The Myth Of Increasing Violent Crime In America

Where were you 30 years ago in 1991?  If you weren’t born yet or were too young to recall, it was a pretty big year in history.  It was the year of the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the first Gulf War.

Nirvana’s Nevermind was released 1991, changing the rock music landscape.  And oh yeah, the first ever page was stood up on the World Wide Web, launching the world into the information age (that link goes to the exact page btw).  If you weren’t alive in 1991 you missed a big one.

It was also the year that violent crime in the United States peaked, and it’s been declining steadily ever since.  In the face of a general media culture that would like to convince you otherwise, America’s rate of violent crime (and all crime) has been going down, pretty drastically.

Why am I writing about violent crime on a personal finance blog?  Because geoarbitrage is a popular strategy to reach financial independence or retire early, and it’d be nice to know the places with less violent crime. 

I should know, I grew up in Baltimore City and have had guns pointed at me more than once.  It tends to ruin your day.

 

The Data

You know how we roll at Accidental FIRE, let’s get to the data.  This is right from the official FBI website:

As you can see violent crime peaked in 1991 and despite a handful of years of small or modest increases it has been steadily declining ever since.  Like the stock market there is a clear overall trend regardless of the change in any single year. 

The big takeaway is the rate of violent crime in 2019 was less than half of what it was in 1991.  This post will specifically address violent crime but the trend for overall crime is the same. 

You might be saying “well that’s not true in my city/state/jurisdiction, we’ve been getting worse.”  Regular readers know that I’m a geography geek and as a highly compensated professional blogger I go above and beyond to add value to boring government data.  Once again I’m here at your service. 

The FBI site does have the data parsed by state, so I pulled it.  It was incredibly painful because their site, like most government sites, kinda sucks.  Let’s dive in.

 

Geography Matters

Since 1991 was the peak year of violent crime in America, I decided to map that years violent crime rate by state.  Then I did the same for 2019 which is the last year they have.  Ok, time for some map porn!

Below is the map for 1991.

(click the map for a larger version)

 

Florida was the most dangerous state in 1991 with 1184.3 violent crimes per 100,000 people.  Here are the 10 states with the highest violent crime rate in 1991:

State	Number of violent crimes per 100k persons 1991
Florida	1,184.30
New York	1,163.90
California	1,089.90
Illinois	1,039.20
South Carolina	972.5
Maryland	956.2
Louisiana	951
Alabama	844.2
Texas	840.1
New Mexico	834.8

 

Here are the 10 states with the lowest violent crime rate in 1991:

State	Number of violent crimes per 100k persons 1991
North Dakota	65.4
Vermont	116.8
New Hampshire	119.3
Maine	132.1
Montana	139.9
South Dakota	182.2
West Virginia	191
Hawaii	241.8
Wisconsin	277
Utah	286.8

 

Below is the map for 2019.  As you can see the value ranges are so much lower than 1991 I had to use a different legend and break the data up differently to even show it correctly.

(click the map for a larger version)

 

As you can see Alaska had the highest rate of violent crime in 2019.  Here are the 10 states with the highest violent crime rate in 2019:

State	Number of violent crimes per 100k persons 2019
Alaska	867.1
New Mexico	832.2
Tennessee	595.2
Arkansas	584.6
Louisiana	549.3
South Carolina	511.3
Alabama	510.8
Missouri	495
Nevada	493.8
Arizona	455.3

 

When the data are examined the differences are drastic.  For instance notice the big drop from #2 to #3 above.  In 2019 Tennessee had the third highest violent crime rate in America at 595.2 violent crimes per 100,000 persons.  But that rate in 1991 would have been ranked #22!

It’s amazing how much safer America is now than 30 years ago, it’s not even close. 

Here are the 10 states with the lowest violent crime rate in 2019:

State	Number of violent crimes per 100k persons 2019
Maine	115.2
New Hampshire	152.5
Connecticut	183.6
Vermont	202.2
New Jersey	206.9
Virginia	208
Kentucky	217.1
Wyoming	217.4
Rhode Island	221.1
Idaho	223.8

So now that we’ve seen the 1991 map and the 2019 map, the logical thing to do is a comparison. 

Once again I have the goods.

(click the map for a larger version)

 

Despite an almost exact 50% decline in violent crime overall in America from 1991 to 2019, there were still 9 states that had an increase.  But as you can clearly see the trend is a positive one and the vast majority of states had a huge decrease in violent crime during this period.

