With the release of the latest crime rates by SLED, where does South Carolina and it’s Counties rank?
According to the WorldPopulationReview website South Carolina ranks 9th in the most dangerous states in the United States.
Year Murder Sexual Battery Robbery Agg.Assault B&E MV Theft Larceny Arson
2019 441 2775 3362 19,940 26,449 15,766 110,115 609
These number come from the 2019 SLED released crime rates in South Carolina. These numbers compared to last years show a rise in the first 4 catagories (Murder, Sexual Battery, Robbery, Agg. Assault).
Total Violent Crimes in South Carolina increased 2.1% brining the number of incidents from 25,980 in 2018 to 26,518 in 2019. That is a 8.1% increase in Murders from last year.
One of the more shocking statistics from this report was the age in which Sexual Battery occurred in the State.
It’s shocking that within 10 years South Carolina has only been able to bring down sexual assault on children under the age of 10 by 2.2% and sexual assault on teens by 4.4%. Could this relate to the fact that South Carolina is among the highest states with single parent homes? Out of the 2775 sexual battery cases reported only 500 arrests were made in 2019.
Domestic Violence in South Carolina
Here are the SLED statistics on Family and Intimate Violence
As South Carolina also ranks within the top 5 States for Domestic Violence, one can ask why has the State not done more to combat the issue of Family Violence? How many children that are not reported are harmed? Further in this statistic given by the SLED report Domestic Violence was broken down into 2 separate catagories, Family and Intimiate.
In the Family Category a total of 14,315 were victims of Murder, Assault and Intimidation. In the Intimate Category there were 31,141 victims in the same breakdown. That brings a total of 45,456 Victims of some sort of Domestic Violence in the State of South Carolina. It is important to know that in South Carolina one can be arrested for simple verbal argument with a spouse or intimate partner, and that this can also give grounds for a charge of Second Decree Domestic Violence if the argument is in front of children.
Many questions the Laws that are currently on the books for South Carolina as they have been argued to give more purpose for the financial aspects of Courts than for the good of South Carolinian Citizens.
Other Offenses such as Drugs and Weapon Violations are broken down here:
As one can see that in this time span in the SLED report Drug Offenses have risen and then maintained a steady level in the state. Weapon Violations have have gone back to the high levels of 20 years ago. Even though DUI’s have decreased in 2019 South Carolina has still ranked high in this category on a national scale.
It is also important to know that the above information are the arrests not the number of offenses in South Carolina.
This report also breaks these items down by County. This report can be downloaded and printed here. See where your County ranks….