Texas ranks in the middle of the pack in terms of safety, recording the 30th lowest property crime rate and 35th lowest violent crime rate. However, this is not the full picture, as Texas’ violent crime rate is elevated by higher crime rates in its largest cities. 

Owing to its size and the diversity of its communities, Texas is actually home to a large selection of very safe cities boasting low violent and property crime rates. Let’s take a look at some of the Lone Star State’s safest communities. 

Memorial Villages, Texas’ safest community, is actually an adjoining group of independent municipalities west of downtown Houston. Known for its exciting mix of residential architecture, the Memorial Villages area is also very safe, recording a terrifically low 0.08 per 1,000 violent crime rate based on just 1 recorded violent crime occurring in 2017.  

Mansfield, Texas #2 safest city, is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Area. The fast-growing city of 67K logged a violent crime rate less than a third of the Texas state average of 4.39 per 1,000, as well as a property crime rate half of the state average. Logging similarly low crime numbers is #3 Roma, a small border city along the Rio Grande in Starr County. 

Ranking #4 in the list of Texas’ safest cities is Seabrook, a pleasant community located on Galveston Bay with a waterfront known for its cozy bed and breakfasts and antique shops. Seabrook’s low violent and property crime rates are well under half of Texas state averages, which should provide comfort for residents and visitors alike.

Rounding out Texas’ top five safest cities is Midlothian, a fast-growing suburb of Dallas known as a steel and cement industry hub that boasts a violent crime rate below 1 incident per 1,000 residents. 

Safest Cities in Texas, 2019

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.