The FBI says crime rankings provide little insight into the many variables that mold crime in a particular city or other jurisdiction. However, comparing cities at the extremes of a ranking may reveal patterns that are otherwise difficult to detect due to the multitude of factors that motivate criminal behavior. For example, consider the US cities with the lowest and highest robbery rates:
Surely, cities with less than 10 robberies per 100K inhabitants differ in important ways from cities with robbery rates in the hundreds and these difference can tell us something about criminogenic factors in the high-robbery cities. Here are some obvious differences:
So what do you do with this kind of information? Generate hypotheses and ideas for interventions. I’ll eventually go there but not yet.