Texas’s 50 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.

Texans’ daily concern about safety jumped 13 percentage points (to 62%) in our most recent State of Safety survey. Not only is that a huge leap from the previous year’s 49%—it’s also 15 percentage points higher than the national average. 

But those who call one of Texas’s 50 safest cities home may be less concerned due to significantly lower rates of crime than the rest of the state.

• 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

Even though Texas’s crime rates are higher than national averages, The Lone Star State boasts the lowest crime rates in the West South Central region. Texas is 33% below Arkansas, which has the highest violent crime rate in the region at 6.7 incidents per 1,000 people. And Texas reports 22% fewer property crime incidents than Louisiana, which has the highest property crime rate in the region at 28.8 incidents per 1,000.

That said, the state saw a slight uptick in violent crime this year, rising from 4.2 to 4.5 incidents per 1,000 people. On the flip side, the property crime rate fell from 24.1 to 22.5 incidents per 1,000 people.

High levels of concern about crime and safety echo higher crime rates across The Lone Star State, but reported experiences of both violent and property crime fell year over year. Although Texans worry more than the rest of the US, 56% of survey respondents feel safe in the state—slightly higher than the national average of 55%. 

• 60% of Texans think crime is increasing versus 11% that think it’s decreasing. Nationwide, 66% think crime is on the rise and 8% think it’s declining.
• Personal experience with violent crime went down 56% year over year, with 7% of survey respondents reporting a personal experience in the 12 months prior to the survey, compared to 16% the previous year.
• Personal experience with property crime also went down 39% year over year, from 23% to 14%.
• Package theft was the most-experienced crime in Texas, with 21% falling victim to porch pirates in the 12 months  prior to the survey (US 20%).

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

View the complete 2022 State of Safety report.

Concern about violent crime is 11 percentage points higher in Texas than the rest of the US. That jump in concern reflects a rising violent crime rate statewide. Texans expressed the second-highest overall concern about gun violence in the nation.

• Texas saw a 7% increase in its violent crime rate year over year. 
• 48% of survey participants use some form of personal protection—41% higher than the national average of 34%.
• A pocket knife or self-defense knife is the most common form of personal protection used in Texas.
• 50% say their personal safety has been affected by the pandemic (US 44%), and 70% worry about the pandemic every day (US 60%).

• 61% said they worry about gun violence every day (US 53%).
• 53% are most worried about a gun violence incident happening to them (US 38%).
• Texas saw 57 mass shooting incidents in 2021 compared to 34 in 2020—the second-highest number of incidents in the US. Illinois recorded the most with 85 and California had the third-most incidents with 46.
• Mass shootings increased by 68% year over year.
• Firearms come in fourth as a preferred method of property protection, and concealed carry firearms are the third-most used self-defense item. 

Texans are 45% more concerned about property crime than most Americans. Higher concern may be what’s motivating Texans to invest in property protection measures more than other Americans. Plus, more security measures may be a contributor to falling property crime rates statewide. 

• The property crime rate in Texas fell 6% year over year, from 24.1 incidents per 1,000 people to 22.5.
• Overall, Texans are most worried that property crime will happen to them, and it accounts for 83% of all crime reported to the FBI by Texas law enforcement agencies. This matches the national average.
• Texas is the second most-concerned state when it comes to property crime (behind New York). It’s the fifth most-concerned in regard to package theft. 
• Burglary makes up 17% of all property crime in the state, 1 point higher than the proportion of burglaries throughout the US.
• 65% of Texas survey participants use some form of property protection (US 60%) with dogs nabbing first place—33% use dogs or another guard animal to help protect their home.
• 42% 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.

• 280 cities met criteria to be considered for ranking.
• Trophy Club and Fulshear held on to the top 2 spots for the second consecutive year. 
• 5 new cities joined the list this year: Hutto (number 23), Little Elm (number 25), Sugar Land (number 32), Midlothian (number 34), and Sanger (number 43).
• Elgin showed the most improvement year over year, moving 26 spots to number 6. 
• 38 (76%) cities didn’t report any counts of murder. 
• All of the cities that made the top 50 reported fewer than 2 violent crimes per 1,000 people. 
• Each safest city came in below state, regional, and US property crime rates. 
• All of the safest cities reported 15.1 or fewer property crimes per 1,000.

VC=Violent crime
PC=Property crime

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.

• Best Home Security Systems
• Best Home Security Cameras
• Best Video Doorbell Cameras
• Burglary Stats & Facts
• The Most Burglarized City in Every State

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.