Alaska’s 5 Safest Cities of 2022

The SafeWise Team is pleased to release the eighth annual Safest Cities report.

See if your city made the full list.

Alaska’s five safest cities include three newcomers for 2022, while repeat-performers Palmer and Homer have risen to the top of the list thanks to decreasing violent and property crime rates.

However, Alaska's violent and property crime rates are above the national average and top the charts for the Pacific region.

• Violent crime rates
• Property crime rates
• Interesting findings
• The Safest Cities
• Methodology
• How to make a safe home anywhere
• How other cities compare
• How other states compare

Alaska has the highest violent crime rate and the thirteenth-highest property crime rate in the US. With that said, crime rates declined in The Last Frontier compared to the previous year.

According to our State of Safety survey, Alaskans’ level of concern about their daily safety has returned to 2019 levels (34%) after a spike in 2020 (42%).

Alaska’s one of the top five states where residents feel the least concerned about property crime, gun violence, and the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the national sentiment. When it comes to violent crime and package theft, Alaska ranks among the top ten states with the least concern.

Despite low levels of concern, 52% of Alaskans feel safe in their state, which is lower than the national average of 55%. And while most Alaskans (63%) believe crime is on the rise, this state’s residents are more likely to think that crime is decreasing overall compared to the national sentiment.

We asked Alaskans which crimes they worry may happen to them. See if Alaskans are concerned about the same crime issues as the rest of the country.

View the complete 2022 State of Safety report.

Alaska is one of just 15 states where violent crime decreased compared to the previous year. Still, Alaska’s violent crime rate is more than double that of the Pacific region and is the highest of all 50 states. So Alaskans’ low concern about violent crime is out of sync with the amount of violent crime happening.

• Alaska’s violent crime rate is 8.4 per 1,000 people, more than double the national average (US 4.0).
• Rape accounts for 18% of all violent crime in Alaska, which is the seventh-highest in the nation and 8 percentage points above the national average.
• 47% of Alaska residents use some form of personal protection (US 34%) with pocket knives leading the way (25%).
• 26% of Alaska residents say their personal safety has been affected by the pandemic (US 44%).
• 48% of Alaskans feel confident in law enforcement’s approach to crime prevention (US 56%).

• In our latest State of Safety survey, Alaskans told us that daily safety/security was their number-one safety concern. On a national scale, the most common safety concern is gun violence (53%), but only 30% of Alaskans named gun violence their top safety concern.
• 6% of Alaskans have experienced a gun violence incident—2 percentage points lower than the national average.
• During the past reporting year, 4 people were injured and 1 person was killed in a mass shooting event in Alaska.
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Property crime in Alaska has decreased year over year, which follows regional and national trends. Results from our State of Safety survey mirror that decline: 28% of Alaskan respondents said they had experienced a property crime in the 12 months prior to the survey, which is 16 percentage points lower than last year’s survey results.

• 27% of Alaska residents reported experiencing package theft in our latest survey, which is 7 percentage points higher than the national average.
• 72% of Alaskans use some form of property protection (US 60%) with firearms leading the way at 49% (US 26%).
• 17% of Alaskans say the security of their property has been affected by the pandemic (US 29%).

For the purposes of this report, the terms “dangerous” and “safest” refer explicitly to crime rates as calculated from FBI crime data—no other characterization of any community is implied or intended.

• 10 Alaskan cities met the criteria to be considered for ranking.
• 2 of the top 5 cities are repeats from last year: Palmer and Homer.
• Palmer moved up 3 spots to land at the top of the list this year.
• Kenai moved up an impressive 11 spots to land in third position this year.

• The top 2 safest cities in Alaska—Palmer and Homer—reported 0 murders during the 2022 reporting year.
• Each of the top 5 cities reported fewer than 40 total violent crimes, with the exception of North Slope Borough, which saw 126.
• Aggravated assault was the most common violent crime reported in each of Alaska’s safest cities. The second was rape.
• Kenai’s violent crime rate decreased by around half year over year.
• Homer and North Slope Burough are the only 2 safest cities with violent crime increases year over year.

• Each of Alaska’s safest cities experienced a decrease in property crime year over year.
• All cities but one (Ketchikan) reported property crimes below state, regional, and US rates.
• Compared to the previous year, burglaries increased in Alaska’s safest cities while larceny-theft and motor vehicle thefts decreased.
• North Slope Burough has a surprisingly low property crime rate of 5.4 per 1,000 people. That’s about half of the next-lowest property crime rate—11.0 in Homer.

Learn how we identified the safest cities on our methodology page.

Whether your city made our list or not, we encourage everyone to be proactive about home security. One of the best ways to stop a burglary before it happens is to add a home security system.

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We calculated crime rates for every city in the state that met our population threshold, based on the state’s median population as calculated using FBI data. To request a report of the remaining cities in your state, sign up for our email newsletter (we make it easy in a quick form below!) or email info@safewise.com with the subject line: Safest Cities Full Report.

NOTE: If you don’t see your city on the list, it means that it was below the population threshold or didn’t submit a complete crime report to the FBI in 2020.

Click on the state image or dropdown menu below to check out the safest cities for each state.

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FBI: Crime Data Explorer, Accessed March 8, 2022.

US Census Bureau, "Data Explorer," Accessed January 24, 2022.

Best Places, “Find a Place Search Tool,” Accessed January 24, 2022.

SafeWise, “2021 State of Safety survey,” Accessed March 8, 2022.

Gun Violence Archive, “Past Summary Ledgers,” Accessed January 24, 2022.

Gun Violence Archive, “General Methodology,” Accessed March 8, 2022.

Melody Hicks, Ben Stickle, Joshua Harms, American Journal of Criminal Justice, “Assessing the Fear of Package Theft,” January 04, 2021. Accessed March 8, 2022.

For definitions and more on data sources, see our methodology page.