Crime Rate by State 2026

Crime is alive and well in the United States. As a nation, we have relatively high crime rates; however, they have decreased significantly over the past 25 years. The American government categorizes crime in two ways.

A criminal act is either a violent crime or a property crime. The four criminal behaviors that fall into the category of violent crime include aggravated assault, robbery, homicide, whether intentional or accidental, and rape.

In 2020, the most common type of violent crime committed in the United States was aggravated assault. Robbery was the next type of violent crime to take place most often, and although homicide rates have always been pretty high in America, they still only accounted for about five cases per 100,000 people.

Property crime is another category of crime in America, and the specific crimes that fall into this category are arson, burglaries, larceny, and motor vehicular theft and damage.

Collective Crime Rates in the United States in 2020

The average crime rates in America during the year 2020 were:

• Homicide, 6.5 deaths per 100,000 people
• Robbery, 73.9 cases per 100,000 people
• Aggravated assault, 279.6 instances per 100,000 people
• Burglary, 314.2 cases per 100,000 people
• Larceny, 1,398 cases per 100,000 people
• Motor vehicle theft, 245.9 cases for every 100,000 people

Crime rates decreased in the United States from 2016-2020. This is good news, but it also isn’t that impressive when you look at the numbers. Take a look at the values below for crimes that involved guns and criminal activity that resulted in murder, if that wasn’t the goal in the first place. These numbers are still quite large, and they are evidence of the reality that the United States still has a long way to go before crime becomes abnormal instead of the norm.

Crime rates vary significantly between states based on several factors, including population density and economic factors.

Historically, the causes and origins of crime have been investigated in many disciplines. Some of the factors known to affect the amount and type of crime that occur in each place are:

• Population density and degree of urbanization
• Differences in population composition, especially the concentration of young people
• Population stability on resident mobility, travel patterns, and temporal factors
• Traffic mode and road network
• Economic conditions, including average income, poverty level, and ability to work
• Cultural factors and educational, recreational, and religious characteristics
• Family conditions in terms of divorce and family cohesion
• Climate

After the FBI changed its criminal data collection program in 2021, nearly 40% of local law enforcement agencies did not report data to the federal government, while more than 7,700 agencies reported data at all. year for the FBI and nearly 4,000 agencies reporting partial data. The gap includes the nation’s two largest cities by population, New York and Los Angeles, as well as most agencies in five of the six most populous states: California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

States with the Lowest Violent Crime Rates

Maine

Maine has the lowest crime rate 108.58, and the incidence Count was 1466. Maine residents aren’t as concerned about their overall safety compared to the rest of the nation. Maine had no mass shooting incidences, compared to one the year before. Property crime has dropped steadily since 2019 in Maine, and each of its safest cities experienced less property crime than the rest of the state, region, and the national average.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire has the second-lowest crime rate in the United States with 2000 incidents. New Hampshire comes in well below US averages for violent crime and property crime. Its already-low violent crime rate made improvements this year.

Vermont

The Green Mountain State borders Canada and is well regarded as one of the safest travel destinations in the US. Vermont has a crime rate of 173.4 per 100,000 people, making it the state with the third-lowest crime rate. According to Safewise, 78% of Vermonters feel safe in their state, beating the national average by a whopping 42%. The crime issue that causes the most concern is property crime, tied with package theft as the crime Vermonters fear may happen to them.

Connecticut

Connecticut has a crime rate of 181.59 per 100,000 people, that’s the fourth lowest in America. The national average was 398.5, and Republican states like Texas, Arizona, and Tennessee had violent crime rates in the 400s and 600s — two to three times higher than Connecticut.

New Jersey

New Jersey New Jersey boasts some of the lowest crime rates in the country, New Jersey’s crime rate of 195.36 is the fifth-lowest nationwide. This is the second consecutive year that New Jersey was among the states with the lowest violent crime rates in the nation. The Garden State is the fourth-lowest in the nation when it comes to property crime. In the Mid-Atlantic region, New Jersey bested the violent-crime regional average, with the lowest rate ahead of New York (363.8)

District of Columbia

The District of Columbia has the highest crime rate in the United States, with a 999.8 crime rate per 100,000 people. According to me Metropolitan Police Department, homicides increase by 14% compared to 2021, robbery by 24%, burglary by 8%, and 4% in motor vehicle theft.

Alaska

Alaska has the second-highest crime rate of 837.85 per 100,000 residents. Alaska has the highest violent crime rate and the thirteenth-highest property crime rate in the US. Alaska’s violent crime rate is more than double that of the Pacific region and is the highest of all 50 states. So Alaskans’ low concern about violent crime is out of sync with the amount of violent crime happening.

New Mexico

New Mexico has the third-highest crime rate in the United States. New Mexico continues to have higher-than-average crime rates across the board, but the good news is that property and violent crime rates are declining yearly. Violent crime fell to 778.28 per 100,000—but that still gives New Mexico the third-highest violent crime rate in the US.

Tennessee

Tennessee’s crime rate of 672.70 per 100,000 is the fourth-highest in the country. According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) increase in property, crimes were driven by the number of reported burglaries in Memphis and Shelby County. Memphis saw an increase of 23 percent while the county as a whole saw an increase of nearly 12 percent. The number of reported motor vehicle thefts (carjackings) in Memphis increased by nearly 13 percent and 11 percent in Shelby County.

Arkansas

Arkansas’s crime rate of 671.93 per 100,000 is the fifth-highest in the country. According to the CDC at the National Center for Health Statistics, Arkansas has one of the highest death rates from firearms. Crime rates in the state are driven up by high concentrations of violence in some cities. Both the Pine Bluff and Little Rock metropolitan areas’ violent crime rates — at 1,098 and 939 incidents for every 100,000 residents, respectively — are far higher than the national average.