Can you guess the most corrupt state in the United States?


“Corruption” is something you might associate most with the world of politics, but shady dealings are certainly not exclusive to elected officials. Corruption taints many aspects of business, legal dealings, and even modern medicine. But are some states in the U.S. actually more corrupt than others? Best Life crunched the numbers and, based on a new 50-state ranking, the answer appears to be “yes.”

Using a wealth of data that includes statistics from the Department of Justice related to corruption convictions, reported violations and medical malpractice cases from the National Practitioner Data Bank, corruption reports by the watchdog group S.W.A.M.P., and rankings of state integrity from the Center for Public Integrity, the site came up with a “Corruption Index Score” for each state.

There’s a lot of data included in these reports, and crunching it all down into one number was likely no easy task. The good news is that after it’s all boiled down to one number, we can easily see which states have the highest and lowest levels of corruption based on these metrics.

Before we dive into the most corrupt states, let’s take a look at the bottom of the list, which should indicate which states are actually the least corrupt of all. Starting from number 50 and working out way up, here are the least corrupt states in the country:




South Dakota



New York

South Carolina




Nothing about any of these states seems to stand out as a trend. Some states have relatively low populations while others are huge. Some have many huge cities, while others have, well, none. There isn’t an easily-identifiable thread that links all of these states together, aside from the fact that their corruption scores are quite low across the board…Read more>>



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