The SafeWise Reports evaluates the 100 Safest Cities in America and continue to release up-to-date Safest Cities rankings for each state, providing a comprehensive assessment of the general safety in each city that is reported on.
"To identify the 25 safest cities in Missouri, they reviewed the most recent FBI Crime Report statistics from 2013, along with population data. We eliminated all cities with fewer than 3,000 residents as well as any cities that failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI," said Claire Jones, Community Outreach Specialist. Portageville ranks number four.
"From that, an evaluation was made on the remaining cities. The report narrowed it down based on the number of reported violent crimes (aggravated assault, murder, rape, and robbery) and property crimes (burglary, arson, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft) in each city. To further level the playing field, it also calculated the likelihood of these crimes occurring out of 1,000 people in each city," she continued.
SafeWise uses the most up-to-date FBI Crime data as the backbone of their reports. They rely on information that cities across the nation report through the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. If you don't see your city represented, it's possible that they reported incomplete data to the UCR or did not report data at all.
"We also utilize a population threshold. We determine an appropriate threshold for each state and only report on cities with populations above this number. The number is based on the state's population as a whole and the number of cities to be included in the list. Using a population threshold reduces the risk of outliers, and lowers the likelihood of an extreme outlier skewing the data," Jones said.
"Before rankings can be assigned, we narrow down the list of eligible cities based on these criteria. This means that we leave out any city with a population below the established threshold, as well as any city that did not submit a complete crime report to the FBI," she concluded.
Staying Safe
Year after year, SafeWise has focused on providing resources to help your community stay safe and the Safest Cities lists are no exception. With these reports, we have put ourselves into our reader's shoes in order to understand what makes us all feel safe or unsafe in a city.