37 thoughts on “Raw data: Violent crime rates in a selection of states”
akapneogy
And yet red state residents are petrified by the fear of violence in blue states.
megarajusticemachine
Right-wingers everywhere (not just in red states) get lied to a hell of a lot, and unfortunately believe it.
J. Frank Parnell
So much for the old saying “an armed society is a polite society”.
Salamander
Indeed. Libertarians are morons ... or con men exploiting the morons.
name99
Alabama, Texas, California, Illinois all basically the same.
I'm not sure that "red vs blue" is the appropriate lens through which to understand this unless you care more about slogans than truth.
Maybe something like Albion's seed (as a starting point, not the end point) is a better framing?
(And of course no-one wants to point out that it's basically the degree of white-ness that correlates most with this degree of violent crime. Not because "race" but because "culture". Once again Albion's seed is relevant, with Connecticut culture rather different from Tennessee culture.)
irtnogg
Montana's violent crime rate is 2.5x as high as New Jersey's. Non-white people make up 11% of Montana's population, and 35% of New Jersey's population. And of course, Montana is far more rural than New Jersey, which ought to lower it's violent crime rate.
Tennessee, which has the worst crime rate on the chart, has a smaller minority population than ANY of the three safest states.
name99
You REALLY wanted to immediately jump to the "race" part of what I said, completely bypassing the "culture/Albion's seed" part, didn't you?
Eve
Google paid 99 dollars an hour on the internet. Everything I did was basic Οnline w0rk from comfort at hΟme for 5-7 hours per day that I g0t from this office I f0und over the web and they paid me 100 dollars each hour. For more details
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jte21
These charts go up to 2020, which isn't particularly helpful in the context of present debates. The pandemic upended a lot of things. Nonetheless it's still true that violent crime (as opposed to property crime, larceny, etc.) is much higher in red states than in blue states. Despite whatever Ron DeSantis says, Miami is still way more dangerous than NYC.
cld
Every gun nut thinks he is the state.
msobel
Yet another instance of "Spot the Confederacy."
Old Times There Are Not Forgotten.
morrospy
~~lawless blue states~~
~~lawless police abolishing demucrat mayors~~
Now what?
erick
Since Jim Jordan is so concerned about violent crime I guess he is starting with New York and then will work up the list holding hearings in every city with a higher murder rate, the congressional travel office is going to busy.
Ok Sarcasm font off…
Jfree707
Memphis and New Orleans have violent crime rates that are almost ten times that of NYC and you can’t really call them Red cities
Atticus
I think local government has more of an impact than state government regarding crime and quality of life issues in cities.
irtnogg
The biggest red cities -- Jacksonville, Tulsa, OKC, Wichita -- all have violent crime rates significantly higher than NYC. Cities are going to be more violent than suburbs and rural areas, no matter who governs those cities, but the small number of big cities with Republican leadership are far more violent than the average big city.
Atticus
It's not just violent crime but the overall quality of life issues in some of these cities that people (both republicans and democrats) are sick and tired of. Yesterday I was reading about a Whole Foods in San Francisco that had to shut down because they couldn't ensure the safety of their employees. It talked about constantly finding syringes and pipes in the restrooms, homeless on the sidewalks right in front of the store doing drugs, yelling at customers, defecating in the open, constant shoplifting, etc. This type of stuff isn't reflecting in statistics on "violent crime" but it makes people not want to go anywhere near the city and leads to elected officials losing their jobs for not being tough enough on crime.
Jfree707
I live in Bay Area and the homelessness is out of control all over the place, not just SF. Pharmacies are locked up like a bank and brazen shoplifting is rampant. Just this weekend, I stopped into a gas station/convenience store and a dude walked in, went right to the cooler, put a case of beer on his shoulder and walked out right in front of owner, who couldn’t do anything about it. I live in the North Bay and in the summer, a fire starts in the encampments about once a week.
Atticus
Exactly. That's the kind of stuff people are sick of but it's not reflected in most of these crime statistics.
CAbornandbred
He could have taken a picture, anyone in the store could have, could have gotten the license plate of the guy and called the police. Could have told the police the direction the guy went. People don't have to do nothing.
I live in the north bay too (Solano County) and people where I live don't just ignore this stuff. When I read the weekly police activity, these kinds of losers are the bread and butter of police actions.
