New Hampshire is one of the safest states in America, logging the 3rd lowest violent crime rate and the lowest property crime rate in the nation. The Granite State’s reputation for safety is reflected in the low crime rates of its 5 safest cities.
Durham is the safest municipality in New Hampshire. The Strafford County town has a history of settlement dating back to the mid 17th Century, and is home to the University of New Hampshire. Durham’s violent crime rate of 0.65 per 1,000 is remarkable for a town that houses a large public university.
The 2nd safest community in New Hampshire is Raymond, a peaceful town of 10.4K in Rockingham County. Only 10 violent crimes were reported in Raymond in 2018.
Merrimack, a town in Hillsborough County named after a Native American term for sturgeon, is 3rd in the ranking of New Hampshire’s safest communities. Despite being over twice as large as the prior two entries on the list, Merrimack has even less violent crime, recording a mere 6 offenses in 2018.
#4 Milford continues New Hampshire’s streak of safe towns, logging under 10 violent crimes and 100 property crimes in 2018. Not far behind is #5 Londonderry, a town of over 26,000 that logged marginally higher crime rates than preceding entries, though they are still considerably less-than-half of national levels.
New Hampshire’s Safest Cities
NH 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 Durham 16813 11 53 23 64 3.81 0.65 3.15 1.37
2 Raymond 10485 10 54 24 64 6.10 0.95 5.15 2.29
3 Merrimack 25683 6 148 52 154 6.00 0.23 5.76 2.02
4 Milford 15497 8 94 31 102 6.58 0.52 6.07 2.00
5 Londonderry 26627 39 194 76 233 8.75 1.46 7.29 2.85
6 Pelham 13795 13 96 30 109 7.90 0.94 6.96 2.17
7 Hanover 11519 8 96 31 104 9.03 0.69 8.33 2.69
8 Goffstown 17978 24 134 45 158 8.79 1.33 7.45 2.50
9 Exeter 15305 15 114 35 129 8.43 0.98 7.45 2.29
10 Bedford 22640 12 190 49 202 8.92 0.53 8.39 2.16
11 Hudson 25232 25 246 65 271 10.74 0.99 9.75 2.58
12 Berlin 10263 16 103 31 119 11.60 1.56 10.04 3.02
13 Hampton 15679 34 159 45 193 12.31 2.17 10.14 2.87
14 Derry 33724 45 315 67 360 10.67 1.33 9.34 1.99
15 Dover 31600 35 353 72 388 12.28 1.11 11.17 2.28
16 Portsmouth 22038 36 341 90 377 17.11 1.63 15.47 4.08
17 Nashua 88596 124 1144 234 1268 14.31 1.40 12.91 2.64
18 Amherst 11232 6 127 19 133 11.84 0.53 11.31 1.69
19 Hooksett 14283 18 207 39 225 15.75 1.26 14.49 2.73
20 Lebanon 13578 22 236 46 258 19.00 1.62 17.38 3.39
21 Salem 29297 30 475 80 505 17.24 1.02 16.21 2.73
22 Conway 10153 18 204 32 222 21.87 1.77 20.09 3.15
23 Concord 43071 103 849 94 952 22.10 2.39 19.71 2.18
24 Claremont 12930 58 247 28 305 23.59 4.49 19.10 2.17
25 Keene 22870 46 560 53 606 26.50 2.01 24.49 2.32
26 Somersworth 11920 30 319 32 349 29.28 2.52 26.76 2.68
27 Manchester 111422 661 2878 279 3539 31.76 5.93 25.83 2.50
28 Laconia 16658 40 554 49 594 35.66 2.40 33.26 2.94
29 Rochester 30947 117 902 63 1019 32.93 3.78 29.15 2.04
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.
