Boats and Crime

Is there a link between the amount of crime in an area and boat ownership?


This graph compares the number of incidents of violent crime in a county (per 100,000 people in 2020) to the average number of boats each person owned in that county during the same year. This reveals that overall the counties that had the lowest amount of violent crime had the highest percentages of boat ownership, with each of the top 15 counties of average boat ownership having less than 500 incidents of violent crime in the previous year. As you get past 2,000 incidents per year, none of these counties registered over .25 boats per person, which ranks them amongst the lowest in the state. Overall, the counties that have high percentages of boat ownership also have low violent crime rates.

While there is a high correlation between violent crime in an area and personal boat ownership, commercial boats do not show the same pattern. In fact, after a county passes 1,000 incidents of violent crime, the average number of commercial boats in the area is almost the same as counties with less than 1,000 incidents of violent crime. Counties with less than 1,000 incidents and over 2,500 incidents show nearly identical levels of commercial boat presence in the county, so it is clear that there is little to no correlation between levels of crime in an area and the amount of commercial boats present.