Rhode Island is one of the safest states in America: its violent crime rate of 2.19 offenses per 1,000 and property crime rate of 16.6 per 1,000 are significantly below national levels. What’s more, Rhode Island’s already low rate of violent crime decreased by 6.4% in 2018, a trend that shows no signs of reversing. It should be no surprise that all of Rhode Island’s safest cities recorded violent crime rates below 1 offense per 1,000 people.
Glocester is the safest municipality in Rhode Island. The small town of just over 10K logged a mere 5 violent crimes and 30 property crimes in 2018, resulting in crime rates that were less than 14% of national levels in each respective category.
Rhode Island’s second safest community, the Providence County town of Scituate, is not far behind. Similar in size to #1 Glocester, Scituate logged just 11 more total crimes for marginally higher, yet equally impressive rates of violent and property crime.
#3 Bristol is the first municipality on the list to record a number of violent crimes in the double digits in 2018 (it had 10). However, due to its larger size, Bristol’s violent crime rate was actually lower than those of the communities in the #1 and #2 spots. Bristol’s slightly higher property crime rate keeps it out of the top spot, yet is still less than 20% of the national rate.
Rhode Island’s 2nd oldest municipality, Portsmouth, continues the state’s safety streak, earning the #4 spot on the list. Portsmouth’s 0.4 per 1,000 violent crime rate is actually lower than all preceding entries, yet slides down the ranking by averaging 1.46 more property crime offenses than #1 Glocester.
Closing out the list of Rhode Island’s 5 safest cities is Narragansett, an oceanside community that doubles its population during the summer months. Narragansett achieved a remarkable violent crime rate of 0.52 per 1,000, although the town has a slightly higher rate of property crime relative to others on the list, perhaps owing to its status as a popular tourist destination.
Rhode Island’s Safest Cities
RI City Population Violent
crimeProperty
crimeLaw enforcement
employeesTotal crimes Crime rate per 1,000 Violent crimes per 1,000 Property crimes per 1,000 Law enforcement per 1,000
1 Glocester 10158 5 30 20 35 3.45 0.49 2.95 1.97
2 Scituate 10617 8 38 28 46 4.33 0.75 3.58 2.64
3 Bristol 22131 10 89 47 99 4.47 0.45 4.02 2.12
4 Portsmouth 17474 7 77 38 84 4.81 0.40 4.41 2.17
5 Narragansett 15448 8 123 52 131 8.48 0.52 7.96 3.37
6 South Kingstown 30816 16 203 70 219 7.11 0.52 6.59 2.27
7 Burrillville 16781 19 97 31 116 6.91 1.13 5.78 1.85
8 Barrington 16112 8 113 31 121 7.51 0.50 7.01 1.92
9 East Greenwich 13051 10 115 40 125 9.58 0.77 8.81 3.06
10 North Kingstown 26101 10 231 60 241 9.23 0.38 8.85 2.30
11 Smithfield 21746 21 189 54 210 9.66 0.97 8.69 2.48
12 North Providence 32475 38 316 83 354 10.90 1.17 9.73 2.56
13 Tiverton 15835 16 167 41 183 11.56 1.01 10.55 2.59
14 Cumberland 35018 23 304 54 327 9.34 0.66 8.68 1.54
15 Warren 10393 18 114 29 132 12.70 1.73 10.97 2.79
16 East Providence 47526 50 515 111 565 11.89 1.05 10.84 2.34
17 Johnston 29317 40 344 77 384 13.10 1.36 11.73 2.63
18 Westerly 22537 17 288 59 305 13.53 0.75 12.78 2.62
19 Middletown 16030 13 209 42 222 13.85 0.81 13.04 2.62
20 West Warwick 28464 65 306 60 371 13.03 2.28 10.75 2.11
21 Coventry 34814 35 452 72 487 13.99 1.01 12.98 2.07
22 Cranston 81059 118 1140 180 1258 15.52 1.46 14.06 2.22
23 Warwick 80380 73 1372 207 1445 17.98 0.91 17.07 2.58
24 Central Falls 19293 83 293 44 376 19.49 4.30 15.19 2.28
25 Lincoln 21900 17 386 43 403 18.40 0.78 17.63 1.96
26 Newport 24863 85 600 98 685 27.55 3.42 24.13 3.94
27 North Smithfield 12469 13 261 27 274 21.97 1.04 20.93 2.17
28 Pawtucket 71892 321 1882 171 2203 30.64 4.47 26.18 2.38
29 Providence 180169 819 5679 505 6498 36.07 4.55 31.52 2.80
Methodology
To identify the safest cities, we reviewed the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. We eliminated any cities that failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI and cities with populations under 10,000. This left 3,381 cities (out of a total of 9,251).
There are two broad classifications of crimes: violent crimes and non-violent crimes. According to the FBI, “Violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force. Property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims. ”
We computed the total number of crimes reported by each city by adding violent crimes and property crimes. We then created a crime rate as the number of crimes per 1,000 population. Then we transformed the total crime rate variable so that the skewness was reduced and normalized.
Data from 2,831 law enforcement agencies was then collected to determine police adequacy (TotalCrimes / Number of police employees). We consider that the smaller the police adequacy statistic is, the safer the city is. This variable was also transformed and normalized.
Finally, the two variables were combined to create a safety score for each city.
