Midwest Safety News

Crime

Murder, mapped two ways. We rank every U.S. city by its murder rate from FBI agency data. Below it the statewide picture comes from CDC death certificates (ICD-10 X85-Y09 assault). On the state map two bars per state show how it compares to the U.S. average and how its rate is trending year over year. Green is the good direction and red is the bad direction. Hover for exact numbers and click to open a state's dashboard.

Updated May 14, 2026Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics

United States

6.0
homicides per 100k · 2024
-11.8%
vs. 2023
20,162
total homicides

Most dangerous cities

City level · FBI data

We rank every U.S. city of 10,000 or more by murders per 100,000 residents averaged across 2020-2024 so a single bad year doesn't dominate. The largest mass shootings are excluded and disclosed, and the whole dataset is mapped, searchable and downloadable.

Annualized murders per 100,000:under 5(2,601)5 to 10(505)10 to 20(291)20 to 35(73)35 to 50(25)50 or more(14)

Dark red (50+) is sized by rate (max on this map: 80); bubbles grow as you zoom in, and the basemap fills in streets and city names so you can place each one. Use the zoom buttons, a double-click or pinch to move around. Hover or tap a red or orange bubble for details, or search the table below for any city.

Highest rates nationwide

  1. 1.Jackson, MS80.5/100k
  2. 2.College Park, GA73.4/100k
  3. 3.St. Louis, MO68.0/100k
  4. 4.Gary, IN67.3/100k
  5. 5.Chester, PA66.1/100k
  6. 6.East Point, GA64.9/100k
  7. 7.Petersburg, VA64.2/100k
  8. 8.Birmingham, AL59.8/100k
  9. 9.New Orleans, LA58.3/100k
  10. 10.Bogalusa, LA57.6/100k
See the full map and ranking →

Most dangerous states

Grading
Rank each state against the others. Top performers green, worst red.
Focus
Color by the average of every metric (current state + trend together).
Rate vs U.S. averageYoY rate changegood directionbad direction

Did the Ramsey County CAT team move the numbers?

Minnesota · Comparative analysis

Ramsey County motor-vehicle theft is the only series in our Midwest comparison set below its 2018 baseline. We pull the FBI data, benchmark it against Minneapolis and three peer cities and report what the numbers can and cannot say about the Carjacking and Auto Theft team’s effect.

Read the analysis →

World homicide rates

~200 countries · UNODC data

How does the U.S. compare to the rest of the world? Murders per 100,000 people for about 200 countries with the trend over the last five reported years. The world rate is 5.2 per 100,000 (2023). Every figure shows its year because countries report on different schedules.

  1. 1.Jamaica49.4/100k (2023)
  2. 2.Ecuador45.7/100k (2023)
  3. 3.South Africa43.7/100k (2022)
  4. 4.Haiti41.1/100k (2023)
  5. 5.Trinidad and Tobago40.4/100k (2022)
See the world map →

Across the country

Where is the homicide rate highest?

Homicides per 100,000 (latest)

  1. District of Columbia16.3/100k
  2. Mississippi15.0/100k
  3. Louisiana12.6/100k
  4. Alabama10.4/100k
  5. New Mexico10.1/100k
  6. Missouri8.5/100k
  7. South Carolina8.5/100k
  8. Tennessee8.1/100k
  9. Alaska8.0/100k
  10. Arkansas7.8/100k

Highest state-level rate in the most recent CDC NCHS release.

Where is the homicide rate lowest?

Homicides per 100,000 (latest)

  1. New Hampshire1.2/100k
  2. Rhode Island1.5/100k
  3. Idaho1.6/100k
  4. Maine1.6/100k
  5. Massachusetts1.8/100k
  6. New Jersey2.1/100k
  7. Utah2.2/100k
  8. Connecticut2.4/100k
  9. Hawaii2.4/100k
  10. Iowa2.4/100k

Lowest state-level rate in the most recent CDC NCHS release.

Where is homicide rising the fastest?

YoY % change in homicide rate

  1. Wyoming+48.4%
  2. South Dakota+46.3%
  3. Delaware+22.6%
  4. West Virginia+10.0%
  5. Utah+9.1%
  6. Iowa+6.5%
  7. Mississippi+0.5%
  8. Vermont+0.0%
  9. Kentucky-1.4%
  10. Oklahoma-2.8%

Largest year-over-year increase in homicide rate between the two most recent calendar years.

Where is homicide falling the fastest?

YoY % change in homicide rate

  1. New Hampshire-38.1%
  2. Rhode Island-33.3%
  3. Connecticut-31.0%
  4. District of Columbia-29.5%
  5. Maine-29.4%
  6. Idaho-28.0%
  7. Pennsylvania-25.4%
  8. Arkansas-23.6%
  9. Louisiana-21.3%
  10. Colorado-17.5%

Largest year-over-year decrease in homicide rate between the two most recent calendar years.

All states · safest to highest rate

Methodology

Homicide rates are pulled from the CDC National Center for Health Statistics via the data.cdc.gov "Mapping Injury, Overdose, and Violence" datasets (state filefpsi-y8tj, national filet6u2-f84c). The underlying source is death-certificate data coded under ICD-10 X85-Y09 (assault).

Cells with fewer than 10 deaths in a given state-year are suppressed by CDC for privacy and arrive here as "—". Vermont's trailing-12-month rate falls into this bucket; New Hampshire, North Dakota and a few other small states have occasional single-year suppressions.

Counts are by state of occurrence, not state of residence — a small number of cases on state borders cross this distinction. "Murder" here is the medical-coder definition of intentional homicide, which is close to but not identical to the FBI UCR definition (UCR excludes justifiable homicide; CDC's count does too because legal-intervention deaths fall under Y35-Y36).

The most-recent TTM (trailing 12 months) figure is provisional and will revise as additional death certificates clear NCHS review.

Sources