Takin' Care Of Viz-Ness

Your one-stop shop for data visualizations that explain complicated and cool stuff in digestible ways.

danger zones

America's Most Dangerous Cities, Mapped

Talk of violent crime in the US usually focuses on big cities, but you might be surprised to learn which urban areas are actually the most unsafe.

9 months ago · 59.4k reads ·

It doesn't take more than five minutes reading or watching the news to feel like violent crime is rampant all over the US — but which parts of the country really are the most dangerous?

According to research by NeighborhoodScout — which ranks US urban areas with a population of at least 25,000 by number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents — some of the most unsafe places in America are actually its smaller or suburban cities. Using NeighborhoodScout's data, Visual Capitalist mapped the worst US cities for violent crime in the graphic below.

Key Findings:

Three of the ten most dangerous cities in America are in Alabama: Bessemer, which ranks worst in the US overall; Mobile, the second-most dangerous city; and Birmingham, which is seventh on the list. People living in Bessemer have a 1 in 30 chance of being a victim of a violent crime.
Memphis and Detroit are the largest cities to make the top ten, with 25.1 and 23 violent crimes per 1,000 residents, respectively.
New York City doesn't even make the top 100 cities, with a violent crime rate of just 5.2 per 1,000 residents.

Click image to enlarge

Via Visual Capitalist.

Comments

Kev Gallegos 9 months ago

Wait till you see Albuquerque NM, and how many homicides happen here daily, very dangerous city
Charlie Bess 9 months ago

What was the selection criteria for the cities? Houston makes it but Dallas doesn't. Rockford but no Chicago, Oakland but no San Francisco or LA? Interesting that Florence and Myrtle Breach made the chart. I heard that Myrtle beach was taken over by gangs but Florence was was just taken over by a Bucc-ees.
1. mark o'dell 9 months ago
  
  It’s the 50 most dangerous cities (violent crimes per capita) according to NeighborhoodScout, which in turn sources its data from various local PDs through an FBI aggregate report.
  It is kind of surprising to see Oakland and not Chicago but not really that strange. Since it is per capita, cities where large swaths of the city are “rough areas” are going to show up. Even if certain parts of LA or Chicago are quite dangerous the majority of neighborhoods in those cities are still places where violent crime is pretty rare.
Emey, Herschel's 8th... 9 months ago

Kind of wild how the level of violence crime doesn't correlate well with which political party the governor is in.
John Doe 9 months ago

Do criminals move to red states, or do red states just do a better job creating criminals?

Maybe they should rethink their abortion laws?
Gregg Bender 9 months ago

Well, well, well. Springfield MO. The supposed "Buckle of the Bible Belt." I live there. No surprise.