See Nevada State Senator Bob Beers’ blog post entitled Per Capita Measures of Nevada for an interesting examination of our supposed violent crime and homicide rates.
Because we are a huge tourist destination, Beers asked the Legistlative Counsel Bureau to develop a statistical measure of tourists v. residents - which they did, here. The upshot is that when you figure in all the “visitor days” (how many tourists are here for how many days vs. the resident population) you find that 21.5% of human activity on any given day in Nevada can be attributed to tourists while 78.5% can be attributed to residents.
Beers goes on to do some math re: our per capita crime rates and suggests we might be a less aberrant population than the rankings say. Also, Greg McFarlane chimed in on a Comment and said that a few years ago Mother’s Against Drunk Driving was up in arms about our drunk driving rate - which did not factor in all the drunk tourists.
