Smarter Security Moves
with our 2025 U.S. Crime Risk Database Update
Our latest data refresh uncovered major shifts in crime risk nationwide—over 19,000 block groups saw changes of 100 points or more. Since each block group includes dozens or even hundreds of individual locations, the true impact is far greater.
Explore what’s changed, why it matters, and how updated insights can help you make smarter, more strategic security decisions in 2025.
Why Update?
Crime risk isn’t static—and your approach to security shouldn’t be either. Whether crime is trending up or down around your locations, having current data ensures you’re spending your security budget where it counts. Here’s why annual updates matter more than ever.
What's New for 2025?
Not only have our crime scores changed, we’ve brought new enhancements to refine our crime risk models, giving even more accurate and reliable insights. With these updates, you can confidently assess risk and make informed security decisions.
Accuracy Backed by Real-World Data
Our 2024 validation study confirms that CAP Index Scores accurately predict where crime is most likely to occur – proving that our models forecast future risk with precision you can trust.
Hear from our Experts
Get insights straight from the source: our Research & Innovation team breaks down what’s new, what it means, and how to use the latest data to guide smarter security decisions.
Why Crime Risk Updates Matter
Knowing your actual crime risk is crucial whether you’re in a high-risk area or a low-risk one—and whether crime around your locations is likely to increase or decrease. Updating your crime risk data annually is important, not just for addressing higher crime rates, but also for ensuring you’re optimizing security in areas where crime may be decreasing.
The Budget Impact of Crime Trends
Security budgets are tight, and every dollar needs to be spent wisely. Accurate crime risk data helps you make informed decisions in two key ways:
- When crime risk rises, businesses need to adjust security measures to stay ahead of emerging threats. This might mean increasing guard presence, improving surveillance, or investing in additional safety measures.
- When crime risk drops, maintaining the same level of security spending could mean wasted budget. If a location is now lower risk, you may be able to scale back security expenses without compromising safety.
Benefits of Risk-Based Budgeting:
Reduce security costs where risk has dropped
Adjust staffing, monitoring, and physical security measures in response to improved conditions.
Strengthen security where higher risk has emerged
Protect employees, customers, and assets by proactively addressing rising risk.
Make informed business decisions
Use the latest data to support insurance assessments, site selection, and corporate risk policies.
Competitive Advantages of Updated Data:
Stay current, stay protected.
Companies that rely on fresh crime data can fine-tune their security strategy and avoid unnecessary costs – while outdated insights can lead to overspending or dangerous blind spots.
Keep up with - or stay ahead of - competitors
Your competitors are already leveraging the latest crime data to refine their security strategies.
Be protected from liability
As regulations and compliance requirements grow, it’s critical to ensure security decisions are backed by the most current risk intelligence.
Smarter, More Accurate Insights for Better Decisions
We’ve taken our already robust crime risk models to the next level. With the latest enhancements, you’re getting even more precise, reliable data – designed to help you assess risk with greater confidence and make smarter security choices. The result? A more powerful tool to guide your decision-making and protect what matters most.
Key Improvements:
Refined Risk Assessments
Our Research & Innovation team has created a proprietary methodology that tailors crime risk scores based on the unique characteristics of each location – whether urban, suburban, or rural. This approach ensures that our risk assessments account for the distinct factors influencing crime in different environments, providing you with more precise and contextually relevant insights.
Expanded Crime Data Sources
Our Research & Innovation team brings together experts in law enforcement data, enabling us to provide more comprehensive and precise crime insights. We gather data not only from large urban centers but from communities of all sizes, ensuring a broader, more accurate understanding of crime trends across diverse areas.
Significant Changes in Crime Risk Scores
This year, 19,248 block groups experienced a shift of more than 100 points in their CAP Scores—a substantial change in crime risk. Even if your specific block group hasn’t seen a shift, changes in neighboring areas can still have a significant impact on the overall crime risk in your vicinity.
Proven Accuracy You Can Trust
Using reported crime data, we compared actual incident rates to our forecasted risk levels – and the results show a direct predictive accuracy: areas with higher CAP risk scores DID experience higher per capita crime rates.
Download the full study to see how our scores hold up and why we remain the trusted standard for crime risk assessment.
What’s new?
By the numbers
For this year’s study, we assessed nearly 3.5 million incidents from urban, suburban, and rural areas. This broad dataset captures crime occurrence across a wide variety of neighborhood types. To ensure consistency in geographic analysis, we examined these incidents at the block group level—standardized neighborhood proxies defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.
What are block groups?
Block groups are standardized proxies for neighborhoods, with boundaries determined by the U.S. Census Bureau. There are approximately 240,000 block groups in the U.S., each typically home to 600–3,000 residents.
Focus of analysis
Our analysis focused on incidents in the 11 defined CAP Index crime categories: simple assault, aggravated assault, rape, homicide, motor vehicle theft, larceny, burglary, robbery, arson, vandalism, and drug offenses.
Hear from the Experts
Go beyond the numbers with insights from CAP’s Research & Innovation team. In these short videos, our experts explain the key drivers behind this year’s risk shifts, how our models are evolving, and what it all means for your security strategy. Whether you’re looking to understand the data or apply it more effectively, these expert perspectives offer clarity, context, and actionable guidance.
Watch now:
Inside the 2025 CAP Scores with our Experts
Hear from CAP’s criminology experts as they discuss the recently released 2025 CAP scores, highlighting updates for improved accuracy. They emphasize how CAP Index’s use of address-level data and expanded crime data collection sets their methodology apart, providing more localized and reliable crime risk forecasting compared to competitors. Click to view.
Why 100? The Story Behind CAP's Crime Risk Benchmark
Finding the right data to accurately rate policies and protect your bottom line can be challenging. CAP Index’s proven risk intelligence can help. Click to view.