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How meaningful is crime index and how is it interpreted city by city?
As you know, most of us consider crime a big deal. My city of West Palm Beach, FL has the same crime index as Camden, NJ. Yet everyone makes a big deal about Camden(it is a big deal) but howcome I hardly hear mention of crime in WPB? Could it be the way they "count" each instance of an offense or felony? Could it be the fact all of Camden is bad, yet theres lower crime wealthy pools of WPB? I dont want to relocate to a city that has a crime problem and if it has a crime index of 400+ this gives me plenty of reason to worry! I would rather live in a small boring town that has pratically no crime than a medium fun city and risk being a victim!
Camden's disgusting. Anyway, I wouldn't live in any city with a high crime rate, and most cities have a high crime rate. I would possibly consider living in a city with a high crime rate if I could live in a "good" neighborhood, and the "good" neighborhood would have to be large, well established, and have low crime. But I would prefer to live out in the 'burbs...close enough to commute for work if necessary, and close enough to enjoy the amenities the city offers...but far enough to keep away from the worst of the crime.
Camden has a very high rate of violent crimes (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/30/national/main2135998.shtml) (broken link). I think that tends to make the news more than non-violent crimes. I would guess that you hear less about WPB because either the violent crime rate is lower, or maybe WPB has better public relations people on staff!
I just heard on the news today there was a murder in the Boynton Beach mall! This is in Palm Beach County! Our crime is probably almost as bad as Camden City-data puts West Palm Beach at 900 for crime index!
You can search crime by zip code on some websites. Many times certain types of crime are limited to certain areas giving the wrong impression for a city as a whole.
That crime index stuff is nice, probably valid as a big picture.
I pay more attention to violent crime as an absolute. The non-violent stuff is a good indicator if your life will be affected. Look for places with zero categories, they are out there.
You can search crime by zip code on some websites. Many times certain types of crime are limited to certain areas giving the wrong impression for a city as a whole.
I guess crime scares me more than I thought! I had a dream about me and dad visiting a city up north that we thought had low crime. It was a nightmare! We drove thru one neighboorhood and branches and leaves littered the broken roads, the houses were big but broken and rundown. Lots of drugs and murders.
The real answer is that a lot of city crime indices are inflated because of nonresidents traveling to those cities, and the proportion of crimes to the population is high.
WPB seems like it has high crime because there are a lot of vacationers/tourists in that area, so the stated population from the census is not symbolic of how many people are actually there at any given time. I bet you the majority of the small crimes like simple assaults and thefts are clustered around the summer time. If there are 300,000 people in a city like Pittsburgh, and the stated population is 300,000, 3,000 crimes per 300,000 residents would produce a low crime index. If there are 300,000 people in a city like WPB but only 100,000 stated population, 3,000 crimes per 100,000 residents would make it seem like crime is 3x as high as Pittsburgh when in fact there are the same number of people there at any given time. Make sense???
Another good example is Ocean City, Maryland. Look at the top 100 list on the main city-data page. Ocean City has very low crime 9 months out of the year when it's 5000 residents are the only ones there, but during the summer months the tourists cause the "temporary population" to increase but the crime rate is still calculated based on a population of 5000 in the city.
It's an oversimplification, but towns that get a lot of tourists/visitors seem a lot higher than is accurate. Look on the top 100 list and I'll bet you see Orlando, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg (vacation spot in TN), Atlantic City, Las Vegas, etc.
What is considered on average to be a high crime rate?
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Data is only a general view
