[bhawks]

An area where it is common for someone with an arrest warrant to be apprehended seems reasonable to be considered unsafe.

Similarly for an area where people go missing.

Getting arrested for drug use in San Francisco is pretty hard to do - if someone accomplishes it you probably wouldn't want to be around them.

[chrismcb]

Why? If the three only crime reported in a neighborhood is a bunch of arrest warrants, why is that less safe than a place that has a bunch of violent crimes reported? I think you are implying that as neighborhood that has a bunch of criminals is inherently unsafe. But it is only unsafe if those people commit crimes there. There may be a relation, there may not be one.

[solidsnack9000]

I think this is basically the right insight, yes.

At the level of a state, there is probably a close connection between warrants served there and crimes committed there, because most people spend most of their time in one state. At the level of neighborhoods, though, there probably isn't, because most people travel across numerous neighborhoods every day and warrants are served wherever it happens that the criminal is found by police or stopped for an unrelated reason.