Law Street’s Crime Team used the FBI’s four major violent crime categories–murders, aggravated assaults, robberies, and forcible rapes–to create a standard measure of violent-crimes-per-100,000 people among all cities over 100,000 people reporting crime data to the FBI. This allows year-to-year and city-to-city comparisons. To derive the ratio, the total number of violent crimes reported to the FBI is divided by the city’s population, with the result then multiplied by 100,000. The formula for this calculation is shown below. Crime rankings were further broken down by population, with 200,000 used as the dividing point.
Violent Crime Rate = (Total Violent Crime in a City/City Population) x 100,000
Click here to read more Crime in America coverage.