Jfree707
I’m in Solano County also and this incident happened in Fairfield two blocks from the County offices and a block from the jail. This happens quite frequently and in Vallejo where I live, a shop owner I know well and has been robbed several times said that when he reports a crime like this, it is standard that the cops won’t even show up until the next day. I’m getting a bottle of water, do you think I’m going to confront the robber by taking out my phone for a photo? They all have video cameras, but the cops are not going to waste scarce resources to pursue this sort of crime that won’t result in any sort of meaningful prosecution. Solano is better than SF, but honestly the overall situation is just so lame, it is not worth the high cost of living and diminishing quality of living that I have requested a transfer back to East Coast. Just not the same as it was even 10 years ago
irtnogg
The threshold for shoplifting to qualify as a serious crime (rather than as petty theft) is higher in Texas than almost anywhere else in the country. If police are ignoring the issue in the Bay Area, it isn't because the perpetrators can't be charged if they are apprehended.
in which Gov Newsom's correct claim about "8 out of 10 of the top murder states are red" is off-handedly confirmed, but then a whole host of minutia dragged in to make it look as if -- SURPRISE!! -- the Democrat was lying.
Because, well, the old traitor states always have high rates of violent crime and murder, so this is nothing new. And red, blue ... what does it even mean? And bigger factors are the social safety net and poverty, which clearly have nothing, NOTHING! to do with politics.
Blah. I get the Fact Checker by email, too, and the best parts are always the cat videos that are embedded.
middleoftheroaddem
Is the state level the correct filter?
For example, at the top of the chart is Tennessee. Is most of Tennessee filled with violence? Or is violent crimes centered in a few cities: Dyerburg, Memphis and Chattanooga (these three cities alone captures about 45% of the state's murders).
My point, unfortunately, violent crime in the US concentrated in urban areas and thus, a state level is likely too broad a lenses.
aldoushickman
"violent crime in the US concentrated in urban areas"
Good point! (although, to be fair, you ask a question, and then make a conclusion based on your priors/feelings and not the evidence).
But you are probably right--after all, Tennessee (violent crime rate 673 per 100k) is undoubtedly 3.5 times as urbanized as New Jersey (violent crime rate 195 per 100k).
irtnogg
Rural counties in Tennessee tend to have a higher crime rate than rural counties in other states. The same is true for Missouri. Look it up and see for yourself. The violent crime rate in urban counties is even higher, but you'd be safer in an urban area in the northeast than in rural Tennessee.
Jasper_in_Boston
I know Kevin prefers and often insists on using "violent crime rate" as a key metric, but a glance at this chart and a couple of minutes of googling reinforces for me why sticking to murder as a proxy is cleaner, statistically (state variations in how crime are defined, how data is compiled, and whether or not they crimes in question are prosecuted can vary a lot, thus rendering this datapoint fuzzy and undependable for purposes of cross-jurisdiction comparison).
What immediately popped out at me was comparing Connecticut and Massachusetts. If the violent crime chart is to be believed, Massachusetts suffers from a rate about 70% higher than its neighbor. Which sounds fishy to me. Seventy percent is a lot! But both states are highly similar: they're both wealthy, highly urbanized/suburbanized states in the same region of the country, both are highly educated, and both have relatively stringent gun laws. And then the googling: in 2020 Connecticut's rate of intentional homicide was nearly 70% higher than Massachusetts's. Doesn't make sense. The state that has a much lower rate of violent crime has a much higher murder rate? Almost identical situation between Massachusetts and New Jersey, I might add: according to the chart New Jersey is quite a bit safer from violent crime than Massachusetts, but curiously suffers from a homicide rate that is nearly 2/3rds higher!
Common sense strongly suggests homicide is the more accurate barometer of violent crime in these cases. Perhaps Massachusetts is more aggressive about how it classifies certain types of crime, or else does a more comprehensive job at compiling violent crime statistics?
I agree that homicide, while a tragic events, provide cleaner data. The other confusing element of the chart, in my opinion, is sorting at a state level.
For example, the vast majority of murder in Connecticut occur is a relatively few locations (Bridgeport, East Hartford, New Haven, New Britain) representing a small percentage of the state's population.
kaleberg
Massachusetts is much more urbanized than Connecticut. Maybe murder is a suburban thing while violent crime in general is more urban?
aldoushickman
Additionally, murder is (thankfully!) only a small subset of violent crime.
