New England dominates ‘Safest States’ list: Report

Low crime figures and few active fault lines helped New England secure the top spots in a list of the country’s safest states released Tuesday.

After taking into account more than two dozen different metrics, including murder stats, unemployment rates and DUIs per capita, analysts at Wallethub, a personal finance website, published a report this week that ranks the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in terms of safety.

Vermont ranked the safest state in the U.S., trailed immediately by the rest of New England, according to Wallethub’s report. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine and Connecticut secured spots two through six, respectively, with Minnesota, Virginia, Utah and Iowa rounding out the top 10.

Mississippi, meanwhile, was deemed the least safest state in the country, per Wallethub’s report, barely beating out Oklahoma, Alaska and New Mexico with regards to rounding up the list.

In calculating “safety” scores for each state, the website’s analysts reviewed a trove of data made available by the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, among other agencies, then came up with 25 specific metrics ranging from poverty rate and average credit score, to law enforcement employees per capita and the number of climate disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damages.

Each of those metrics was then given a value between 0 and 100, from least safe to most safe, before Wallethub calculated the overall score for each state using the weighted average for all metrics.

On the 0-to-100 scale, Vermont, the safest state, earned a score of 66.78; Mississippi, the least safe state, according to the report, yielded a safety score of only 34.0.

Washington, D.C., was awarded 30th place, having earned a safety score of 47.40, even though the District boasted the highest number of murders and non-negligent manslaughters per capita, as well as the highest unemployment rate in the country, according to Wallethub.

In addition to ranking first place overall, Vermont also boasted the best score with respect to home and community safety, with runners-up Massachusetts and Rhode Island earning first place for road safety and workplace safety, respectively.