Toronto Crime Score case study

The problem

Toronto’s police service publishes one of the better open-data portals anywhere: crime data by neighbourhood, free to download. What it doesn’t publish is a decision. Raw counts mislead on their own — a downtown neighbourhood can post more events simply because more people are there — and nine crime categories across 158 neighbourhoods is a research project, not an answer. Fair comparison needs per-capita rates; responsible ranking needs to decide, out loud, that a homicide is not equivalent to a bicycle theft. Toronto Crime Score makes those decisions once, in the open, so residents don’t each have to.

Who it’s for

Residents and newcomers comparing neighbourhoods, renters and buyers scoping a move, journalists and community groups writing about local safety. They want the same thing: the numbers, ranked honestly, with the method shown — not a vibe.

The data

The rankings start from the Neighbourhood Crime Rates open data on the Toronto Police Service’s Public Safety Data Portal, with population denominators from the Environics Analytics projections published with that dataset. Rates are normalized per 100,000 residents so neighbourhoods of very different sizes compare fairly. The score then weights nine crime types by severity: homicide and shootings count heaviest, assault and robbery next, while break and enter, auto theft, theft over $5,000, theft from vehicle, and bicycle theft contribute at lower weights. The combined score is capped at 100, and neighbourhoods are grouped into tiers from the most affected to the calmest. Every profile breaks out violent versus property rates, so the ranking never hides what’s driving it. In the product today:

• Ranks all 158 City of Toronto neighbourhoods on one leaderboard
• Severity-weighted score across nine crime types, capped at 100
• Violent and property crime rates normalized per 100,000 residents
• Rankings, map, and compare views over the same underlying data

How it’s built

The site is built to be skimmed. A rankings leaderboard, a map, and a side-by-side compare view all read from the same underlying numbers, and every neighbourhood profile links back to what feeds it. Crime counts can be shown raw or per 100,000 residents, and the site states its data window and the last date the police dataset was updated, so no chart floats free of its period. The licence attribution shown on torontocrimescore.com names the Open Government Licence – Ontario, and the caveats sit with the rankings, not in a footer: a crime-score ranking is a view of reported incidents, not a measure of how safe any street feels.

Where it stands

Toronto Crime Score is live and free at torontocrimescore.com. The dataset is refreshed as the Toronto Police Service publishes updates, and the weighting and tiers are maintained as the data evolves. Questions about the method or the source data — the contact page below is open.

Try it

Browse the rankings at torontocrimescore.com — free, no signup. Want a public-data product like this built and maintained? Webuildstuff designs, builds, and operates tools like Toronto Crime Score — reach the studio through the contact page.

More from the project lab

• Drone Flight Calc — how the flight-condition calculator models the air at cruise altitude
• How Much Water Do I Need? — how the 18-parameter hydration estimate works
• Browse everything we ship on the projects hub.