ILLINOIS (NEXSTAR) — When you’re thinking about moving to a new city, safety is probably one of the main factors you take into consideration. If Illinois is one of your top states to live in, you are in luck.
Two Illinois cities were highlighted as being among the safest U.S. cities to live in, according to a recent analysis. One of those cities was ranked as the safest city in the nation.
Using FBI data from 2021, MoneyGeek ranked the safest U.S. cities based on violent crime and property crime statistics. The crime rates were calculated per 100,000 people to compare cities across sizes.
Then, MoneyGeek ranked cities by the calculated “cost of crime,” which they define as the economic losses attributed to crime and its cost to society. Examples of such costs include the loss of property from theft, the cost of incarcerating people, and even the increased cost of home or auto insurance for individuals living in dangerous areas.
According to the study, Naperville was ranked as the safest city in America, while Joliet was ranked the eighth-safest city in the country. Naperville had a relatively low crime cost per capita of $156, while Joliet had a $247 crime cost per capita.
MoneyGeek analyzed crime data for 263 cities, and not a single Illinois city ranked among the most dangerous.
While the data paints these Illinois cities in a bright light, it’s important to remember that statistics cannot tell the whole story.
“We live in an unequal society,” Geoffrey T. Dancy, an associate professor of political science at Tulane University, told MoneyGeek. “One often overlooked indicator of that inequality is who gets to engage in the politics of safety. Those who are objectively safe often fear crime and act on it in the counterproductive policies they support. Those who are actually victimized by crime and terrorized by gun violence pay the price and are rarely heard.”
Those interested in the full study can check out the results by clicking here.