Mason City ranked 42nd safest place in Iowa; Clear Lake is number 24

NIT – A study of 70 cities and towns in Iowa ranked Mason City number 42 and Clear Lake number 24 of the safest towns in the state.

The study, conducted by Value Penguin, compared a variety of crime metrics they sourced from the FBI.

Decorah was ranked number one.  Charles City was number 31.

The 70 towns in the study ranged in a crime score from 351 to an outlier of 7,628, with an average of 2,126, Value Penguin said.

More populous cities Cedar Rapids (60th) and Des Moines (67th) fell near the bottom of our rankings despite the fact that we adjusted our crime score metric for population, also taking into account both the amount of violent and property-related crimes per 100,000 people. Below is the entire list of places that ValuePenguin included in its “Safest Places in Iowa” study. They are listed from the safest to the least safe, according to our analysis.

The calculation for the crime scores can be found in the methodology:  To rank these places, Value Penguin collected data from the 2013 FBI crime statistics by city, which provides the most recent crime data available. Not every town participates in this report and we also excluded towns with fewer than 5,000 residents because towns with small populations are more sensitive to crime score fluctuations for fewer crimes committed. The raw data report included property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson), and violent crimes (murder/manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) from all law enforcement agencies that chose to partake in the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program.