In 2025, Pietermaritzburg in South Africa ranked as the world's most dangerous city with a crime rate of 82 per 100,000 inhabitants. Five of the 10 cities with the highest crime rates worldwide are found in South Africa. The list does not include countries where war and conflict exist. South Africa dominates crime statistics When looking at crime rates, among the 10 most dangerous cities in the world, half of them are found in South Africa. The country is struggling with extremely high levels of inequality, and is struggling with high levels of crime and power outages, harming the country's economy and driving more people into unemployment and poverty. Crime in Latin America On the other hand, when looking at murder rates, Latin America dominates the list of the world's most dangerous countries. Violence in Latin America is caused in great part by drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and gang wars.

In 2023, around 3,640.56 violent crimes per 100,000 residents were reported in Oakland, California. This made Oakland the most dangerous city in the United States in that year. Four categories of violent crimes were used: murder and non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape; robbery; and aggravated assault. Only cities with a population of at least 200,000 were considered.

In 2022, the New Orleans-Metairie, LA metro area recorded the highest homicide rate of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000, at **** homicides per 100,000 residents, followed by the Memphis, TN-MS-AR metro area. However, homicide data was not recorded in all U.S. metro areas, meaning that there may be some cities with a higher homicide rate. St. Louis St. Louis, which had a murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate of **** in 2022, is the second-largest city by population in Missouri. It is home to many famous treasures, such as the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, Washington University in St. Louis, the Saint Louis Zoo, and the renowned Gateway Arch. It is also home to many corporations, such as Monsanto, Arch Coal, and Emerson Electric. The economy of St. Louis is centered around business and healthcare, and boasts ten Fortune 500 companies. Crime in St. Louis Despite all of this, St. Louis suffers from high levels of crime and violence. As of 2023, it was listed as the seventh most dangerous city in the world as a result of their extremely high murder rate. Not only does St. Louis have one of the highest homicide rates in the United States, it also reports one of the highest numbers of violent crimes. Despite high crime levels, the GDP of the St. Louis metropolitan area has been increasing since 2001.

In 2024, the Mexican city of Colima was the second most deadly city in the world, with a murder rate of ****** per 100,000 inhabitants. * out of the top 10 cities with over ******* habitants and the highest homicide rates were located in Mexico.

In 2023, the state with the highest crime rate in the United States per 100,000 inhabitants was New Mexico. That year, the crime rate was ******** crimes per 100,000 people. In comparison, New Hampshire had the lowest crime rate at ****** crimes per 100,000 people. Crime rate The crime rate in the United States has generally decreased over time. There are several factors attributed to the decrease in the crime rate across the United States. An increase in the number of police officers and an increase in income are some of the reasons for a decrease in the crime rate. Unfortunately, people of color have been disproportionately affected by crime rates, as they are more likely to be arrested for a crime versus a white person. Crime rates regionally The District of Columbia had the highest rate of reported violent crimes in the United States in 2023 per 100,000 inhabitants. The most common crime clearance type in metropolitan counties in the United States in 2020 was murder and non-negligent manslaughter. The second most dangerous city in the country in 2020 was Detroit. Detroit has faced severe levels of economic and demographic declines in the past years. Not only has the population decreased, the city has filed for bankruptcy. Despite the median household income increasing, the city still struggles financially.

This dataset contains county-level totals for the years 2002-2014 for eight types of crime: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson. These crimes are classed as Part I criminal offenses by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in their Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. Each record in the dataset represents the total of each type of criminal offense reported in (or, in the case of missing data, attributed to) the county in a given year.A curated version of this data is available through ICPSR at https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/38649/versions/V1

This table contains data on the rate of violent crime (crimes per 1,000 population) for California, its regions, counties, cities and towns. Crime and population data are from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Uniform Crime Reports. Rates above the city/town level include data from city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies. The table is part of a series of indicators in the Healthy Communities Data and Indicators Project of the Office of Health Equity. Ten percent of all deaths in young California adults aged 15-44 years are related to assault and homicide. In 2010, California law enforcement agencies reported 1,809 murders, 8,331 rapes, and over 95,000 aggravated assaults. African Americans in California are 11 times more likely to die of assault and homicide than Whites. More information about the data table and a data dictionary can be found in the About/Attachments section.

