New Study Shows Cost Of Crime In Parsippany

PARSIPPANY, NJ - Crime takes a toll on communities — not just emotionally but economically as well. In addition to direct costs from loss of property, services for victims and policing and corrections, residents of higher-crime locales often pay higher rates on car insurance and homeowners and renters insurance. MoneyGeek puts this cost to a dollar amount.

To quantify the cost of crime in smaller cities and towns, MoneyGeek analyzed crime data and calculated the cost of crime in each place. The service included data on violent crimes such as murder, rape and aggravated assault, and on property crimes such as burglaries and car theft. Though property crimes are much more common, violent crimes are more costly.

Parsippany-Troy Hills Township ranked 241 on their list with a crime cost per capita of $316. According to their data, the violent crime rate is 44.3 and the property crime rate is 628. This, in a town of 51,907 costs a total of $16,417.

MoneyGeek analyzed crime statistics and quantified the cost of those crimes to identify the safest and least safe small cities and towns — those with 30,000 to 100,000 residents.

Most of the safest small cities and towns in America are in the Northeast, with the top two in Massachusetts and six of the top ten in New York or New Jersey. The least safe towns are more distributed, with Gary, Indiana, atop the list.

To rank the safest small cities and towns in the United States, MoneyGeek started with standardized crime statistics reported to the FBI. To determine crime rates per 100,000 people, population data accessed from the FBI was added to the analysis.

MoneyGeek relied on research by professors Kathryn McCollister and Michael French of the University of Miami and Hai Fang of the University of Colorado Denver to determine the cost of crime to society. Their findings were integrated into the broader data set to better understand the societal cost of crime within individual cities.

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