Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will be the country’s next vice president if the Democrats win the upcoming election, but what is his state’s crime rate and how does it compare to others?
Walz, who has been selected as Kamala Harris’ running mate, is seen as a progressive and his record on crime has been criticized by Republicans, with Minnesota-based conservative think tank American Experiment calling the state a new “high crime state.”
Minnesota is roughly in the middle when it comes to safety, ranked 29th in a list of the most dangerous states in the U.S. compiled by Forbes Advisor in March.
Using 2022 figures from the FBI Crime Data Explorer, Forbes calculated a 2.81 violent crime rate per 1,000 residents in the state, with a one in 356 chance of being a victim of a violent crime.
This is significantly better than New Mexico, the most dangerous state, which had a violent crime rate of 7.80, but well over the 1.26 rate in the safest state, New Hampshire.
It has a better violent crime rate per 1,000 residents than most of the states surrounding it—Wisconsin (2.97), South Dakota (3.77) and Iowa (2.87). North Dakota is just slightly under Minnesota with a rate of 2.80.
But Minnesota’s crime rates have increased for several years in a row since Walz was elected governor in 2018.
Last year, local news outlet MinnPost reported that after the violent crime rate dropped in 2018 and 2019, it increased by 17.2 percent in 2020 and 21.6 percent in 2021. This was based on the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s 2021 statewide crime report.
This was discussed on the Minnesota Now with Cathy Wurzer podcast, where Senior Fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice Thomas Abt said the spike in certain crimes was generally in line with the rest of the country.
You can read the full article at Newsweek.