Alaska’s violent crime rate would be second-highest in US, but it’s not part of the latest federal report
- Mark Sabbatini
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
724 incidents per 100,000 Alaska residents in 2024 in report earlier this year far above national average of 370.8 in new study, which omits state because it ‘did not meet statistical reliability criteria’
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
The violent crime rate in Alaska has been among the nation’s highest for many years, but that isn’t the case in a new federal report — but only because the state is among five whose data isn’t considered sufficiently reliable.
Alaska’s rate was 724 for every 100,000 people in 2024, according to a report published in January. That would place the state second in a new report this month that puts the national average at 370.8, behind New Mexico at 752.9 (Tennessee was third at about 600), according to U.S. Justice Department statistics.
The DOJ report released this month about "crime known to law enforcement" excludes five states — Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Mississippi and Pennsylvania — because they "did not meet statistical reliability criteria." The specific language cited for Alaska is highly convoluted, but essentially means the figure cited could be off by at least 30% and excludes at least 10% of the state’s population.
"State estimates are suppressed because the ratio generated by dividing the root-mean-square error (RMSE) by the estimate (E) is greater than or equal to 30% (RMSE/E ≥ 0.30) and because an agency that comprised 10% or more of the population did not report NIBRS data," is how the report puts it.
The other four states met one of those two criteria for exclusion, but not both.
Austin McDaniel, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Public Safety, stated Monday that Alaska is excluded because in 2021 the FBI began requiring agencies to submit data to the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) rather than the previous Summary Reporting System (SRS) format.
"Some Alaska law enforcement agencies have not been reporting their data in the required NIBRS format, including the Anchorage Police Department which reports approximately 60% of the crime that occurs in Alaska. APD submits data in the SRS format," he wrote.
The Anchorage Police Department is updating its systems to use NIBRS, McDaniel noted.
As such, McDaniel said, the rates in the most recent DOJ study aren’t necessarily directly comparable to those cited for Alaska earlier this year. But the state’s official crime report for 2024, which reports a 0.1% decease in violent crime compared to 2023, tracks similarly with federal data for those periods.
Alaska’s rate, reported in January by USAFacts.org, was cited by that website as the highest among states prior to the release of this month’s DOJ report. The state’s second-highest rating behind New Mexico is noted in U.S. News and World Report’s state rankings.
Federal data for 2023 put Alaska’s rate at 728 incidents per 100,000, compared to 724 in 2024. Also, "the violent crime rate has held steady since about 1993,” Brad Myrstol, director of the Alaska Justice Information Center, told the state House Judiciary Committee in a February 2025 presentation.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, in his final State of the State address in January, declared violent crime reported to police in Alaska declined 20% between 2018 and 2024. He also, in a press conference before the address, said "We didn't say we have the best crime rate in the nation. We said we are affecting it and driving it down.”
Violent crime is declining overall nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to DOJ’s known crimes report for 2024 as well as a second department report examining crimes over a 10-year period. Initial data from 2025 in 40 large U.S. cities show the decline continued in 2025.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
