NeighborhoodScout does an annual report on the most dangerous cities US per capita. Let’s see what cities are on the list for 2023.
Please consider NeighborhoodScout’s Most Dangerous Cities – 2023
Our research reveals the 100 most dangerous cities in America with 25,000 or more people, based on the number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents. Violent crimes include rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault. The data used for this research are the number of violent crimes reported to have occurred in each city, and the population of each city. Based on the latest national data available at the time of publication, representing calendar year 2021 and released in October 2022, this report reveals interesting patterns about safety from crime in America.
This year, Monroe, LA was replaced by Bessemer, AL, dropping from its two-year ranking as the number one most violent city in America to the ranking of third. Bessemer has 33.18 violent crimes per 1,000 population, and the chance of being a violent crime victim is 1 in 30.
Many of the dangerous cities on the list this year have appeared on past lists. For those who live in these cities, NeighborhoodScout can help you find the safest neighborhoods nearby any city using our Create feature. For example, by searching for the lowest crime rate within 15 miles of the number one most dangerous city, Bessemer, AL you can find the neighborhood of New Hope in Birmingham, AL is safer than 99% of neighborhoods nationwide.
Top 22
- Bessemer, AL
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 33.1
Your chance of being a victim: 1 in 30 - Mobile, AL
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 27.9
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 35 - Monroe, LA
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 26.3
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 38 - Saginaw, MI
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 25.1
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 39 - Memphis, TN
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 25.1
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 39 - Detroit, MI
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 23.0
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 43 - Birmingham, AL
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 20.6
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 49 - Pine Bluff, AR
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 20.5
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 48 - Little Rock, AR
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 20.2
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 49 - Alexandria, LA
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 18.8
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 53 - Cleveland, OH
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 17.1
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 58 - Kalamazoo, MI
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 16.8
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 59 - Milwaukee, WI
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 16.6
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 59 - Albany, GA
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 16.1
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 61 - Gadsden, AL
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 15.8
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 63 - Danville, IL
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 15.8
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 63 - Lansing, MI
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 15.7
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 63 - Baltimore, MD
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 15.6
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 63 - Springfield, MO
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 15.6
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 64 - Spartanburg, SC
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 15.2
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 65 - Rockford, IL
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 15.0
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 66 - Wilmington, DE
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 residents): 15.0
Chance of being a victim: 1 in 66
Hello Danville
I grew up in Danville, Illinois. It chimes in at # 16 with a 1 in 63 chance of being a victim of a violent crime.
The top 100 ranges from a 1 in 30 chance for Bessemer, AL, to 1 in 107 for Rocky Mount, NC, in spot #100.
I grew up in Danville, Illinois, the home of Chuckles (the candy), Hyster (lift forks), Lauhoff (the world’s largest grain elevator), Petersen Puritan (one of the world’s largest aerosol bottling plants, think deodorant sprays), a GM foundry in adjacent Tilton, and many other industries.
All of those industries but Hyster are gone or sold to other companies. Hyster remains but production of forklifts doesn’t. Lauhoff is now the Bunge corporation. Inquiring minds may be interested in the History of Chuckles, no longer made in Danville.
Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Van Dyke, Bobby Short, Gene Hackman, Irving Azoff, Hellen Morgan, are some of the celebrities who were born or raised in Danville.
I graduated from Danville Schlarman, a Catholic high school, in 1971, and from the University of Illinois in 1976. My goal was to escape the area, and I did.
The population of Danville was 44,000+ when I was in high school. It’s now 28,472 according to US Census Data as of 2022.
When industry left, Danville had nothing else going for it.
Number of US Cities by Population
Number 16 out of 1,521 is an impressive achievement of sorts.
Roughly 99 percent of the country is better than Danville, Illinois when it comes to violent crime.
Test Scores at Danville School District 118
- 18% of elementary students tested at or above the proficient level for reading and 19% tested at or above that level for math.
- 20% of middle school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 15% tested at or above that level for math.
- 15% of high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 9% tested at or above that level for math.
- The high school college readiness is 20.3% and the high school graduation rate is 70.2%.
The test score stats are from US News.
Only 9 percent of those in high school are proficient in math. Wow.
What a sorry, sorry situation.
