Over the past few years, Colorado has gone from easily one of the Top 5 states to live in in the country to being outside of the Top 15 according to U.S. News.

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Being the 16th best state to live in is by no means bad, but at one point to say that would have been blasphemous. 

However, quite possibly their biggest reasoning for placing the Centennial State so low in the rankings is quite simple; our high crime rate.

In U.S. News’ ranking, they place Colorado as the third most dangerous state in the entire country, which for some may be shocking.

That’s wild for a state ranked as highly as us, since the two states that are second and first on the list, Louisiana and New Mexico, rank as the 50th and 49th best states respectively.

However, just what crime is driving up Colorado’s rank?

Colorado is Second for Larceny and Theft

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Simmrin Law Group, which is a law firm that operates out of California, decided to create their own list of the most and least safe states in the country.

Within the study, they were able to gleam quite a few interesting things about crime in Colorado. 

The biggest statistic they were able to pull from the study is that Colorado has an astronomically high larceny/theft rate, which sits at 2,087.6 out of 100,000 residents.

That means that Colorado has the second highest rate in that category in the entire country.

The only state that’s higher in that regard is Washington, which is at a staggering 2,133.6 per 100,000.

However, in the overall rankings, Colorado is worse off than Washington. In fact, it’s much worse.

In Simmrin’s overall ranking, Colorado comes in as the second most dangerous state in the country, meaning they believe Colorado is more dangerous than U.S. News. 

In terms of our safety score, they gave Colorado a 49. 

What is the Most and Least Dangerous State in the U.S.?

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Simmrin’s list ranks every state in the country based on an overall safety score, which was pulled from a combination of numbers.

The state that they consider to be the safest is New Jersey, which they note as having the lowest assault and sex offenses in the country, along with low theft and burglary rates. 

They gave New Jersey a total safety score of 80, which is 31 points better than Colorado.

However, the title for most dangerous state belongs to Colorado’s neighbor, New Mexico. 

It has the highest kidnapping, sex offense, and vandalism rates in the entire country amongst other things.

With all this being said, New Mexico gets a safety score of 40, which is by far the biggest outlier in the entire study.

Which One of Colorado’s Largest Cities Sees the Most Violent Crime?

Which one of Colorado’s largest cities sees the most violent crime? Using crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, we looking at 13 cities in Colorado with a population of 100,000 or more to see which location has seen the most violent crime so far in 2023. 

Gallery Credit: Wesley Adams

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