📊 Reading the numbers honestly

A count on its own can mislead. SSH Intel shows every number with what you need to read it fairly. Five ideas cover almost everything you will see.

Counts versus rates

A count is how many were recorded. A rate is that count for every 1,000 people around. Rates let you compare a busy district with a quiet one fairly. A big downtown will always have a higher count and may still have a lower rate.

Who we count as "people": the daytime population

We divide by the daytime population: residents plus the workers and visitors who are actually there by day. Business and tourist areas fill up during the day, so dividing by residents alone would make their rates look several times higher than they are. (This is the population we divide by, sometimes called the denominator.) A rate is only shown where at least 300 people are present by day.

The likely range

Every rate comes with a likely range, for example "1.6, likely range 1.4 to 1.8." Some screens call it the 95% band or confidence band. Small areas and small counts get wider ranges. When two areas' ranges overlap a lot, read them as "about the same," not as one being higher.

Small counts are withheld where they could identify someone

Counts that involve people are hidden when they are small:

• under 10 for groups that could identify a victim, such as sex offenses or missing persons;
• under 5 for other groups linked to a person, such as assault or drugs;
• under 5 for any total that mixes people and property.

Property and event counts, such as a stolen bike or a lost dog, show in full. When one count is hidden, one or two others may be hidden too, or shown only as "under 5" or "under 10", and a total that could give it away is rounded down and marked with a +. That way the hidden count cannot be worked out by subtraction. This is why a very specific search in a small area sometimes returns a withheld figure: it is privacy protection, not missing data. See Why did my search decline.

Provisional months

The newest month is never complete. HPD keeps adding late records for about a month, so the latest month is marked Provisional and its numbers can still rise. Past provisional months have gone up as late records arrived. A low number for the newest month usually means "not counted yet," not "did not happen." See Why did the number change.