How Safe Is Your Town?

How safe are Richland County cities as compared to the rest of Ohio?

SafeWise recently released its fifth annual Safest Cities report. The news was fairly good for the Buckeye State, but locally the picture was less optimistic.

The good news is that Ohio comes in under the national violent crime rate, but the state is slightly higher when it comes to property crime. Ohio had a reported 3.60 violent crimes per 1,000 people, compared to 4.49 across the country. Its property crime rate of 29.63, however, exceeds the national rate of 27.11.

Ohio’s safest cities did even better than the state overall—with each one reporting fewer than 0.35 violent crime incidents per 1,000 people. Plus, each of the top three cities had zero violent crimes. In regard to property crime, 70% of the selected cities experienced fewer than 10 incidents per 1,000 people.

Other statewide findings:

Chester Township once again claimed the number one spot as the safest city in Ohio, with zero counts of violent crime reported in 2017.
40% of the cities on the list are being recognized for the second year in a row.
Not one murder was reported among Ohio’s safest cities, and more than 50% reported no murder and no rape.
Property crime is the state’s top safety concern, and 17% of respondents to our State of Safety study reported a personal experience with property crime in the past year, compared to 16% nationwide.
Ohio is less concerned about sexual assault than the rest of country—34% ranked sexual assault by a stranger as a top worry, compared to the national average of 39%. And just 16% are worried about an assault by someone they know, which is 7 percentage points below the national average.

Cities in Ashland, Crawford, and Richland Counties had mixed results:

CITY – RANK AMONG SAFEST CITIES IN OHIO – VIOLENT CRIME PER 1,000 POPULATION – PROPERTY CRIME PER 1,000 POPULATION