In 2023, the District of Columbia had the highest reported violent crime rate in the United States, with 1,150.9 violent crimes per 100,000 of the population. Maine had the lowest reported violent crime rate, with 102.5 offenses per 100,000 of the population. Life in the District The District of Columbia has seen a fluctuating population over the past few decades. Its population decreased throughout the 1990s, when its crime rate was at its peak, but has been steadily recovering since then. While unemployment in the District has also been falling, it still has had a high poverty rate in recent years. The gentrification of certain areas within Washington, D.C. over the past few years has made the contrast between rich and poor even greater and is also pushing crime out into the Maryland and Virginia suburbs around the District. Law enforcement in the U.S. Crime in the U.S. is trending downwards compared to years past, despite Americans feeling that crime is a problem in their country. In addition, the number of full-time law enforcement officers in the U.S. has increased recently, who, in keeping with the lower rate of crime, have also made fewer arrests than in years past.

CrimeMapping.com allows citizens to query and map recent crimes and incidents within the City’s borders. Crime data is extracted on a regular basis from each department's records system so that the information being viewed through a Web browser is the most current available.

*This dataset is updated nightly. Crime data represents the initial information that is provided by individuals calling for police assistance. Please note that the dataset only contains the last 5 years. Remaining information is often amended for accuracy after an Officer arrives and investigates the reported incident. Most often, the changes are made to more accurately reflect the official legal definition of the crimes reported. An example of this is for someone to report that they have been "robbed," when their home was broken into while they were away. The official definition of "robbery" is to take something by force. An unoccupied home being broken into, is actually defined as a "burglary," or a "breaking and entering." While there are mechanisms in place to make each initial call as accurate as possible, some events require evaluation upon arrival. Caution should be used when making assumptions based solely on the data provided, as they may not represent the official crime reports.

The District of Columbia had the highest robbery rate in the United States in 2023, with 614.2 robberies per 100,000 inhabitants. The lowest robbery rate in the country was found in Idaho, with 9.5 robberies per 100,000 inhabitants. Crime in the District of Columbia The violent crime rate in the District of Columbia was found to be the highest in the United States, with there being a few reasons for this: Firstly, the population of the District of Columbia is quite low (causing a higher rate of crime), and secondly, issues such as the crack epidemic of the 1990s exacerbated the prevalence of crime in the District. As rising rents and gentrification force more people out of the District, crime is moving into neighboring Maryland and Virginia suburbs, as poorer residents seek more affordable living conditions. Crime in the United States Overall, violent crime in the United States and the District of Columbia today is far below the violent crime rate of the 1990s. While some may feel that crime is on the rise, due in part to media sensationalism in fact, the opposite is true, and the United States is becoming safer over time.

This data collection was designed to evaluate the implementation of community policing initiatives for three police departments in Jefferson County, West Virginia: the Ranson Town Police Department, the West Virginia State Police (Jefferson County Detachment), and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department. The evaluation was undertaken by the Free Our Citizens of Unhealthy Substances Coalition (FOCUS), a county-based group of citizens who represented all segments of the community, including businesses, churches, local law enforcement agencies, and local governments. The aim was to find answers to the following questions: (1) Can community policing have any detectable and measurable impact in a predominantly rural setting? (2) Did the police department do what they said they would do in their funding application? (3) If they were successful, what factors supported their efforts and were key to their success? and (4) If they were not successful, what problems prevented their success? The coalition conducted citizen surveys to evaluate how much of an impact community policing initiatives had in their county. In January 1996, research assistants conducted a baseline survey of 300 households in the county. Survey responses were intended to gauge residents' fear of crime and to assess how well the police were performing their duties. After one year, the coalition repeated its survey of public attitudes, and research assistants interviewed another 300 households. The research assumption was that any change in fear of crime or assessment of police performance could reasonably be attributed to these new community policing inventions. Crime reporting variables from the survey included which crime most concerned the respondent, if the respondent would report a crime he or she observed, and whether the respondent would testify about the crime in court. Variables pertaining to level of concern for specific crimes include how concerned respondents were that someone would rob or attack them, break into or vandalize their home, or try to sexually attack them/someone they cared about. Community involvement variables covered participation in community groups or activities, neighborhood associations, church, or informal social activities. Police/citizen interaction variables focused on the number of times respondents had called to report a problem to the police in the last two years, how satisfied they were with how the police handled the problem, the extent to which this police department needed improvement, whether children trusted law enforcement officers, whether police needed to respond more quickly to calls, whether the police needed improved relations with the community, and in the past year whether local police performance had improved/gotten worse. Specific crime information variables include whether the crime occurred in the respondent's neighborhood, whether he/she was the victim, if crime was serious in the respondent's neighborhood versus elsewhere, whether the respondent had considered moving as a result of crime in the neighborhood, and how personal safety had changed in the respondent's neighborhood. Variables relating to community policing include whether the respondent had heard the term "community policing" in the past year, from what source, and what community policing activities the respondent was aware of. Demographic variables include job self-classification, racial/ethnic identity, length of residency, age, gender, martial status, educational status, and respondent's town of residence.

The purpose of this research was to further understanding of why crime occurs where it does by exploring the spatial etiology of homicides that occurred in Washington, DC, during the 13-year period 1990-2002. The researchers accessed records from the case management system of the Metropolitan Police, District of Columbia (MPDC) Homicide Division to collect data regarding offenders and victims associated with the homicide cases. Using geographic information systems (GIS) software, the researchers geocoded the addresses of the incident location, the victim's residence, and offender's residence for each homicide case. They then calculated both Euclidean distance and shortest path distance along the streets between each address per case. Upon applying the concept of triad as developed by Block et al. (2004) in order to create a unit of analysis for studying the convergence of victims and offenders in space, the researchers categorized the triads according to the geometry of locations associated with each case. (Dots represented homicides in which the victim and offender both lived in the residence where the homicide occurred; lines represented homicides that occurred in the home of either the victim or the offender; and triangles represented three non-coincident locations: the separate residences of the victim and offender, as well as the location of the homicide incident.) The researchers then classified each triad according to two separate mobility triangle classification schemes: Traditional Mobility, based on shared or disparate social areas, and Distance Mobility, based on relative distance categories between locations. Finally, the researchers classified each triad by the neighborhood associated with the location of the homicide incident, the location of the victim's residence, and the location of the offender's residence. A total of 3 statistical datasets and 7 geographic information systems (GIS) shapefiles resulted from this study. Note: All datasets exclude open homicide cases. The statistical datasets consist of Offender Characteristics (Dataset 1) with 2,966 cases; Victim Characteristics (Dataset 2) with 2,311 cases; and Triads Data (Dataset 3) with 2,510 cases. The GIS shapefiles have been grouped into a zip file (Dataset 4). Included are point data for homicide locations, offender residences, triads, and victim residences; line data for streets in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia; and polygon data for neighborhood clusters in the District of Columbia.

Alaska saw the highest rape rate in the United States in 2023, with 118.4 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants. The lowest rate was found in New Jersey, with 17.9 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants. Sexual assault in Alaska Fighting sexual assault in Alaska is particularly difficult due to small, isolated, close-knit communities who can be wary of airing their dirty laundry to outsiders, as well as a low number of law enforcement employees in the state. In addition, Alaska’s low population is spread out over a large land area, meaning that in the event of an assault being reported to police, it can take law enforcement hours, or even days, to reach the most isolated communities. The victims of sexual assault There tends to be more reported female victims of sexual assault than male victims. However, since sexual assault is typically an underreported crime, especially among males, these figures could be, and probably are, much higher. In addition, many victims of sexual offenses tend to be young, although sexual assault can occur at any age.