Wisconsin's Safest Towns: 2018 Rankings

MILWAUKEE, WI —Two new rankings came out naming the safest cities in Wisconsin, but one criminologist says rankings like these do little to report the actual crime landscape of any given community.

According to ReporterNewspapers.net, Joshua Hinkle, a Georgia State University Criminologist, said such rankings are flawed in both method and concept, because most crime is “incredibly concentrated” on a much more granular level in any given community. He getting an overall picture of the safety of a city is much more complicated than summing it up in a single ranking. “It’s not a matter of bad neighborhoods, much less safe or unsafe cities, [but] more the idea of a bad [or] unsafe street block here and there driving crime rates,” Hinkle said.

The report continued, saying that one site admitted its ranking is made by non-expert staff as part of a marketing business driving customers to security companies and Amazon.com.

Two rankings that took a look at Wisconsin bill themselves as either "independent professional review sites" or "Big Data analysis companies." Here are the two that looked at Wisconsin's crime statistics and their differing views on the state's safest cities:

Safewise Ranks Wisconsin

Safewise bills itself as an independent professional review and comparison website. According to company information posted online, company officials say they fun experienced writers to do in-depth research and provide candid feedback about products and services. "When you click on these links, we may receive compensation," the company states," but the results of our editorial reviews are based on objective assessments.

In their analysis, the Badger State high marks for being the first in the nation to implement a crime victim bill of rights, it also adopted a constitutional amendment to ensure victims are kept up-to-date about their accuser’s case. Taking victim advocacy one step further, the Wisconsin Senate recently passed Senate Joint Resolution 53 (also known as Marsy’s Law) which aims to strengthen crime victims’ rights under the Wisconsin constitution.

1. Freedom
Population: 6,098

2. Beaver Dam Township
Population: 3,887

3. Bayside
Population: 4,417

4. Fox Point
Population: 6,754

5. Sauk Prairie
Population: 4,640

6. Hartland
Population: 9,239

7. Grand Rapids
Population: 7,466

8. Hobart-Lawrence
Population: 13,793

9. Elm Grove
Population: 6,222

10. Cedarburg
Population: 11,488

11. Slinger
Population: 5,232

12. Geneva Town
Population: 5,050

13. Richland Center
Population: 4,980

14. Muskego
Population: 24,876

15. Oconomowoc Town
Population: 8,662

16. Kewaskum
Population: 4,117

17. Mequon
Population: 24,114

18. Sheboygan Falls
Population: 7,849

19. Delafield
Population: 7,194

20. Sturtevant
Population: 6,958

Read full details on these 20 cities.

To identify the twenty safest cities in Wisconsin, we reviewed FBI crime report statistics and population data. Cities that fell below identified population thresholds or that failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI were excluded from the ranking system.

Their evaluation is based on the number of reported violent crimes (aggravated assault, murder, rape, and robbery) in each city. If there was a tie, we also factored in the number of property crimes (burglary, arson, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). To level the playing field, we calculated the rate of crimes per 1,000 people in each city. This makes it easier to directly compare the likelihood of these crimes occurring in cities with vastly different populations.

Neighborhood Scout Ranks Wisconsin

Meanwhile, NeighborhoodScout, a web-based neighborhood analysis website from Location, inc., builders of location-based Big Data and intelligence for businesses, flexed their Big Data engine to arrive at their own ranking of Wisconsin's safest cities.

According to the company, NeighborhoodScout uses more than 600 characteristics to build a neighborhood profile for each and every neighborhood and address in America, including school quality, housing costs, crime rates, income levels, the age, size and style of homes, the density of buildings, rental areas versus owner occupied, the proportion of families with children, educational attainment, languages spoken, types of careers of those living in the neighborhood, economic trends, demographic trends, crime trends and forecasts, crime risk by crime type, home price appreciation and HPA forecasts, unemployment trends, and more to paint a data-driven picture of any neighborhood in the U.S.

Here are the 10 safest cities in Wisconsin based on their report:

1. Hobart-Lawrence
2. Waunakee
3. Oregon
4. Cedarburg
5. Muskego
6. Mequon
7. Kaukauna
8. Fox Valley Metro
9. Oconomowoc
10. Port Washington

NeighborhoodScout says its analysis includes all reported crimes from all 18,000 local law enforcement agencies across the country from the most recent final data available. For this 2018 report, the figures are based on 2016 statistics.

Patch reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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