Every CrimeScore page shows the same four things: a percentile, a national rank, a state rank, and a level. They are four views of one measurement, and each answers a different question. This is the short guide to reading them.
The percentile: "more reported crime than X% of ZIPs"
The percentile is the share of scored US ZIP codes with lower crime intensity. A ZIP at the 75th percentile has more reported crime than three quarters of scored ZIPs. A ZIP at the 10th percentile has more than only one in ten, which makes it one of the quieter places in the country.
The direction matters, so say it out loud: higher percentile means more crime. Some other rating systems run the opposite way, with 100 meaning safest. On CrimeScore, 100 is the top of the crime scale.
Percentiles are relative. A ZIP's percentile can move even if nothing changed locally, because other ZIPs moved around it. That is a feature: the question the score answers is "how does this place compare with the rest of the country right now."
National rank: the same idea as a position
Rank is the percentile as a place in line. #1 is the highest-crime scored ZIP in the country. Rank and percentile usually move together, but not always. When the number of scored ZIPs changes from one month to the next, a ZIP can drop in percentile and still rise in rank, or the reverse. In Baltimore's July 2026 data, ZIP 21208 rose from the 97.07th to the 97.13th percentile while its rank improved from #356 to #313. Both are correct; they are just measured against slightly different denominators.
When you quote a rank, quote the denominator with it. "#63 of 33,000" is a fact. "#63" is a headline.
State rank: the local comparison
State rank repeats the ranking inside one state. It is the number to use when the question is "where does this ZIP sit compared with the rest of Maryland" rather than the whole country. Again, mind the denominator: #2 of 30 scored ZIPs and #2 of 1,800 scored ZIPs mean different things, and the page shows both numbers so you never have to guess.
Level: the percentile in words
Percentiles map to six fixed levels:
| Level | Percentile |
|---|---|
| Low | under 25 |
| Below Average | 25 to 50 |
| Above Average | 50 to 75 |
| High | 75 to 90 |
| Very High | 90 to 99 |
| Extreme | 99 and above |
The cutoffs never move, so a ZIP's level changes only when its own standing does. Use the level when you need one word, and the percentile when you need to compare two places at the same level.
Trend: read months, not a month
Scores are republished monthly, and ZIP pages keep the history. Treat a single month as one observation. A change of a few tenths of a percentile point between two months is within the ordinary churn of reporting; a steady move across several months is a real change in the area's standing.
The two mistakes to avoid
Treating the score as a forecast. It summarizes reported incidents over a recent window. It does not predict next month, and it says nothing about any individual.
Treating "not found" as "safe". When CrimeScore has too little published police data to score an area, the connector says "not found". That is a statement about data coverage, nothing else.
Try it
Pick any ZIP from the state directory and read the four numbers in order: level, percentile, ranks with denominators, then the history. Thirty seconds, and you know more than the headline number could tell you.