The ten states with the largest decrease in violent crime from 1991 – 2019 are:

State	Decrease in violent crime incidents per 100k persons from 1991 – 2019
New York	-69.19%
Florida	-68.05%
New Jersey	-67.41%
Connecticut	-65.98%
Illinois	-60.84%
California	-59.52%
Massachusetts	-55.50%
Georgia	-53.85%
Maryland	-52.51%
Rhode Island	-52.14%

 

The easy one to comment on is here New York.  Because New York City was such a crime-ridden cesspool in the 80’s and 90’s, there was only one way to go.  In 1991 New York City alone (not the whole state) had 2154 homicides with 7.3 million people.  That’s 5.9 per day by the way, unbelievable but true.

In 2019 they had 311, with 8.3 million people.  That’s an 87% reduction per capita!

Baltimore other hand, a city of 609,000 people had 348 homicides in 2019.  Baltimore’s population was 1/13th of New York’s in 2019, yet they had 11% more homicides.  I don’t even want to calculate the per capita difference, it’s astronomical.

The ten states with the largest increase (or smallest decrease) in violent crime from 1991 – 2019 are:

State	Change in violent crime incidents per 100k persons from 1991 – 2019
North Dakota	+335.17%
Montana	+189.42%
South Dakota	+118.99%
Vermont	+73.12%
West Virginia	+65.76%
Alaska	+41.24%
New Hampshire	+27.83%
Hawaii	+17.95%
Wisconsin	+5.85%
New Mexico	-0.31%

North Dakota is worth commenting on as I know they had a large population influx due to the shale oil boom.  And most of that population was probably men since those jobs are mostly physical.  And men commit most violent crime by far.  That’s my guess for North Dakota’s huge change.  Please chime in below if you disagree (politely) or if you live there and can explain. 

Vermont and New Hampshire despite increases in violent crime during this period still ranked #2 and #4 for the lowest rates in 2019.  

 

Violent Crime In Urban Areas

Ranking and measuring violent crime in cities and urban centers is harder than you’d think.  There can be drastic differences between data for the city proper (the actual city boundaries) versus the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) which is the city plus surrounding suburbs etc. 

I spent a few hours doing some analysis and then figured if I looked hard enough someone else had probably done it for me.  I’m a professional blogger, so if I can outsource I will. 

I found this data of the top 100 most dangerous cities in America.  After reading their methodology I found it sound, and it’s based off of the same FBI data from 2019 (official 2020 data won’t be released until late this year). 

Here’s the top 10 most dangerous:

 

My hometown of Baltimore tried to take the crown but alas, they made 4th. As you can see the top 4 have very close numbers.  Next year Baltimore, stay classy. 

To end on a high note, the same site lists the top 100 safest “cities”.  I put that in parenthesis because their criteria to make the list was a population of 25,000.  Most of these are located near a major metro area and they list that info as well. 

Here’s the top 10:

 

 

Perception Is Not Reality

Why do so many people think violent crime has been increasing when in fact it’s been drastically decreasing? 

I think it’s a combination of a click-bait news industry that goes by the motto “if it bleeds it leads”, and probably more importantly our 24×7 information-flooded modern environment.  

(assumes persona of old man….) When I was a kid we didn’t have the internet and we had 4 channels on TV.  Sure we heard about many of the Baltimore crimes and murders on the local news and some happened right in my neighborhood, but the national news on TV covered mostly politics.  You couldn’t doom scroll through some social media site seeing gruesome videos of shootings, murders, and violent crimes from anywhere in the country. 

But they were happening, and far more frequently than they are now as the data clearly show. 

Our ubiquitous media culture combined with a tendency for bad things to rise to the top gives the impression that things are getting worse.  They’re clearly not.  It’s not even close. 

So if anything this post should give you another reason to stay off social media, and stop watching the damn news.  They’re literally bleeding, and they’re skewing your perception of reality.

 

Geoarbitrage

So there you go financial warriors, the truth about violent crime in America with the definitive data.  While violent crime has decreased in America a great deal over the past 30 years, we still have a lot of room for improvement.

I post lots of tools like this that show various aspects of money, finance, and other societal factors from a location perspective.  If you’re considering Geoarbitrage in the United States this mapping tool can help you find affordable housing. 

Also be sure to check out my Geoarbitrage Resources Page that has tons of great tools to help you find your perfect location.

I hope you find these resources handy and I will continue to expose valuable tools that can help when deciding on a geoarbitrage strategy.