Crime in Highland, Utah, and the US 2009-2018

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 (2009-2018) and how we ranked within the state and nation over that time period. All data came from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting system.

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. At the end of this post are tables from the report that show the costs of  different type of crimes and what these costs were based on.

How Safe Are We In Highland?

According to the recently released FBI Crime Statistics for 2018 Highland and Alpine are the second safest cities in Utah. There are multiple ways to compare crime rates. I chose the four categories listed below to compare Highland with cities in the state and across the nation. We ranked second in all categories except for property crimes where we were first.

Surprising 10-Year Highland City Budget Review

Since the city is asking for a revenue increase to fund a significant jump in public safety spending I thought it would be good to share a historical overview of the city’s general fund revenue and expenses. When I included population growth and factored in inflation I was surprised at what I found.

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.