More tax hikes and progressive policies will not help Danville or the entire state. I have written about the state on numerous occassions.
- Escape Illinois: Get The Hell Out Now, We Are
- It Takes 3 Weeks to Escape Illinois
- The Great Escape From California, New York, and Illinois Accelerates
Danville Illinois demographics (2023):
Whites 59.68%
Blacks 33.83%
You will find a similar situation in basically ALL of the most dangerous US cities.
All of the BS written in the other replies explain nothing. It’s the demographics, period.
Nearby Champaign-Urbana has some very rough neighborhoods, too. Many of the worst offenders probably are ghetto people from Chicago sent downstate. Pretty much human toxic waste. Don’t forget about Peoria and Decatur.
And Cairo is the mini-Detroit of Illinois.
So, if you have a 1 in 63 chance of being a victim of violent crime in Danville. I guess that means that you have a 62 in 63 chance of not being a victim of violent crime. Seems like pretty good odds of not being a victim. I have yet, in my 50+ years been a victim of violent crime in the US (have been overseas though, but, probably my own asinine behavior contributed to that! haha).
Have you ever been a victim of violent crime Mish? In Danville or elsewhere?
murder rates are really the only rates that can’t be easily hidden by police and governments. one thing most don’t get is life in usa was much worse in past centuries regarding murder rates. the modern scared man who watches endless doom newspapers…….are so safe. per wikipedia “In the long term, violent crime in the United States has been in decline since colonial times. The homicide rate has been estimated to be over 30 per 100,000 people in 1700, dropping to under 20 by 1800, and to under 10 by 1900.
Sam Brown, 60s hippie leader, and 70s, Colorado State Treasurer said: ” College graduates marry college graduates, and high school dropouts have children with high school dropouts. Now roll that out for 4, 5, 10 generations.”
Its all about jobs. Since everyone keeps mentioning my current city, Chicago, lets compare Chicago vs a local suburb, Arlington Hts. Have every politician in Chicago drive thru Arlington Hts and ask them this question: Why are there no obvious pathologies in Arlington Heights compared to Chicago? It is jobs, jobs, jobs. There are no burned out houses and dealers on the corner and crappy store choices in Arlington Hts. Why? Jobs. Germany and Japan made it a govt. priority to keep their jobs and they are doing fine. America and the out-of-control free market moves all wealth upward as a govt. priority, and we end up with the slums. What a surprise.
The greatest thing that happened to me in this life was having loving parents. Funny part, we were poor but I never felt like it. Food was always on the table and if I wanted money to do something, my father would let me use his lawn equipment and teach me how to repair it. At one point I had a couple dozen yards pushing the lawn equipment down the street.
Not much of this going on in these crime infested cities and towns. I go back to mine (also on the list) every few months to do repairs on the old house. The kids around there are always stopping me. Good kids by and large but it’s obvious there is something missing in their life; a father. Also a tool shed. These single mothers have no tools and no idea how to save money fixing things themselves. Instead, they get their kid to come over and ask me to do it…meh.
A very sad commentary on the state of the US and the failure of our crony capitalist goverment. We have billions for neocon projects abroad while ignoring the sad state of our cities at home.
Another ‘graduate’ of Danville was John H Kelly, a banker who wound up in Milwaukee, founding the Midland National Bank, establishing and/or buying three State-chartered banks, and achieving spectacular growth during the ‘go=go’ era (’65-’75 or so).
Then things exploded. The main bank and all the State banks were sold off (US Bank took the National one). However, Kelly emerged with enough assets to pay off every single little-town correspondent bank which lost money on Midland-originated loans.
Kelly was a Kennedy Democrat; seeing a porn-book store Downtown, he purchased the building it was in and evicted the goblns. May he rest in peace!
I have a couple of reservations about those statistics and a considerable reservation about the city-ranking they produce.
First, a generic violent-crime stat is easily manipulated by a jurisdiction’s reporting practices. Homicides is a better measure because it’s hard to underreport dead bodies.
Second, the volatility of small numbers makes comparisons and rankings mixing small and larger jurisdictions dubious. For instance, according to city-data.com, your hometown had two years of zero homicides since 2007, and several additional years of between 1 and 3 homicides resulting in per-100k rates below 10. In a bad year, 2018, a dozen murders rocketed the per-100k rate to 38.5, seriously bad.