The graph illustrates the murder rate in the United States from 1985 to 2023. The x-axis represents the years, labeled with two-digit abbreviations from '85 to '23, while the y-axis shows the annual murder rate per 100,000 individuals. Throughout this 39-year period, the murder rate fluctuates between a high of 10.66 in 1991 and a low of 4.7 in 2014. Overall, the data reveals a significant downward trend in the murder rate from the mid-1980s, reaching its lowest point in the mid-2010s, followed by slight increases in the most recent years.

In 2020, Memphis, TN-MS-AR reported 1,358.8 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, the most out of any metro area in the United States. Monroe, LA followed closely behind, with a violent crime rate of 1,308.5 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants.

This project was designed to isolate the effects that individual crimes have on wage rates and housing prices, as gauged by individuals' and households' decisionmaking preferences changing over time. Additionally, this project sought to compute a dollar value that individuals would bear in their wages and housing costs to reduce the rates of specific crimes. The study used multiple decades of information obtained from counties across the United States to create a panel dataset. This approach was designed to compensate for the problem of collinearity by tracking how housing and occupation choices within particular locations changed over the decade considering all amenities or disamenities, including specific crime rates. Census data were obtained for this project from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) constructed by Ruggles and Sobek (1997). Crime data were obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). Other data were collected from the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association, County and City Data Book, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency. Independent variables for the Wages Data (Part 1) include years of education, school enrollment, sex, ability to speak English well, race, veteran status, employment status, and occupation and industry. Independent variables for the Housing Data (Part 2) include number of bedrooms, number of other rooms, building age, whether unit was a condominium or detached single-family house, acreage, and whether the unit had a kitchen, plumbing, public sewers, and water service. Both files include the following variables as separating factors: census geographic division, cost-of-living index, percentage unemployed, percentage vacant housing, labor force employed in manufacturing, living near a coastline, living or working in the central city, per capita local taxes, per capita intergovernmental revenue, per capita property taxes, population density, and commute time to work. Lastly, the following variables measured amenities or disamenities: average precipitation, temperature, windspeed, sunshine, humidity, teacher-pupil ratio, number of Superfund sites, total suspended particulate in air, and rates of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft, violent crimes, and property crimes.

In this web map created I wanted to focus on the state of New Jersey since 2 of its cities are very high in crime in the United States. Camden and Trenton in Particular are the highest crime rates in New Jersey. I was able to create this web map by showing the police departments in the most dangerous parts of the cities which is shown by the darker the red gets the more dangerous it gets in these parts of the state

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.

The purpose of this project was to estimate long-term trends in violent victimization by gender and various socio-demographic factors. These factors included race and ethnicity, age, type of place (urban, suburban, rural), socio-economic status, marital status (for adults), and family status (for juveniles). The principal investigators also further disaggregated these violent victimization trends by victim-offender relationship to reveal trends in violence committed by strangers, intimate partners, and known/non-intimate offenders. The researchers produced these various trends in violent victimization by pooling and appropriately weighting the National Crime Survey and its successor, the National Crime Victimization Survey for the period 1973 to 2005, resulting in 33 years of data. In total, a series of 135 trends in violent victimization were developed.

In response to a growing concern about hate crimes, the United States Congress enacted the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990. The Act requires the attorney general to establish guidelines and collect, as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, data "about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including where appropriate the crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation, arson, and destruction, damage or vandalism of property." Hate crime data collection was required by the Act to begin in calendar year 1990 and to continue for four successive years. In September 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act amended the Hate Crime Statistics Act to add disabilities, both physical and mental, as factors that could be considered a basis for hate crimes. Although the Act originally mandated data collection for five years, the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996 amended the collection duration "for each calendar year," making hate crime statistics a permanent addition to the UCR program. As with the other UCR data, law enforcement agencies contribute reports either directly or through their state reporting programs. Information contained in the data includes number of victims and offenders involved in each hate crime incident, type of victims, bias motivation, offense type, and location type.

