By Madison D. Link
Vice President, Ducks in a Row Inc.
Ben Krasney, spokesman for Congressional Quarterly Press, defended a report claiming that New Mexico is the third most dangerous state by saying, "It's data. ... Our goal is to inform the public of what is going on."
That's a good goal, but merely reporting crime and other statistics state-by-state falls far short of informing the public of what is actually going on.
My company, Ducks in a Row Inc., created software, "Safe At Home," that estimates the user's home risks from crime and other hazards. We used statistics from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) to develop a database of crime rates for this software. These statistics are based on the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system. We are well aware of the shortcomings of the UCR and NACJD data, and they were not made clear in the article.
When using these statistics, it's important to remember that state and local agencies are not required to report crimes to the FBI and that definitions of particular crimes vary from state to state. And that means that the numbers don't always add up.
For example, Davis County, Utah, population 259,681, reported one murder in 2006, claiming nearly 100 percent coverage in reporting. But a quick Google search turns up a report by the Utah Domestic Violence Council listing three murders in Davis County in 2006 resulting from domestic violence alone.
I don't know for a fact how many murders were committed in Davis County in 2006, but one can surmise that Davis County's exceptionally low murder rate in the NACJD statistics is partly due to a lack of reporting.
A second thing to remember is that the county-by-county crime statistics report the raw number of crimes for a single year. For small counties, this can lead to a faulty estimate of the county's crime rate. In 2006, Harding County, N.M., had the highest per-capita murder rate in the United States. This resulted from a single murder in a population of 728.
In other years, Harding County has had a per-capita murder rate of 0. To properly determine Harding County's murder rate, you would have to take the average number of murders over the course of a century.
Moreover, comparing the crime rates of two states is often like comparing apples and oranges. Most sizable metropolitan areas have significantly higher than average crime rates, whereas rural areas generally are below average.
It is reasonable to compare two metropolises, such as Las Vegas and Houston, and in doing so, you'll find that the "Sin City" and Houston are comparable in violent crime rates. But it is meaningless to compare Nevada and North Dakota. More than 70 percent of the population of Nevada lives in Las Vegas, so the state average appears to be that of "big city" crime. North Dakota, with a single population center of 127,000 people and a large number of scattered towns, has low crime rates.
The three "most dangerous" states listed in the article, Louisiana, Nevada, and New Mexico, have one thing in common: Each state has one or a few large metropolitan areas that account for more than 50 percent of its population.
Citing crime statistics alone and using them to list "most dangerous" states is flawed, because crime rate is only one (frequently minor) factor.
Albuquerque's crime risk is offset by a well-trained police department and a professional fire department that can get a fire truck or ambulance to the scene of an emergency within minutes. In "safe" North Dakota, you had better own a fire extinguisher and take your entire family to CPR classes, because it will be a while before the emergency services get to your house, and longer before they can get you to a hospital.
In New Mexico's rural areas, the murder rate is slightly above the U.S. average, at 6.08 per 100,000 persons. The Albuquerque metropolitan area (Valencia, Bernalillo and Sandoval counties) has a rate of 10.4 per 100,000 persons. This is actually typical for a metropolis of our size. Nashville, Tenn., San Francisco and Louisville, Ky., are three cities of similar size and similar murder rates. Our robbery statistics follow a similar pattern.
The UCR data must be used cautiously, and with great care to understand how they are compiled and what they mean. My view of the numbers on Albuquerque is that the crime rates are typical of a large metropolitan area— not that Albuquerque is a particularly dangerous city in which to live. As for the state's No. 3 ranking, it's because the state's population is concentrated in urban areas.
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