The geographic, or spatial, analysis of crime in the United States has been relatively slighted by investigators interested in criminality and criminal justice. This paper treats the distribution of crime across the fifty states using crime rates from the Uniform Crime Reports, 1970-76. Our analysis indicates the pattern in which violent crime, with the exception of homicide, and property crime of all types are shifting away from the North and East to the Sun Belt and West. These shifts have definite policy implications for the criminal justice system. Effective responses to criminal activity must begin with an overall assessment of a locality's, state's, or region's major crime problem. This paper is one initial effort in this direction.The perennial social issue of crime is of concern to a wide variety of social analysts in the United States. Most writings on the topic have been behavioral or quasi-behavioral studies or theories by criminologists and by sociologists, who have dominated the field of criminology for the past fifty years (Hodgdon, 1975); there have been relatively few geographic (spatial) analyses of crime. This deficiency of geographic analysis has not inhibited considerable argument regarding the &dquo;why&dquo; and &dquo;how&dquo; of the spatial distribution of crime. The present paper treats the &dquo;how&dquo; of crime apportionment at the state level of areal aggregation, using crime rates from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), 1970-76 for fifty states.