Schools
Illinois City Ranked 2nd-Safest College Town In Nation
Only 1 college town in the country had a lower crime rate than the home of Trinity International University, according to a new report.
DEERFIELD, IL — Deerfield was ranked the second-safest college town in the United States, according to a new report. No other place in Illinois cracked the top 10 of the 2018 rankings, and only Brookline, Massachusetts was deemed to be a safer town in a rating of the nation's safest places that include institutions of higher learning.
In order to qualify as a "college town" for the purposes of the ranking from the safety-focused website SafeWise, municipalities needed to have at least 15,000 people and include a nonprofit college or university offering four-year degrees.
With nearly 3,000 students, Trinity International University was founded in 1897 and moved to its present location in the village of Bannockburn in the 1960s. In addition to its North Shore campus, Trinity also has campuses in Dolton, Illinois; Miami, Florida and Santa Ana California.
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In Brookline, home of Newbury College and Hellenic College, average rents are just under $2,600 a month and the median annual household income is $93,640, according to cost of living data cited by the SafeWise report. That's compared to average rents of $1,560 a month in Deerfield, where the median household brings in $135,754.
Only one college town – Moscow, Idaho – reported zero murders and zero rapes but 70 percent of the top 50 cities ranked reported no murders in 2016, according to SafeWise. Per capita property crime rates, including burglary, theft, stolen cars and arson, were included for context. Besides Deerfield, the only other Illinois college town to crack the top 20 was Naperville, where there are at least seven college campuses in town.
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The rating used 2016 crime data, the most recent full year available from the FBI. The ranking was based on the incidence of violent crimes per capita. Violent cimes include murder, sexual assault, aggravated assault and robbery. The national average for violent crimes per 1,000 people is 4.64, according to the data.
See the rest of the top 20 safest college towns:
| Rank | City | Population | Violent Crimes | Property Crimes |
| 1 | Brookline, Massachusetts | 59,033 | 0.24 | 10.33 |
| 2 | Deerfield, Illinois | 19,176 | 0.26 | 6.41 |
| 3 | Rexburg, Idaho | 28,112 | 0.32 | 6.72 |
| 4 | Upper Dublin, Pennsylvania | 26,333 | 0.42 | 8.43 |
| 5 | Wellesley, Massachusetts | 29,049 | 0.45 | 5.47 |
| 6 | Princeton, New Jersey | 29,660 | 0.51 | 7.86 |
| 7 | Newton, Massachusetts | 89,116 | 0.52 | 7.20 |
| 8 | Alpharetta, Georgia | 69,943 | 0.54 | 20.14 |
| 9 | Smithfield, Rhode Island | 21,660 | 0.55 | 9.51 |
| 10 | Irvine, California | 266,663 | 0.57 | 14.01 |
| 11 | Fairfield, Connecticut | 61,889 | 0.61 | 16.19 |
| 12 | Naperville, Illinois | 148,070 | 0.62 | 10.72 |
| 13 | West Hartford, Connecticut | 62,979 | 0.64 | 25.23 |
| 14 | State College, Pennsylvania | 58,119 | 0.7 | 8.45 |
| 15 | Orem, Utah | 95,640 | 0.68 | 25.59 |
| 16 | Gorham, Maine | 17,346 | 0.69 | 11.7 |
| 17 | Moscow, Idaho | 25,307 | 0.71 | 19.16 |
| 18 | Tiffin, Ohio | 17,637 | 0.74 | 23.70 |
| 19 | Northfield, Minnesota | 20,445 | 0.78 | 10.32 |
| 20 | Bristol, Rhode Island | 22,229 | 0.81 | 6.75 |
Patch national reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this article.
Top photo: Trinity International University in Bannockburn (Trinity International University)
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