Economy

Arkansas Leads States Where People Face Black Friday Violence

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: November 27, 2015 9:06 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 4:44 pm

Arkansas is the state were it is most likely shoppers will have violent encounters while shopping. The forecast was posted by research site Estately

According to Estately management:

To determine just where it’s most dangerous to participate in Black Friday we at Estately sought to determine where people are most likely to be participating in Black Friday sales and where people are most prone to violently attacking each other. Our findings come from ranking each state from 1-50 for these two data sets and then averaging the results.

Facebook users expressing interest in Black Friday sales — (source: Facebook user data)
Frequency of aggravated assaults (attempts to cause seriously bodily injury purposely) — (source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports—2014)

Combing Facebook data with FBI statistics is a poor methodology. States with high crime rates will tend to rank high on the list.

Most of the states where shoppers are most likely to experience violence while shopping are in the South. Among the top 10 are 1) Arkansas, 2) Tennessee, 3) Alabama, 4) Louisiana, and 10) South Carolina. The other states among the top 1o were 5) Missouri, 6) West Virginia, 7) Oklahoma, 8) Indiana, and 9) Kansas.

The other end of the list is dominated by states in the Northeast. Maybe these should be called “safest states to shop” The best record should be posted by Massachusetts, followed by Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Connecticut, Washington, Utah, New Hampshire, Colorado, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Maine.

If our study is accurate, you will definitely want to take precautions when participating in this dangerous shopping day in the following ten states…

The study may not be accurate at all, but better to be safe than sorry. Who wants to be beat up on Black Friday?