as the Nation’s Most Dangerous State

North Dakota Reclaims the Safest State Title

LAWRENCE, KS — Nevada today was named the nation’s Most Dangerous State. The announcement was made in Crime State Rankings 2004, an annual reference book published by Morgan Quitno Press, a Lawrence, Kansas-based independent research and publishing company. At the opposite end of the rankings scale, North Dakota reclaimed its title as the nation’s Safest State, an honor that it has held for seven of the 11 years that the company has issued its awards.

"It has been five years since Nevada was named the most dangerous state, and I suspect that the good citizens of the Sagebrush State were just fine with this,” said Scott Morgan, President of Morgan Quitno Press. “However as the nation’s fastest growing state, Nevada struggles with crime and other problems that accompany rapid growth.”

The 11th annual Most Dangerous and Safest State designations were based on six basic crime factors reported in Morgan Quitno’s just-released annual reference book, Crime State Rankings 2004. Factors considered were rates per 100,000 population for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. States are ranked based on how they compare to the national average for each crime category. The findings are based on 2002 crime statistics, the most recent final state data available from the FBI.

Joining Nevada at the top of the rankings list (in descending order) were Louisiana, Arizona, Maryland and South Carolina. On the safer end of the rankings scale immediately preceding North Dakota were last year’s winner Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and South Dakota.

“Nevada has had its share of crime problems. The state’s violent crime rate jumped 8.2% from 2001 to 2002, while the rate for a nation as a whole dropped 2%,” said Morgan. “However, in fairness, the state is very diverse and large parts of Nevada reported hardly any crime at all, while other faster-growing sections had their hands full.”