The Safest and Dangerous Cities in Tennessee

Tennessee Crime Rates at a Glance

Overall, crime rates nationwide decreased in 2023. Tennessee’s crime rates, however, remain unusually high among its peers, and they grew markedly in 2023 while many states’ crime rates dropped. The state ranked No. 3 among all states in the most recent year of available federal data for its rate of both violent and property crimes.

Tennessee also has high rates of income inequality,³ tobacco use,⁴ and drug abuse.⁵ Those are factors with correlations to accidents, injuries, crime, and fatalities.

Violent crime rates

(per 100,000 residents)

The state’s violent crime rate of 628 per 100,000 residents in 2023 was a staggering 73 percent higher than the national average. It also increased 1.1 percent in 2023 over the previous year’s reported incidents, while the national average markedly decreased.

Tennessee’s 2023 murder rate of 9.9 per 100,000 was about 74 percent above the national average. Tennessee’s 37.6 reported rapes for every 100,000 residents in 2023 was the only crime subset that registered below the national average, by 1.1 percent.

Robbery occurred at a rate of 71.5 per 100,000 and was 7.5 percent higher than the national average. The rate of aggravated assault was 71.5 for every 100,000 Tennesseans — a shocking 92.8 percent above the national average.

The most common violent crime in Tennessee in 2023 was aggravated assault. It occurred at a rate of over 500 per 100,000 residents — or one out of every 200 people living in Tennessee.

Property crime rates

(per 100,000 residents)

At the same time, property crimes reported to the police in Tennessee topped 2,360 per 100,000. That was 23 percent higher than the nationwide average in 2023, and it represented a 2.6 percent year-over-year increase.

The most common property crime was larceny-theft, at more than 1,600 per 100,000 people, or nearly two out of every 100 residents. That was nearly 20 percent above the national average. Burglary across the state clocked in at just under 300 per 100,000 people — 18.3 percent higher than the national average. Vehicle theft topped 450 incidents per 100,000 residents, which was 41 percent above the national average.

Tennessee Statewide Crime Trends

The Volunteer State is one of the more populous U.S. states, ranking 15th by population. Furthermore, Tennessee ranks above the national average in income inequality. Criminal justice researchers have long noted a statistically significant correlation between income inequality and crime rates at the county, state, and international levels.

An Italian social scientist wrote about that phenomenon a century ago, building on the work of an American economist from Wisconsin who worked for the Census Bureau. Researchers in the social sciences call the metric the Gini coefficient.⁶

Researchers have found that poverty doesn’t correlate with crime so much as disparities in wealth and income levels within a geographic region.

Where Our Crime Data Comes From

Unless specified otherwise, the information in this article is based on crime data compiled by the FBI and made available through the Crime Data Explorer. Statewide violent and property crime statistics are drawn from the FBI’s 2023 Crime in the United States Report (Table 5), and for city-level crime rates, we referred to Table 8, which lists reported offenses by state and city.

Important Note: Crime statistics offer valuable insights, but they aren’t the only way to evaluate a community’s safety. Local context, law enforcement practices, and reporting standards can all influence how crime is recorded. Additionally, FBI publication tables and the data displayed on the Crime Data Explorer may differ slightly due to variations in methodology.