Yet Danville ranks on this tally as a worse city than Baltimore (where heaven help me, I live), which had its lowest recent homicide rate (31.4 per 100k) in 2011 and in the latest reported year (2017) showed a 55.8 per 100k rate–far higher than Chicago and New York, to put things in perspective. Baltimore simply ignores a lot of non-fatal crime.
crumbling empire 101. why would our cities and rural counties be nice if we have been bombing the rest of world for past 60 years non stop. those bombs cost more than money. this of course can get much worse. lived all over usa but from nyc and now back here in black hood and ride subway few times per week. i ask all my boomer pals around country, “how many murders have you eye witnessed in your long lives? ” usually crickets. i’ve seen only a handful and consider my life very safe. been shot at in cross fire of cartel heroin dealer in a rich and safe small town. i don’t get the fear factor of most. 99.99999999% of my life has been uneventful and peaceful. amerikans are coddled and soft and have no clue what many places on globe are. usa bombed 40,000,000 out of their homes since 9.11.01. probably killed a few million or so, though we don’t count anymore. crumbling evil empire 101 study of anthropology and history says we have long way down, unless folks start caring about our own and not killing killing killing folks around globe. you cannot separate the two. it’s just dumb. like having gangster parents and expecting the kids in house to be NOT screwed up and violent and dumb. rant off.
Crime pays : the regime change king transferred power and RE from white to black.
Trump transferred wealth to the poor and the middle class. They got the money, but didn’t know how to make money.
Blue collar jobs are coming back. There are 16,400 small towns out of 20,000 total in the US, all under C/S radar.
Blue collar workers might rent at deflated prices, save money, buy a house and feed a family with money they Earned, not with transfer money.
Toot toot!
Homestead vs the Zardoz kabal.
it is a shame.
girlfriend (now wife) went to UI.
we went to Danville at least twice
to visit with her friends’ families.
nice town back then.
so many places we have been are now just awful.
SF, Chicago (my favorite), Portland, etc.
I’m from KC. While most time has been on west coast since 1980, I’ve probably been back 50 times over that period, and when there I get into ‘other’ neighborhoods. fyi: KC is very segregated (I think) and I bet all that crime and the murder is 95% happening in one demographic. KC has not experienced the implosion other rust belt cities have. It has a diverse economy and in general it is extremely prosperous. A lot of wealth broadly distributed and the migrants from south of the border are doing well and prospering, too, and breathing new life into neighborhoods that were poised for decay.
Decades ago, Springfield, Missouri (a 95% white city by the way) used to have a low crime rate. That all changed after the great recession of 2008 and then the oxycodone epidemic happened and now fentanyl.
Springfield has very low cost housing, but the wages are even lower so the prices aren’t actually affordable. Homeownership rate is very low.
Is the problem with Danville and Springfield lack of education? Or is it a consequence of shipping jobs overseas? Or?
U don’t need an “A” student in math to dig a hole, push packages from point A to B,
or to work in a factory. Tech schools are good enough.
You obviously don’t need an “A” in math to become a doctor or even a lawyer and especially a politician.
And certainly not, in order to “make money” off of rent and “your investments.”
Smart people don’t need, hence don’t want, redistributive central banks nor totalitarian governments nor kangaroo courts. Smarter ones, even recognise that triviality by now.
Hence: Simple self preservation necessitates that: Central banks, totalitarian governments and kangaroo courts, redistribute as much resources as possible away from smart, and especially smarter, people. By all the means available to them: Asset pumping, “legal” activism, mandates/bans and the lot.
As well as by indoctrination of the not-so smart, into idiotic beliefs that central banks, totalitarian governments and kangaroo courts are somehow needed.
Since LBJ the gov paid to make love. Today transfer payments pale in comparison to
unions or non-union workers wages. Women are better off marrying a UPS guy, a truck driver, or a guy who dig holes in the ground for $38/h, who can support a family.
“Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Van Dyke, Bobby Short, Gene Hackman, Irving Azoff, Hellen Morgan, are some of the celebrities who were born or raised in Danville.”
“The population of Danville was 44,000+ when I was in high school. It’s now 28,472 according to US Census Data as of 2022.”
