Which states have the highest violent crime rates? As always, we have two sources for this: the FBI, which compiles records from local police departments, and the NCVS, an annual survey of crime victims.
The FBI releases state totals routinely, so that part is easy. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, however, had to spend an entire decade to produce state-level breakdowns¹—and even then, due to concerns about "disclosing sensitive information," it only produced a single report for the 22 largest states.
And as usual, the data from the two sources had to be normalized. The NCVS calculates crime rates based on the population over 12, so the FBI data had to be adjusted to match. At the same time, the FBI violent crime index includes only aggravated assault, not simple assault, so the NCVS data had to be adjusted to match that. Finally, the FBI by definition includes only crime reported to the police, so NCVS has to be adjusted for that too.
Whew. After that's all done, here's what things look like:
There you have it. And here's one more thing just because. It shows victimization rates by household income:
The median household income is currently $80,000, so these income levels are all below average. Even so, you can see that violent crime is highest in the absolutely most poverty-stricken places—those with incomes under $25,000. Even an income of $30,000, about what a full-time burger flipper makes, is enough to get you into a neighborhood with an average-ish crime rate.
¹Seriously. Here's the timeline for this gargantuan effort:
Yay! For Maine!! We might be poor but we’re not violent.
We are blessed with lots of open woodlands for cleansing away our anger.
No other state has such freedom to nature.
Alaska?
Not if yu read Stephen King... and all those "open woodlands" are filled with bodies ... and monsters.
Ahem, the Overlock Hotel was in the Colorado Rockies….
Storm of the Century was filmed in Southwest Harbor. King was born in Portland, ME and graduated from U. of Maine.
Also: Pet Sematary, Carrie, and many more were set in Maine.
Party pooper ..
Maine is old.
Yeah, but we have lobsters. Nyah Nyah na Nyah Na
I don't have any statistics but my anecdotal view is that almost all violent crime is between people who know each other or have some business with each other.
Unprovoked attack by a stranger is freakishly rare, even in high crime neighborhoods.
I suspect/speculate there is an inverse relationship around the type of crime. White collar crime, such as fraud, is more common in wealthier neighborhoods and violent crime, more likely in poorer neighborhoods.
OK but who cares? My state is something like 70000 square miles. I don’t leave the 20 square miles around my house unless it’s by plane to go to another state. These numbers are meaningless, except maybe for Rhode Island because it’s basically a city-state.
The average American who commutes 30-45 minutes to work might care.
The "average" american who commutes 30-45 minutes to work is 30-67% getting screwed, since the actual average american commute time is ~27 minutes.
My cousin's a barber, maybe he can get you more hairs to split.
Next time try Amtrak. Oh wait Trump is gonna ruin it.
I suppose these surveys count the actual physical victims of violent crime but I think that particularly with violent crime there are many more victims. For instance, the parents of the kids killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the loved ones of the staff. And the kids who witnessed the killings. Aren’t they victims? Many, I’m sure, will experience a lifetime of trauma.
Violent crime has a long string of victims who aren’t counted in surveys like this
Not to pick on New Jersey and I get that it has a large population but with AC, Newark and The Sopranos how can its crime rate be so low? (One fifth the national average).
Atlantic City is small, less than 40,000 population; Newark less than 1/3 million. Most of the state’s population lives in suburbs of New York or Philadelphia. It’s also a high-average-income state. Still, that number is awfully low.
As an overwhelmingly suburban, high income state, NJ lacks many of the conditions that support higher rates of violent crime. The cities are indeed small - hardly cities at all - and they are gentrifying. I went to college in Newark in the 1970s, and the city was nothing like it is now. If you are not involved with illegal drugs and don’t get into bar fights, your chances of being the victim of violent crime in NJ are really low.
Not to pick on New Jersey and I get that it has a large population but with AC, Newark and The Sopranos how can its crime rate be so low
Its crime rate isn't that low. As a typical blue state, New Jersey actually is pretty safe. But nonetheless the NCVS numbers are garbage. There's no way that violent crime is five times more common in Massachusetts or California than in New Jersey.
I really wish Kevin would give us intentional homicide numbers when discussing crime. If he prefers to focus on "violent crime" in general because it's a lot more common, that's fine (it's not my preferred approach; but it's a defensible choice for the reasons Kevin has repeatedly stated).
But simultaneously providing intentional homicide numbers would give us a nice, clean way to parse the statistics for reliability.
"I really wish Kevin would give us intentional homicide numbers ..."
They don't fit the narrative.
Crime has always been associated with poverty. Find numbers from 50 years ago and I doubt it would look much different.
The difference between NCVS and FBI is concerning.
I remember reading a while ago that local police had issues using the new reporting system AND didn't like reporting data to the FBI. Not sure how what the situation is now.
The median household income is currently $80,000, so these income levels are all below average
Huh?
We're number one! We're number one! New Mexico, tops in all that's bad, at the bottom in all the desireable rankings. (sigh) Thank the gods for Mississippi. Oh... wait a minute...
Okay, I assume that the violent victimization by household income must include simple assault numbers (USA average 22.5). The charts on state rates have much lower rates per thousand (USA average 3.3 to 4.4 depending on source of data), which I assume is because they exclude simple assault. I think the variation in rates by income seems plausible, though I wonder what they would look like excluding simple assault like the other charts. Comparing apples to apples is a better way to show data. If you look at the numbers that show injuries to victims, the lower income ranges are 4 to 5 times higher than high income.
Lowest income tier have 49 violent crime incidents per 1,000 of those over 12.
Essentially 50 per 1,000, or 5%
One in twenty per year. That means a lot of people will know someone who was a victim, which has more of an impact than reading statistics or seeing reports on the news. That probably leads to a stressed, tense society where everyone is on a hair-trigger while going about their daily routine.
A friend had her car stolen from a garage a month ago and that was plenty upsetting*. Thank goodness there wasn't violence involved.
* thief was arrested while driving the car in a town 70 miles north. Car was apparently for personal use and (we think) lodging, not for stripping down or shipping elsewhere. Who steals a car and drives it around with the same plates? People are strange.
Speaking of crime, you asked last week about why China's tourism hasn't recovered, and I suggested crime had a role. From the BBC:
Of course, it seems odd that a country with 3x the population of the US has so little violence. But they're a totalitarian state where Big Brother is always watching and people are always snitching on each other, and the consequences for crimes are especially more harsh than anything we have in the western world. All of this makes the jump in deadly violence especially notable.
Sounds like a potential failure in policing, in terms of coverage, and resulting void filling by criminal elements.
If we really want to commit to defeating gangs, we need to step up our policing in the poorest areas, as street gangs may be less effective and more visible the more they are forced to operate in higher income areas (taking the "street" out of ganging).
One option would be to step up enforcement of loitering laws on publicly owned streets, with penalties being the most boring community service obligations you can imagine...clean up the streets both figuratively and literally!