Esquire recently ran a story on the 10 most dangerous cities in the nation. A compelling article, but one based entirely on FBI Crime data which, as they note, can be misleading due to differences in collections and definitions.
Esquire’s articles illustrates this point when it describes Indianapolis:
“Indianapolis saw its overall violent crime rate climb 2 percent from 2013 to 2014, although the FBI concluded that the years can’t really be compared due to changes in reporting practices. Because of changes in the state/local agency’s reporting practices, figures are not comparable to previous years’ data.”
The ability to bring additional datasets and models to the story can yield different results. Even though it’s Halloween season, we don’t want to scare people unnecessarily, but these may not be the most dangerous cities in the US!
We looked at these places – and all US cities with more than 200,000 people – using some additional content. Specifically, we used a longer time-series and focused on crime risks.
Onboard uses a longer lens when looking at safety, using violent crime incidence over a seven year period and also trends in employment and behavior to establish its Crime Risk index. If you generate a list based of the likelihood of violent crime, the cities change. We don’t profess to have a crystal ball…but we think our numbers are pretty good!
We’ve mapped the Top 10 from this story to our index and also included any cities in the Top 10 by risk that didn’t make it into the LawStreet story.
- St. Louis, Missouri
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Atlanta, Georgia
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- Detroit, Michigan
- Miami, Florida
- Orlando, Florida
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Tampa, Florida
- Nashville, Tennessee
Cities like Cleveland, Oakland, and Indianapolis didn’t even make our list.
For these “top” 10 cities there was actually a reduction in risk compared to the national average since 2010 – a small change of two index points, but a change in the right direction. Orlando had the most improvement, dropping 49 index points!
This type of dynamic content is great at attracting, engaging, and converting users to your site and your brand. But it’s important the data you source is as accurate as possible so you gain and maintain trust with your clients and prospects.
If you want to learn more about how to effectively use local data in generating more traffic and leads for your business, contact us today.
The post The 10 Most Dangerous Cities in America….or are they? appeared first on OnBlog.