America by Population Group

Images below are via Radical Cartography (h/t Foseti) Similar US maps available for percent Native American and percent Pacific Islander

A higher percent European population is generally seen in lower crime and higher income regions.

A higher percentage of persons of African descent is generally seen in high crime, low income regions. Blacks tend to concentrate in cities.

The "hispanic" category is misleading and confused. For US populations, "hispanic" typically refers to a range of mestizo populations from Mexico and Central America. It can also refer to Cuban immigrants, Puerto Rican immigrants, Europeans with Spanish names or to blacks with Spanish sounding names.

As one would expect with such a confused category, crime and poverty rates associated with a high "hispanic" percentage are mixed.

As with the hispanic category, the "Asian" category can refer to a wide range of population groups, from East Asians to South Asians to Southeast Asians, etc. In general, areas with higher "Asian" population percentages tend to have less crime and higher income.

Murder Rate per 100,000 in Large Cities

Trulia Crime MapsThe above map has a link to the Trulia.com crime map website, which will provide you with an incredible amount of "neighborhood-level" detail for crime in whichever city you select. Very useful for planning activities, and neighborhoods to avoid.

Crime rates in the US tend to be higher in cities -- particularly in cities with high black populations and high mestizo populations, with low European and Asian populations.

This map of Chicago gives an idea of the level of segregation one can find within US cities, over 40 years after affirmative action and desegregation policies were put in place. In high black percentage areas and neighborhoods within cities, crime and poverty rates tend to be significantly higher than in areas where black population percentages are lower. That simple fact goes a long way toward explaining the voluntary segregation one finds -- those who can move away from the crime and poverty tend to do so.

If black crime were eliminated from US crime statistics, violent crime rates in the US would be comparable to those in the most peaceful of European states.

More information, taken from official US government crime statistics, on racial disparities in US crime:

• Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.
• When blacks commit crimes of violence, they are nearly three times more likely than non-blacks to use a gun, and more than twice as likely to use a knife.
• Hispanics commit violent crimes at roughly three times the white rate, and Asians commit violent crimes at about one quarter the white rate.
• The single best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of the population that is black and Hispanic.

_Color of Crime

Download full PDF report: Color of Crime

America is a complex mix of peoples, varying widely by geography and by sub-regions within particular regions and cities. Rates of poverty, crime, corruption etc. vary widely across the regions of the US. Some of these differences can be associated with differences in racial and cultural compositions of these different regions and sub-regions.

If you are planning a visit to the US, please take these differences into account in your planning, for your own safety. If you are planning to re-locate to the US, or are re-locating from one area within to the US to another, please consider the issues presented here, for your own and your families' sakes.

Of course, it could be a lot worse. We could be talking about South Africa:

With 50 murders and 40 ‘culpible homicides’ a day, South Africa has the world’s highest daily violent-death rates.


By comparison, the United States’ city of New Orleans, which holds the dubious distinction of being the ‘murder capitol of the USA,’ records 80 murders A YEAR. _Source

More: The global crime rate map (Economist via Mises Institute) and Wikipedia crime rate table below, may provide a foundation for understanding patterns of crime within different populations within the US:

[hide]Country	Sources	2010
Honduras	[7][8]	78
El Salvador	[7][8]	66
Jamaica	[7]	52
Venezuela	[9]	48
Belize	[7][8][10]	42
Guatemala	[7][8]	41
Colombia	[11]	38
Saint Kitts and Nevis	[7]	38
Trinidad and Tobago	[12][13]	37
South Africa	[14]	32
Bahamas	[7]	28
Brazil	[15]	25
Dominican Republic	[7]	25
Saint Lucia	[7]	25
Dominica	[7]	22
Panama	[7][8]	22
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	[7]	22
Ecuador	[7]	18
Guyana	[7]	18
Mexico	[16]	18
Nicaragua	[7][8]	13
Russia	[17]	13
Grenada	[7]	12
Paraguay	[7]	12
Barbados	[7]	11
Costa Rica	[7][8]	11
Bolivia	[7]	8.9
Moldova	[7]	7.4
Haiti	[7]	6.9
Antigua and Barbuda	[7]	6.8
Estonia	[18]	6.3
Uruguay	[7]	6.1
Thailand	[7]	5.3
United States	[19]	4.8

The Wikipedia table above lists intentional homicides per 100,000 population. It is hampered by the fact that many of the third world nations of the world are unable to maintain accurate statistics of this nature, and tend to understate their own murder and homicide rates as an inadvertent routine. Leave it as an exercise to guess which nations that should be listed prominently near the top, are not.