Which U.S. State has the LEAST amount of crime?

The Canadian thing makes me less biased than someone living in one of the 50 United States I would think.

I thought this would be an interesting subject to research and I used my usual method of going to Wikipedia for some basic information. I looked at the FBI and Department of Justice websites first but found they had just too much information to answer this question in a simple manner. Seems that 5% of US citizens will be a victim of crime each year. One thing is for sure, crime is a big issue in the United States.

What I found in the Wikipedia story was that the information they had was based on the year 2004 and related to crime rates which would remove the sheer numbers of larger states and make this a more reasonable comparison.

And I was quite surprised by the answers. Seems New Hampshire had the lowest rate and Arizona had the highest rate. I guess the Wild West still is full of "banditos".Texas and Arkansas were included with Arizona as the most dangerous.

The New England States were listed as the safest and surprisingly New York and New Jersey were below the national average so the movies that depict these two states as full of crime are exaggerating somewhat.

It seems that there is a direct correlation between wealth and crime. The states that are the poorest have the highest crime generally. They include Florida, Louisiana and Georgia. The states that are the wealthiest had the lowest rate which included Wisconsin and California.

If I was to move to the United Sates I know it wouldn't be to Baltimore, Detroit or Washington, D.C. These were the cities listed with the highest crime rates.

I would move to New England and I know why because I have visited a lot of these states in the past on ski trips and business. New England would be the closest in relationship to the province of Ontario in Canada. The people, the countryside, climate and overall values seem to be very similar.

And here's my personal opinion on crime, for what it is worth. Crime is a cancer. The only way to deal with cancer is to eradicate it in order to save what is left of the good part of the body. The more serious the cancer, the more intense the treatment has to be.

And so it should be for crime. If someone chooses to kill another human being, they have made a very serious attack on society and society should send a very strong message in return. That can no longer be tolerated. The punishment should match the crime. No further discussion required. Perhaps that will reduce the crime rate.

A more current measurement (2009) of homicides in cities by Georgia State University shows that Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis and Oakland have very high rates compared to other cities in the USA. http://www.cjgsu.net/initiatives/HomRates-PR-2010-01-21.htm

And if you examine another 2009 map of USA crime rates http://www.policymap.com/crime-statistics/index.html you will note that this map points to the fact that New England and rural America in general have very low rates. Suffice it to say, that living in the country (as opposed to the city) is one way to live in a safer climate with respect to violent crimes, simply because there is less opportunity for gain from crime as there is in the more condensed population found in cities. The economics of crime are no different than the economics of any business with respect to supply and demand.