Crime Data

If you look at the Dallas open data portal, it won’t take you long to see that most of the data listed there is crime data. We capture TONS of data for each incident, but we don’t capture as many incidents as other cities (which is partly because we have a pretty good crime rate). According to every cop show I’ve ever seen doing paperwork is the worst part of the job, but it does give us nerds some very valuable data to work with.

Here are the different offense types the city captures:

You can read here about the importance of data in crime reduction:

On any given day, Dallas County incarcerates about 5,100 people in county jail. About 71% of these inmates are “pretrial,” which means they are awaiting trial for the charges against them. If they are in jail as a pretrial defendant, it generally means they cannot afford bail, or they are held without bail. Is the crime serious enough to do time? Not always. On average, Dallas County jail has about 400 pretrial defendants who are incarcerated for misdemeanor charges. They are in jail because they cannot afford bail. And their incarceration alone costs Dallas County taxpayers about $24,000 per day.

Crime Rate

Dallas is quite safe despite its large size. We have the 4th largest population on this list, but are 38th on the list in total crimes committed.