Disclaimer

Yes, murder rates are up in 2019, 2020 and 2021, especially in big cities. I’ll address this subcategory of violent crimes in a separate analysis.

Rural Versus Urban Area Violent Crime Rates

There are claims that rural violent crime rates now exceed urban violent crime rates. I find no conclusive evidence to support these claims.

https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-crime-rural-urban-cities.html

The US Bureau of Justice recently revised its definitions of urban, suburban and rural locations. The rural violent crime rate appears to be 20-25% lower than the urban crime rate. Note that rural property crime rates are 60% lower than urban rates.

Rural Versus Urban Violent Crime Trends

I’m not finding any consistent long-term “rural versus urban” crime rate statistics. As a substitute, I’m comparing the 15 most rural states versus the 15 most urban states based upon the “538” definition.

I’m choosing to focus on 2000-2010-2020 to simplify the analysis. Crime rates were dropping “like a rock” from 1993-2000 everywhere (see above).

The total US violent crime rate dropped by an additional 22% from 2000 to 2010. It was flat between 2010 and 2020.

15 Urban States

The 15 most “urban” states averaged 508 events/100,000 people in 2000, above the national average. This group dropped by 19% in the first decade to 413 incidents per 100K people. This subset of states continued its downward trend by 13% in the next decade, reaching 361 reported violent crimes per 100K in 2020. At 361 incidents, these 15 relatively urban states had a violent crime rate 10% below the national average of 400.

Urban 15: WA, PA, CO, TX, AZ, CT, FL, IL, MD, RI, NV, MA, CA, NJ, NY.

The greatest reductions in violent crime rates in these “urban” states occurred in Florida, Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut.

15 Rural States

The 15 most rural states had crime rates of 321, 309 and 400 versus the national averages of 510, 400 and 400. The 15 rural states in 2000 had violent crime rates more than one-third lower than the national average. By 2020, they had increased to match the national average.

Rural 15: WY, MT, SD, AK, VT, MS, ME, ND, WV, AR, IA, ID, AL, KY, NM.

Six of the 15 states had very high violent crime rate increases. North Dakota and South Dakota based upon the “fracking” boom disruptions and Vermont, Montana, Arkansas and Alaska based upon other drivers.

Summary

Despite the news media’s focus on urban homicide rates in 2019-20-21, the overall US violent crime rate continued to fall from 2000-2010 after an amazing drop from 1993-2000 and then stayed constant/flat for the next 10 years. This “flat” crime rate from 2010 to 2020 was AFTER a 40% drop in violent crime measured by the FBI stats and a 75% drop measured by the Bureau of Justice surveys of crime victims from 1993-2010.

The 15 urban states’ violent crime rates fell by 29% between 2000 and 2020. The 15 rural states’ violent crime rates INCREASED by 25% between 2000 and 2020, then roughly equaling the national average.

Violent crime rates fell by another 10% between 2010 and 2014, reaching a modern low. Unfortunately, they increased back to the 2010 level in 2020.