A note about the comparability between this year's rankings and previous years:

The scores given in this year’s and last year's Safest City Award rankings were calculated using the same methodology and are comparable.  The population threshold is also the same at 75,000.  However, a city's ranking is not necessarily comparable because nine cities are in this year's survey that were not considered last year.  In addition, seven cities that reported data last year did not this year and thus were not considered.  This change in the universe of cities makes a direct comparison of rankings inaccurate.

Cities with a score of zero have crime that averages out to the national average.  Cities with scores below zero (i.e. a negative number) have crime below the national average.  Cities with scores above zero have crime higher than the national average.

This is the thirteenth year that Morgan Quitno has issued the Safest City and Safest Metropolitan Area rankings. The first year, we only ranked the nation’s 100 largest cities. The second year, we looked at cities of more than 100,000 but used a different method to determine the rankings. The third and fourth years, the universe of cities remained the same (100,000+ population), but the study was done in partnership with Money Magazine using a slightly different methodology. In 1998, we lowered the population threshold for cities to 75,000 or more and adopted the current methodology. Therefore, this most recent survey is only comparable with surveys conducted since 1998.

Because of interest in the previous years' rankings we have left those pages on our website. Click below to go to those pages.  To return to this year's ranking you will need to either press your "Back" button in your browser or return to our home page and click there on the connection to our new press release.

PREVIOUS YEARS' RANKINGS PRESS RELEASES: