The Most Safest and Dangerous Cities in Wisconsin

Is Wisconsin safe? Well, that depends. At one end, just over the border from Chicago, lies what some refer to as a “smaller Chicago,” Milwaukee. It is the state’s largest city by a country mile, and home to all the social vices Americans typically associate with large cities. About 90 minutes west, however, lies Madison, a leafy university town and the state’s second largest city. It’s home to all the social virtues Americans typically associate with university towns.

In the north, past the rolling hills of the Driftless Area and on the other side of the corn counties (flattened by ice age glaciation), we enter the lower reaches of North America’s great boreal forest. This area is a world of endless spruces, pines, oaks, and aspens that spans the width of the continent, from Newfoundland to Alaska. Crime is relatively low in these upstate parts, where the trees are generally well-behaved and local governments stubbornly refuse to prosecute cow tipping.

Crime, however, is a very real problem in Wisconsin’s Rust Belt, which includes Milwaukee and a score of erstwhile factory towns. Most of them are situated in the state’s eastern third, along the waterways — Lake Michigan, Fox River, Green Bay — that were once commercial superhighways. These cities rose and fell with domestic industry and are now where crime in the state clusters.

The Towns With the Lowest Property Crime Rates in Wisconsin

Milton Town (population 3,100), not to be confused with the slightly larger city of Milton (also named for the English poet), is a single stoplight place. The sparseness of its population, which is 91 people per square mile, makes crimes of opportunity, such as burgling an unlocked car, extremely unlikely. Like a lot of so-called towns in Wisconsin’s most rural regions, Milton Town is not so much a coherent community as a convenient administrative division drawn on a map by the relevant county (in this case, Rock County). Nonetheless, its property crime rate is only 33 incidents per 100,000 people, so Miltonians needn’t worry about locking up their stuff.

Another town with low property crime rates is Hammond. Unlike Milton Town, the village of Hammond in north western Wisconsin is a coherent community, with a main street and the rest of it, even a Running of the Llamas (now defunct, alas). An exurb about an hour from the Twin Cities, which serve as its economic anchor, Hammond, while not exactly wealthy, nonetheless enjoys low poverty and high home ownership. This helps preserve peace in the community, which is also too small, at 1,900 people, to sustain the kind of commercial developments that attract outsiders and late-night crowds. Hammond’s property crime rate is 54.

The Towns With the Worst Property Crime Rates in Wisconsin

At the other end of the spectrum, we have West Milwaukee, population 4,100, a suburb nestled against Milwaukee’s southwest side. It has a property crime rate of 14,694. At first glance West Milwaukee seems like a middling place. But a look into its Census figures, particularly those from 2000 and 2010, shows that poverty is on the upswing and the town is changing. Meanwhile, the Brewers play just a few blocks away, meaning there is high foot traffic, lending itself to opportunistic crime.

Long an overflow zone for tourists visiting the Wisconsin Dells, Lake Delton is home to 3,500 in south central Wisconsin. Gradually, it has become the other half of the Midwest’s largest tourist destination. Millions of people now pass through Lake Delton every year, many leaving their belongings unattended at the town’s many water parks to make the place easy pickings for petty thieves. Lake Delton’s property crime rate is 9,167.

The Towns With the Lowest Violent Crime Rates in Wisconsin

Mount Horeb is a peaceful town of 7,700 in south central Wisconsin, just a 20-minute drive from Madison. It’s a town known for its Norwegian heritage, one which led Mount Horeb to designate itself the Troll Capital of the World to celebrate Norway’s contribution to folklore. Its poverty rate is only 3.7 percent and its unemployment rate is only 0.8 percent. So, it should come as no surprise that violent crime in Mount Horeb barely registers at 13.

Shorewood is an old-growth, old-money suburb in Milwaukee’s North Shore. This idyllic town of 13,900 is something of a bubble in the area, with a crime rate of barely 15. Although its poverty rate clocks in at 13.4 percent, according to the census, its standard-setting social services and engaged community of long-term residents help keep Shorewood safe and sound.

The Towns With the Highest Violent Crime Rates in Wisconsin

Maple Bluff — yes, you read that right — is a town where the governor’s mansion is just one among 300 Architectural Digest-worthy homes. It also has Wisconsin’s highest violent crime rate (1,935), according to the FBI’s latest estimate. But is this lakeshore enclave within Madison actually a war zone? I wouldn’t say so, since it only takes a single hockey brawl to explode the violent crime rate in a town so small (population 1,300).

Milwaukee (population 561,000) suffered greatly when production moved overseas, as it was a city built on industries with broad exposure to the global economy. And while employment has gradually recovered, wages have not — a fate shared, unfortunately, by half the Rust Belt. Poverty in the city remains high at 23 percent, according to the census. And since crime often pays, it also persists. Milwaukee’s rate is 1,438.

Statewide Trends: How Safe is Wisconsin Overall?

Overall, the Badger State is very safe — at least compared to other states. Wisconsin is well below national averages in all major categories of property and violent crime, except for rape, where it is only 3.9 percent below the national average. It ranks 30th among states for violent crime and 44th for property crime. And the year-over-year trends for both property and violent crime point in the right direction. Property crime in Wisconsin (already 37 percent below the national average) dropped 12.1 percent compared with the previous year, and violent crime (already 21 percent below the national average) dropped 2.8 percent compared with the previous year.

Given these realities, there is little reason to think of Wisconsin as particularly dangerous outside of a few hotspots. Poverty, after all, is in secular decline, and aggravated assault (see: Milwaukee) and larceny-theft (see: Lake Delton and the Wisconsin Dells), the most common types of crime, are declining with it. This can be chalked up, on the one hand, to a fairly resilient economy, which has diversified over the years and maintained a large public sector. On the other hand, to the rural character of half the state, where the people and property are too dispersed for easy mischief — a natural statistical bulwark.

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), while metro area data comes from Table 6, which breaks down offenses by metropolitan statistical areas. 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.

The Safest and Most Dangerous Cities in Wisconsin