Mahwah Rated One Of the Safest Cities In Nation And State

Mahwah, NJ — In an annual report released this spring about the safest cities in America with more than 17,375 people, Mahwah Township was ranked No. 43, after being ranked No. 16 the previous year. Mahwah Township also was rated the No. 35 safest city in New Jersey in a related report that included all cities regardless of population.

According to certain metrics, New Jersey is one of the country's safest states, though people in New Jersey do not feel as safe as they have in previous years.

Those are some of the findings from SafeWise, a company that tests and compares home safety products and home security companies and annually uses data and a variety of metrics to rank the safest cities in the country and safest cities in each state. The study also measures perceptions about safety and whether or not they reflect the reality.

For SafeWise's ratings of The 100 Safest Cities in America for 2021, statistics were compiled over the last year. The study measured both violent crime rate and property crime rate by determining the number of incidents per 1,000 people. In Mahwah Township, there were 0.3 violent crimes, up from 0.1 the previous year. Meanwhile, the property crime rate of 4.4 was up from 3.7 the previous year. These statistics also helped Mahwah earn its spot on SafeWise's list of The 50 Safest Cities in New Jersey.

SafeWise noted that cities with smaller populations tend to have lower rates of crime. Locations with higher household incomes, SafeWise also wrote, are usually safer overall. According to SafeWise, Mahwah Township has a population of 26,317, with a median income of $102,168.

All of New Jersey's 50 safest cities reported crime rates well below the state and national average.

The 2021 violent crime rate in New Jersey was 2.1 per 1,000, while the property crime rate was 13.4 per 1,000. The violent crime rate was the same as it had been in 2020, while the property crime rate dropped from 14.0 per 1,000 the previous year.

In the Mid-Atlantic region, New Jersey beat the regional average and had the lowest violent crime rate ahead of Pennsylvania (3.1). It also had the lowest property crime rate ahead of New York (13.7). New Jersey's crime rates are also lower than the national average. Among all 50 states, New Jersey had the fifth-lowest rates for both violent crime and property crime.

On the list of the 100 safest cities, Mahwah Township was one of 29 cities from New Jersey. Massachusetts was second with 17 cities. New York was third with 12.

Despite these positive numbers, SafeWise discovered that New Jerseyites actually are more worried about crime than before.

In SafeWise's State of Safety survey, 58 percent of residents in New Jersey expressed daily levels of high concern for their safety, which is a 32-percent jump over last year, when just 44 percent of respondents had similar concerns. By comparison, less than half of Americans, 47 percent, reported similar levels of concern.

The Top 5 safest cities in New Jersey, according to the study are: River Vale Township, Sparta Township, Chatham Township, Kinnelon and New Providence.