According to data for large and small cities, small towns and cities tend to be safer than large cities. In fact, the violent crime rate in big cities was almost double that of small towns. However, the distribution of crime costs also shows significant overlap between crime costs in large cities and smaller cities and towns. In this overlap, small and large cities may have the same per capita cost of crime.

The data shows many unsafe small towns and cities with crime levels comparable to their big city counterparts.

For example, the per capita cost of crime in the least safe small and large cities is comparable. In Monroe, Louisiana, the least safe small town, the per capita cost of crime is $8,902. That’s higher than big cities like Baltimore, Maryland, and Cleveland, Ohio, where the per capita cost of crime is $8,160 and $7,397, respectively. Benton, Arkansas, (population 36,282) has a per capita crime cost of $1,727, comparable to New York City (population 8.2 million), which has a per capita crime cost of $1,722.

While the safest places to live tend to be smaller, there isn’t a perfect correlation between population size and crime rates.

Methodology

To rank the safest small towns and cities in the United States, MoneyGeek started with standardized crime statistics reported to the FBI from 2022, the last year of data available. To determine crime rates per 100,000 people, population data accessed from the FBI was added to the analysis. This analysis focused on cities with a population between 30,000 and 100,000 inhabitants and included 1,010 cities in the ranking. Please note that 2022 data was not available for small cities in Florida, Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania. When cities did not have data available in the FBI dataset, MoneyGeek conducted individualized research on standardized crime statistics for each specific city or town.

On which MoneyGeek was based research by Professors Kathryn McCollister and Michael French from the University of Miami and Hai Fang from the University of Colorado Denver to determine the cost of crime to society. Their findings were integrated into the larger data set to better understand the societal cost of crime in individual cities.

The data points presented are defined as follows:

• Per capita cost of crime: The societal cost of crime per resident.
• Violent crime rate: composed of four crimes: murder and manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault per 100,000 residents.
• Property crime rate: includes theft, burglary and motor vehicle theft per 100,000 population.
• Cost of Crime: Economic losses attributable to crime and its cost to society (individuals, community and national) in millions.

This story was produced by MoneyGeek and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.