Halloween is the holiday of thrills and chills, but to celebrate the spooky season without any real scares, prioritizing safety during trick-or-treating is paramount.
Whether you’re taking your child for their first candy collection session or are considering trusting the teens with a night out unchaperoned, one question is undoubtedly top of mind:
How safe is my community?
In the following study, we present a list of the top 25 safest cities for trick-or-treating based on factors such as crime rates, pedestrian protections, law enforcement presence, and more.
Key findings:
- Among the top 25 safest cities in the nation for trick-or-treating, seven are in the state of Texas. Specifically, both the Dallas metropolitan area and the Houston metropolitan area are home to some of the safest cities for trick-or-treating.
- Elsewhere, the Phoenix metropolitan area is home to five cities within the top 25 ranking, including Gilbert (No. 2), Chandler (No. 14), Surprise (No. 15), Scottsdale (No. 16), and Peoria (No. 19).
- Four cities in California are also within the top 25 safest, including Irvine (No. 10), Glendale (No. 12), Carlsbad (No. 18), Murrieta (No. 21), and Sunnyvale (No. 22).
- The Chicago suburb of Naperville claims the top spot at No. 1 on the list.
Which cities are the safest for trick-or-treating?
To establish our ranking, we analyzed data from more than 300 U.S. cities and assigned equal weight to five key metrics: pedestrian fatalities, violent crime, property crime, the number of registered sex offenders, and the number of law enforcement employees. We standardized each metric by calculating it per 10,000 residents. Furthermore, every city included in our analysis had a population of at least 100,000 or more.