Most Dangerous Cities in America 2026: FBI Data & Rankings

Ask five websites to name America’s most dangerous city, and you’ll get five different lists — but one name keeps surfacing at the top. In September 2025, The Hill’s FBI-based ranking put Memphis, Tennessee, at No. 1, with Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Albuquerque close behind, but close inspection reveals that reporting gaps, city boundaries, and the metric itself all change the winner — here’s how to read the lists without being misled.

Highest crime-rate U.S. city (FBI-based 2025 list): Memphis, Tennessee ·
Reported top tier: Memphis; Detroit; Baltimore; Kansas City, Mo.; Milwaukee; Albuquerque ·
Source date: September 12, 2025 ·
Safest-city ranking covered by Forbes: MoneyGeek, 2023 ·
25-most-dangerous-cities source: WSBT/WalletHub, June 8, 2026

Nine facts define the current rankings, and one pattern runs through all of them: the dataset and the date decide the order more than the cities themselves.

What are the top 25 U.S. cities for crime?

How is “crime rate” defined in city rankings?

• The FBI defines violent crime as murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault (Federal Bureau of Investigation).
• A crime rate is the number of offenses per 100,000 people, which lets cities of different sizes be compared on an equal footing.
• Most national rankings use the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports as the base dataset, as The Hill’s September 2025 analysis did.

That definition put the national violent-crime rate at 359.1 per 100,000 people in 2024, with 1,221,345 violent offenses recorded nationwide, per the FBI’s annual statistical volume.

Which cities appear most often in FBI-based lists?

• In The Hill’s September 12, 2025 FBI-data ranking, the reported top tier is Memphis, Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Missouri, Milwaukee, and Albuquerque.
• In the FBI Crime Data Explorer compilation from the data-aggregation site American FactBook, Alexandria, Louisiana, ranked first at 2,713.5 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2024.
• WSBT/WalletHub’s 25-most-dangerous-cities list, published June 8, 2026, repeats entries from Texas, California, Ohio, and Tennessee.

The two FBI-based lists don’t contradict each other; they measure different things. The Hill presents a city-level crime-rate ranking, while American FactBook pulls from the FBI Crime Data Explorer and applies a 25,000-population floor, which excludes and includes different cities.

Why do top-25 rankings change by source?

• Per-capita rates replace raw counts, so large cities are not automatically the most dangerous.
• Reporting is voluntary, and some agencies do not submit complete annual data, as Government Executive notes.
• Population floors and city-limit versus metro definitions include or exclude different places.
• No complete federal database covers every city, so every list is a partial view.

The implication: the same FBI dataset can produce two different top-25 lists, and neither is lying. The list that excludes small cities, or uses the latest release, or defines crime narrowly is answering a different question than the one beside it on Google.

The pattern is that each ranking is defined by its cutoff, not by the underlying crime number alone.

What is the #1 crime city in America?

What puts a city at No. 1?

• In The Hill’s September 12, 2025 FBI-data analysis, Memphis, Tennessee, is the U.S. city with the highest reported crime rate.
• The same reported top tier lists Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Albuquerque.
• In American FactBook’s FBI CDE compilation, Memphis’s 2024 violent-crime rate is 2,507.6 per 100,000 residents, while Alexandria, Louisiana, tops that table at 2,713.5, according to American FactBook.

A No. 1 ranking, in other words, depends on which dataset and which threshold the publisher chose. A “#1 crime city” label is not an official government designation; the FBI publishes the data, and outlets decide what the ranking means.

Why do local and national rankings disagree?

• Voluntary participation means a city’s absence from a list can be a reporting gap, not a sign of safety.
• City-limit crime counts exclude the metro area, where suburban agencies report their own numbers.
• Rankings that mix violent crime with property crime, or use a single year of data, place the same city in different positions.
• MoneyGeek’s 2023 report, covered by Forbes, used its own scoring and produced a different order from FBI-only lists.

What should readers check before trusting a #1 crime-city claim?

• The source date: is the list using the most recent FBI release?
• The dataset: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, FBI Crime Data Explorer, or a private methodology like WalletHub?
• The geography: city limits or metro area?
• The metric: violent crime only, or an index that includes property crime?

