US Counties With the Highest Safety Scores
2,086 US counties ranked by safety score, from highest to lowest. First are Arlington County, VA (1.4), Loudoun County, VA (1.39) and Madison County, ID (1.38). The middle one of the 2,086 has -0.186.
What this measures
Deaths from violence and injury (guns, crashes and overdoses), flipped so higher is safer. Homicide, suicide, drunk-driving and total injury deaths are left out, since they would count the same deaths twice. Gun deaths already include most homicides and suicides, and injury deaths include all four. Source: .
A standard deviation is a typical gap between places.
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.
| Rank | State | standard deviations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | 0.788 |
| 2 | Washington | 0.756 |
| 3 | Minnesota | 0.747 |
| 4 | California | 0.68 |
| 5 | Oregon | 0.628 |
| 6 | Utah | 0.609 |
| 7 | New Jersey | 0.577 |
| 8 | Rhode Island | 0.536 |
| 9 | New York | 0.423 |
| 10 | Iowa | 0.372 |
| 11 | Connecticut | 0.277 |
| 12 | Texas | 0.26 |
| 13 | Virginia | 0.188 |
| 14 | Michigan | 0.18 |
| 15 | Maryland | 0.179 |
| 16 | Illinois | 0.165 |
| 17 | Massachusetts | 0.153 |
| 18 | Delaware | 0.0356 |
| 19 | Colorado | 0.0342 |
| 20 | Vermont | 0.0253 |
| 21 | Nevada | -0.00638 |
| 22 | North Carolina | -0.0217 |
| 23 | Wisconsin | -0.0461 |
| 24 | Georgia | -0.0835 |
| 25 | Florida | -0.104 |
| 26 | Kansas | -0.188 |
| 27 | Arizona | -0.211 |
| 28 | Pennsylvania | -0.347 |
| 29 | Idaho | -0.356 |
| 30 | Indiana | -0.392 |
| 31 | Maine | -0.471 |
| 32 | Ohio | -0.473 |
| 33 | District of Columbia | -0.474 |
| 34 | Nebraska | -0.538 |
| 35 | North Dakota | -0.558 |
| 36 | South Carolina | -0.563 |
| 37 | New Mexico | -0.627 |
| 38 | Oklahoma | -0.735 |
| 39 | Alaska | -0.736 |
| 40 | Alabama | -0.771 |
| 41 | Arkansas | -0.779 |
| 42 | Tennessee | -0.912 |
| 43 | Louisiana | -0.999 |
| 44 | Wyoming | -1.13 |
| 45 | New Hampshire | -1.16 |
| 46 | South Dakota | -1.23 |
| 47 | Montana | -1.23 |
| 48 | Missouri | -1.37 |
| 49 | West Virginia | -1.48 |
| 50 | Kentucky | -1.52 |
| 51 | Mississippi | -1.82 |
More on safety score
- US Counties With the Lowest Safety Scores
- Safety score 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.