Overview-2020

The lists below provides an overview of the most dangerous cities and metropolitan areas, states, and counties from the US Department of Justice and commercial/news sources.

It also compares the world’s most dangerous cities and countries.

This page offers four sections:

1 Data from the US Department of Justice as to rates of violent crime per cities

2 Crime rankings from news and commercial sources

3 Commentary on reported and unreported crimes

4 US Department of Justice data on homicides, counties and metro areas

Author

Leonard A. Sipes, Jr.Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.

Contact us at leonardsipes@gmail.com.

Introduction

Crime in America offered a series of articles on the most dangerous cities as presented by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice based on crimes reported to law enforcement compiled by the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI).

We included the top thirty cities for every category. There are additional cities listed plus footnotes that need to be considered. Please see the full report at the Bureau Of Justice Statistics.

Two charts offered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics are below focusing on:

1 Percentage increases for violent crime over a five-year span for the top thirty cities,

2 Crime rates for the thirty most violent cities.

Five Articles From Crime In America

Five articles using rates of violence from the US Department of Justice are offered. They include:

One year changes in the rate of violent crime, Most Violent Cities-2018 (chart below), the percentage of change in violent crime from 2014 to 2018 (chart below), Most Violent Cities-2014-2018, an overview of city homicide rates, Most Dangerous Cities-Homicides , the Most Dangerous Cities-Robbery, and The Most Dangerous Cities-Rape.

Each article provides an overview of the data and the issues surrounding the use of crimes reported to law enforcement. Most crimes (including violent crimes) are not reported, thus the need for a national survey of crime victims administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (the same people offering the charts below and data for the articles above).

Please note that every table contains footnotes. Please refer to the full report for additional cities and topics at Bureau Of Justice Statistics.

Chart One-Percentage Increases In Violent Crime for Thirty Cities, 2014-2018, Highest Percentage Increase

Chart Two-Rates Of Violent Crime for Thirty Cities-2018-Highest Crime Rates

Crime Rankings for Cities and States From News And Commercial Sources

The following are commercial publications and news organizations. We include links for recent years.

247wallst.com/

The Source-Top Murder Cities

Top Murder Cities-CBS

Pew

USA Today

Neighborhood Scout

USA Today

Realtor.Com

CBS News

Police One

Forbes

Newser.Com

Crime Searchable By Zip Code

City-Data.Com

Area Vibes.Com

CNN-How Healthy Is Your Neighborhood?

Safest Cities in America

WalletHub

Top Cities For Homicides

CBS News

Buying or Renting a House

Many come to this site for assistance in choosing a safe place to live. We caution readers to personally investigate the immediate and surrounding neighborhoods as an important first step. Talk to local police.

Canada

MaCleans Most Dangerous Canadian Cities

There are Resources Comparing States

247WallStreet

World Atlas

USA Today

There are Resources Comparing Cities Throughout the World (Includes US Cities)

The Street

WorldAtlas.com/

Business Insider

A Comparison of US Crime To Other Countries

Crime in America

Additional Sources for Crime Data:

Start with the FBI

Background–the Difficulty of Comparing Jurisdictions–Reported and Unreported Crime and Crime Rates

Crime statistics are confusing and frequently misunderstood. There are criminologists who spend their professional lives investigating the complexity of crime data.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) collects crimes reported to law enforcement agencies through state collection agencies and releases statistics for the nation, states, metropolitan areas and cities twice a year.

The National Crime Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics releases crime survey data for the country based on reported and unreported crime and did not offer crime statistics for states, metro areas or cities “until” the introduction of the report above and the comparison of counties and metro areas (below).

Most crime is not reported to the police (thus the need for the National Crime Survey to get a picture of total crime) so there is a lot of room for error. Law enforcement agencies can affect the amount of crime reported through aggressive interactions with citizens.

