City Safety Guides
Data-driven guides on understanding crime statistics, evaluating neighborhood safety, and making informed decisions about where to live in the United States.
UCR vs NIBRS: Why US Crime Data Got Messy After 2020
The FBI transitioned from Uniform Crime Reporting to NIBRS in 2021. What each system captures, why 40% of agencies missed the deadline, and what this means for comparing crime data across years.
Why "Safest City" Rankings Disagree: Methodology Behind the Lists
WalletHub, US News, Niche, and FBI data produce wildly different safest city rankings. How population thresholds, weighting schemes, and data sources create contradictory lists.
Property Crime vs Violent Crime: What the FBI Categories Actually Mean
FBI Part I crime categories explained — why property crime is 4x more common, what clearance rates reveal about police effectiveness, and what each type means for daily life and housing decisions.
Crime Rate vs Crime Count: Why Per-Capita Data Changes Everything
How population denominators transform crime statistics — tourist city inflation, college town distortion, commuter city effects, and why raw crime numbers are misleading.
Neighborhood Safety Data: What Crime Maps Show and What They Miss
The limits of census tract and city-level crime data — reporting bias, police deployment patterns, the dark figure of unreported crime, and what crime maps actually tell you about safety.