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COMPARING CRIME RATES: UTAH VS. NEW YORK

Comparing Crime Rates:

Utah vs. New York

Hailey Richman

Salt Lake Community College

Intro to Criminal Justice 1010

Prof. Brett Terpstra

September 29, 2022

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COMPARING CRIME RATES: UTAH VS. NEW YORK

Comparing Crime Rates: Utah vs. New York

This paper will cover the crime rates between Utah and New York. We will do this by

explicitly comparing the rate of all violent, property, and arson crime rates through a 5-year

frame, 2016-2020.

First, we can talk about all violent crime rates between Utah and New York. We can look

at this by seeing the rate of violent crime offenses by population. To start with Utah, in 2016,

there was a rate of 243.3 violent crime offenses per 100,000 people that year. This is the biggest

peak in violent crime offenses until 2020 in Utah. Now we can look at New York for the same

year and compare, which is 374.6 violent crime offenses per 100,000 people in 2016. In 2017,

Utah had almost the same violent crime offenses that year (242.2 violent crime offenses per

100,000), but still relatively low compared to New York, which was 361.1. In 2018, both Utah

and New York have a lower point on their charts, but not being the lowest for Utah. Utah being

239.4 and New York having their lowest point, 350.8. Now for 2019, this was Utah’s lowest

point on our 5-year analysis. There were 236.9 violent crime offenses per 100,00 people. New

York did start to jump a little so there were 361. Lastly, we can talk about 2020 where numbers

start to jump across the board. In Utah, there were 260.7 violent crime offenses per 100,000

people, while New York’s was 363 violent crime offenses per 100,000 people. Overall, New

York had about 100 more violent crime offenses per 100,000 people than Utah. It was very

interesting to see that even at New York’s lowest point, they still were much higher than Utah’s

numbers ever get for violent crimes.

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COMPARING CRIME RATES: UTAH VS. NEW YORK

380
Rate of Violent Crime Offenses by Population
360
340
320
300
280
260
240
220
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Utah New York

Rate per 100,000 people, by year

Second, we can look at all property crime rates between Utah and New York. Starting off

with 2016, Utah hit their peak in our 5-year analysis. Utah had 2,974.8 property crime offenses

per 100,000 people. New York has quite a bit less than Utah in this area of crimes, being 1,538.7

property crime offenses per 100,000 people. Now in 2017, there were 2,777.9 in Utah, while

there were 1,497.9. Both states are now on a decline until 2020, but Utah is still about a thousand

more property crime offenses per 100,000 people than New York. Continuing with the decline in

property crimes, Utah has 2,419.3 and New York has 1,441.6 property crime offenses per

100,000 people in 2018. The lowest point in both states was 2019, where Utah has 2,168.6 and

New York has 1,386.1 property crime offenses per 100,000 people. Again, even though Utah hit

its’ lowest point in our 5-year analysis, it still was a tremendous amount more property crimes

than New York. Now 2020 is where both states start to incline again, where Utah has 2,464.4

and New York has 1,410.7 property crimes per 100,000 people. This really shocked me to see

how much more property crimes there were in Utah compared to New York. I did assume that

since there were more violent crime offenses in New York, there would just be more crimes in

New York in general.

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COMPARING CRIME RATES: UTAH VS. NEW YORK

Rate of Property Crime Offenses by Population

3,000.00
2,800.00
2,600.00
2,400.00
2,200.00
2,000.00
1,800.00
1,600.00
1,400.00
1,200.00
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Utah New York

Rate per 100,000 people, by year

Lastly, we can discuss arson offenses between Utah and New York. In 2016, Utah had

8.7 arson offenses per 100,000 people, while New York only had 5.3. Utah started to go on a

decline in 2017 with 7.3 arson offenses per 100,000 and New York had a spike of 5.6. In 2018,

Utah hit their lowest point at 6.3, while New York had 4.3 arson offenses per 100,000 people.

Utah began to rise again in 2019 with 6.8 arson offenses and New York hit its’ lowest with 4.2

arson offenses per 100,000 people. The only similarity in this whole 5-year analysis for arson

offenses in both states was in 2020, where they both spiked. Utah had hit 9.4, while New York

had 5.2 arson offenses per 100,000 people. This chart was very interesting to research because

the charts seemed to be so opposite. Even though both charts were very different when they

inclined and declined, Utah had a few more arson offenses per 100,000 people than New York.
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COMPARING CRIME RATES: UTAH VS. NEW YORK

Rate of Arson Offenses by Population

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2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Utah New York

Rate per 100,000 people, by year

In conclusion, Utah had overall more crime than New York in the research that we did

today. As an overview, New York had quite a bit more violent crime offenses per 100,000

people than Utah did, which caused me to believe that New York would have more crime in

general. This proved me wrong to see that only specific crime was high in New York because

Utah beat New York’s numbers by a long shot in rates of property crime and arson offenses per

100,000 people.
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COMPARING CRIME RATES: UTAH VS. NEW YORK

Citations

FBI Crime Data Explorer. All Violent Crime Offenses by Population, Utah

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend

FBI Crime Data Explorer. All Violent Crime Offenses by Population, New York

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend

FBI Crime Data Explorer. All Property Crime Offenses by Population, Utah

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend

FBI Crime Data Explorer. All Property Crime Offenses by Population, New York

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend

FBI Crime Data Explorer. All Arson Offenses by Population, Utah

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend

FBI Crime Data Explorer. All Arson Offenses by Population, New York

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend