City Vs. City Crime Ratings/Rankings---How much stock do you put into them? (living, state)

[Southern Soul Bro]

"Each year when Crime in the United States is published, many entities—news media, tourism agencies, and other groups with an interest in crime in our Nation—use reported figures to compile rankings of cities and counties. These rankings, however, are merely a quick choice made by the data user; they provide no insight into the many variables that mold the crime in a particular town, city, county, state, region, or other jurisdiction. Consequently, these rankings lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting cities and counties, along with their residents. -FBI.gov


"The FBI cautions against ranking cities because of a variety of factors, such as density, that make comparisons difficult. For example, the boundaries of cities such as Baltimore and Washington, D.C., are drawn tightly around an urban core, where others' boundaries include wider suburban areas." - Baltimore Sun

When you consider factors such as the boundaries of some cities are "drawn tightly around an urban core, where others' boundaries include wider suburban areas" how much stock do you put into city crime rankings and ratings? Or are you more concerned with the level of crime in specific neighborhoods, zip codes, different areas, etc. within said city?


Some of the people that love to bash my city love to bring up the "crime ratings and rankings" but 35-40% of the residents live in better, safer communities in unincorporated areas. We've recently consolidated with the county, and after 2014 the "per capita stats" will look much different and lower. In other words, we're going to have the same exact city with the same low and high crime areas, yet the "stats" will drastically differ on paper. So I don't understand how someone could make their judgements solely off that. I know other people have been in this situation when addressing people about their city, so how do you feel about these ratings and rankings?

[marothisu]

Definitely at the actual specific areas. When you have a large city, you have to know where it's happening. If you think it happens all over then you just don't "know cities" in reality.

[EnricoV]

If anyone thinks living in a "safe neighborhood" in a high-crime city insulates them from the problem of that high-crime, they're sadly mistaken.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by EnricoV

If anyone thinks living in a "safe neighborhood" in a high-crime city insulates them from the problem of that high-crime, they're sadly mistaken.

I partially disagree. It depends on how big the city is and how far away the high crime areas are from where that person lives, as well as what areas of town their daily life entails. Not understanding this is not understanding cities and peoples' daily lives in cities.


I will use Chicago as an example since it is very much a tale of two cities, where people don't EVER have to go even anywhere close to any bad areas in some. Chicago has great data and I'm going to use homicides as a measure. The north side is extremely safe and frankly, a lot of people who live there never venture to the south side, and even part of the west side. This data is from 2011 and you can get this on the City of Chicago data portal (http://data.cityofchicago.org) and Red Eye Homicides data (http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/).

This is broken down by community area, which are larger neighborhoods. This area is for downtown, north and NW sides and form a continuous geographical area.

The following geographical area constitutes a population of 1,143,273 people as of the 2010 Census. It is 94.51 square miles in area, but O'Hare airport takes up about 11 sq miles, so in reality it's about 83.5 sq miles. By contrast, Seattle is 83.87 sq miles in land area. In other words, in almost the same amount of area, Chicago has a population almost double that of Seattle.

The total number of homicides for this area in 2011 was 43. That means the homicide rate per 100,000 people was 3.76. By contrast, the homicide rate in Portland in 2011 was 3.4 per 100k while Seattle was 3.2 per 100k, so not much different.

Here is the raw data in case you are wondering, by community area for 2011:
* Dunning | 2011 | 41932 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* Edison Park | 2011 | 11187 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* Forest Glen | 2011 | 18508 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* Montclare | 2011 | 13426 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* North Center | 2011 | 31867 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* North Park | 2011 | 17931 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* Norwood Park | 2011 | 37023 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* Ohare | 2011 | 12756 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* West Ridge | 2011 | 71942 total people | 1 total homicides | 1.39 homicides per 100k people
* Lake View | 2011 | 94368 total people | 2 total homicides | 2.12 homicides per 100k people
* Lincoln Square | 2011 | 39493 total people | 1 total homicides | 2.53 homicides per 100k people
* Belmont Cragin | 2011 | 78743 total people | 2 total homicides | 2.54 homicides per 100k people
* Logan Square | 2011 | 73595 total people | 2 total homicides | 2.72 homicides per 100k people
* Lincoln Park | 2011 | 64116 total people | 2 total homicides | 3.12 homicides per 100k people
* Portage Park | 2011 | 64124 total people | 2 total homicides | 3.12 homicides per 100k people
* Loop | 2011 | 29283 total people | 1 total homicides | 3.41 homicides per 100k people
* Near North Side | 2011 | 80484 total people | 3 total homicides | 3.73 homicides per 100k people
* Edgewater | 2011 | 56521 total people | 3 total homicides | 5.31 homicides per 100k people
* Irving Park | 2011 | 53359 total people | 3 total homicides | 5.62 homicides per 100k people
* Albany Park | 2011 | 51542 total people | 3 total homicides | 5.82 homicides per 100k people
* Rogers Park | 2011 | 54991 total people | 4 total homicides | 7.27 homicides per 100k people
* Avondale | 2011 | 39262 total people | 3 total homicides | 7.64 homicides per 100k people
* Jefferson Park | 2011 | 25448 total people | 2 total homicides | 7.86 homicides per 100k people
* Uptown | 2011 | 56362 total people | 5 total homicides | 8.87 homicides per 100k people
* Hermosa | 2011 | 25010 total people | 4 total homicides | 15.99 homicides per 100k people


