Michigan’s ranking is high on a list where the lowest number possible is best.
According to NeighborhoodScout, Michigan not only has seven cities in the top 100 on this list of the most dangerous in the country, but three of the top 10 in 2016.
Their research was based on violent crimes (those include murder, rape, armed robbery and aggravated assault) per 1,000 residents in cities with a population of 25,000 or greater, based on FBI statistics. That’s how they determine which cities are the “most dangerous.”
So, what are the Michigan cities on this list?
At #84, you have Battle Creek.
#79, Jackson.
Right at the middle of the list is #50, Lansing.
#39, Kalamazoo.
#8? Saginaw.
#7 is a city that’s been in the news a lot lately, Flint.
And number #3 on the list is the city of Detroit.
A bit on their methodology, as when these kinds of lists come out it’s important to look at how they were put together to come to the conclusions they did.
NeighborhoodScout says they collect raw crime data from all 18,000 law enforcement agencies in America. Then they use a relational database built from the ground up to assign reported crimes from each agency to the city where it has law enforcement responsibility. They say that this method provides an accurate representation of the complete number and types of crimes that truly occur within any city or town, not just crimes reported by a single municipal agency.
Just two cities more dangerous in the research than Detroit at number three. Camden, New Jersey is number two and East St. Louis, Missouri comes in at number one. The complete list is here.