Submitted by Matthew Klumpp, Oct 31, 2006 09:48

This list is misleading, in that it compares apples to oranges. Comparing a compact big city - something like Boston or Philadelphia - to the newer, sprawling cities of the south and west makes little sense. Amherst, the second safest city on the list, is a suburb of Buffalo, which shows up much lower in the rankings. In somewhere like Jacksonville, those two cities would be combined into one, since the city Jacksonville consists of everything within miles and miles of the city center, effectively containing both inner city and suburbs. I would guess that the inner parts of Jacksonville are closer to Buffalo's stats and the outer reaches of Jacsonville are more in line with a place like Amherst.

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