Methodology - 25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods in America

Exclusive Neighborhood Crime Information
NeighborhoodScout.com collects data from all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies in America, and uses a relational database to aggregate the statistics from each agency to the municipality that they protect. This provides an accurate representation of the total crimes and actual crime rates within any given city or town.

NeighborhoodScout then uses proprietary computer models it develops to statistically estimate incidences of both violent and property crimes for every sub-zip code neighborhood in the U.S based on the aggregate crime data for the municipality containing that neighborhood averaged across the most recent three years of non-preliminary (final) data available from the FBI (2005, 2006, and 2007). This moving three-year window helps stabilize data where a single year could be uncharacteristically high or low, providing a more accurate risk assessment. It is important to note that very recent changes in a neighborhood may not be reflected in our findings, as we use non-preliminary data in our models that take a year to be released.

Why neighborhoods and not cities? Even the cities with the highest crime rates in America can have relatively safe neighborhoods, and thus it is less useful to generalize about an entire city. But using exclusive data developed by Dr. Schiller at NeighborhoodScout.com, and based on FBI data from all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies, we here report those specific neighborhoods in America that have the highest predicted rates of violent crime of all.

Violent crimes included are the violent crimes from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault. Based on multiple years of data, and predicted to the individual neighborhood level by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive crime models, we list the top 25 most dangerous. The rating is based on the predicted number of violent crimes in the neighborhood per 1,000 population of the neighborhood.

NeighborhoodScout reveals and maps the neighborhoods, and reports the predicted number of violent crimes, property crimes, the violent crime rate per 1,000, the property crime rate per 1,000, the density of crimes per square mile, and a neighborhood resident’s chance of becoming a victim of a violent crime, or a property crime, if living in the neighborhood for a year. All are compared to city-wide, state-wide, and nation-wide averages for comparison.

These data can be used by homebuyers, insurance companies and many other companies to evaluate the true nature of a given neighborhood. No one else has developed this depth and richness of neighborhood-level crime information for the nation. NeighborhoodScout licenses these crime data by state for an annual fee.

Commercial Property Developers, Marketers and Retail Operators
Developers, marketers and retailers frequently use NeighborhoodScout’s data to determine the underlying characteristics of a neighborhood’s commercial viability or demographic appeal prior to investing in a project or opening a retail location.

Insurance Providers
Insurance underwriters could use NeighborhoodScout’s data to more accurately assess risk when underwriting new and renewing existing homeowners’ and vehicle owners’ policies. NeighborhoodScout’s crime data and models offer the ability to allow insurers to benchmark specific neighborhoods against state and national averages in areas likely to affect their portfolio like home values, appreciation and crime.

About the Input Data
The data used from these 17,000 local law enforcement agencies are the FBI defined "crime index" crimes. Index crimes are the eight crimes the FBI combines to produce its annual crime index.

The index seeks to overcome differences in individual state statues - that would ignore how the individual is charged - and create a standardized definition of crime classification. This was done through defining serious and non-serious offenses. Part I crimes are comprised of serious felonies and Part II crimes are comprised of non-serious felonies and misdemeanors. Together these two types of classifications make up the crimes reported in the Uniform Crime Reports.

These offenses include willful homicide, forcible rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, larceny over $50, motor vehicle theft, and arson. In order to compare statistical information on a national basis the FBI came up with this common definition for crime comparison.

Location, Inc. is a research and data mining company born of university research, specializing in location analysis, demographic and school data information products, and location-based decision-making tools for businesses and consumers. The Company licenses data for a host of business to business applications. Location, Inc. is the owner of NeighborhoodScout.com, a national neighborhood data source and search engine which has served 6.7 million home buyers and businesses since its 2002 inception. The Company is based in Rhode Island.

Dr. Andrew Schiller is the Founder, President and Chairman of Location, Inc. and is responsible for inventing the methods and technology that power NeighborhoodScout.com. He is also responsible for designing studies and reports for various media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Money Magazine, Parade Magazine, Smart Money, The New York Times, and others.

Prior to founding NeighborhoodScout, Andrew received his Ph.D. in Geography from Clark University’s Graduate School of Geography, America’s oldest and largest geography Ph.D. program. Previously he was a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Atomic Energy Complex. He was also a Director of Science for the Nature Conservancy’s Tennessee Chapter. He has conducted research and published with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Stanford University. He is an expert in statistics, demographic and risk analysis, and interpreting the relationships among environmental, social and economic conditions in the United States.