The primary objective of this project was to explore the familial, physical, psychological, social, and cultural antecedents and correlates of violent criminal offending. This research used an extensive longitudinal database collected on 1,345 young adult male offenders admitted to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Tallahassee, Florida, from November 3, 1970, to November 2, 1972. Using FBI arrest records ("rap sheets"), each inmate was classified on the basis of the National Crime Information Center Uniform Offense Codes into one of four distinct categories: (1) "angry violent," in which the apparent goal was to injure the victim, (2) "instrumentally violent," in which the aggressive behavior was a means to an end (as in a robbery), (3) "potentially violent," as evidenced by making threats or carrying weapons but in which the offender was not accused of any violent offenses, and (4) "nonviolent," in which the offender had not been charged with violent criminal behavior. Violent offenders were also subdivided into those who had been repetitively violent and those who had been charged with just one violent offense. As part of the classification process, each inmate was administered an extensive battery of tests by the research project staff. The two primary personality assessment instruments utilized were the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). Each inmate's caseworker filled out a series of of standard Bureau of Prisons forms recording the results of the medical, educational, and psychological evaluations, as well as salient aspects of the case and criminal history. The researchers also obtained copies of each offender's Presentence Investigation Report (PSI) that had been prepared by the federal probation officer, and then devised a series of scales to quantify the PSI data. In addition, an hour-long structured intake interview was administered to each inmate by his team psychologist. Global scales were constructed from these intake interviews. After each interview, the psychologists performed an evaluative Q-sort. Nine scales were later constructed based on these Q-sorts. Also, every dormitory officer and every work supervisor completed scales assessing each subject's interpersonal adjustment and work performance at 90-day intervals. Immediately prior to release, as many inmates as possible were reinterviewed and retested on the MMPI and the CPI. Follow-ups using FBI rap sheets were conducted in 1976 and 1984. Variables obtained from the Bureau of Prisons forms include age upon entry, race, marital status, age at first arrest, number of prior adult convictions, commitment offense(s), highest school grade completed, drug dependency, and alcoholism. Scales developed from the PSIs provide data on father, mother, and siblings, family incohesiveness, adequacy of childhood dwelling, social deviance of family, school problems, employment problems, achievement motivation, problems with interpersonal relations, authority conflicts, childhood and adolescent or adult maladjustment and deviance, poor physical health, juvenile conviction record, adult arrest and conviction record, violence of offense, group influence on illegal behavior, and prior prison adjustment. The intake interview inquired about the developmental family history and the child's development, the inmate's marriage, educational, and work history and attitudes, attitudes toward sex, military service and attitudes, self-reported use of alcohol and other substances, religious preferences and practices, and problems during any previous confinements. Scales based on the psychologists' Q-sorts evaluated aggression, hostility avoidance, authority conflict, sociability, social withdrawal, social/emotional constriction, passivity, dominance, and adaptation to the environment. Data are also provided on global dorm adjustment and the number of shots, cell house days, sick calls, and infractions for the offenders' first and second 90-day periods at the FCI.

The study contains cross-section data on the relationship between aggregate levels of punishment and crime rates. It examines deterrent effects of punishment on seven Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) index crimes: murder, rape, assault, larceny, robbery, burglary, and auto theft, committed in 1960 in 47 states of the United States (excluded were New Jersey, Alaska, and Hawaii). For each state, the data include variables for the reported crime rates for each of the seven index crimes. For each of the index crimes, there are two sanction variables included: the probability of prison commitment and the average time served by those sentenced (severity of punishment). There are 11 socioeconomic variables, including family income, income distribution, unemployment rate for urban males in the age groups 14-24 and 35-39, labor force participation rate, educational level, percentage of young males in population, percentage of non-white young males living in the population, percentage of population living in Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, sex ratio, and place of occurrence. The data also include per capita police expenditures for 1959 and 1960. A related data collection is PARTICIPATION IN ILLEGITIMATE ACTIVITIES: EHRLICH REVISITED, 1960 (ICPSR 8677). It provides alternative model specifications and estimations.

