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It's not city wide and primarily driven in very poor neighborhoods in the Southeast and parts of Northeast, areas I wouldn't suspect you should worry about on a personal level day to day.
Homicides, robberies and GTAs are up significantly this year. Of course, homicides are pretty rare in the downtown area and the traditional upscale residential neighborhoods in NW. Robberies more common downtown but still rare in the aforementioned nice residential areas. Auto theft however is up citywide pretty much and can happen anywhere.
While crime overall is far more common in ungentrified, impoverished areas, it's certainly up and a real presence in gentrified areas that are in relatively close proximity to those crime-ridden neighorhoods.
In other words, if you live in the Palisades or Foxhall it's not really anything to worry about, if you live in Anacostia or Brentwood you know what the score is, but if you're in a place like Navy Yard, Shaw, Capitol Hill or Adams Morgan, well it's gonna be closer to home than you'd like given how much you're probably paying for your home.
I got mugged once in D.C., and almost mugged two other times. And this was years ago when crime wasn't as bad as it is now. FWIW, I'm a street smart guy who has lived in Harlem, the Tenderloin, New Orleans (that's the Olympics of crime in that city) and lots of other places where you needed to have your wits about you.
If it could happen to me, it could definitely happen to just about anyone. Go to Neighborhood Scout and ck out their crime statistics for different cities some time. There are good, bad and worse places in D.C., my successful mugging happened in Dupont Circle, which is a "safe" area.
It's not city wide and primarily driven in very poor neighborhoods in the Southeast and parts of Northeast, areas I wouldn't suspect you should worry about on a personal level day to day.
Maybe homicides are fairly concentrated. But, muggings, carjackings, harassment, break-ins are pretty widespread across the city. Shootings are pretty common in the areas that saw lots of development over the past 15 years (the Green line neighborhoods from Petworth down to Navy Yard, H Streets, areas around NoMa). The odds of being a victim of crime is pretty low on any given day. But, you definitely have to be more aware of your surroundings in DC than in other most other places. Obviously lots of people live there and tolerate it as an acceptable trade off for more positive aspects of DC living. But, I'm definitely more cautions in DC than NYC or most other walk-able urban cities.
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