New Report Ranks Colorado Among the Least Safe States in the Country

Colorado is developing a dangerous reputation — at least, according to recent online rankings.

Colorado was named the seventh-least safe state in America in a WalletHub report released on October 6. The only states deemed less safe than Colorado, from sixth to first, were Oklahoma, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

It’s a familiar headline. Colorado was ranked the second-most dangerous state by U.S. News and World Report in May. World Population Review calls it the fourth most dangerous. But different reports reach wildly different conclusions. An August study by personal injury lawyers Whitley Law Firm placed Colorado in the middle of the nation, ranking thirtieth for safety.

State officials dispute the disparaging reports. In 2022, Governor Jared Polis laid out a plan to make Colorado one of the top ten safest states in the country. Polis’s spokesperson, Shelby Wieman, says Colorado crime rates have been on the decline ever since.

“Since then, he signed laws to fund law enforcement better, support more prosecutors, toughen penalties for auto theft, and much more,” Wieman says. “That work is paying dividends as we’re seeing year-over-year reductions in crime in key areas. …We’re incredibly proud of our work to make Colorado safer and the most recent data speaks for itself, showing a continued significant decline in crime over the last few years.”

Statewide violent crime dropped by 13.6 percent in the first quarter of 2025, compared to the first quarter of 2023, according to data from the Colorado Department of Public Safety. Murder decreased by 39 percent, robbery decreased by 27 percent, sexual offenses decreased by 19 percent and aggravated assault decreased by 8.6 percent. During that same period, property crime fell by 29 percent.

Similar encouraging trends can be seen within the capital city. This year, homicides are down more than 50 percent from the same period in 2023 and non-fatal shootings are down 24 percent from 2024, according to the Denver Police Department.

“We believe Colorado, specifically Denver, is not a dangerous place to live and we work diligently every day to improve the quality of life for our citizens,” DPD says in a statement.

So what’s the truth? Westword took a closer look at the WalletHub report to see why Colorado received such a poor grade.

WalletHub analyzed each state on 52 metrics broken into five categories: personal and residential safety, financial safety, road safety, workplace safety and emergency preparedness. The metrics were given different weights depending on their importance. For example, a state’s murder rate is counted more heavily toward its safety score than its rate of uninsured drivers.

Colorado placed fairly well in financial safety (seventeenth best) and average in emergency preparedness (thirtieth best). But the state struggled in personal and residential safety, workplace safety and road safety.

Here is where Colorado falls short in the most weighted metrics within these categories:

Personal and Residential Safety

Colorado performed worse in this category than any other, ranking as the sixth least safe state. Personal and residential safety was also the most important category in the report, representing 40 percent of the final grade, while each of the other four categories made up 15 percent.

The WalletHub report took into account crime rates ranging from drug overdoses to terrorist attacks, but it most heavily weighed each state’s rates of murder, rape, assault and registered sex offenders.

Colorado’s placement on the list aligns with its violent crime rate in 2024. Last year, Colorado had the eighth-highest rate of violent incidents in the nation — 476 per 100,000 people — according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center’s analysis of FBI data on homicide, aggravated assault, robbery and rape. The report also found that Colorado had the single-largest percent increase in violent crime between 2019 and 2024, rising by 24 percent.

Colorado had the fifth-highest rate of rape, tenth-highest for aggravated assault and twelfth-highest for robbery, according to the CSG Justice Center report. It ranked below average in homicide, however, placing 28th nationwide.

In 2024, Colorado had the fifteenth-highest rate of sex offenders in the country, with 335 per 100,000 residents, according to an analysis by SafeHome.

The Colorado Department of Public Safety warns against using FBI data to compare crime in different states, calling the accuracy of those numbers into question.

“The FBI itself cautions against using its data for state-to-state comparisons, since participation in reporting is voluntary and many of the nation’s largest agencies and jurisdictions do not submit data,” the department says in a statement. “As a result, the rankings draw conclusions from an incomplete picture of national crime trends.”

The WalletHub report also used data from various different time periods, some of which could be outdated. In analyzing climate disasters, it included all disasters that occurred within a state between 1980 and 2024. Terrorist incidents were counted from 2015 to 2025. For the majority of the data analyzed regarding crime rates, the year is not specified. If the report used the latest completed annual reports, the numbers would be from 2024 and Colorado’s improvements throughout 2025 would not be reflected.

“While the reports list their data sources, it does not specify which datasets or years of data were used, limiting transparency and making it difficult to assess accuracy,” the department adds.

Workplace Safety

The state’s second-lowest-performing category in the WalletHub report was workplace safety, ranking as the ninth least-safe state. The list primarily considered rates of occupational injuries in each state.

Colorado fares relatively well in this metric. The state had just the 38th-highest rate of fatal occupational injuries in 2023, according to the most recent state-by-state data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That year, Colorado’s fatal injury rate was 2.8 per 100,000 full-time workers.

When it comes to nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses, the state had the fourteenth-highest rate in 2023: 2.7 per 100 full-time workers, according to bureau data.

However, Colorado lost major points for workplace safety because it does not have its own state plan for occupational safety and health. Instead, Colorado is under federal OSHA jurisdiction, which covers most private sector workers but does not cover state and local government workers.

Road Safety

WalletHub named Colorado the thirteenth least-safe state for road safety, with the most significant factors being roadway fatalities and pedestrian fatalities.

Colorado is pretty middle-of-the-road in those categories. It had the 24th-highest pedestrian fatality rate in 2024 (2.06 fatalities per 100,000 population), according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.

The same year, Colorado had the 21st-highest fatality rate for miles traveled (1.25 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles of travel), according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The state performs worse in the less-weighted categories analyzed by WalletHub. For example, Colorado had the fourteenth most DUI arrests per capita in 2024, according to a Forbes study. The state also scored poorly for its lack of driving safety laws regarding occupant protection, child passengers and new driver requirements, based on the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety’s annual report.

Best and Worst

The top ten safest states in the nation, according to WalletHub, are as follows:

1. Vermont
2. Massachusetts
3. New Hampshire
4. Maine
5. Utah
6. Connecticut
7. Hawaii
8. Minnesota
9. Rhode Island
10. Wyoming

The ten least safe states are:

1. Louisiana
2. Mississippi
3. Texas
4. Florida
5. Arkansas
6. Oklahoma
7. Colorado
8. Alabama
9. Georgia
10. Missouri