he National Council for Home Safety and Security (NCHSS) released its annual report on the safest cities in each U.S. state. The Safest Cities Report examines each city’s per-capita crime data to provide state rankings and simultaneously features cities that have made strides to improve or sustain a safe environment for their residents.
The City of Frankfort is ranked 22nd in the latest Safest Cities in Indiana ranking. The organization ranked Frankfort ninth in 2018, but was unranked in 2019.
Indiana, for example, saw a 2.8% decrease in violent crime and an 8.2% decrease in property crime since last year.
See all city rankings in the 2020 Safest Cities Report here: https://www.alarms.org/safest-cities-in-indiana/
Millions of Americans relocate every year, and personal safety is one of the most important factors to consider when doing so. Unfortunately, many often rely on public opinion rather than objective data. The Safest Cities Report gives everyone a detailed safety analysis to evaluate before drawing any conclusions.
Findings are a result of combining data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting tool (which relays cities’ violent and nonviolent crime data) with internal population research. Lastly, two small segments were discarded from the analysis: cities with populations under 10,000 and cities that chose not to submit complete crime reports to the FBI.
Methodology
To identify the safest cities, we reviewed the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. We eliminated any cities that failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI and cities with populations under 10,000. This left 3,381 cities (out of a total of 9,251).
There are two broad classifications of crimes: violent crimes and non-violent crimes. According to the FBI, “Violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force. Property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims. ”
We computed the total number of crimes reported by each city by adding violent crimes and property crimes. We then created a crime rate as the number of crimes per 1,000 population. Then we transformed the total crime rate variable so that the skewness was reduced and normalized.
Data from 2,831 law enforcement agencies was then collected to determine police adequacy (TotalCrimes / Number of police employees). We consider that the smaller the police adequacy statistic is, the safer the city is. This variable was also transformed and normalized.
Finally, the two variables were combined to create a safety score for each city.
About the National Council for Home Safety and Security
The National Council for Home Safety and Security (NCHSS) is a national trade association comprised of companies in the security sector, including licensed alarm installers, contractors, and other relevant trade groups across the United States. Through Alarms.org (the NCHSS’s official site), consumers can find essential home safety and security guides, as well as related research, articles, and reports. Learn more at Alarms.org.