A further dimension that might be relevant is the reality that the distinction between murder and attempted murder is often how fast medical personnel can intervene (and the quality of their efforts) to keep the victim from becoming a corpse. Some of the decrease in homicides over the past 50 years is attributable to improvements in emergency medicine; some of the increases in homicide in rural areas may well be due to a decline in the availability of emergency services . . .
Jasper_in_Boston
Massachusetts is much more urbanized than Connecticut. Maybe murder is a suburban thing while violent crime in general is more urban?
No, Massachusetts is not "much more urbanized" than Connecticut. One could very accurately rename the Bay State "Boston Suburbia." About 85% of the state's population lives in the Greater Boston primary statistical area, but less than 10% of the state's population resides within the city limits of Boston itself. The NYC, Philly, LA and Chicago metros all have a much higher percentage of the population living in the city proper.
Occam's Razor is what explains this: Connecticut/New Jersey (on the one hand) and Massachusetts (on the other) use different methodologies for compiling and reporting violent crime statistics, and so we're comparing apples and oranges.
irtnogg
Well, urban Boston doesn't stop at the city border. That's an artifact of an incorporated municipality that simply can't expand its borders. You'd be nuts to argue that Chelsea and Revere aren't "urban" simply because they are not inside the Boston city limits.
If you want to look at population density clusters and metropolitan areas, Massachusetts is probably more urban than Connecticut. If I were a betting man, I'd be willing to place quite a lot of money on that.
Jasper_in_Boston
Well, urban Boston doesn't stop at the city border. That's an artifact of an incorporated municipality that simply can't expand its borders. You'd be nuts to argue that Chelsea and Revere aren't "urban" simply because they are not inside the Boston city limits.
I don't disagree at all. But if we're going to play that game, we likewise have to account for the fact that large swaths of such City of Boston neighborhoods as Readville, Hyde Park, Brighton, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, West Roxbury etc are thoroughly suburban in character (single family homes with backyards, significantly car-dependency) as are broad areas of other Massachusetts cities like Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, Brockton and so on. Moreover, lots of Connecticut is gritty and urban. Ever been to Hartford? Bridgeport? New Haven? Danbury? Waterbury? New London? Even relatively affluent Stamford is majority renter and majority non-white (about 41% Black and Latino). Connecticut is plenty urban!
If you want to look at population density clusters and metropolitan areas, Massachusetts is probably more urban than Connecticut. If I were a betting man, I'd be willing to place quite a lot of money on that.
Your "probably" is duly noted. And no need to be a "betting man" — just provide a few numbers to support your position. Also, various Massachusetts datapoints—household income, per capita GDP, education attainment rate, SAT scores, poverty, etc—compare highly favorably with Connecticut. If the two states were really all that different in terms of demographics, you'd expect to see larger differentials. But they're just not there.
And here's the thing: while I flat out don't believe Massachusetts is substantively less "suburban" than Connecticut, even if it were, this still wouldn't fit with the crime numbers. For one thing, a cursory glance around the country strongly suggests non urban areas (where gun ownership is often quite common) can be plagued by relatively high rates of crime (look at the red states of the south). In other words, urban vs. non-urban doesn't seem to correlate positively with violent crime at the state level. But moreover, the MA-CT differentials are both large (I wouldn't expect the numbers on either violent crime or intentional homicide to be identical, but 60-70%? Again, that's a big difference!) and weird: we're supposed to believe Connecticut manages to keep violent crime some 2/3rds less common than Massachusetts but suffers 70% more killings? Really? Color me maximally skeptical.
Doesn't add up. Again, by far the most plausible explanation is that the two states (three, if we add NJ) compile their violent crime numbers differently.
skeptonomist
Southern states (not red central and mountain states) generally have higher proportions of black people, and crime rates are higher among black people overall. But this is clearly a matter of economic opportunity - low-income people tend to commit non-white-color crime more frequently.
The political emphasis on red states vs blue states or city vs rural obscures important demographic aspects of crime. Rather than address these things informatively, the media prefer to repeat the often idiotic claims of Republicans and simplified counter-claims of Democrats.
frankwilhoit
"...a selection of states"? Are these not the seventeen worst? And if they are not, then which others are salted in between those that are shown and why where they omitted? If they are the seventeen worst, would it not have been overwhelmingly preferable to simply say that?
irtnogg
They are absolutely not the seventeen worst. New Jersey and Connecticut are among the very safest places to live in the U.S. Only Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have lower violent crime rates.
