Which counties in the is have the most crime? Is it a difference between red and blue states?
Executive summary
National and city-level data show crime has generally fallen in recent years, with important local spikes, but the available reporting does not provide a definitive ranked list of U.S. counties with the “most crime”; researchers and federal agencies warn against simplistic county or city rankings because of reporting differences and contextual variables [1] [2] [3]. Analyses that do exist show a persistent pattern: higher murder rates across so-called red states versus blue states on average, but that pattern frays at the local level where big-city concentrations and socioeconomic factors often drive the highest rates [4] [5].
1. What the data actually say about geography and crime
Federal compilations and major reporters document that violent crime and property crime trends vary by place and year: the FBI published comprehensive 2024 offense data covering millions of incidents [1], USAFacts noted record-low national crime in 2024 with notable state-level reversals like Hawaii’s large 2024 surge [6], and outlets such as The Atlantic and The Washington Post have documented an overall decline into 2025–26 even as particular cities experienced upticks [7] [8]. Those same sources and aggregators caution that changes can be rapid and geographically concentrated, meaning national headlines about “most crime” rarely capture on-the-ground nuance [1] [2].
2. Counties vs. cities vs. states — why rankings mislead
The FBI and data journalists explicitly discourage treating UCR counts as simple “rankings” because reporting participation, population density, urbanization, and local reporting practices skew comparisons; the DW fact-check and FBI guidance both emphasize these limits and the complex mix of socioeconomic drivers behind crime, not merely political labels [3] [2] [1]. Public lists that aim to name the “most dangerous” places often rely on per‑capita rates without fully controlling for these variables, so a county containing a large city may appear at the top even though much of the violence is concentrated in a handful of neighborhoods [2] [3].
3. The red/blue debate: clear averages, messy local reality
Policy groups and think tanks reach different conclusions depending on methods: Third Way’s analysis finds that murder rates have been higher in red states than blue states every year this century and reports a persistent red‑state “murder gap” in recent years [4], while Manhattan Institute writers and others stress that the relationship flips at local scales — many red‑state problems are concentrated in blue cities and county-level comparisons can run the other way [5]. Independent investigations of mayoral partisanship across hundreds of cities found little effect of a mayor’s party on crime trends, underscoring that party labels alone don’t explain local outcomes [3].
4. Where the highest crime burdens are observed in reporting
Contemporary reporting highlights certain city and metro areas repeatedly: outlets flagged Baltimore as among the deadliest large cities and noted high burglary rates in Seattle in 2025 [9], while other coverage called out increases in places such as Omaha and Atlanta amid broader national declines [10]. But none of the supplied sources offers a definitive, verified list of the “most crime” counties nationwide; instead the pattern in the reporting is that high crime burdens concentrate in specific urban counties and in several Southern states with elevated murder rates [9] [4] [10].
5. Bottom line and what’s missing
The best-supported claims in the available reporting are: crime has broadly declined in recent years even as localized surges occur [7] [8], red states show higher average murder rates in some reputable analyses [4], and simple red-versus-blue narratives are weakened by local complexity and data limits [5] [3]. The supplied sources do not include a validated, up-to-date ranking of counties by crime, so any definitive county list would require querying FBI or CDC data at the county level and adjusting for reporting and demographic differences — a step beyond the current coverage [1] [2].