Crime in Chicago, Illinois
Major crime in Chicago is 1.8 times the U.S. rate per resident: about the same for persons crimes and 2.0 times for property crimes. Expected major crimes are down 11.5% from a year earlier.
How we did this
We start from police agencies' crime reports to the FBI (estimated where an agency doesn't report), model how they spread across the census block groups each agency serves, then add up Chicago's 2,162 block groups. Numbers are estimates with a range of uncertainty, not counts of individual incidents.
Rates are per resident, so areas where many people work or visit but few live, such as downtowns, airports and stadiums, can look high. More on the method
Index: crimes per resident compared with the U.S., where 100 is the U.S. rate and 200 is twice it.
Motor vehicle theft is highest, at 4.4 times the U.S. rate
Expected crimes per year in Chicago for each type, and the index against the U.S. rate per resident.
Citywide indexWhere the middle half of residents live
Property crimes
Social disorder
How crime varies across Chicago
Half of Chicago residents live in neighborhoods with a major-crime index between 76 and 213, and half live where it is below 125. The citywide figure (179) is higher than that because crime concentrates in a smaller set of areas.
- 0–508.6%
- 50–10029.8%
- 100–20033.6%
- 200–40020.7%
- 400+7.2%
Share of residents by the index of their census block group, a neighborhood of roughly 600 to 3,000 people.
Highest on Friday and Saturday nights
Major-crime index by time of week, against the U.S. rate for the same hours.
Trend and outlook
Change in expected crimes. The past year uses the reporting agencies' year-to-date FBI data; 2031 is the model's projection.
Chicago against U.S. places with 1 million or more residents
5 of the 12 other places of this size have a higher major-crime index than Chicago; the middle of the group is 161. The 9 nearest in population:
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; residents in gray.
How we calculated this
Each police agency's crimes, as reported to the FBI, are spread across the census block groups it serves using population, jobs, points of interest and, where available, local incident records. Chicago's figures add up its 2,162 block groups. The index compares crimes per resident with the U.S. rate.
- Chicago's published incident records inform the estimate for every neighborhood.
- 51.1% of residents live in block groups whose estimate has high confidence (80% interval within about 5x).
- Disorderly conduct and trespassing are modeled, because the FBI records them only through arrests.
- Residents: 2,762,950. Model updated Oct 20, 2026. Release 2026-2026-10-20-2
Full method and validation·Data sources
CrimeMetric. "Crime in Chicago, Illinois." Vorp Labs, model updated Oct 20, 2026. https://crimemetric.com/il/chicago
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The CrimeMetric API returns the same indexes for any U.S. address or neighborhood, by crime type, with the uncertainty range. The free plan covers 10,000 lookups a month.
Get a free API keyNearest cities we publish
Major-crime index, U.S. = 100
- Indianapolis, IN165 mi189
- Columbus, OH277 mi156
- Nashville-Davidson, TN399 mi223
- Charlotte, NC591 mi208
- Washington, DC597 mi180
- Philadelphia, PA667 mi281
- Oklahoma City, OK691 mi189
- New York, NY718 mi154