Furthermore, this could even be expanded to the near south areas such as the near south side, armour square, and bridgeport:
* Armour Square | 2011 | 13391 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* Near South Side | 2011 | 21390 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* Douglas | 2011 | 18238 total people | 0 total homicides | 0 homicides per 100k people
* Bridgeport | 2011 | 31925 total people | 3 total homicides | 9.4 homicides per 100k people

That would bring the total homicide count to 46 for a population of 1,228,217 and a land area of 90 sq miles (without O'Hare airport). That is 3.75 homicides per 100k people.

[Southern Soul Bro]

Originally Posted by EnricoV

If anyone thinks living in a "safe neighborhood" in a high-crime city insulates them from the problem of that high-crime, they're sadly mistaken.

...living in a "low crime" city doesn't insulate people from the crime in the "low income" neighborhoods of that city either. It all comes down to where you live within that city.

I'd take Buckhead in high crime Atlanta over Hunter's Point in low crime San Francisco any day.

[Southern Soul Bro]

I think the only way it would be accurate to describe an entire city as "bad" because of the crime is:

1) Crime spills over from the bad neighborhoods into the "good" ones on a regular basis
2) The city is very small in land size

[mjtinmemphis]

I live in the Hyde Park area of Chicago (presidents Obama neighborhood) and don't worry about crime. When I end up in South Shore to visit friends I don't fear crime. I often take the blue line through the west side of town to Suburban Oak Park and don't fear crime.

If your live a clean life not involved in the drug culture, gangs, and you have reasonable street smarts you are fine regardless of if your in St. Louis, Chicago or Salt Lake City. Common sense goes a long way.

[Southern Soul Bro]

Originally Posted by mjtinmemphis

I live in the Hyde Park area of Chicago (presidents Obama neighborhood) and don't worry about crime. When I end up in South Shore to visit friends I don't fear crime. I often take the blue line through the west side of town to Suburban Oak Park and don't fear crime.

If your live a clean life not involved in the drug culture, gangs, and you have reasonable street smarts you are fine regardless of if your in St. Louis, Chicago or Salt Lake City. Common sense goes a long way.

I think people tend to forget the vast majority of victims of most violent crimes are:

- gang bangers or thugs attacked by other gang bangers or thugs

- criminals/drug abusers in the wrong places at the wrong time

Usually, It's not honest hard working people in their communities falling victim.

[yyuusr]

I think saying "oh it doesn't matter, it only happens in the ghettos" is just as bad as saying the whole city is dangerous. It definitely matters. Sometimes some of that crime and violence spreads to seemingly safe neighborhoods.

I always hear some people try to justify it by saying things like "oh the chances of a crime actually happening against is only this and this, and there is this many people in the whole city" and such. Well guess what it's not just about a crime being committed against you it's having to live with the fear everyday that it might.

But yes I would definitely like for more information on what areas in particular the crime happens in so if I live in a city with a high crime rate I could avoid these areas and also nearby areas where there is a good chance of it spreading completely.

[JaySwelly]

The way I see it, the crime ratings are overrated. In many cases, I see C-D posters using them to bash certain cities. They take the data and paint a broad stroke over an entire city, calling it unsafe. I tend to see this done with Atlanta. Now, there are bad areas in many cities, but who tends to live there? Usually it is poorer people and they tend to be involved in drugs and gang violence. When people ask about cities on C-D, they obviously aren't looking to live in those dangerous places.

The phrase "high-crime city" is disingenuous and misleading. When we see that Chicago has a higher crime rate than Portland(?), we should also note the areas where the crime is located. As some posters above described with Chicago, there is a terrible problem with gang violence in certain areas of the city (I'm guessing the Southside). If you don't go to or live in South Chicago and you live your life as an upstanding US citizen, you will probably be unaffected by the problems that occur there. marothisu posted some great data on the number of homicides per 100k people in Chicago. Many of those areas are comparable to the "safest cities" in the US.