Crime In America: Study Reveals The 10 Most Dangerous Cities (It’s Not Where You Think)
So why should people care about the cost of crime? Two reasons, says MoneyGeek. “The cost of crime we’ve calculated provides weights that can help us understand relative differences in crime rates that captures the impact of the crimes reported,” says Milnes. “Second, the cost of crime estimates used in our rankings reflect all of the costs of crime in a community: The impact to the victim and the community and remind us all that crime has an impact on our communities.
MoneyGeek also ranked the safest large cities in America with populations over 300,000. Virginia Beach was named the safest large city, with a per-capita crime cost of $611. Compare that to St. Louis, which had the highest per-capita crime costs at $11,574. “Virginia Beach is known as a popular tourist destination and certainly being safe and being perceived as safe is helpful for travelers and cities that want to attract tourists [and] encourage tourism,” says Milnes.
Another surprise: While no large cities made the overall safest list, fewer than half of the 15 most dangerous cities in the U.S. were large cities. Does this mean that large cities are getting safer? Or do they just have more money to spend fighting crime? “Typically larger cities have been doing well economically. Meaning that while there’s crime, there’s also economic opportunity and related tax revenue,” says Milnes.
Another example that’s potentially less relevant to travelers is San Bernadino and Riverside in Southern California. “San Bernadino has one of the highest cost of crime numbers in the country while Riverside is ranked amongst the safest large cities but they are about 10 miles away from each other,” says Milnes. “If you combined Riverside and San Bernadino, you’d get a city that's somewhere in the middle.