.
A town has 10,000 people and records 5 robberies in 2020.
To get this on the standardized scale, multiply the population by 10 so it is now 100,000 people and then multiply the robbery number by 10 so it is now 50.
The crime rate of 5 robberies per 10,000 residents will be equivalent to 50 robberies per 100,000 residents.
In some cases, the data is not available, which is why the section will not be graded. A gray circle with a hyphen will be displayed when a town was not eligible for a crime grade. It is not always clear why the data is not available because the collection is done by the FBI. We will update the section if data becomes available in the future. As long as the majority of the data in other categories is present, the location will still be eligible for an overall grade. You can learn more about Where Our Data Comes From by visiting the platform.
Niche pulls in data from the last three FBI UCR reports when determining the grade to help minimize the impact of outlier data. Each year holds a different weight when calculating the grade and is as follows:
Current year’s published crime data = 0.65 weight
Last year’s crime data = 0.25 weight
Prior year’s crime data = 0.1 weight