The catch: a headline that says “No. 1” is a publisher’s decision, not a federal finding. If the methodology isn’t printed next to the ranking, the ranking is a claim waiting to be checked.

The consistent rule: No. 1 is determined by the list’s design, not by federal decree.

What is the crime rate difference between Miami and Atlanta?

Does city-width or metro-width data favor one answer?

• A valid Miami–Atlanta comparison must use the same FBI UCR definition and the same year for both cities.
• Metro-area data can produce a different answer than city-limit data because each city’s suburban agencies report separately.
• Both boundaries are legitimate; they answer different questions about where crime is concentrated.

What do FBI UCR comparisons show about Miami and Atlanta?

• The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports include submissions from both cities, but the FBI does not publish a side-by-side city danger ranking.
• Differences in reported rates may reflect local reporting practices, not real differences in safety.
• A list that includes one city and excludes the other may simply be applying a population threshold, not making a safety judgment.

Why don’t official sources declare a single more dangerous city?

• No official government ranking declares Miami or Atlanta the more dangerous city; that label belongs to individual analyses and news lists.
• Crime data are released at agency and national level, not as a city-versus-city verdict.
• Switching years, definitions, or city-versus-metro boundaries can flip the result.

What this means: if someone tells you Atlanta is more dangerous than Miami, ask for the dataset, the year, and the boundary. If those aren’t named, the claim is an opinion wearing a statistic’s clothes.

The caution here is that without a shared methodology, the comparison is meaningless.

What state is #1 in crime in the USA?

What are the 10 worst states for crime?

• The #1 state for crime depends on whether a list ranks total crimes, violent crimes, or per-capita rates.
• State-level FBI data include all reporting agencies, but some states file incomplete annual submissions.
• Total crime counts and crime rates can order the same states very differently.

With the FBI’s 2024 national release as the reference — 1,221,345 violent offenses and a rate of 359.1 per 100,000 — a state ranking becomes a choice about which number to sort by.

What state has the lowest crime?

• “Lowest crime” requires the same choice: lowest total, lowest rate, or lowest violent-crime count.
• Safest-state lists use their own methodology and cannot be swapped in for FBI rankings.
• States with incomplete reporting can appear safer than their neighbors.

How does state-level reporting affect the #1 crime state?

• Per-capita rates are the fairest way to compare states of different population sizes.
• Large states dominate total counts because more people live there.
• A state’s rank can change from year to year as agencies complete or skip submissions.

The trade-off: a state-level list measures reporting systems as much as it measures crime. That’s why the “highest-crime state” and the “most murders state” can name different places in the same year.

This underscores that state rankings are as much about data completeness as about actual crime.

What are the top 5 states with the most murders?

What state has the least murders?

• Murder totals are driven by population, so the largest states tend to appear near the top of total-count lists.
• A small state can have a low murder total but a high murder rate per 100,000 people.
• Per-capita rates answer the “least murders relative to population” question more fairly.

Why are murder totals and murder rates different?

• Totals count every murder in a state; rates divide that number by population and multiply by 100,000.
• U.S. murder and nonnegligent manslaughter fell an estimated 14.9% in 2024 (Crime in the United States, 2024).
• The same data can put a large state first by total murders and a different state first by rate.

How should top-five murder states be sourced?

• Use the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, the standard federal source for state-level murder counts.
• Check which release year the ranking cites; the 2024 release is the latest confirmed national dataset.
• Prefer a source that states whether it used totals or rates; otherwise the top-five list is ambiguous.

The implication: a “top 5 murder states” headline without a rate or a year is unverifiable. The FBI provides the counts; the list-maker defines the question.

What is the safest city in the US?

What are the 10 safest states to live in?

• Forbes covered MoneyGeek’s 2023 ranking of America’s safest and most dangerous cities, one of the most widely cited safe-city lists.
• Safest-city rankings use a methodology that can rank cities differently from simple violent-crime lists.
• State safety rankings answer a different question than city safety rankings, so the two shouldn’t be mixed.

What state is #1 in safety?

