Since our founding, Minnesota Compass has tracked trends in our Public Safety topic area from the lens of crime and corrections. But in the years following events that affected our state and communities very locally—in particular, the police-involved killings of Philando Castile and George Floyd, and the civil unrest that followed these events—it became increasingly clear that our public safety indicators no longer reflected the community safety issues that matter most to Minnesotans’ quality of life. Learn how we gathered new data.
Our project is now on the threshold of launching a set of four new key measures of public safety, identified in collaboration with an advisory group composed of diverse stakeholders representing Minnesota’s business, government, nonprofit, community organizing, academic, and philanthropic sectors. This article takes a deeper look at two of those new measures—adult feelings of safety and crime rates—to show how objective, official crime statistics align with Minnesotans’ feelings of safety in their communities.
Minnesota’s adults largely feel safe in their communities, but those feelings appear to be trending in the wrong direction.
Recent survey results from the Minnesota Community Survey reveal some good news about feelings of public safety. Eighty-five percent of Minnesota adults report that the community where they live is “mostly” or “always” safe. Focusing explicitly on crime, three-quarters of Minnesota adults say that fear of crime “rarely” or “never” prevents them from doing things they would like to do (74%). Still, about a quarter of adults reported that fear of crime “somewhat often” or “very often” prevents them from doing things they would like to do (26%).
Feelings of safety
Most Minnesota adults feel safe in their community
Most Minnesota adults not deterred by fear of crime
One-third of Minnesota adults report their community is less safe
The survey also revealed some mixed views related to perceived changes in safety over the past three years. About one-third of Minnesota adults believe their community has become less safe (36%). More than half believe their community has stayed the same (56%), while only 8% report that their community has become safer.
Do Minnesotans’ feelings of safety track with our crime rates? At first glance…no. But upon further investigation…yes.
At a high level, Minnesotans’ feelings of safety do not necessarily square with official crime statistics. Our serious crime rate has been steadily declining for decades and stands at its lowest level in more than three decades (1,995 serious crimes per 100,000 residents). There was a slight uptick in our crime rate between 2018 and 2021, although the downward trend has since resumed.
This seems to suggest that Minnesotans’ feelings of safety are at odds with official crime statistics. If serious crime has been declining for decades, why do a third of Minnesota adults feel their community has become less safe? Why do a quarter of Minnesota adults say fear of crime prevents them from doing things they would like to do?
If we dig further into the data, looking at specific types of serious crime, Minnesotans’ feeling of safety may be more aligned with official crime statistics than at first glance.
During the pandemic years, our state was home to a noticeable uptick in violent crime, a subcategory of serious crime that includes murder, rape, aggravated assault, and human trafficking. Between 2019 and 2021, Minnesota’s violent crime rate went from 222 to 311 violent crimes per 100,000 residents. That represents a 42% increase in violent crime overall, led by a 63% increase in reports of aggravated assault in particular. While violent crimes make up a minority of serious crimes reported in Minnesota—13% in 2023—pronounced increases in violent crime in recent memory may continue to impact Minnesotans’ perceptions of safety for years after.
Property crime, which includes burglary, larceny (or theft), motor vehicle theft, and arson, plateaued during the pandemic. Although it did not rise, Minnesota saw its property crime rate exceed the national rate, which did decrease, for the first time in three decades. And this plateau disguises notable increases in some detailed types of property crime, like motor vehicle theft and arson. Motor vehicle theft, for example, increased 47% between 2018 and 2022, before declining in 2023. This specific type of property crime has garnered broad attention, with likely impacts on Minnesotans’ feelings of safety.
Objective crime rates and subjective feelings of safety are both important to our understanding of Minnesotans’ well-being.
Our newest key measure demonstrates the specific importance of understanding Minnesotans’ feelings of safety. These perceptions can influence behaviors and strengthen (or wear away) at the fabric binding our communities together.
But we also know that perceptions of safety can accurately reflect, lag years behind, or even negate official crime statistics. Our most recent data show declines in both violent crime and property crime over the last year or two, both heading in promising directions reflective of fewer disruptions from the pandemic. In our newly refreshed Public Safety topic area, our Compass team will continue to monitor official crime statistics, while at the same time collecting updated data on feelings of safety, to provide a more nuanced picture Minnesotans’ sense of well-being in their communities.
For the first time in our nearly 20-year history, we took a leap in collecting our own primary data for this measure. We worked with the team at Lumaris to add three items to their Minnesota Community Survey, a new web-based panel survey of more than 3,000 Minnesota adults. In order to build on research in this area, our items were based on a review of previous surveys conducted by APM Research Lab, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Gallup, and Pew Research Center.