You’d be hard pressed to find a dangerous city in New Hampshire: the Granite State logged the lowest property crime rate of any state in the country, along with the 3rd lowest violent crime rate. This high level of safety is reflected in the many New Hampshire cities scoring very well on our Safety Index, a score based on the latest FBI crime data as well as the ratio of law enforcement employees to residents.
In one of the best showings of any state, 22 New Hampshire cities scored a .03 or higher on the Safety Index, while 8 scored a 0.6 or higher. A remarkable feat considering New Hampshire is the 10th least populous state. Let’s take a closer look at New Hampshire’s five safest cities.
Portsmouth is our choice for New Hampshire’s safest city. The historic Rockingham County seaport earned a terrific 0.85 Safety Index score based on a 2.03 per 1,000 violent crime rate and 13.88 property crime rate. Portsmouth’s score is also boosted by its high law enforcement to resident ratio of 3.9 per 1,000.
Not far behind is Londonderry, also of Rockingham county, which lodged a 0.75 score on the Safety Index on the strength of its very low 1.1 per 1,000 violent crime rate and property crime rate less than half of the national average.
Hanover, home of Ivy League Dartmouth College, just trails behind with its 0.71 Safety Index score. The city is very safe, logging a violent crime rate below 1 per 1,000 based on just 9 recorded violent crimes in 2017.
Rounding out New Hampshire’s top five safest cities are Hudson (#4) and Merrimack (#5). Each scored above a 0.6 on the Safety Index and enjoy violent and property crime rates well below half of the national average in each category.
Safest Cities in New Hampshire, 2019
| Rank | City | Safety Index |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Portsmouth | 0.85 |
| 2 | Londonderry | 0.75 |
| 3 | Hanover | 0.71 |
| 4 | Hudson | 0.65 |
| 5 | Merrimack | 0.64 |
| 6 | Raymond | 0.62 |
| 7 | Bedford | 0.61 |
| 8 | Pelham | 0.6 |
| 9 | Windham | 0.59 |
| 10 | Dover | 0.58 |
| 11 | Milford | 0.58 |
| 12 | Hooksett | 0.57 |
| 13 | Hampton | 0.55 |
| 14 | Nashua | 0.52 |
| 15 | Salem | 0.52 |
| 16 | Amherst | 0.51 |
| 17 | Exeter | 0.49 |
| 18 | Berlin | 0.48 |
| 19 | Durham | 0.47 |
| 20 | Goffstown | 0.47 |
| 21 | Derry | 0.46 |
| 22 | Lebanon | 0.32 |
| 23 | Claremont | 0.2 |
| 24 | Concord | 0.11 |
| 25 | Somersworth | 0.07 |
| 26 | Keene | 0.03 |
| 27 | Laconia | -0.22 |
| 28 | Rochester | -0.39 |
| 29 | Manchester | -0.48 |
Methodology
We used the most recent FBI crime statistics to create state rankings. There were initially 7,430 cities in the data set. After filtering out the cities with populations of less than 10,000, 2,929 cities remained. We then calculated violent crime rates and property crime rates by dividing the crime numbers by the population to get rates per 1,000. We also calculated the ratio of law enforcement workers to per 1,000. These were weighted with -50% for the violent crime rate, -25% for the property crime rate, and +25% for the law enforcement rate. The resulting metric gave us a the safety index score. The higher this number more safe the city is.
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