Georgia slips in ’safest state’ rankings to no. 39
March 23, 2009 at 5:49 pm by Thomas Wheatley in News
Seven spots, to be exact — the largest drop of all the states, says CQ Press. New Hampshire is the safest state in the nation. Nevada, a sizzling den of crime and chaos, is the least safe. (How much you want to bet at least one journalist uses the “when crime happens in Vegas, it stays in Vegas” line?)
To view CQ Press’ study, visit its site. A PDF of state rankings is available here. A PDF of the survey’s methodology is here.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:36 pm
The way they weighted the different types of crime was interesting. Check out this tidbit from the “Methodology”:
“The number is then scaled to be one-sixth (.1667) of the index to make it comparable to scores in the previous editions of this book. A number of years ago, we weighted each of the six crimes based on the results of a telephone survey that determined which crimes were of greatest concern to Americans. The polls seemed to indicate that most Americans believe crimes such as burglary are more likely to happen in their lives than more heinous crimes such as murder. Thus, burglary received the highest weight and murder the lowest weight in the formula. However, we discontinued the polling and consequently eliminated the weights. We left this stage in the methodology, giving each crime equal weight, so that future scores would be more closely comparable to the earlier scores with the weighted factors.”
I wonder how the results would change if burglary were given back its weight.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:40 am
But wait…. Georgia does great in catching perps after the crime is committed! Doesn’t that count for something? And what about the fact that Georgia also–just to be safe–is reasonably good at putting people in prison even if they haven’t done anything. Doesn’t that also soften the blow of the stats CL is reporting?
March 24th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I think the story there was that metro Atlanta was good at catching murderers.
Most murders are committed by people who have some kind of history with the victims. Unlike burglaries, they’re mostly not random. I would guess that’s part of the reason why it would make sense for burglaries to carry a heavier weight when considering how safe a state might be.