Highland City: 10-Year Crime Trends

After writing my previous post about Highland/Alpine being ranked as two the safest cities in Utah – we share the same police force and so our numbers get reported together. I wanted to look at a trend over time instead of just one year’s worth of data. Below you will find charts and graphs that show what type of specific types crimes were committed in Highland and Alpine over a 10-year period of time (2008-2017), and how we ranked within the state and nation over that time period. All data came from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting system.

I again used two additional metrics to compare crime in general:

• Combined Crime:  II multiplied the number of violent crimes by the national ratio of property crimes to violent crimes (~6) to equalize these two types of crime.
• Cost of Crime: I used a report published in 2010 entitled “The Cost of Crime to Society: New Crime-Specific Estimates for Policy and Program Evaluation” to attach a value to the specific types of crime reported by the FBI. This creates a total cost of crime to a community. I put the relevant tables from the report at the end of this post.

For the comparison charts I looked only at cities with a population of 10,000 or more cities (~3,400). Based on violent crimes our national ranking in terms of safety ranged from 29th to 340th; for property crimes our range was 148th to 471st. Our 10-year trend is down across the board. This is a bit counter intuitive as some assume if population and density increases crime rate rises. Note, our population (Highland + Alpine) grew from 23,795 in 2008 to 29,328 in 2017 (23%).

Cost of Crime Tables

Thanks to everyone who help make Highland a wonderful and safe place to live. This includes our residents, schools and teachers, city staff and public safety officers, plus the local businesses who provide us with valued services.

Links:

Cost of Crime

• The Cost of Crime to Society: New Crime-Specific Estimates for Policy and Program Evaluation (see tables 1 & 5), Kathryn E. McCollister, Michael T. French, and Hai Fang, Jan 2010
• Costs of Crime: Experts Report Challenges Estimating Costs and Suggest Improvements to Better Inform Policy Decisions, US Government Accountability Office Report, Sept 2017

Crime Data

• 2008-2017 Highland, Utah & US Crime Summary Spreadsheet
• 2008 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2009 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2010 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2011 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2012 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2013 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2014 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2015 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2016 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• 2017 FBI National Crime Spreadsheet
• FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program – main page

Other

• Highland/Alpine Population Data
• Highland/Alpine Safest Cities in Utah