Crime Statistics & Relationships
By Best in Moderation
Sources:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-5
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-3
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-regions-of-the-united-states.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/US
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/party-affiliation/by/state/
Crime in the USA is a hotly debated topic, one that often has people making sweeping claims about causes, correlations and of course politics. Below is a comprehensive analysis of various elements of the population, states and regions of the USA, and their relationships with one another. Several claims are also presented below, to examine and discuss in the comments below.
CLAIMS:
- Certain regions of the USA see more crime
- Certain states have more crime than others
- There is more violent crime in cities than in rural areas
- Crime is negatively linked to poverty levels
- Crime is positively linked to education levels
- Crime is negatively linked to black ethnicity
- Crime is positively linked to a positive general economy
- Crime is negatively linked to mental health scores
- Crime is linked to dominant political ideology
- Crime is negatively linked to population levels
DATA:
The top Violent Crime States are as follows, with the corresponding relationships mentioned in the claims:
The bottom Violent Crime States are as follows, again with corresponding relationships:
The top Property Crime States:
And the bottom Property Crime States:
CLAIM 1 ANALYSIS
Claim 1: Certain regions of the USA see more crime
Based on the FBI statistics table linked above, The South region sees more homicide than their population by far, and more assaults and theft, while the West sees more rape, robbery and assault than their population would suggest, and has a far outsized motor vehicle theft statistic (36.2% of all MV thefts with only 23.9% of the population). The MidWest only has more Rape than their population would suggest. The NorthEast beats every statistic, having a lower rate than their population share.
Based on the top 10 crime states, it seems that the South sees the worst rates of violent crime, with the West coming in second, and the West sees the highest Property crimes, with the NorthEast coming in second. Conversely, in the bottom ten we see the NorthWest as having the lowest violent crime rates (with northern Southern states and eastern Western states coming in second, ironically). For Property Crime, NorthEast and MidWest have low rates, with a few Southern states pulling up second.
Conclusion 1: TRUE, though mostly depending on the crime. The South has more crime overall, while the West has outsized representation in especially property crimes. Being in the NorthEast statistically makes you safer overall.
CLAIM 2 ANALYSIS
Claim 2: Certain states have more crime than others
While the term "more" can be debated, the crime rates of states do differ significantly. As shown above, States like Alaska and New Mexico top out at the mid 800 violent crimes per 100,000 people, while in Maine, New Hampshire or Connecticut it never breaches 200 per 100,000 people. The same is true for property crimes, with Florida leading by a huge margin and Rhode Island doing the same on the bottom.
Virginia, New Jersey and Rhode Island scored low in both property crimes and violent crimes, while Alaska and Arizona both scored high in both property and violent crime rates.
Interestingly, New Mexico scored high in violent crimes but one of the lowest in property crimes, and Maine and Idaho scored low in violent crime but high in property crime.
Conclusion 2: TRUE, and interestingly not as consistent between property and violent crimes as you might expect.
CLAIM 3 ANALYSIS
Claim 3: There is more violent crime in cities than in rural areas
Six States show little difference in the crime rate in metropolitan versus rural areas, those being South Carolina, Maine, Florida, Utah, New Hampshire and Virginia. One shows more rural than metro crime, Hawaii. And several show a significant difference, Connecticut and South Dakota at 3 times the rate, and Nebraska, Indiana, Maryland, North Dakota and Wisconsin having twice the rate. Most other states show a lean towards metro areas having higher crime rates.
Similarly, a city/rural analysis reveals Hawaii again with more rural crime, New Hampshire and Michigan no real difference, and Arizona and South Dakota having far more crime in cities. In fact, the crime rate difference between non-metro cities in Arizona and rural areas in Arizona is almost 23 times greater!
Conclusion 3: Mostly TRUE, especially in some states noted above. Most lean that way, with only Hawaii, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Maine showing the opposite leaning.
CLAIM 4 ANALYSIS
Claim 4: Crime is negatively linked to poverty levels
Violent crime is linked to the highest poverty rates in 6 out of the ten most violent states. Only Alaska is an outlier in that it has a poverty rate under the average (though still not one of the best).
