Across the board, Virginia is one of the safest states in the U.S.: the latest FBI crime data shows that the state had the nation’s 13th lowest property crime rate and 4th lowest violent crime rate in 2018, and its major cities all boasted violent crime rates below the national average.
Fittingly, Virginia’s safest cities have crime rates on par with the safest cities in the United States. Let’s take a closer look at Old Dominion’s five best performing cities.
Purcellville, a small town of just over 10,000 in Loudoun County, is the safest community in Virginia. The town recorded just 59 total crimes in 2018 for a total crime rate of 5.85 per 1,000.
Coming in #2 is Hampton, a large city of nearly 134K that boasts very low crime rates for a city its size. While its 2.36 per 1K rate of violent crime isn’t among the lowest in the state, Hampton makes up for it with its high 2.77 per 1,000 ratio of law enforcement personnel to residents.
The third safest city in Virginia is Manassas Park, a small city in Prince William County to the south of Bull Run, a river immortalized in the name of two famous Civil War battles. Many more were harmed during those battles than is usual in Manassas Park, which posted a violent crime rate of 1.48 per 1,000 in 2018,or less than half of the nationwide average.
#4 Vienna was also the site of an early Civil War skirmish, yet is considerably more peaceful in present times, with the lowest violent crime rate of any Virginia city, at 0.48 per 1K. The city’s property crime levels–while low by national standards–are just high enough to keep Vienna out of the spot of Virginia’s safest city.
Closing out the list of Virginia’s five safest cities is Blacksburg, a prosperous community that is home to Virginia Tech, a renowned public, land-grant, research university. Blacksburg is one-third of one of the fastest growing metropolitan statistical areas in the country (the Blacksburg-Christianburg-Radford MSA), with low crime being one of the main draws for the many moving into the area.
Virginia’s Safest Cities
VA 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 Purcellville 10090 13 46 17 59 5.85 1.29 4.56 1.68
2 Hampton 133965 316 743 371 1059 7.91 2.36 5.55 2.77
3 Manassas Park 16882 25 111 38 136 8.06 1.48 6.58 2.25
4 Vienna 16660 8 149 51 157 9.42 0.48 8.94 3.06
5 Blacksburg 44853 41 322 76 363 8.09 0.91 7.18 1.69
6 Poquoson 12011 19 101 24 120 9.99 1.58 8.41 2.00
7 Herndon 24697 32 259 67 291 11.78 1.30 10.49 2.71
8 Falls Church 14884 12 176 40 188 12.63 0.81 11.82 2.69
9 Fairfax City 24259 24 405 81 429 17.68 0.99 16.69 3.34
10 Leesburg 56030 100 626 95 726 12.96 1.78 11.17 1.70
11 Radford 17797 52 237 47 289 16.24 2.92 13.32 2.64
12 Culpeper 18671 31 296 54 327 17.51 1.66 15.85 2.89
13 Manassas 41888 105 636 118 741 17.69 2.51 15.18 2.82
14 Alexandria 162588 260 2482 408 2742 16.86 1.60 15.27 2.51
15 Front Royal 15356 33 279 51 312 20.32 2.15 18.17 3.32
16 Salem 25942 24 503 84 527 20.31 0.93 19.39 3.24
17 Harrisonburg 54869 110 834 121 944 17.20 2.00 15.20 2.21
18 Virginia Beach 451001 528 7772 953 8300 18.40 1.17 17.23 2.11
19 Waynesboro 22470 50 477 58 527 23.45 2.23 21.23 2.58
20 Christiansburg 22444 43 532 66 575 25.62 1.92 23.70 2.94
21 Lynchburg 81603 275 1627 188 1902 23.31 3.37 19.94 2.30
22 Hopewell 22562 99 553 79 652 28.90 4.39 24.51 3.50
23 Bristol 16613 42 513 72 555 33.41 2.53 30.88 4.33
24 Charlottesville 48585 174 1161 140 1335 27.48 3.58 23.90 2.88
25 Staunton 24584 46 608 63 654 26.60 1.87 24.73 2.56
26 Chesapeake 242310 979 5191 519 6170 25.46 4.04 21.42 2.14
27 Suffolk 90817 251 2340 231 2591 28.53 2.76 25.77 2.54
28 Newport News 178734 942 5148 567 6090 34.07 5.27 28.80 3.17
29 Petersburg 31568 224 916 111 1140 36.11 7.10 29.02 3.52
30 Martinsville 13025 54 471 50 525 40.31 4.15 36.16 3.84
31 Fredericksburg 28919 108 999 94 1107 38.28 3.73 34.54 3.25
32 Norfolk 244347 1134 8463 801 9597 39.28 4.64 34.64 3.28
33 Richmond 229927 1190 8807 841 9997 43.48 5.18 38.30 3.66
34 Colonial Heights 17857 50 676 56 726 40.66 2.80 37.86 3.14
35 Danville 40781 216 1632 134 1848 45.32 5.30 40.02 3.29
36 Roanoke 100042 427 4434 309 4861 48.59 4.27 44.32 3.09
37 Portsmouth 94218 749 4977 350 5726 60.77 7.95 52.82 3.71
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.
