The murder rate is genuinely lower. Robbery rates are obviously lower because there's less opportunites for muggings (though liquor stores and such still get held up). Other crimes, it's tough to say because the less serious the crime, the more subject statistics are to bias in local police forces. It's impossible to determine how many petty crimes get dismissed by local sheriffs because it's "so and so's boys just playing around" that would end up with a serious charge if it were some black kid in a big city. Basically everywhere in rural Appalachia has less violence than Philadelphia or New Orleans, but "less crime" is loaded.