How CrimeGrade estimates crime at a business address
Police crime data has four problems that matter to a business: places with no filings, the wrong yardstick, averages that hide the corner and messy monthly counts. Each section below states the problem and what CrimeGrade does about it.
Every address gets a score, including places police data misses
About 1 in 20 Americans live where the local police department sent the FBI no crime counts for the year. In some states the share is far higher: 44% of Mississippi residents and 25% of Florida residents.
CrimeGrade estimates crime at every address with the same model it uses everywhere. In states that keep their own crime records, such as Florida and New York, the estimates are checked against the state's counts.
A chain can compare every location on one scale, whatever the local department filed.
Crime measured against what it happens to, not against residents
Most crime indexes divide crime by the people who live in an area. That makes downtowns, parks, stations and shopping districts, where few people live and many visit, read as the most dangerous ground in a city.
CrimeGrade measures each crime against what it targets. Street robbery is measured against the time people spend in public, vehicle theft against parking spaces and home burglary against households. Each crime's measure is its ideal denominator.
Theft per resident
Theft on its ideal denominator
Scores for the hexagon at the address, about 66 meters on a side
Neighborhood crime indexes give one number per neighborhood. The typical U.S. neighborhood they score covers about 90 of CrimeGrade's hexagons, and a quarter of them cover more than 500. A store sits on one of those hexagons, and its corner can differ sharply from the neighborhood's average.
CrimeGrade scores about 77 million hexagons nationwide. Each report gives scores at the address and in the 1-, 3- and 5-mile rings around it.
Two stores in the same neighborhood can carry different risk, and the report shows the difference.
Police filings checked month by month
Police departments file crime counts with the FBI month by month, and the files carry missing months, partial years, typing errors and one-month spikes. CrimeGrade checks each department's filings month by month and corrects or sets aside the months that fail before any estimate is built.
Errors in a department's file are caught before they reach a store's score.
21,607 factors tested from 125 data families
Each crime's model keeps the factors that improve it, and every model is tested on whole metro areas and later months left out of its training. The data families include the eight below.
Where crime happens, and where it comes from
Legacy source-of-crime reports estimate where people likely to commit crimes live. A store's losses happen where crime happens, so CrimeGrade leads with that view and carries SCAPP for the models and benchmarks built on the older scale.
Where crime happens
CrimeGrade scores for each crime at the address and in the rings around it, on one national 0 to 1000 scale, and store scores for the business type.
Where it comes from
SCAPP: Source of Crime, CrimeGrade's estimate of where people likely to commit crimes live, on the scale where 100 is the U.S. average.
Any U.S. address, updated once a year
A report covers its address and the 1-, 3- and 5-mile rings around it, for any address in the U.S. Crime counts come from police incident records and FBI crime statistics, and every figure counts crimes reported to police.
CrimeGrade updates its data once a year, and each report names the release it was built on. The current release is the 2026 Winter Update. Definitions for every figure are on the Data definitions page.
Questions from business buyers
How is this different from a neighborhood crime index?
A neighborhood index gives one number for an area and divides crime by residents. CrimeGrade scores the hexagon at the address, about 66 meters on a side, measures each crime against what it happens to, and compares a business with the typical store of its type.
What is SCAPP?
SCAPP: Source of crime against property and people is CrimeGrade's estimate of where people likely to commit crimes live, on the familiar scale where 100 is the U.S. average, with site scores from 1 to 12 miles. It is CrimeGrade's own estimate and is not affiliated with any other provider.
Why not crimes per resident?
Residents are the right yardstick for a few crimes, such as home burglary. For most crimes against a business, the people and cars present matter more. A shopping district with few residents and thousands of shoppers reads as dangerous per resident, while each shopper's risk can be low.
How current is the data?
CrimeGrade updates once a year, and each report names the release it was built on. The current release is the 2026 Winter Update.
What happens where police filed no data?
CrimeGrade estimates crime there with the same model it uses everywhere, so every address gets a score. Reports mark figures that rest on less certain data with a low-confidence note.
Are exports, portfolio scoring and custom models available?
Every report exports to CSV, with full scores for modeling. Portfolio scoring, an API and custom models built on your own loss data are available through the enterprise tier.
How is customer data handled?
Each organization's locations and reports are private to it, and address-level detail appears only for the locations it buys. CrimeGrade deletes an organization's data within 30 days of a request. The Security page has the details.