The FBI and state crime data collection agencies try to enforce common definitions on what constitutes a crime, but individual officers can (and do) downgrade crimes where definitions are vague. For example, an overaggressive person (or people) asking for money could be guilty of panhandling or robbery; it depends on how you interpret the aggressiveness of the person “asking” for money.

Some cities have been known to downgrade crimes. The past is filled with documented examples. Some cities do poor jobs of collecting and analyzing crime data.

Most crime rankings are based on crimes per 1,000 residents which immediately creates an unfair playing field if you get thousands of tourists or workers per day. Those thousands of “outsiders” will inevitably commit crimes or inadvertently create opportunities for crime that would not exist in cities or states not getting a lot of tourists or daily workers.

So the bottom line is that crimes and crimes reported can and will differ for reasons having little or nothing to do with the quality of policing or crime control strategies.

So if you choose to look at rankings, please do so with an open mind. A city or state may have crime problems, but hundreds of thousands or millions of its citizens, tourists and workers move throughout their city in relative safety on a daily basis.

US Department of Justice Data Report for 2015

The reports below were offered by two agencies within the US Department of Justice and were released in 2015. They are included here because they provided jurisduction specific crime data which was unusual until the Bureau of Justice Statistics released their report ranking cities (discussed above) in 2020, see Bureau Of Justice Statistics.

The following data is from The National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice.

The Cities With the Largest Total Increase in Homicides-Study of 56 Cities

Please note that the US Department of Justice funded data below did not measure all cities in the US; only 56 cities were chosen for the study. See the link at the bottom for access to the study.

Of the cities studied, those with the highest total increase for homicides in 2015 include:

Baltimore-127%

Milwaukee-61%

Houston-61%

Chicago-61%

Washington, D.C.-57%

Cleveland-57%

Nashville-34%

Kansas City-29%

St Louis-29%

Philadelphia-32%

Source: National Institute of Justice

The Cities With the Largest Percentage Increase in Homicides-Study of 56 Cities

Please note that the US Department of Justice funded data below does not measure all cities in the US; only 56 cities were chosen for the study. See the link at the bottom of the two articles for access to the study.

Of the cities studied, those with the highest percentage increase for 2015 for homicides include:

Cleveland-90%

Nashville-83%

Milwaukee-73%

Baltimore-58%

Washington, D.C.-54%

Kansas City-37%

Houston-25%

St Louis-18%

Chicago-15%

Philadelphia-13%

Source: National Institute of Justice

Data On Rates of Violence for Metro Areas and Counties

There is data released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice that provides data (not rankings) on violent crime rates for counties and metro areas. Why is this important? Previously, rankings principally depended on crimes reported to law enforcement. This is a problem considering that the majority of crimes are not reported.

The data below depend on crime surveys to discover the totality of criminal activity. Because surveys record much higher numbers, they tend to be more accurate. Rankings are ours. Use the same caution expressed above.

Top Ten Violent Crime Metro Areas in the United States

Based on Department of Justice Victimization Data

Violent Crime Rates-2010-2012. Published in December, 2015

Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville, CA—42.8 Denver-Aurora-Bloomfield County, CO—40.2 Pittsburg, PA—37.5 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA—36.2 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR—34.9 Kansas City, MO/KS—33.9 Louis, MO/IL—33.5 Baltimore-Towson, MD—30.8 Oklahoma City, OK—30.7 Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI/MA—30.2

Top Ten Violent Crime Counties in the United States

Based on Department of Justice Victimization Data

Violent Crime Rates-2010-2012. Published in December, 2015

Sacramento County, CA—44.1 Allegany County, PA—42.4 Philadelphia County, PA—41.4 Honolulu County, HI—39.4 Pima County, AZ—36.1 Dallas County, TX–35.9 Riverside County, CA—34.4 Alameda County, CA—33.5 Marion County, IN—30.6 Salt Lake County, UT—29.7 and Milwaukee County, WI—29.7

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics

See More

See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.

Contact

Contact us at leonardsipes@gmail.com.

My book: A “Best Business Book,” Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization available at Amazon

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