And yet red state residents are petrified by the fear of violence in blue states.
Right-wingers everywhere (not just in red states) get lied to a hell of a lot, and unfortunately believe it.
So much for the old saying “an armed society is a polite society”.
Indeed. Libertarians are morons ... or con men exploiting the morons.
Alabama, Texas, California, Illinois all basically the same.
I'm not sure that "red vs blue" is the appropriate lens through which to understand this unless you care more about slogans than truth.
Maybe something like Albion's seed (as a starting point, not the end point) is a better framing?
(And of course no-one wants to point out that it's basically the degree of white-ness that correlates most with this degree of violent crime. Not because "race" but because "culture". Once again Albion's seed is relevant, with Connecticut culture rather different from Tennessee culture.)
Montana's violent crime rate is 2.5x as high as New Jersey's. Non-white people make up 11% of Montana's population, and 35% of New Jersey's population. And of course, Montana is far more rural than New Jersey, which ought to lower it's violent crime rate.
Tennessee, which has the worst crime rate on the chart, has a smaller minority population than ANY of the three safest states.
You REALLY wanted to immediately jump to the "race" part of what I said, completely bypassing the "culture/Albion's seed" part, didn't you?
Google paid 99 dollars an hour on the internet. Everything I did was basic Οnline w0rk from comfort at hΟme for 5-7 hours per day that I g0t from this office I f0und over the web and they paid me 100 dollars each hour. For more details
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These charts go up to 2020, which isn't particularly helpful in the context of present debates. The pandemic upended a lot of things. Nonetheless it's still true that violent crime (as opposed to property crime, larceny, etc.) is much higher in red states than in blue states. Despite whatever Ron DeSantis says, Miami is still way more dangerous than NYC.
Every gun nut thinks he is the state.
Yet another instance of "Spot the Confederacy."
Old Times There Are Not Forgotten.
~~lawless blue states~~
~~lawless police abolishing demucrat mayors~~
Now what?
Since Jim Jordan is so concerned about violent crime I guess he is starting with New York and then will work up the list holding hearings in every city with a higher murder rate, the congressional travel office is going to busy.
Ok Sarcasm font off…
Memphis and New Orleans have violent crime rates that are almost ten times that of NYC and you can’t really call them Red cities
I think local government has more of an impact than state government regarding crime and quality of life issues in cities.
The biggest red cities -- Jacksonville, Tulsa, OKC, Wichita -- all have violent crime rates significantly higher than NYC. Cities are going to be more violent than suburbs and rural areas, no matter who governs those cities, but the small number of big cities with Republican leadership are far more violent than the average big city.
It's not just violent crime but the overall quality of life issues in some of these cities that people (both republicans and democrats) are sick and tired of. Yesterday I was reading about a Whole Foods in San Francisco that had to shut down because they couldn't ensure the safety of their employees. It talked about constantly finding syringes and pipes in the restrooms, homeless on the sidewalks right in front of the store doing drugs, yelling at customers, defecating in the open, constant shoplifting, etc. This type of stuff isn't reflecting in statistics on "violent crime" but it makes people not want to go anywhere near the city and leads to elected officials losing their jobs for not being tough enough on crime.
I live in Bay Area and the homelessness is out of control all over the place, not just SF. Pharmacies are locked up like a bank and brazen shoplifting is rampant. Just this weekend, I stopped into a gas station/convenience store and a dude walked in, went right to the cooler, put a case of beer on his shoulder and walked out right in front of owner, who couldn’t do anything about it. I live in the North Bay and in the summer, a fire starts in the encampments about once a week.
Exactly. That's the kind of stuff people are sick of but it's not reflected in most of these crime statistics.
He could have taken a picture, anyone in the store could have, could have gotten the license plate of the guy and called the police. Could have told the police the direction the guy went. People don't have to do nothing.
I live in the north bay too (Solano County) and people where I live don't just ignore this stuff. When I read the weekly police activity, these kinds of losers are the bread and butter of police actions.