Dayumm! That’s got to be close to the most impressive, per capita, population of serious A-listers from almost any town anywhere. And that’s not even counting Mish 🙂
Danville, IL or Danville, CA?
West Hollywood hired some people they call ambassadors, to patrol, but residents are complaining they are of little use. They want more sheriff’s deputies patrolling the city. Up in Oakland, the NAACP recently complained of the city’s defund the police policy. I believe a while back, Newsom sent some CHP officers to help fight crime there.
For the glass half full, they also publish the 100 safest city list: link to neighborhoodscout.com
Most of these are “cities” of around 30,000 people.
I count 26 of 100 as Massachusetts towns. One must wonder at the coverage and/or reliability of those crime numbers.
Anyway, for lists like these, it might be interesting to show pictures of the city halls and people going in and out of the city hall.
One might also wonder at the conjunction of that safest-city statistic and the fact that Massachusetts is the bluest state in the Union. I’m proud of that and proud to be a native and resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Crime in American cities is going to continue to get much worse as they continue to promote woke agenda ideologies and reject traditional values of hard work, family values, patriotism, community involvement and objective truth-religious faith.
In the late 1950’s I listened to Hilltopper basketball on my single AAA cell earplug radio purchased with funds earned from my paper route. Most folks don’t know that Hackman’s character in HOOSIERS “Norman Dale” is an actual neighborhood in Danville (looked a property there). I assume that the VAMC is now the largest employer (I’m a Viet-Nam vet) and the “Beefhouse” is still a local draw for good food.
Thanks for ALL of your hard work….
Are these sanctuary states or citys? If not its a LIE the worst are democrat states or citys ran by them, PERIOD.
The common denominator is a minimum wage far higher than the value of local labor talent.
These cities will be able to develop thanks to tourism !!
link to nypost.com
I live in the NE suburbs of metro Detroit. Lived in Detroit until 4th grade and it was safe then. My parents luckily moved to the suburbs before it really went south. I think Detroit has the highest murder rate per capita in the US. All the BS about it coming back is just that . It is and will remain a S hole. As your stats demonstrate on Danville only about 20% if high school students graduated a while back. That number is now in the 70% range but I think they are doctoring the numbers or handing out diplomas if you show up once a year. Those that do graduate are basically illiterate. If you pay people to reproduce and not work thats what happens. Over 70% single parent families. Until you change cultural attitudes to emphasize education, job training and working for a living nothing will ever change. Throwing money at it like they did in the Baltimore MD school district is just peeing money down the drain. I believe the aggregate test scores declined after they burned through the monetary donations in that grand experiment.
Yes.
Detroit – An American Autopsy
Detroit City Is The Place To Be
I think peeing into a strong wind is a more accurate analogy.
A downward spiral can only be reversed by extreme force.
I find that sad about your hometown. It has happened to many smaller communities that were dependent upon just a handful of industries that have met their demise or relocated over the past few decades.
These communities were the backbone of America, but have slowly withered away. Hopefully, other communities have prospered in the same timeframe. There has been an exodus of rust-belt industries to the south and southwest for a variety of reasons….cheaper labor, better weather, less regulation, etc…
Sending all of the soup can, and solar power companies to Asia, is what figuratively happened to town after town in America such as these. Making the stuff you consume may cost more in a financialized world, but the cost of not making what you consume is far more expensive in the real world.
It’s all about the soup!
“Making the stuff you consume may cost more in a financialized world, but the cost of not making what you consume is far more expensive in the real world.”
Agreed. We experienced some of that when covid hit in 2020. IMO, in a decade or less your point is going to be hammered home with very painful consequences in ‘the land of plenty’.
Teaching CRT, DEI, BLM, Antifa, and LGBTQ+ won’t help reading and math scores; however, those subjects are the foundation for violence. American culture is infected with cancerous ideas.
Toot toot!
Maybe that’s why none of those things are in anybody’s curriculum.
Except that they are. The California state education board is finalizing their math class as social justice, agenda.
They claim maths is rayciss. So they need to come up with new ways to teach 2+2=4.
Make it relevant to the students with questions that they can relate to.
