US Counties With the Highest Aggravated Assault Rates

2,289 US counties ranked by aggravated assault rate, from highest to lowest. First are Crittenden County, AR (1,500), Shelby County, TN (1,463) and Orangeburg County, SC (1,274). The middle one of the 2,289 has 156.

What this measures

Aggravated assaults in the year, per 100,000 residents, from the FBI. An aggravated assault is an attack with a weapon, or one that leaves someone badly hurt. Fights without a weapon or serious injury are not counted. Agencies that report far fewer of these attacks than robberies are left out, since they did not report them in the usual way. It counts only crimes reported to police or found by them, so crimes nobody reports are missing. For a state, the figure is the FBI's estimate, which fills in for police agencies that did not report. For a county, it is only what the agencies reported, and it is shown only where agencies that reported for all 12 months serve at least 90% of the people who live there. Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program (Crime Data Explorer).

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

The 100 highest counties

Every state, highest first

Each state’s own published figure, not an average of its counties.

More on aggravated assault rate

• US Counties With the Lowest Aggravated Assault Rates
• Aggravated assault rate by US county: map by year and what it goes with

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.