I’m in Solano County also and this incident happened in Fairfield two blocks from the County offices and a block from the jail. This happens quite frequently and in Vallejo where I live, a shop owner I know well and has been robbed several times said that when he reports a crime like this, it is standard that the cops won’t even show up until the next day. I’m getting a bottle of water, do you think I’m going to confront the robber by taking out my phone for a photo? They all have video cameras, but the cops are not going to waste scarce resources to pursue this sort of crime that won’t result in any sort of meaningful prosecution. Solano is better than SF, but honestly the overall situation is just so lame, it is not worth the high cost of living and diminishing quality of living that I have requested a transfer back to East Coast. Just not the same as it was even 10 years ago
The threshold for shoplifting to qualify as a serious crime (rather than as petty theft) is higher in Texas than almost anywhere else in the country. If police are ignoring the issue in the Bay Area, it isn't because the perpetrators can't be charged if they are apprehended.
Found a list of "most dangerous cities" in2021 or 2022--NYC and Chicago not amongst them:
https://www.populationu.com/gen/most-dangerous-cities-in-the-us
Their link to the crime data exporter was broken. It can be found at:
https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/home
Note: the 2021 data showed a large fall off in crime from 2020 to 2021 in Chicago--pandemic affects crime too.
Speaking of which, check out the awful "Fact Checker" in the WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/12/newsoms-claim-that-trump-states-have-highest-murder-rates/
in which Gov Newsom's correct claim about "8 out of 10 of the top murder states are red" is off-handedly confirmed, but then a whole host of minutia dragged in to make it look as if -- SURPRISE!! -- the Democrat was lying.
Because, well, the old traitor states always have high rates of violent crime and murder, so this is nothing new. And red, blue ... what does it even mean? And bigger factors are the social safety net and poverty, which clearly have nothing, NOTHING! to do with politics.
Blah. I get the Fact Checker by email, too, and the best parts are always the cat videos that are embedded.
Is the state level the correct filter?
For example, at the top of the chart is Tennessee. Is most of Tennessee filled with violence? Or is violent crimes centered in a few cities: Dyerburg, Memphis and Chattanooga (these three cities alone captures about 45% of the state's murders).
My point, unfortunately, violent crime in the US concentrated in urban areas and thus, a state level is likely too broad a lenses.
"violent crime in the US concentrated in urban areas"
Good point! (although, to be fair, you ask a question, and then make a conclusion based on your priors/feelings and not the evidence).
But you are probably right--after all, Tennessee (violent crime rate 673 per 100k) is undoubtedly 3.5 times as urbanized as New Jersey (violent crime rate 195 per 100k).
Rural counties in Tennessee tend to have a higher crime rate than rural counties in other states. The same is true for Missouri. Look it up and see for yourself. The violent crime rate in urban counties is even higher, but you'd be safer in an urban area in the northeast than in rural Tennessee.
I know Kevin prefers and often insists on using "violent crime rate" as a key metric, but a glance at this chart and a couple of minutes of googling reinforces for me why sticking to murder as a proxy is cleaner, statistically (state variations in how crime are defined, how data is compiled, and whether or not they crimes in question are prosecuted can vary a lot, thus rendering this datapoint fuzzy and undependable for purposes of cross-jurisdiction comparison).
What immediately popped out at me was comparing Connecticut and Massachusetts. If the violent crime chart is to be believed, Massachusetts suffers from a rate about 70% higher than its neighbor. Which sounds fishy to me. Seventy percent is a lot! But both states are highly similar: they're both wealthy, highly urbanized/suburbanized states in the same region of the country, both are highly educated, and both have relatively stringent gun laws. And then the googling: in 2020 Connecticut's rate of intentional homicide was nearly 70% higher than Massachusetts's. Doesn't make sense. The state that has a much lower rate of violent crime has a much higher murder rate? Almost identical situation between Massachusetts and New Jersey, I might add: according to the chart New Jersey is quite a bit safer from violent crime than Massachusetts, but curiously suffers from a homicide rate that is nearly 2/3rds higher!
Common sense strongly suggests homicide is the more accurate barometer of violent crime in these cases. Perhaps Massachusetts is more aggressive about how it classifies certain types of crime, or else does a more comprehensive job at compiling violent crime statistics?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_intentional_homicide_rate
I agree that homicide, while a tragic events, provide cleaner data. The other confusing element of the chart, in my opinion, is sorting at a state level.
For example, the vast majority of murder in Connecticut occur is a relatively few locations (Bridgeport, East Hartford, New Haven, New Britain) representing a small percentage of the state's population.
Massachusetts is much more urbanized than Connecticut. Maybe murder is a suburban thing while violent crime in general is more urban?
Additionally, murder is (thankfully!) only a small subset of violent crime.
