This Is America’s Most Dangerous State

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 11, 10:30AM EDT

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This Is America’s Most Dangerous State — © andykazie / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

When it comes to where people live, danger can be defined in several ways. Certainly, the weather plays some role in states that have areas prone to wildfires and floods. Some states have worse air pollution than others. Additionally, earthquakes have been destructive and could be again. Much rarer are states where there has been volcanic activity.

Another commonly used yardstick for danger in a state, county or city is crime rates. Some of these crimes are much more dangerous than others.

Violent crime (a broad category of offenses that includes robbery, aggravated assault and homicide) is on the rise in the United States. According to FBI data, there were a total of 1.3 million violent offenses reported in 2020, or 388 for every 100,000 people. That was a 5% increase from 2019.

The uptick was led by a spike in homicide. The number of murders surged by nearly 30%, from 16,669 in 2019 to 21,570 in 2020, the largest year-over-year increase on record. The spike in murders came during a year of national turmoil, marked by coronavirus lockdowns, mass protests against police misconduct and a sharp rise in gun sales.
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24/7 Wall St. reviewed 2020 violent crime rates from the FBI to identify the most dangerous state in America. States are ranked by their overall violent crime adjusted for the population. Violent crime rates in the 50 states range from 109 to more than 800 incidents per 100,000 people.

The states with the lowest violent crime rates are disproportionately located in the northeast, particularly New England. Pennsylvania is the only northeastern state with a higher than average violent crime rate, and four of the five states with the lowest violent crime rates are in New England.

Most states reported an increase in violence in 2020. Still, 14 states reported a decline in the rates of violence. However, several of these states still have some of the highest violent crime rates in the country.

The analysis found that the most dangerous state in America is Alaska. Here are the details:

Violent crimes in 2020: 838 per 100,000 people (6,126 total)
One-year change in violent crime rate: −3.4%
Homicides in 2020: 49 (10th fewest)

Alaska’s violent crime rate is far and away the highest of any state. The majority of the 6,126 violent crimes reported in the state in 2020 (69%) were aggravated assaults. Still, Alaska’s violent crime rate is 3.4% lower than it was in 2019, making the state one of only 14 to report a year-over-year decline in violence.

Violence in Alaska tends to be highly concentrated in certain cities. In the Anchorage metropolitan area, for example, there were 1,171 violent crimes for every 100,000 people in 2020. That metro area alone accounted for over 58% of all the violent crimes committed in Alaska in 2020, yet is home to only 42% of the state’s population.

Click here to see all of America’s most dangerous states.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.