New Hampshire Has Lowest Crime Rate in Nation
By Riley Yates
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10, 2002–New Hampshire has the least crime per capita in the nation, its already low rate falling 4.5 percent last year, according to a study that the FBI made public this week.
Crime rates in New Hampshire were about 45 percent lower than the national average. About 2,321 crimes were committed in 2001 per 100,000 New Hampshire inhabitants, compared to a national average of about 4,160 per 100,000, the study said.
In violent crime, New Hampshire’s rate also fell, going down 3 percent, keeping New Hampshire among the five lowest states in that category. For both violent and total crime rates, the Granite State bucked a national trend that saw small increases in those categories.
Ted Kirkpatrick, the director of the University of New Hampshire’s Justiceworks, an applied research center on crime and criminal justice, credited the “connectivity” of New Hampshire communities as a key factor in the state’s current and historically low crime rates.
New Hampshire has remained a relatively stable community in the past decade, Fitzpatrick said, with its population growth and demographic change remaining smaller than those of its neighbors.
The result is that most people in the state are emotionally and financially tied to where they live. “The more connected people are to their neighborhoods,” Fitzpatrick said, “the less invasive is crime.”
Kirkpatrick said other factors also played a role in the state’s low crime rate. Part of the reason probably lies in New England’s regional attitude, he said, adding that unlike in the South, there is no “culture of violence” stemming from the legacy of slavery and segregation.
Relatively high income levels, as well as low unemployment rates, also contribute, Kirkpatrick said.
Murray Straus, a UNH professor of sociology, said that despite the state’s economic stability, crime rates will rise in the next few years. “We’re certainly very likely to experience them also,” he said.
In general, New Hampshire lags behind national trends but does not buck them altogether, Straus explained. With unemployment and population growing in the past few years – even if less than in other states – a rise in crime necessarily follows, he said.
Cities on the southeastern coast such as Somersworth, Portsmouth and Hampton may already show population growth’s impact on crime rates, Fitzpatrick said. They had the highest crime rates of New Hampshire cities, probably because of their recent population boom, he said.
“There’s more change that’s taking place (there),” he said. “With growth comes crime. You have more opportunity for [it], at very least.”
Hanover had the lowest overall crime rate among cities in the state in 2001, one-fourth the rate in Lebanon, which had the highest.
Kirkpatrick said Hanover’s low crime rate reflects the community’s homogeneity and constantly low unemployment. “It’s a historically bucolic, Norman Rockwell town. It’s as close to mainstream America as you can get,” he said.
The only possible area of concern for New Hampshire in the FBI report was its high number of reported rapes, the state ranking 18thworst in the nation in that category.
But analysts said they were unsure whether this reflected a tendency toward increased willingness on the part of victims to report to police that they had been raped, or whether the crime actually had been committed more often.
“Are we doing well or not so well?” Nicole Tower, the director of the YWCA crisis service in Manchester, said. “This is a difficult question to answer.”
Tower said she guessed the high number of rape reports was probably a positive statistic, however. “Certainly New Hampshire has well-written (rape) laws,” she said. “I think this state is moving forward. It is a state that is aware.”
Published in The Manchester Union Leader, in New Hampshire.