A further dimension that might be relevant is the reality that the distinction between murder and attempted murder is often how fast medical personnel can intervene (and the quality of their efforts) to keep the victim from becoming a corpse. Some of the decrease in homicides over the past 50 years is attributable to improvements in emergency medicine; some of the increases in homicide in rural areas may well be due to a decline in the availability of emergency services . . .
Massachusetts is much more urbanized than Connecticut. Maybe murder is a suburban thing while violent crime in general is more urban?
No, Massachusetts is not "much more urbanized" than Connecticut. One could very accurately rename the Bay State "Boston Suburbia." About 85% of the state's population lives in the Greater Boston primary statistical area, but less than 10% of the state's population resides within the city limits of Boston itself. The NYC, Philly, LA and Chicago metros all have a much higher percentage of the population living in the city proper.
Occam's Razor is what explains this: Connecticut/New Jersey (on the one hand) and Massachusetts (on the other) use different methodologies for compiling and reporting violent crime statistics, and so we're comparing apples and oranges.
Well, urban Boston doesn't stop at the city border. That's an artifact of an incorporated municipality that simply can't expand its borders. You'd be nuts to argue that Chelsea and Revere aren't "urban" simply because they are not inside the Boston city limits.
If you want to look at population density clusters and metropolitan areas, Massachusetts is probably more urban than Connecticut. If I were a betting man, I'd be willing to place quite a lot of money on that.
Well, urban Boston doesn't stop at the city border. That's an artifact of an incorporated municipality that simply can't expand its borders. You'd be nuts to argue that Chelsea and Revere aren't "urban" simply because they are not inside the Boston city limits.
I don't disagree at all. But if we're going to play that game, we likewise have to account for the fact that large swaths of such City of Boston neighborhoods as Readville, Hyde Park, Brighton, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, West Roxbury etc are thoroughly suburban in character (single family homes with backyards, significantly car-dependency) as are broad areas of other Massachusetts cities like Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, Brockton and so on. Moreover, lots of Connecticut is gritty and urban. Ever been to Hartford? Bridgeport? New Haven? Danbury? Waterbury? New London? Even relatively affluent Stamford is majority renter and majority non-white (about 41% Black and Latino). Connecticut is plenty urban!
If you want to look at population density clusters and metropolitan areas, Massachusetts is probably more urban than Connecticut. If I were a betting man, I'd be willing to place quite a lot of money on that.
Your "probably" is duly noted. And no need to be a "betting man" — just provide a few numbers to support your position. Also, various Massachusetts datapoints—household income, per capita GDP, education attainment rate, SAT scores, poverty, etc—compare highly favorably with Connecticut. If the two states were really all that different in terms of demographics, you'd expect to see larger differentials. But they're just not there.
And here's the thing: while I flat out don't believe Massachusetts is substantively less "suburban" than Connecticut, even if it were, this still wouldn't fit with the crime numbers. For one thing, a cursory glance around the country strongly suggests non urban areas (where gun ownership is often quite common) can be plagued by relatively high rates of crime (look at the red states of the south). In other words, urban vs. non-urban doesn't seem to correlate positively with violent crime at the state level. But moreover, the MA-CT differentials are both large (I wouldn't expect the numbers on either violent crime or intentional homicide to be identical, but 60-70%? Again, that's a big difference!) and weird: we're supposed to believe Connecticut manages to keep violent crime some 2/3rds less common than Massachusetts but suffers 70% more killings? Really? Color me maximally skeptical.
Doesn't add up. Again, by far the most plausible explanation is that the two states (three, if we add NJ) compile their violent crime numbers differently.
Southern states (not red central and mountain states) generally have higher proportions of black people, and crime rates are higher among black people overall. But this is clearly a matter of economic opportunity - low-income people tend to commit non-white-color crime more frequently.
The political emphasis on red states vs blue states or city vs rural obscures important demographic aspects of crime. Rather than address these things informatively, the media prefer to repeat the often idiotic claims of Republicans and simplified counter-claims of Democrats.
"...a selection of states"? Are these not the seventeen worst? And if they are not, then which others are salted in between those that are shown and why where they omitted? If they are the seventeen worst, would it not have been overwhelmingly preferable to simply say that?
They are absolutely not the seventeen worst. New Jersey and Connecticut are among the very safest places to live in the U.S. Only Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont have lower violent crime rates.