10 U.S. States With The Lowest Murder Rates

Interesting, the states fall into 3 geographical groupings, though I think the western grouping might have 2 separate reasons. The top spot increasing and remaining the lowest, though...

They are all concentrated in the North. I guess warmer climates make for hot-blooded brains.

or just it's hard to kill people when you are indoors all day because it's too damn cold to go outside.

"I would kill you, but... now, where is my coat?"

@rocamorar is right, higher temperature tends to make people more irritable and thus increases aggressive behavior. Kalbahamut's point is good too though--when people are stuck indoors, they are less likely to commit crimes. A combination of those factors is why crime waves are almost always exclusive to the summer, and why warmer areas tend to have more violence.

Boston has a murder rate of 8.35 per 100,000 people. While it's certainly not the lowest in America (for example, in New York it's only 3.39), it's still below the murder rates of many major American cities.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

boston isn't really known for being dangerous lol especially in New England

In general this is a collection slow growth, higher income, rural, higher educated, homogeneous populations. All of them them don't fit into all of the categories but most fit into at least 3. As result you have an older population that doesn't run into a lot of strangers and if they do they are likely to be accommodating to each other and less likely to be under financial pressure to do something criminal or prevent them from making bad decisions.

That's quite an array of criteria... They do all matter, but the single biggest factor that jumps out seems to be race, which unfortunately has a high explanatory value here. 5 of these are in the top 10 whitest states, but more strikingly, 8 of them are in the top 10 least black states.

There are a ton of well known and tragic reasons why such correlation should exist but that's what jumps out to me looking for correlations here.

True, but correlation does not imply causation. It is also true that (in part due to historical, systematic racism) black populations tend to be more heavily concentrated in urban areas, and another criteria true of most of these states is that most of them lack large, urban areas (with the notable exceptions of Massachusetts and Oregon, and maybe Utah, if you count SLC). When you have a lot of people living in close proximity, you're going to have more crime (and particularly if those people are poor--which may explain why wealthier cities such as Boston, Portland, and SLC don't knock these states off the list).

uhhhhh ok

It is very encouraging to see some pretty massive drops in percentages among many of the states here. That being said, I would not be surprised to see Minnesota to fall off the list next year with the rather large increase of the recent homicide rate in Minneapolis.

Wow, my original comment was quite prescient then. Downtown Minneapolis is awful now.

I was bad at this 😢

How do people know this? I’m usually good at these kinds of quizzes but I just got bottom 6.8 percentile. There didn’t seem to be any sort of pattern, not dense or sparsely populated, not liberal or conservative, not East or West, not poor or rich. What am I missing?

Edit: im f***ing stupid I thought the quiz was asking for highest murder rates

Interesting to see absolutely no correlation to the state's gun control laws.

Yeah. Pretty much everybody in Oregon owns a gun, at it was on the list

well... Minnesota has aged badly

I somehow managed to get them all except for the #1 answer. That's certainly a first for me on these quizzes.

This quiz says top 10! But there is 11!

no, there is ten

Hello

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pretty insane that if the UK were a state, it would be second on this list