Illinois Has Three of the Midwest's Top 10 'Most Dangerous' Metro Areas

Illinois Has Three of the Midwest's Top 10 'Most Dangerous' Metro Areas
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Illinois is home to three of the Midwest's Top 10 most dangerous metropolitan areas, including the No. 1 most violent, according to the latest installment in Law Street Media's "Crime in America 2016″ rankings.

The legal policy and news website's analysis used 2014 violent crime data from the FBI to rank the safest and most dangerous metro areas in each region of the country.

With a violent crime rate of 767 per 100,000 people, Springfield, Ill., is the Midwest's most dangerous metro area and No. 4 overall in the U.S, according to Law Street.

More from Law Street Media's Kevin Rizzo:


The Springfield, IL metro area sits atop the list of the most dangerous metro areas in the Midwest for the second year in a row. According to the latest FBI crime statistics, which cover the 2014 calendar year, Springfield, IL had a violent crime rate of 767 per 100,000 people, the fourth highest in the country. The Wausau, WI metro area was the safest metro in the Midwest for a second straight year. In total, Wisconsin had five of the top 10 safest metro areas in the Midwest. In 2014, the Midwest region of the United States held about 21 percent of the country's population, but just 19 percent of its violent crime.

Rockford wasn't far behind. It ranks as the second most dangerous in the nation's heartland. Danville also made its way onto this year's ranking, coming in at No. 7. Illinois and Michigan were the only two states in the Midwest to have three metropolitan statistical areas appear on the Top 10 most dangerous list.

The FBI doesn't provide statistics for all 388 MSAs in the U.S., often times because data either is underreported or does not comply with the bureau's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. You can find a more detailed explanation from the FBI here, as well as why it's important to be cautious when comparing crime among metros and compiling rankings.

Here are the Top 10 most dangerous metro areas in the Midwest, according to Law Street Media.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot