By james art At the other end of the list, Birmingham, Alabama ranks as the city with the highest per capita crime costs in the US at $11,392, coupled with a high violent crime rate of 1,682 per 100,000 residents. New Orleans and St. Louis followed closely behind with crime costs of $11,094 and $11,055, respectively.
Safety and cost of crime
The direct economic costs of crime to individuals and society include victims’ medical and mental health needs, property damage and loss, and policing and corrections costs. In addition to the immediate danger of crime, people living in higher crime areas see lower home values and pay higher prices for vital necessities, including home insurance, renters insurance and auto insurance.
To rank the safest cities, MoneyGeek analyzed crime data, including violent crimes such as murder, rape and aggravated assault, and property crimes such as home burglary and motor vehicle theft. The cost of crime for each city is calculated and the cities are ranked based on the cost of crime per capita. In addition, researchers have determined how much more violent crime costs the community than property crime.
Although perceptions of safety are vital, crime statistics do not cover the entire history of any city or community.
“Behind all these averages people like to cite about crime rates in different communities are individuals and their decisions about how they choose to engage in their community,” says Jesse Brun, assistant professor of education and economics at the University Brown, who researches education issues and gang violence in the city. “There’s a lot more heterogeneity in these patterns that we just can’t measure.”
Despite the real threats, Brun says, it can be surprising how safe people can feel in high-crime neighborhoods.
Methodology
To rank the safest cities in the United States, MoneyGeek started with standardized crime statistics reported to the FBI from 2022, the most recent year of data available. Each city’s population was added to the analysis to determine crime rates per 100,000 people, and that information was also available through data provided by the FBI and the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey.
When cities with more than 100,000 people or more did not have data available in the FBI data set, MoneyGeek conducted an individual survey of standardized crime statistics for each specific city. Please note that 2022 data is limited to cities in Florida, Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. MoneyGeek omitted all cities that did not report murders and rapes.
MoneyGeek’s analysis includes 302 cities.
MoneyGeek relies on research by professors Kathryn McCollister and Michael French of the University of Miami and Hai Fang of the University of Colorado, Denver, to determine the cost of crime to society. MoneyGeek then integrates its findings into the broader data set to better understand the societal cost of crime in individual cities.
This story is produced by MoneyGeek and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.