Most Violent Cities and Towns in MA According to the FBI (Boston: 2015, crimes)

[Parsec]

Originally Posted by Urban Peasant

No surprise here with this list.

I found Tewksbury and Yarmouth to be surprising.

[495neighbor]

Originally Posted by Parsec

I found Tewksbury and Yarmouth to be surprising.

Tewksbury has had an extreme amount of drug related crime over the past few years. Although this ranking is violent crime only, one can easily spill over into the other.

[Flashpoint922]

Brockton's a ****hole, it always has been. No surprises here.

[BostonMike7]

Oak Bluffs??????

[lrfox]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

Oak Bluffs??????

A few on the list surprised me too. Provincetown was another.

I'm not sure how they measure and weight the violent crime data for these lists; but no matter how you cut it, a single incident in a town of 3,000 - 4,000 people is going to skew data quite a bit. If there were a few bar fights between drunken tourist in Oak Bluffs or P-town that got reported to the police and arrests were made, the violent crime numbers are going to be abnormally large. More importantly, they're not going to be indicative of the overall safety of the community.

I lived in a town in Maine of around 8,000 people. One mentally disabled young man killed his father, mother, and brother. It was an awful tragedy. It also skewed crime data to the point where people were posting questions on city-data like "Why is the murder rate so high in this town." The answer was because one kid killed his family one year and the murder rate was through the roof because the population was so low. It was an isolated incident. It could explain the reason for some of the outliers on this list.

It's worth pointing out that crime data doesn't tell the whole story. Yes, it's true that places like Brockton, New Bedford, Springfield, etc. are home to more violent crime than most other communities in the Commonwealth. Too much, even. That doesn't necessarily make them more dangerous. Most of the more violent crimes aren't random. The vast majority of the murder victims in these communities have history with their killers. I wouldn't want to live in Brockton because it's run down and unattractive. I wouldn't want to live there because there is not much there from an urban amenities standpoint. I might even be concerned about property crime or theft from my car if I parked on the street frequently. However, I wouldn't worry about my safety. The threat of violent crime is so low (relatively speaking) that it doesn't really register to me. So many other things pose a much more imminent risk to my health than violent crime. Driving being the biggest. If I work in Boston (and I do), I'm safer living in a "tough" Brockton neighborhood along the commuter rail line and taking the train to work than I am driving from a "safe" suburban neighborhood in Easton. You're much more likely to be killed in an auto accident than by violent crime.


I did love the stock images though.

[Parsec]

Originally Posted by 495neighbor

Tewksbury has had an extreme amount of drug related crime over the past few years. Although this ranking is violent crime only, one can easily spill over into the other.

Yeah, still surprising though. I think it was the only Boston-area town on that list. The others were all small cities. I would've expected Woburn or Billerica to have higher crime stats. <shrug>

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

Oak Bluffs??????

I was wondering about the Cape and Island towns too, but I figure it was due to tourist crime. Some of these towns only have 5,000 year-round residents, but the summer population can increase it to 20,000. That means more crime, calculated with the 5,000 year-round resident figure on the denominator equals a higher percentage per resident.

[thenewtexan]

The top 10 are the usual suspects, but there are a lot of big surprises. Some of the small towns really got screwed by having a small handful aggravated assaults. North Brookfield? Warren? Barre? Great Barrington? WHATELY?????? These are still great places to live. I'm sure these towns were just unlucky this one year. Next year they'll probably on the lowest crime list. This can't be a trend. I mean the thought of North Brookfield or Barre going ghetto makes me chuckle.

[pennyone]

Originally Posted by thenewtexan

The top 10 are the usual suspects, but there are a lot of big surprises. Some of the small towns really got screwed by having a small handful aggravated assaults. North Brookfield? Warren? Barre? Great Barrington? WHATELY?????? These are still great places to live. I'm sure these towns were just unlucky this one year. Next year they'll probably on the lowest crime list. This can't be a trend. I mean the thought of North Brookfield or Barre going ghetto makes me chuckle.

Yes, I don't even know where they are. Never heard of them until now.

[timberline742]

I assume Great Barrington is the same situation as some of the Cape places. Tourism crime with a relatively low year round population throwing the stats out of whack.

[wolfgang239]

The Cape doesn't just suffer from the summer influx although I'm sure that explains some of the data. Like many other parts of the state/country there are drug issues which spill over all kinds of crime. It has been this way for quite awhile too.