A LACK of poverty gives a bit more of a muddled picture, with only two of those states being in the lowest 10 violent crime rates, and one being well into the top poverty rate states (Kentucky). Most however were under the national average of 12.07%
For Property Crime, strangely enough none of the top ten states fell into the top ten poverty rates, as you might expect given the nature of the crimes. Even isolating for theft shows none. Only three states were above the national average poverty rates, and then not by much.
Conversely, low property crime rates did line up more with low poverty rates, with both New Jersey and Maryland scoring low in both. New Mexico was an outlier again, with a top 5 poverty score but a bottom 10 property crime score. Most of the rest hung close to the middle, though the majority were lower than the national average.
Conclusion 4: HALF TRUE in that more poverty certainly seems to be related to more violent crime, but surprisingly not related as strongly to property crimes. Lower poverty rates had some effect, but not universally.
CLAIM 5 ANALYSIS
Claim 5: Crime is positively linked to education levels
All but three states scoring highest for violent crime also scored lowest for education. Those who weren't in the top ten were still lower than average in education scores, with Missouri presenting as the best of the worst, while New Mexico and Alaska shared the top spot with the worst violent crime and education rates.
Lower violent crime wasn't as strongly correlated but it did show generally that higher education scores related to lower violent crime rates, with New Jersey and Connecticut showing the strongest relationship.
For Property Crimes, we see a similar impact to the lower violent crimes, with one notable exception. Florida, having the highest property crime rate by far, also scores 3rd in the nation in education. Quite the outlier!
Lower property crimes also didn't line up as neatly, though better than the lower violent crime. However, the lowest crime rate states also had the lower education scores, with New Jersey again as the exception.
Conclusion 5: Partially TRUE, in that highest violent crime rates definitely matched the lowest education scores, but the other relationships weren't as solid and even were contraindicated sometimes. There is little evidence showing a consistent reduction in crime due to education rating, though there is a lean that direction.
CLAIM 6 ANALYSIS
Claim 6: Crime is negatively linked to black ethnicity
For this claim we are looking specifically at the percentage of black people in a population, with the national representation of 12.07%.
For the highest violent crime rates, we have a bit of a mixed outcome. The highest violent crime rates by far are in Alaska and New Mexico, and both have only a quarter of the national average of black people in them (around 3%). Meanwhile, 5-7th place are Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama, who have the 2nd, 6th and 5th highest black population respectively. The rest of the top ten play around the middle, with three being below and 2 being above the national average.
Lower violent crime rates are better supported for this claim, as only two of the lowest rates come with higher than average representation of black people in the population (New Jersey and Virginia). 5 of the lowest violent crime states are also in the lowest ten states for black population percent.
We see a converse relationship in property crime rates, with only two states holding higher than average black populations, and 4 states being in the lowest 10 states for black populations (Maine, South Dakota, Oregon and Idaho).
This is also shown in lower property crime rates; most low property crime states also have high black populations (Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and South Carolina being in the top ten). Rhode Island is an outlier here at the top, and New Mexico always seems to be an outlier.
Conclusion 6: IT DEPENDS. Yes, I know this looks like an attempt to dodge the most hot button claim of all of them, but the results to truly show a mixed image. Lower violent crime rates were observed strongly in low black population states, but we see the inverse in property crimes and we do not see as strong of a relationship in higher violent crimes and we see another inverse in higher property crimes. Add to this the fact that while 12.07% of the nation is black, the MEDIAN state population level is 7.15%, meaning there are clusters of population in a few states, meaning that we could better look at the top black population states and see if any patterns are there, and again, there aren't any consistent ones (see below). As such, while the data does not disprove the claim, neither does it support it enough to say it is true.
CLAIM 7 ANALYSIS
Claim 7: Crime is positively linked to a positive general economy
The worst rates states for economic scores trend with higher crime scores in general, with 4 out of ten matching top ten violent crimes (Alaska, Louisiana, New Mexico and Arkansas) and 3 out of ten matching top ten property crimes (Alaska, New York and Pennsylvania). However, there are also inverse relationships to be found in Wyoming and Kentucky (low violent crime) and New Mexico (low property crime).
What really crushes this claim however is the higher economic score comparison. Only one state, Idaho, shows a positive impact to lower violent crime. 5 states show an inverse relationship between economy scores and crime (Nevada and Arizona for violent crime, and Idaho, Arizona, Florida and California for property crime)
Conclusion 7: Mostly False. There's little evidence for a clear relationship in higher crime levels, with contradictions abound. And better economic scores actually seem to increase crime rates, not decrease it.
