How to Find Crime Rate
Studying crime rates provides an interesting look at a society. The wealth of data and resources available online and from local law enforcement authorities make it possible to research crime rates at the national, state, local and even neighborhood levels. Researching neighborhood crime is a way to learn about the state of a specific community. The crime rate, after all, is among the factors people take into consideration before deciding to move into a particular neighborhood.
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Instructions
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Finding Crime Rates: From the National to the Neighborhood Level
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Begin your study of crime rates at the national level by accessing the Federal Bureau of Investigation's website (See Resources 1). The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports contains crime statistics for cities and states, as reported by law enforcement authorities across the country. The FBI's main homepage contains an extensive menu of links on the left side of the page. Under the heading, "Use Our Resources," click the link "For Researchers." This will open the Records and Information section. Under the "Crime Stats" heading, click the year for which you want crime statistics.
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Dis-aggregate your crime rate research by examining violent crimes, such as murder and sexual assault, or property crimes. The Crime in the U.S. page on the FBI website enables you to examine both. Links on the page allow you to examine both classes of crime, as well as specific offenses. Other links will allow you to examine crime data by national level, state, county or city.
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Calculate crime rates for the level you want, be it national, city or state. The FBI's statistics table will give you all the information you need to do this. To calculate the rate of violent crime, divide the number of violent crimes by the population of the nation, state or city, and multiply the result by 1,000. This gives you the number of violent crimes per 1,000 people, a common crime rate measure. For example, FBI data for 2008 show 48,430 incidents of violent crime in New York City. Dividing that number by the city's reported population (8,345,075) and multiplying by 1,000 provides a result of 5.80. Repeating this step for multiple cities or states allows you to compare crime rates across jurisdictions.
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Contact your local police department for neighborhood crime rates. Some large cities maintain crime statistics information on their websites. In other cases, you should contact your local police for crime rate information on a neighborhood. Be sure to specify the area, preferably using street names, to get the most specific information.
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Tips & Warnings
The FBI's crime statistics pages allow you to download Excel spreadsheet files of the crime data you're studying.
