The American City With the Most Property Crime in Every State

Lansing is a city of about 28,000 in northeastern Illinois. Nearly 1,500 property crimes were reported in the city in 2019, or 5,423 for every 100,000 people, more than every other comparable city in the state.

As is often the case, larceny is the most commonly reported type of property crime in Lansing, accounting for just over 84% of all known property crimes.

Clarksville, Indiana, is a town of about 21,600 residents located just north of Louisville, Kentucky. With a property crime rate of 5,839 incidents per 100,000 people, Clarksville is the only city in Indiana with a population of at least 20,000 with a property crime rate over 5,000 incidents per 100,000 people. Across the state as a whole, there were just 1,535 property crimes for every 100,000 people in 2019.

Only about 13% of the 1,263 property crimes committed in Clarksville in 2019 were burglaries or motor vehicle thefts. The vast majority were cases of larceny.

Council Bluffs’s property crime rate of 5,845 incidents per 100,000 people is by far the highest of any city or town of at least 20,000 people in Iowa. For context, there were 2,039 property crimes for every 100,000 people across the entire state in 2019, and just 602 per 100,000 in North Liberty, the Iowa city with the lowest property crime rate.

Council Bluffs is home to only 2% of Iowa’s population — yet nearly 7% of all property crimes in the state in 2019 were committed there.

The property crime rate of 5,322 incidents per 100,000 people in Wichita is the highest of any city in Kansas and more than three times the state property crime rate of 1,585 incidents per 100,000 people.

Other, more serious, crimes like robbery and homicide are also more concentrated in Wichita than they are across the state as a whole. With a violent crime rate of 1,141 incidents per 100,000 people, Wichita is also by far the most dangerous city in the state. For context, there were 411 violent crimes for every 100,000 people in Kansas in 2019.

Paducah is a small western Kentucky city of about 25,000. There were 1,305 property crimes in the city in 2019, or 5,255 per 100,000 people, more than in every other city in the state and more than three times Kentucky’s property crime rate.

Property crimes are typically committed for monetary gain, and many in Paducah are struggling financially. The local poverty rate of 21.6% is well above both the 17.3% state and 13.4% national poverty rates.