This research project was designed as a replication and extension of earlier research on how childhood victimization relates to delinquency, adult criminality, and violent criminal behavior (CHILD ABUSE, NEGLECT, AND VIOLENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR IN A MIDWEST METROPOLITAN AREA OF THE UNITED STATES, 1967-1988 (ICPSR 9480)). The study consisted of a sample of abused and neglected children who were made dependents of the Superior Court of a large urban county in the Northwest between 1980 and 1984, and a matched control group of children. Dependency records were obtained from the county court house. Control match criteria were collected from Department of Health birth records data. Type of abuse/neglect precipitating the dependency petition was collected and coded using a modified version of the Maltreatment Classification Coding Scheme (MCS). Data on juvenile arrests from juvenile court records, including both number and types, were collected for each abused and/or neglected youth and each matched control subject. Adult criminal arrests, excluding routine traffic offenses, for all abused and neglected subjects and matched controls were collected from local, county, state, and federal law enforcement sources. A subset of arrests consisting of violent crimes was developed as a key outcome of interest. Major types of variables included in this study are demographics, criminal records, dependency records (only for those subjects abused/neglected as children), including type and severity of child abuse/neglect, and census socioeconomic variables. Several derived variables were also included.

These data provide information on the number of arrests reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program each year by police agencies in the United States. These arrest reports provide data on 43 offenses including violent crime, drug use, gambling, and larceny. The data received by ICPSR were structured as a hierarchical file containing, per reporting police agency: an agency header record, and 1 to 49 detail offense records containing the counts of arrests by age, sex, and race for a particular offense. ICPSR restructured the original data to logical record length format with the agency header record variables copied onto the detail records. Consequently, each record contains arrest counts for a particular agency-offense.

These data examine the relationships between childhood abuse and/or neglect and later criminal and violent criminal behavior. In particular, the data focus on whether being a victim of violence and/or neglect in early childhood leads to being a criminal offender in adolescence or early adulthood and whether a relationship exists between childhood abuse or neglect and arrests as a juvenile, arrests as an adult, and arrests for violent offenses. For this data collection, adult and juvenile criminal histories of sampled cases with backgrounds of abuse or neglect were compared to those of a matched control group with no official record of abuse or neglect. Variables contained in Part 1 include demographic information (age, race, sex, and date of birth). In Part 2, information is presented on the abuse/neglect incident (type of abuse or neglect, duration of the incident, whether the child was removed from the home and, if so, for how long, results of the placement, and whether the individual was still alive). Part 3 contains family information (with whom the child was living at the time of the incident, family disruptions, and who reported the abuse or neglect) and data on the perpetrator of the incident (relation to the victim, age, race, sex, and whether living in the home of the victim). Part 4 contains information on the charges filed within adult arrest incidents (occasion for arrest, multiple counts of the same type of charge, year and location of arrest, and type of offense or charge), and Part 5 includes information on the charges filed within juvenile arrest incidents (year of juvenile charge, number of arrests, and type of offense or charge). The unit of analysis for Parts 1 through 3 is the individual at age 11 or younger, for Part 4 the charge within the adult arrest incident, and for Part 5 the charge within the juvenile arrest incident.

Introduction

Crime Statistics: Crime affects how we live, where we go, and how safe we feel every day. The latest numbers from 2025 reveal significant shifts in the types of crimes occurring and their geographical distribution. As towns and cities grow and new technologies are introduced, it's essential for everyone—from parents and students to business owners and local leaders—to understand what is happening.

This Crime Statistics will break down the newest US crime data, including violent crimes, property crimes, where crime is rising or falling, how police are responding, and which groups are most at risk. These facts and figures aren't just stats—they show what's happening in real communities and help us make better choices for a safer future.