• No official federal list names a No. 1 safest state; safety rankings come from private scoring models.
• A No. 1 safety ranking depends on whether the model weighs violent crime, property crime, accidents, or cost of living.
• The safest city in one methodology can fall far down another list that changes the weights.

How does a safe-city ranking compare to a safe-state ranking?

• City rankings rely on police-agency submissions; state rankings aggregate many agencies, some of which don’t report fully.
• A safe state can contain a high-crime city, because city and state measures use different denominators.
• Treat rankings as context, not a complete safety guide, no matter which list you use.

What this means: “safest city in the US” is always the answer to a specific methodology. If the methodology is published, the ranking is useful; if it isn’t, the ranking is a headline.

This upshot highlights that even contradictory rankings can be factually accurate under their own rules.

How the major rankings compare

Four published rankings, four different answers — the pattern is that each one starts from the same federal data and applies a different filter.

The pattern is consistent: each list does real work with real data, but the choices after the data — cutoff, weights, boundary, date — are editorial. That’s why the same city can be No. 1 in one column and absent from another.

Timeline: how the No. 1 city keeps changing

• 2023 — MoneyGeek released its safest-and-most-dangerous-cities report; Forbes covered it on January 31, 2023.
• September 12, 2025 — The Hill reported FBI data ranking Memphis as the U.S. city with the highest crime rate, with Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Albuquerque in the reported top tier.
• June 8, 2026 — WSBT/WalletHub published America’s 25 most dangerous cities, with repeated entries in Texas, California, Ohio, and Tennessee.

The lesson in the dates: every new release resets the conversation, and the publisher’s chosen threshold decides who appears in it.

What’s confirmed, what’s still unclear

Confirmed facts

• The Hill’s September 2025 FBI-based list places Memphis at No. 1 for U.S. cities by crime rate.
• The reported top-10 tier includes Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Albuquerque.
• Forbes covered MoneyGeek’s 2023 safest-and-most-dangerous-city ranking.
• WSBT/WalletHub published a 25-most-dangerous-cities ranking with cities from Texas, California, Ohio, and Tennessee.

What’s unclear

• The exact top five states for murders depends on the FBI data release and whether totals or per-capita rates are used.
• Miami vs Atlanta cannot be answered definitively without agreeing on city-vs-metro definitions.
• A single “#1 crime city” label is not an official government designation.
• FBI reporting gaps mean rankings may understate or overstate crime in some cities (Government Executive).

The split is telling: what’s confirmed is what specific outlets published; what’s unclear is everything that depends on definitions — and nearly every ranking depends on definitions.

What the rankings said

In the FBI data reviewed for its September 2025 analysis, Memphis, Tennessee, has the highest reported crime rate among U.S. cities, with Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Albuquerque in the reported top tier.

— The Hill analysis, September 12, 2025

MoneyGeek’s 2023 methodology ranked America’s safest and most dangerous cities with its own scoring, which produces a different order than a straight FBI violent-crime list.

— MoneyGeek report, covered by Forbes, January 2023

America’s 25 most dangerous cities, published June 8, 2026, include repeated entries from Texas, California, Ohio, and Tennessee.

— WSBT/WalletHub ranking, June 8, 2026

Violent crime is defined as murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault — and participation in the data program is voluntary.

— FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program

The consistent thread: all four sources point to the same federal data, and each applies its own lens. The ranking, not the underlying FBI count, is where the disagreement lives.

What to take from the rankings

Every “most dangerous cities” list in this space starts with the same FBI numbers and makes a different editorial cut. The Hill’s cut made Memphis No. 1; American FactBook’s cut made Alexandria, Louisiana, No. 1 and Memphis No. 2; WalletHub’s cut repeated entries from Texas, California, Ohio, and Tennessee; and MoneyGeek’s methodology produced still another order. The forward stake is data quality, not bragging rights: the FBI’s 2024 release covers more than 95% of the U.S. population, but voluntary participation means each city’s submission still shapes every rank it appears in. For anyone comparing cities — a family weighing a move, a local official answering a critical headline, a reporter deciding what to write — the choice is clear: verify the dataset, the year, and the boundary yourself, or let a list’s methodology make the decision for you.

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