With per capita violent and property crime rates above national levels according to the latest FBI crime data, South Carolina cannot claim to be one of the safest cities in the country. Nevertheless, the Palmetto State is home to plenty of safe communities boasting low crime levels and well-staffed police forces.
Aiken tops the list of South Carolina’s safest cities. Despite a higher-than-national average violent crime rate, the city, which was named “The Best Small Town of the South” by Southern Living, makes up for it with a very low property crime rate of 8.26 per 1,000 and a high ratio of law enforcement to residents of 3.82 per 1,000.
The second safest city in South Carolina is Blufftown, a fast-growing Lowcountry community of 22.5K in Beaufort County. Blufftown excels in many areas, and safety is one of them: the city’s 2.21 per 1,000 violent crime rate is just 45% of the statewide rate.
Mount Pleasant is 3rd in the ranking of South Carolina’s safest cities. The large Charleston County community earned some of the lowest crime rates in the state, despite a large population of nearly 90,000.
4th in the ranking is Fort Mill, a suburb of Charlotte with the perfect balance of low crime rates and a law enforcement-to-residents ratio above 3 per 1,000. Fort Mill is followed by Port Royal (#5), a city on Port Royal Island that boasts the lowest violent crime rate of any city in South Carolina’s top 5.
South Carolina’s Safest Cities
SC City Population Violent
crimeProperty
crimeLaw enforcement
employeesTotal crimes Crime rate per 1,000 Violent crimes per 1,000 Property crimes per 1,000 Law enforcement per 1,000
1 Aiken 30881 120 255 118 375 12.14 3.89 8.26 3.82
2 Bluffton 22578 50 252 52 302 13.38 2.21 11.16 2.30
3 Mount Pleasant 89733 138 1221 183 1359 15.14 1.54 13.61 2.04
4 Fort Mill 18618 31 328 56 359 19.28 1.67 17.62 3.01
5 Port Royal 13227 16 198 24 214 16.18 1.21 14.97 1.81
6 Mauldin 25418 42 439 63 481 18.92 1.65 17.27 2.48
7 Hanahan 26060 60 346 42 406 15.58 2.30 13.28 1.61
8 Charleston 137092 415 2848 514 3263 23.80 3.03 20.77 3.75
9 Tega Cay 10763 7 219 28 226 21.00 0.65 20.35 2.60
10 Goose Creek 43545 105 955 93 1060 24.34 2.41 21.93 2.14
11 Lexington 21680 79 662 60 741 34.18 3.64 30.54 2.77
12 North Augusta 23161 43 893 89 936 40.41 1.86 38.56 3.84
13 Simpsonville 22641 41 694 52 735 32.46 1.81 30.65 2.30
14 North Myrtle Beach 16688 105 975 150 1080 64.72 6.29 58.43 8.99
15 Summerville 51565 140 1740 133 1880 36.46 2.72 33.74 2.58
16 Cayce 14238 112 661 82 773 54.29 7.87 46.43 5.76
17 Beaufort 13920 81 581 57 662 47.56 5.82 41.74 4.09
18 Greenville 69608 368 2810 244 3178 45.66 5.29 40.37 3.51
19 Moncks Corner 11484 68 409 33 477 41.54 5.92 35.61 2.87
20 Greer 31722 134 1144 79 1278 40.29 4.22 36.06 2.49
21 Rock Hill 74049 361 2794 192 3155 42.61 4.88 37.73 2.59
22 Orangeburg 12820 170 750 91 920 71.76 13.26 58.50 7.10
23 Irmo 12413 64 447 27 511 41.17 5.16 36.01 2.18
24 Conway 24784 141 960 59 1101 44.42 5.69 38.73 2.38
25 Sumter 39898 366 1873 149 2239 56.12 9.17 46.94 3.73
26 Columbia 133540 986 6753 454 7739 57.95 7.38 50.57 3.40
27 Newberry 10293 91 457 28 548 53.24 8.84 44.40 2.72
28 North Charleston 112840 1039 6567 389 7606 67.41 9.21 58.20 3.45
29 Myrtle Beach 33687 473 3553 326 4026 119.51 14.04 105.47 9.68
30 Easley 21203 105 1254 57 1359 64.09 4.95 59.14 2.69
31 Forest Acres 10375 50 654 31 704 67.86 4.82 63.04 2.99
32 Gaffney 12816 104 908 45 1012 78.96 8.11 70.85 3.51
33 West Columbia 17368 181 1292 60 1473 84.81 10.42 74.39 3.45
34 Florence 37819 362 2462 101 2824 74.67 9.57 65.10 2.67
35 Greenwood 23265 392 1594 57 1986 85.36 16.85 68.51 2.45
Methodology
To identify the safest cities, we reviewed the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. We eliminated any cities that failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI and cities with populations under 10,000. This left 3,381 cities (out of a total of 9,251).
There are two broad classifications of crimes: violent crimes and non-violent crimes. According to the FBI, “Violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force. Property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims. ”
We computed the total number of crimes reported by each city by adding violent crimes and property crimes. We then created a crime rate as the number of crimes per 1,000 population. Then we transformed the total crime rate variable so that the skewness was reduced and normalized.
Data from 2,831 law enforcement agencies was then collected to determine police adequacy (TotalCrimes / Number of police employees). We consider that the smaller the police adequacy statistic is, the safer the city is. This variable was also transformed and normalized.
Finally, the two variables were combined to create a safety score for each city.
