per-capita. NYC still has like 400-500 murders a year. That's a small area. That's as many as happen in my whole state.

How many people in said state?

Close to that of NYC.

So a roughly similar population has a roughly similar murder rate? Why would this be surprising?

Sooo… just as safe then?

... but per-capita is 100% of what matters when assessing risk...?

[EDIT] Assessing risk based on course crime stats, I mean. Of course individual context and situations matter a lot, too.

Not really. Proximity is important. It influences how many people are going to be affected by it.

Getting murdered on my front lawn is a lot different than getting murdered in the lobby of a housing complex with 1000 people living in it.

Density is even more important when considering random crime because you have even more people who will be potential victims when someone is targeting an area.

> Density is even more important when considering random crime because you have even more people who will be potential victims when someone is targeting an area.

This is true—it's why rural towns and small cities are often really dangerous, while the overall state they're in might not have high violent crime stats, if a large proportion of the state's population isn't in towns or cities at all. Living far away from people is an effective way to avoid crime.