Understanding crime rates in your state

• 1991 marked the start of the nation’s falling crime rates. From 1991 to 2020, violent crime rates fell in 39 states and Washington, DC. New Jersey and Florida have had the most pronounced long-term decreases in crime overall.

• In 2020, Alaska had the highest violent crime rate of any state, with 837.8 crimes per 100,000 residents. Maine, with 109 per 100,000, had the lowest. 
   
• Washington, DC, had an even higher violent crime rate than Alaska, but it might be more fitting to compare the rate in the nation's capital to cities with at least 500,000 residents instead of states. In 2019, seven cities, including Albuquerque, Detroit, and Memphis, had higher violent crime rates than Washington, DC. (City crime rate data for 2020 is not yet available from the FBI.)
   
• A drop in property crimes — down 8.1% from 2019 — drove 2020’s lower overall crime rate. Massachusetts had the lowest property crime rate: 1,053 incidents per 100,000 residents. 

Find out where your state ranked over the decades. And explore the data on crime rates dating back to the 1980s and 1990s for additional context. 


Where can felons vote? 

More than 1.2 million people were in prison in the US in 2020. Over 99% of these prisoners lost their right to vote while incarcerated. Here’s an overview of how felony convictions impact voting rights, from states that never remove the right to states that never restore it.

• Twenty states automatically restore voting rights when felons are released from prison, allowing them to vote while serving probation or on parole. In 2020, these states accounted for about 34% of the nation’s prison population.
   
• Since 2020, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Washington have changed their voting laws to automatically restore voting rights after release. Parolees previously could not vote in these five states.

• Eleven states do not automatically restore rights for felons. In Virginia and Tennessee, for example, they must petition the court or state government to restore their voting rights.

Three places in the US allow people to vote from prison. See where in this article.


Oil reserves and the price of gas
 

The Biden administration has continuously released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil, since November 2021. What is this reserve and how does it work? Did the released barrels affect oil prices? Here are the facts. 

• The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created in response to OPEC’s 1973 oil embargo. The reserve’s primary function is to prevent national oil shortages, but the federal government has also sold crude from the reserve to generate revenue. These sales have become more frequent since 2017.

• In March, one month after Russia invaded Ukraine, US crude oil prices were $107.07 per barrel, up from $89.41 a month prior. Prices reached a 14-year high of $113.77 a barrel in June.
   
• Also in March, the administration announced it would release 180 million barrels of oil into the supply chain, the most in the reserve’s history. An analysis from the Treasury Department shows that the oil releases helped lower US gasoline prices from March to July by an estimated 13–31 cents per gallon.

Learn more about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Data behind the news

New gross domestic product (GDP) numbers released last week show that GDP increased at an annual rate of 2.6% in the third quarter of 2022. Why does the government track GDP? Read this explanation. 

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