Altoona is on the list! | Safest Cities in Wisconsin 2016

Thursday, January 28, 2016
Rebecca Lake, CreditDonkey

Wisconsin is a great place to settle down if you're in search of friendly people and scenic surroundings. It's even greater if you choose to live in one of the state's safest cities.

If you're curious about whether your hometown scores a top ranking for safety, you've come to the right place.

Wisconsin is feeling safer in general. Between 2013 and 2014, property crime in the Badger State declined by 4.3% and burglaries were down 12.9%, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report data.

We decided to round up the 50 cities in Wisconsin where both property and violent crime are least likely to be a nuisance to residents. The following guide breaks down each city by the numbers so you can see just how safe they are.

STUDY METHODOLOGY

The size of a city and its crime rate tend to go hand-in-hand, with crime occurring less frequently in smaller cities. For our study, we focused on Wisconsin cities with a population of 5,000 or more.

Our rankings are based on the FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2014. We zeroed in on the overall property and violent crime rates for each city as well as two individual crimes: burglary and robbery. We chose to consider burglary and robbery specifically because these are the kinds of crimes that occur more frequently and are typically of most concern to residents.

To come up with the 50 safest cities, we used the following indicators:

Number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents

• Number of robberies per 1,000 residents*
• Number of property crimes per 1,000 residents
• Number of burglaries per 1,000 residents*

Based on these four criteria, we assigned each city a CreditDonkey safety score. The 50 Wisconsin cities that made it into our rankings had the best safety scores overall. We've listed them here according to their score, with a lower crime and safety score resulting in a higher ranking (the rankings range from 50 to 1, with one being the safest).

* We took a close look at robbery and burglary rates since those types of crimes are what tend to get people sleeping with one eye open. Keep in mind robberies also fall under the violent crime category, and burglaries fall under property crime.

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