A question like “ if you cut an ounce of heroin with battery acid how many ounces of battery acid do you need to make 4 ounces of cut product?” or “ at $20 a blow job how many John’s do you need to blow to give your pimp a Benjamin and still keep a Benjamin”.
Yes I’m being cynical but dealers and pros are what half of them will become as most will be illiterate drop kicks when they graduate and unsuited for skilled jobs.
Thankfully some kids graduate understanding 2+2+11.
You figure it out.
.
Lisa Hooker wrote “Thankfully some kids graduate understanding 2+2+11.
You figure it out.”
——–
2+2+11=6. You forgot the plus sign between the two 1’s!
“ if you cut an ounce of heroin with battery acid how many ounces of battery acid do you need to make 4 ounces of cut product?”
Concentrated sulfuric acid has a specific gravity of 1.84 while the specific gravity of distilled water is 1.00. When the sulfuric acid is diluted with water to make the battery electrolyte, the specific gravity of the end product should be between 1.26 and 1.30. Please denote answer for different variables in both avoirdupois ounces, fluid ounces, and for extra credit Troy ounces?
RonJ Avatar
RonJ
August 19, 2023
“Except that they are. The California state education board is finalizing their math class as social justice, agenda.”
It never hurts the public to teach math in such a way that people, can realize how much they are getting ripped off by the non productive investment class.
Buh but Tucker said…
As long as the students don’t understand how compound interest works, the better for the $300,000+ salary and pension suburban school superintendents in Illinois.
Once your labor pool has been on welfare for 2 generations, there’s no recovery. They’ll be that way till they die out.
I sort of hope that that is wrong … but I doubt that it is
link to theatlantic.com
I’d like to think otherwise too.
“Once your labor pool has been on welfare for 2 generations, there’s no recovery. They’ll be that way till they die out.”
Which, for America as a whole, is a much bigger problem wrt virtually the entire ruling, “owning” and “executive” classes having done nothing but collect Fed welfare since 1971; than wrt some dudes in Danville, IL getting a few pennies a month to keep them from starving to death, once those Fed welfare queens mismanaged and burned the capital underpinning once-was-industry to the current point of no return.
The former’s complete and undifferentiated dependence on nothing but ever more welfare, is why “we” can’t even remotely hope to compete with communists anymore. And per your analysis, never will. While the latter is just more of a “that’s kind of sad.”
There are still millions of smart people in the US, creating amazing stuff. Those have always been outnumbered by the feebs.
“There are still millions of smart people in the US, creating amazing stuff.”
Problem is: Those millions have no resources available that they can use to produce their amazing stuff. At any scale beyond, at best, cottage industry scale.
Since all those resources, have been redistributed to utterly non-smart, absolute deadweight dilettantes; in the form of asset pumping, rent, mandates, bailouts, legal shakedowns and all the other pathologies of financialization.
A friend of mine’s ex boyfriend was recently beaten to death on Michigan Avenue in Chicago by a bum and the police did nothing about it. 53 year old white men apparently don’t matter.
Chicago –
Heyjackass dot com – shootings and killings by day, time and location.
CWB Chicago dot com – best for crime in downtown lincoln park and way-kewl hipster north side
Second City Cop dot com – best accounts during 2020 Summer Of Love.
cities with high crime tend to lose population. I checked Chicago on Wikipedia and see that in 1950 they had a high population of 3.6 million. In 2021, they are a million lower. Such population decline is usually due to “white flight”, making cities less diverse and coincidentally, raising crime rates. Politicians should be paying the price for this loss of citizen safety and tax revenues.
I grew up, went to school and worked in Newark, NJ from 1960 to 1974. It was a tough city with primarily blue-collar level people. In 1960, Newark had 405k population. By 2000, the population was down to 273k. As they have worked to make the city a safer and cleaner place to live, the population has apparently increased to 311k by 2020.
Poverty and poor education equals high crime. It always will…. Sad.
Most times poverty and poor education drive to hard work and achievement.
Fatherlessness is much larger factor to criminality….but that doesn’t sell TV time.
Beaten to death, I guess gun control works in Chicago. Until law abiding citizens are allowed to defend themselves expect more of the same.
The Magnificent Mile is no longer as magnificent as it once was.
Magnificent 1/2 Mile now?