Report: Two Ohio cities among most dangerous in terms of cost of crime
(The Center Square) – Two Ohio cities rank among the most dangerous in the U.S. with the highest cost of crime in America, according to a recent report.
MoneyGeek, a personal finance technology company, analyzed crime statistics and applied research findings to determine the safest and most dangerous cities where crime is the most costly.
Cleveland ranked 294th and Dayton 297th out of 303 cities analyzed, while Columbus ranked 205th – still below average but tops in Ohio. The annual cost of crime in Cleveland is $1.7 billion. In Dayton, crime costs more than $5,000 per capita, compared to$1,766 in Columbus.
“In urban areas, poverty and crime are both attributable to other, deeper factors – like former red-lining policies and other institutionalized methods for preventing the accumulation of wealth,” Geoff Darcy, of Tulane University, said.
Toledo ranked second in Ohio but 253rd overall with crime costing more than $7 million annually, while Akron ranked 263rd in terms of cost and safety. Cincinnati is ranked 294th with a crime cost of more than $1 billion a year.
The research found the average cost of crime in the United States is $1,849 per capita, and mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019 cost $5.7 billion, 3% of the total cost of crime.
MoneyGeek used research from the National institutes of Health into society’s costs of crime and estimated cost of reported crimes for each city. For the 300 cities examined, the cost of crime is $176 billion annually.
The report ranked Arlington, Virginia, as the nation’s overall safest city, followed by Thousand Oaks, California; Allen, Texas; Cary, North Carolina; and Irvine, California.
The safest large cities were Raleigh, North Carolina; Henderson, Nevada; Anaheim, California, Honolulu, Hawaii; and Mesa, Arizona.
Overall, the most dangerous cities with the highest cost of crime were St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, Jackson, Mississippi, and Memphis.