CLAIM 8 ANALYSIS
Claim 8: Crime is negatively linked to mental health scores
Four of the top ten violent crime states also have some of the lowest mental health scores. with others low in mental heath rating mostly above average in violent crime. There is however no such link to property crime, meaning this may only be an influence on violence.
The same kind of relationship exists for lower crime scores, with higher mental health having the lowest violent crime in 3 states and generally around or below average, and property crime being all over the place, with some very high, others very low.
You really see the strongest impact on higher violent crime, with lower mental health scores corresponding mostly to higher violence rates. Not the strongest relationship, however.
Conclusion 8: Partially TRUE. Lower mental health scores are related to higher violent crime rates, but not much else. Higher scores didn't consistently reduce it (except for in Connecticut and New Jersey) and property crime was not consistently impacted.
CLAIM 9 ANALYSIS
Claim 9: Crime is linked to dominant political ideology
Out of 14 states which leaned right, Three were in the top 5 violent crime states, One was in the top ten violent crime states, and Two were in the bottom 10 violent crime states. For property crimes, Two were in the top 5 and One was in the top 10.
Out of 21 states that leaned left, One was in the top 5 violent crime states, One was in the top 10 violent crime states, One was in the lowest 10 of violent crime states, and all Five of the 5 lowest violent crime states leaned left. For property crimes, Three were in the top 5, Three were in the top 10, Two were in the lowest 10, and all Five of the lowest five property crime states leaned left.
Only ONE strongly leaning state was in the top ten most violent crime rate states (Alabama, right lean).
FIVE strongly leaning states were in the top ten property crime states (New York, California and Oregon left, and South Dakota and Idaho right).
Low violent crime rate had 4/10 leaning strongly left, and 2/10 leaning strongly right.
Low property crime rate had 5/10 leaning strongly, all towards the left.
Conclusion 9: Somewhat TRUE. While there is certainly no causal relationship established, there is a significant relationship between the amount of violent crime and political leaning, with the less numerous red states having 35.71% of their number in the top ten violent states, while the more numerous blue states only had 9.52% of their number there. And for lower rates, red states lost out again at 14.29% to 33.33%. Property crimes, however, went the other way, albeit a bit less severely. The blue states had 28.57% of their number in the top ten property crime rate states, while red states only scored 21.43%. Lower rates however were once again dominated by blue states, at 33% to 0%.
CLAIM 10 ANALYSIS
Claim 10: Crime is negatively linked to population levels
The highest violent crime rate states have a total population of 43.9 million people, with an average of 4.39 million per state. The range was from 732K to 7.3M people.
The lowest violent crime rate states have a total population of 32.2 million people, with an average of 3.22 million per state. The range was from 579K to 8.9M people.
The highest property crime rate states have a total population of 109.5 million people, with an average of 10.95 million per state. The range was from 732K to 39.5M people.
The lowest property crime rate states have a total population of 66.6 million people, with an average of 6.66 million per state. The range was from 974K to 12.7M people.
Conclusion 10: TRUE. There's a pretty strong case to be made that the higher the population, the higher the rate of crime. We saw this a little in the rural versus city claim. It would be interesting for further debate to look at population density, taking the size of the states into account.
SUMMARY:
The South has more crime overall, while the West mostly rules in property crime rates. Alaska and New Mexico have a lot of violent crime, while Florida leads property crime rates by far nationally. Cities have higher crime rates, generally. Poverty leads to higher violent crime rates, but not higher property crime rates. Lower education led to higher violent crime only as well. Clustered black populations made any claims on ethnicity harder to substantiate or disprove in this analysis. A good economy did not have a positive impact on crime rates. Lower mental health scores were strongly linked to higher violent crime rates, but little else. Red states showed higher indexes of high violent crime by far, while blue states showed slightly higher indexes of property crime rates. And it was firmly established that the higher the population, the higher the crime RATE, thus debunking a defense from higher populated states regarding their crime rates.
What do you think? Do you have any claims you'd like to investigate based on the data? Do you have any observations missed in the analysis above? And do you agree with the interpretation of data as it relates to these claims? Debate below!
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