When it’s time to get out the luggage and head for someplace you’ve never been, most people look for some fun in the sun or perhaps some place with tons of historical monuments or places of interest. However, there are some people who choose to visit these five cities because they consistently rank within the top cities for violent crimes, year after year. Why would anyone ever want to vacation there? Actually, there are a few good reasons to do so, but first, here are the five worst cities where crime makes the national news daily, to the chagrin of mayors and city council members alike.

5 “Most Dangerous” Cities in the U.S.

According to the latest information found on the World Atlas website, some of the cities that rank as the most dangerous should come as no surprise, while others are a total shock to anyone who doesn’t hold a criminal justice degree. The cities in the top five slots are:

1. Detroit, Michigan
2. Memphis, Tennessee
3. Oakland, California
4. St. Louis, Missouri
5. Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Detroit and Oakland are well-known for the number of violent crimes perpetrated each year, but who would have guessed Memphis or Milwaukee? To the average person, these appear to be innocuous cities that hold no real allure to tourists but wouldn’t typically send up a red flag as being dangerous. Even so, they each have a high violent crime rate per capita, which is why they are ranked as the worst cities to live in or work in. That is, unless you are pursuing an online criminology degree, where you’d want to be where the ‘action’ is!

Knowing This, Why Would Anyone Want to Live In or Visit These Cities?

There are actually a few good reasons why anyone would want to visit these infamous cities, and crime is one of the attractions, believe it or not! A student of criminology might want to do an internship in any one of them to get a realistic hands-on approach to the criminal justice system, at its best or worst, as the case may be. No matter what branch of criminal justice a student is going to major in, especially when seeking advanced criminology degrees online, there is nothing like getting your feet wet in a hotbed of criminal activity.

A Fresh Insight

It is one thing to study from a book and analyze statistics reported by law enforcement in those cities, but it’s another thing altogether being able to observe why crime is out of hand and perhaps to view it with the fresh insight of an outsider. If you are a serious student of criminal justice, why not take your next vacation to one of the five cities that rank so highly in crime? It may sound a bit bizarre, but if this is your chosen career path and you will soon be seeking employment in the system, you might want to mix a little R&R with job searches.