Crime stats (Memphis, Johnson City, Kingsport: crime rate, home, to buy)

[dad2paisley]

We are still looking for a home with land to buy in NE Tennessee. Every town or city I look up for crime, it says this has the highest crime rate in the whole USA. This is for every town or city I look up in Tennessee.
Is this wrong.

[DubbleT]

Yes, and there are a lot of threads already about TN using a different method of reporting crimes than most other places in the country, including this one-> Crime

ETA- this is from a really old source, but explains the difference fairly well IMO

While there is a national equivalent to TIBRS (tennessee incident based reporting system)- called NIBRS, or National Incident-Based Reporting System - virtually all other major cities from New York to Los Angeles still use the traditional FBI Uniform Crime Reporting system (UCR). Austin, Texas, is the largest city outside of Tennessee using the new method.

One of the major differences between the two is how they deal with incidents that involve more than one crime. Under the UCR system, a robbery of three people in which one of the victims was killed would result in only the most serious crime - the homicide - being reported. Under TIBRS, both the robbery and the homicide would be counted. (MY NOTE THIS IS CALLED HIERARCHICAL COUNTING).......snip.....The TIBRS system also reports crime in much more detail. The UCR system has eight basic categories for serious crimes while TIBRS divides major crime into 47 categories. It breaks sexual assault into six categories, for example, ranging from forcible rape to incest.

And TIBRS counts several crimes as serious that the UCR system does not, including illegal gambling and drug violations.

From the Memphis Commercial Appeal

[Serious Conversation]

Keep in mind that, for even something like a DUI, someone might get charged with DUI, then a bunch of other things. Someone could easily get multiple charges depending on what applies during a DUI arrest - open container, possession of a firearm while intoxicated, violation of financial responsibility law, etc. Each one of these ends up being a separate charge.

I'm speaking for the Tri-Cities. Kingsport has far higher crime rates than anywhere else in the area, and it feels that way. Johnson City and Bristol are around the national averages. Jonesborough and Erwin are lower. Some rural areas, particularly west of the Tri-Cities going into Hawkins County, have higher crime rates. There is almost no random violent crime in east TN, and I'd wager most of the crime is drug/domestic, and largely contained among people already known to each other.