Maine: The Cities With the Most and Least Crime

Sparsely populated Maine, like many of its Northeastern neighbors, is in the enviable position of being among the 10 states with the lowest rates of both property crime and violent crime. Not only that, but the state has the lowest rate of violent crime among the 50 states with an overall violent crime rate that’s about 20 points lower than New Hampshire, which has the next-lowest rate.

Low crime rates also extend to most of Maine’s larger cities and towns, including Bangor, one of the few metro areas with available data to have zero murders reported by the FBI for the year in question (2022).

Of course, that’s not to say that crime never occurs in Maine but, statistically speaking, it tends to be rarer here than in most other places in the United States.

Crime in Maine Cities

Crime is, of course, a local issue, with rates often varying street by street within communities. For most of Maine’s larger cities, while crime is sometimes more common than it is in the state overall, crime rates tend to be low when compared to other major metro areas.

For the three metro areas in Maine with available data, none of them rank among the top 100 of the 300-plus cities, whether for overall crimes or specific types of crimes. As we’ve touched on already, Bangor’s rate of murder/nonnegligent manslaughter is a statistical zero.

Maine metro area crime rates per 100,000 people (rank among 300-plus metro areas)

	Bangor	Lewiston-Auburn	Portland-South Portland
Violent crime (overall)	55 (313th)	166 (287th)	100 (310th)
Murder/nonnegligent manslaughter	0 (310th)	5 (170th)	1 (289th)
Rape	6 (314th)	49 (126th)	30 (255th)
Robbery	16 (263rd)	31 (195th)	9 (293rd)
Aggravated assault	34 (313th)	82 (297th)	59 (308th)
Property crime (overall)	1,670 (203rd)	1,473 (235th)	1,091 (283rd)
Burglary	134 (286th)	149 (275th)	81 (310th)
Larceny-theft	1,475 (146th)	12,48 (198th)	941 (266th)
Motor vehicle theft	61 (298th)	76 (285th)	69 (288th)

Some locations in Maine do have higher-than-expected crime rates, though that’s often caused by population fluctuations that occur in seasonal tourist destinations in the state.

For example, Biddeford has the state’s second-highest overall violent crime rate (336 per 100,000), which is still below the overall national violent crime rate. With a population of over 20,000, Biddeford isn’t exactly a tiny hamlet, but it is among the fastest-growing tourist destinations in the state thanks to its proximity to the Seacoast region of New Hampshire.

Skowhegan ranked fifth among all Maine cities for its violent crime rate. Like Biddeford, it is a popular tourist destination in Maine, boasting the oldest continuously conducted state fair in the U.S.

Property Crime in Maine

When determining property crime rates in Maine, we looked at larceny-theft, burglary and motor vehicle theft incidents:

The overall property crime rate in Maine is 1,214 per 100,000 people, which is 38 percent lower than the overall U.S. rate of 1,954 per 100,000, putting Maine in 47th among the 50 states.
Only three states — Idaho, New Hampshire and Massachusetts — have lower property crime rates than Maine.
Larceny continues to be the most common property crime in Maine, as it is everywhere else in the country, with about 1,027 incidents per 100,000 people:

Violent Crime in Maine

Violent crimes include murder/non-negligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, rape and robbery and they are much less common than violent crimes:

Maine has the nation’s lowest rate of violent crime overall with 103 incidents per 100,000 people.
The violent crime rate in Maine is a staggering 73 percent lower than the overall U.S. rate of 381 per 100,000.
The most common type of violent crime in Maine is aggravated assault, with a rate of 59 per 100,000 (also a national low).

Our data

Our data comes from comprehensive reporting compiled by the FBI and accessed via the Crime Data Explorer website. Property and violent crime state figures were drawn from Table 5 of the 2022 Crime in the U.S. Report. Metropolitan figures were found in Table 6, Crime in the U.S. by Metropolitan Statistical Area. City-level figures were drawn from Table 8, Offenses Known to Law Enforcement by State by City. The population figures in that table are U.S. Census Bureau provisional estimates as of July 1, 2020.

Limitations: According to the FBI, the data in the publication tables may differ from those released on the Explorer Pages of the CDE. These variations are due to the difference in methodologies between the publication tables and data displayed on the CDE. Please note that crime statistics are not the sole measure of a city’s safety.