Murder Capitals Of America: 2 New Jersey Cities On List

Two New Jersey cities have been listed as "Murder Capitals of America" for 2018. One came in third in the country and is considered more dangerous than Detroit or Baltimore, according to the survey.

The list was prepared by NeighborhoodScout, a web-based platform from Location, Inc., and includes 30 cities in America with the highest number of murders per 1,000 residents.

In New Jersey, the two cities that were given the designation include Camden and Newark. Camden came in second, making it the nation's worst "murder capital" behind only East St. Louis, Ill. and Chester, Pa. Chester, like Camden, is in the Philadelphia suburban area, and the two towns are only 20 miles apart.

NeighborhoodScout compiled its list, which includes cities with a population of 25,000 or more, using crime data from the FBI on number of murders. The data was then compared to the population of each city provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In Camden, a city with about 74,000 people located east of Philadelphia, there were 47 murders in 2016 (the latest full year for which FBI data is available). That's a murder rate of 0.63 per 1,000 residents.

The top 10 Murder Capitals of America, according to NeighborhoodScout, include:

1. East St. Louis, IL
2. Chester, PA
3. Camden, NJ
4. St. Louis, MO
5. Gary, IN
6. West Memphis, AR
7. Baltimore, MD
8. Flint, MI
9. Detroit, MI
10. New Orleans, LA
11. Salisbury, NC
12. Danville, VA
13. Wilmington, DE
14. Compton, CA
15. Newark, NJ

Click here to see the full list of NeighborhoodScout's Murder Capitals of America.

With reporting by Kara Seymour, Patch National Staff

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