In the time that it takes you to read this sentence, a property crime occurs in the United States. That’s a scary fact, according to FBI statistics released in September 2019: A burglar, carjacker or other thief strikes every 4.4 seconds. And if you take a little over a half-hour for a lunch break (32.5 minutes), a murder took place.
But those are average numbers, and don’t tell you much about how safe your city and state is. Crime isn’t spread evenly in the country. Some cities and states are much more dangerous, while others are relatively peaceful.
We took the latest FBI data, weighted it by the amount of time prisoners serve for each crime, to come up with a “Danger index” for each state. Read on to see how Wyoming fares.
How Does Wyoming Compare?
Methodology
For LawnStarter to determine both the most dangerous and the safest states to live, we used FBI crime statistics, and then weighted them for individual states and cities. The FBI collects crime statistics from both state and city police departments. The FBI collects data on eight crimes:
- Arson.
- Aggravated assault.
- Burglary.
- Larceny.
- Motor vehicle theft.
- Murder.
- Rape.
- Robbery.
Using those eight metrics, we weighted each crime based on the average amount of jail time per crime, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s most current “Time Served in State Prison” report, found here: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/tssp16.pdf. The longer the average sentence, the greater the weight given the crime. We separated the crimes into two categories: violent crime and property crime. We then determined each state’s and city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall “Danger Index” score. The lower the number, the safer the community.