Louisiana Has the 2 Least Safe Cities in New Ranking

LOUISIANA - If you're looking for the safest places to live in America, a new national ranking has some pretty rough news for Louisiana.

Two of the state's cities landed at the very bottom of a new study examining safety across the country. That's right, 2 Louisiana cities have ranked as the two lowest-scoring cities among the 182 communities included in the report.

Yes, WalletHub used metrics like crime stastitics and traffic fatalities, but there are some other important factors that are out of anyone's control that went into the rankings that contributed to these Louisiana cities being dead last.

Let's take a look...

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Least Safe Cities In Louisiana

In total, three cities in Louisiana landed on this list. Honestly, to only have three on the entire list of 182 doesn't seem all that terrible.

The 3rd least safe Louisiana city is Shreveport, landing at number 158 out 182.

By the way, the top 5 safest cities in America according to WalletHub's new survey are -

1. Juneau, Alaska

2. Warwick, Rhose Island

3. Overland Park, Kansas

4. Burlington, Vermont

5. South Burlington, Vermont

OK, look at Burlington, Vermont showing off!

Now, let's take a look at Louisiana...

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New Orleans Ranks As The Least Safe City In America

New Orleans received an overall safety score of just 30.66 out of 100, putting it in last place among the 182 cities WalletHub evaluated.

The city's overall ranking reflects several different categories of safety, including crime-related measures, environmental risks, and financial conditions.

Here's how New Orleans performed in the study's three major categories -

Home and Community Safety: 182nd
Natural Disaster Risk: 104th
Financial Safety: 172nd

Yeah, that's right. New Orleans ranks at the bottom of the barrel for Home and Community Safety.

Yikes.

I would have thought New Orleans would rank much higher in the Natural Disaster Risk.

Baton Rouge Finishes Just One Spot Ahead

Baton Rouge finished 181st with an overall score of 34.20 out of 100. That placed Louisiana's capital just one position above New Orleans.

Baton Rouge's category rankings looked like this -

Home and Community Safety: 181st
Natural Disaster Risk: 130th
Financial Safety: 144th

Like New Orleans, Baton Rouge's weakest performance came in the home and community safety category.

However, Baton Rouge ranked better than New Orleans in both natural disaster risk and financial safety.

Why Did Both Louisiana Cities Rank So Poorly?

This is where the study gets a little bit interesting.

WalletHub evaluated 182 cities using 41 different measures, dividing them into three major categories...home and community safety, natural-disaster risk, and financial safety.

Those categories aren't weighted equally.

Home and community safety accounts for 60% of the overall score, while natural-disaster risk and financial safety each account for 20%.

That means crime and other community-safety measures carry considerably more weight than either of the other two categories.

The home and community category includes statistics such as murders, assaults, rapes, thefts, mass shootings, hate crimes, drug-poisoning deaths, traffic fatalities, pedestrian fatalities, and the availability of emergency personnel.

But, let's be honest with ourselves. Things like murders, rape, shootings, ect being weighted categories doesn't provide any sort of excuses for Baton Rouge and New Orleans to be last in America. These particular crime stats carry more importance because, they are, and, Baton Rouge and New Orleans are failing more than any other cities in the United States at keeping these stats down.

I don't like saying it, but it's a painful truth.

WalletHub also considers financial safety, including unemployment, underemployment, health insurance coverage, poverty, foreclosure rates, credit scores, fraud complaints, and other indicators of financial security.