Report claims Nevada is the most dangerous state, again

A new version of an annual analysis of FBI Crime data by CQ Press shows that Nevada is ranked "least favorably."
I'm very suspicious of this kind of analysis. First, combining crime reports by state does not make a great deal of sense. Crime in New York City isn't really strongly related to crime in Buffalo, for example. Since so much of the population is focused in Clark County, a look at crime here in Nevada is really a look at state-wide crime is almost like a diluted look at crime in metro Las Vegas.
When you compare the states, Nevada comes in with the highest crime rate for this year's report. Because of reporting delays, this year's report is based on 2009 crime reports. Crime Tracker 3's weekly look at crime trends, on the other hand, uses data that is current to the last complete week (i.e. our statistics are between one and seven days delayed, depending on the day of the week of our report.)
It should be noted that the FBI, which compiles the data CQ Press uses to generate its reports, discourages the use of the statistics to make "rankings." The FBI is also working on a more thorough system to collect crime data beyond the ten crime categories tracked in the Uniform Crime Reports.