The homicide rate by state ranges from 2.3 per 100,000 residents in New Hampshire to 21.4 in Mississippi, based on the CDC’s most recent finalized age-adjusted figures from 2023.1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homicide Mortality The District of Columbia sits higher still at 27.2. That roughly tenfold gap between the safest and most dangerous states does more to describe the country than any national average can.
States With the Highest Homicide Rates
Southern states dominate the top of the rankings, and that pattern has held for decades. The ten states plus the District of Columbia with the highest age-adjusted homicide rates per 100,000 residents in 2023:1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homicide Mortality
- District of Columbia: 27.2
- Mississippi: 21.4
- Louisiana: 16.4
- New Mexico: 14.9
- Alabama: 14.4
- South Carolina: 10.8
- Tennessee: 10.8
- Missouri: 10.2
- Alaska: 10.1
- Georgia: 9.8
- Maryland: 9.8
Mississippi’s rate is more than three times the national figure, and Louisiana has ranked among the five most dangerous states for most of the past two decades. New Mexico and Alaska are geographic outliers on this list, driven partly by vast rural areas with limited law enforcement access and high rates of interpersonal violence in isolated communities.
States With the Lowest Homicide Rates
New England dominates the other end of the spectrum. The ten states with the lowest homicide rates per 100,000 in 2023:1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homicide Mortality
- New Hampshire: 2.3
- Idaho: 2.5
- Massachusetts: 2.6
- Utah: 2.9
- Rhode Island: 3.2
- New Jersey: 3.3
- Maine: 3.7
- Connecticut: 3.7
- New York: 3.8
- North Dakota: 3.9
Several of these states recorded fewer than 100 total homicides for the entire year. New Hampshire had 18, Maine had 34, and Rhode Island had 20.1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homicide Mortality New York’s position often surprises people, but its rate reflects the entire state, not just New York City, and most of upstate New York has extremely low crime.
The National Trend Behind These Numbers
The national picture has shifted significantly. After a sharp spike during 2020 and 2021, the country has seen a sustained and historically steep decline. The FBI reported that murder and non-negligent manslaughter dropped 14.9% between 2023 and 2024 alone.2Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI Releases 2024 Reported Crimes in the Nation Statistics Preliminary analysis of 2025 data from 40 large cities suggests the decline continued, with homicides dropping roughly another 21% from 2024 levels. If those numbers hold when the FBI publishes full national data, the 2025 rate may fall to around 4.0 per 100,000, which would be the lowest recorded in over a century.
For perspective, the rate was roughly 6.8 per 100,000 as recently as 2022. The speed of the reversal has caught even criminologists off guard, and no single explanation accounts for it. Analysts point to a combination of post-pandemic stabilization, targeted violence-intervention programs, and improved law enforcement technology. When 2024 and 2025 finalized state figures are published, expect most of the states ranked above to show meaningfully lower numbers than their 2023 baselines.
What the Rate Actually Counts
The math is straightforward: divide the number of homicides in a state by its total population, then multiply by 100,000.3National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. LEAIC Learning Guide – Using the LEAIC Without that per capita adjustment, California would always look more dangerous than Wyoming simply because it has 65 times more people.
For these statistics, “homicide” means murder and non-negligent manslaughter only. The FBI’s reporting framework specifically excludes deaths from negligence, suicide, accidents, and justifiable homicides like lawful self-defense.4Federal Bureau of Investigation. Offense Definitions Counting only intentional criminal killings isolates the kind of violence that law enforcement and policymakers can target.
One subtlety matters when comparing states. The CDC uses age-adjusted rates, which account for differences in states’ age distributions. Since younger populations experience higher homicide rates, age adjustment prevents a state with a disproportionately young population from appearing artificially more dangerous when the underlying risk is similar. The FBI’s raw per-capita rates don’t include this adjustment, which is one reason CDC and FBI figures for the same state and year may differ slightly.
Why State Averages Can Mislead
A single state-level number hides enormous variation within that state’s borders. Homicide clusters in specific urban neighborhoods, and a handful of high-crime areas can drag up the rate for an entire state where most communities see almost no violence. This is where most misunderstandings about “dangerous states” originate.
A state ranking in the top ten nationally may contain counties with homicide rates near zero alongside a city where certain neighborhoods see violence at rates comparable to conflict zones. The reverse also holds. Low-ranking states like New Hampshire or Idaho are not homogeneous, and individual cities occasionally spike in ways that don’t register at the state level because the surrounding population dilutes them.
Researchers have noted that tourist and downtown districts in high-crime cities frequently experience violent crime rates 40 to 70% lower than the citywide figures, which means even “dangerous city” labels deserve scrutiny block by block. If you’re evaluating safety for a move or visit, county-level and neighborhood-level data are far more useful than any state ranking.
Why the CDC and FBI Numbers Don’t Match
Two separate federal agencies track homicide, and they don’t always agree.
The FBI collects crime data through its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which recently transitioned to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Under NIBRS, participating police departments report detailed information about each criminal event, including weapon type, victim-offender relationship, and location.5Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crime/Law Enforcement Stats (Uniform Crime Reporting Program) The transition is not yet complete. As of late 2024, about 76% of law enforcement agencies covering roughly 87% of the U.S. population report through NIBRS.6Congress.gov. Federal Support for Law Enforcement Agencies Transition to the National Incident-Based Reporting System
The CDC tracks homicides through its National Vital Statistics System, which relies on death certificates and medical examiner reports rather than police records.7Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mortality Data Because every death generates a death certificate regardless of whether the case is reported to the FBI, the CDC’s count is typically higher. Every murder is a homicide, but not every homicide qualifies as “murder” under the FBI’s narrower definition, which excludes justifiable killings.
The gap has widened. In 2023 and 2024, the FBI’s murder estimates ran at roughly 84% of the CDC’s homicide count. Part of that stems from the FBI’s estimation process: when a high-homicide jurisdiction fails to report, the FBI estimates its numbers using data from similarly sized agencies in the same state, and those estimates can miss badly. For practical purposes, the CDC numbers tend to be more complete for state-by-state comparisons, while the FBI data offers richer detail about circumstances and weapons for jurisdictions that do report.
Where to Find Detailed State and Local Data
For the broadest state-by-state comparison, the CDC’s Stats of the States page publishes age-adjusted homicide mortality rates for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, updated annually once death certificate data is finalized (currently through 2023).1Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homicide Mortality The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer offers interactive tools for examining offense details, trends over time, and agency-level reporting for jurisdictions that participate in NIBRS.8Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crime Data Explorer
For data below the state level, most state Departments of Public Safety or State Police agencies publish annual uniform crime reports. These documents typically break homicide counts down by county, city, and sometimes precinct, and include clearance rates and weapon data that federal summaries may not capture. Search your state’s law enforcement agency website for terms like “annual crime report” or “crime statistics” to find downloadable reports or interactive dashboards. County and city-level data gives a far more accurate picture of safety in a specific community than any state-level ranking can.