Chicago Crime Rate Trends
Data sourced from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) Open Data portal and analyzed by Public Analyst.ai: 77 neighborhoods, 9 incident categories, twelve months of trailing comparison. Browse the rankings, scan the multi-year trends, or open a neighborhood-level breakdown.
Beverly aggravated assault rose 86% against its multi-year baseline, the strongest single signal in Chicago this briefing and the first time this neighborhood has topped the citywide rankings. The move stands out against an otherwise broadly declining month, making it the clearest fresh story in September 2026.
Citywide volume is down 3.7% against the prior 12 months, 128,894 incidents against 133,803. The signal mix leans toward stability: 49 sustained-shift signals and 34 below-trend signals against 10 fresh spikes across 77 neighborhoods. Sexual assault registered fresh spikes in three neighborhoods, Lower West Side, West Pullman, and Douglas, a category-level pattern that sits alongside the Beverly aggravated assault move as the second thread worth tracking.
The Beverly result is new to the top of the rankings, so there is no multi-month run to contextualize it. The sexual assault pattern across three neighborhoods is the more structurally notable element: three separate areas showing the same move in the same month is a signal worth watching in October. Otherwise, the sustained-shift and drop signals continue to outnumber spikes nearly eight to one, and the multi-year decline in citywide volume holds.
Chicago Crime Frequently Asked Questions
Trailing 12 months vs the prior 12 months, computed from the same NIBRS-aligned categories used everywhere else on the page. Updated each September 2026 briefing.
Is crime in Chicago down?
Yes. Citywide incident volume is 3.7% lower than the prior 12 months.
Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 128,894 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 133,803 in the year before, down 4,909 incidents.
Is violent crime in Chicago down?
Yes. Homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 11.5% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 20,552 violent incidents in the past year against 23,221 in the prior year. See the by-category section below for the per-bucket breakdown.
Is property crime in Chicago down?
Yes. Burglary, theft from vehicle, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson are down 1.7% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 82,647 property incidents in the past year against 84,104 in the prior year.
What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in Chicago?
- Edison Park — 6.5 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Forest Glen — 9.3 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Mount Greenwood — 10.7 incidents per 1,000 residents
The three safest neighborhoods in Chicago, ranked by trailing-12-month incidents per 1,000 residents.
Computed as NIBRS-aligned trailing-12-month incident totals divided by the latest ACS 5-year residential population, expressed per 1,000 residents. Restricted to neighborhoods with at least 1,000 residents so park-only and industrial geographies, where visitor populations are not reflected in the residential denominator, are excluded.
Which neighborhood in Chicago saw the biggest crime drop?
Forest Glen: 25.3% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.
Forest Glen logged 186 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 249 the year before.
Which neighborhood in Chicago saw the biggest crime increase?
Armour Square: 17.7% more incidents than the prior 12 months.
Armour Square logged 816 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 693 the year before.
The denominators behind the numbers
Lake-fronting flat city laid out on a strict grid; the 77 community areas were defined by the University of Chicago in the 1920s and remain the city's standard analytical unit. Major arterials (Lake Shore Dr, Western, Western Ave, the I-90/94 expressway) define most community-area boundaries.
ACS 2024 5-year estimates, county-level (Cook County). Cook County is broader than Chicago city — county-level medians (rent, home value, household income, age) lean slightly different from a Chicago-city-only median. Per-tract counts (population, households, housing units) sum only the ~790 tracts that fall inside the city.
City-level only. We deliberately do not juxtapose these with neighborhood-level crime data — see the methodology for why.
Dense, transit-rich core (Loop, Near North, Lakeview) gives way to mid-density bungalow belts and lower-density South and West Side neighborhoods. The CTA L network shapes most North Side and West Side travel patterns; far South Side is more car-dependent.
CPD started submitting to NIBRS in 2021 but the public Crimes dataset has stayed on the IUCR coding scheme for stability. Our category mapper translates IUCR primary types and descriptions into the same UCR Part 1 buckets used elsewhere on the site, so cross-city comparisons stay apples-to-apples. The dataset documents a 7-day reporting buffer.
Every neighborhood, color-coded
Largest moves this month
| # | Neighborhood | Category | MoM | YoY 12mo | vs baseline | 90-day trend | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Beverly | Aggravated Assault | -75% | +74% | +86% | SPIKE | |
| 02 | Gage Park | Other Larceny | -28% | +56% | +122% | SPIKE | |
| 03 | Lower West Side | Sexual Assault | -33% | +59% | +91% | SPIKE | |
| 04 | West Pullman | Sexual Assault | +33% | +65% | +84% | SPIKE | |
| 05 | Douglas | Sexual Assault | 0% | +36% | +83% | SPIKE | |
| 06 | Armour Square | Other Larceny | +50% | +47% | +64% | SPIKE | |
| 07 | Bridgeport | Other Larceny | -36% | +11% | +47% | SPIKE | |
| 08 | Ashburn | Sexual Assault | -40% | +17% | +85% | SPIKE | |
| 09 | West Town | Sexual Assault | +14% | +22% | +38% | SPIKE | |
| 10 | Lincoln Square | Sexual Assault | +75% | +69% | +76% | SPIKE | |
| 11 | Archer Heights | Arson | — | — | — | STREAK BREAK | |
| 12 | Englewood | Robbery | -29% | -41% | -45% | DROP |
The long arc — eight years of monthly counts
Four neighborhoods worth your time
Beverly
The past 12 months saw 40 incidents — about 86% above the 21 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · OTHER LARCENYGage Park
The past 12 months saw 812 incidents — about 122% above the 366 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · SEXUAL ASSAULTLower West Side
The past 12 months saw 54 incidents — about 91% above the 28 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · SEXUAL ASSAULTWest Pullman
The past 12 months saw 51 incidents — about 84% above the 28 average from prior years.
Read briefing →Hour-of-day, day-of-week, and seasonality
Distribution of bucketed incidents citywide across the full analysis window. Useful for routine context — shopping-strip thefts vs. late-night assaults read very differently when you can see when each typically happens.
All 77 Chicago neighborhoods
Crime rate trends and September 2026 briefings for every tracked neighborhood. Alphabetical.
- Albany Park crime rate
- Archer Heights crime rate
- Armour Square crime rate
- Ashburn crime rate
- Auburn Gresham crime rate
- Austin crime rate
- Avalon Park crime rate
- Avondale crime rate
- Belmont Cragin crime rate
- Beverly crime rate
- Bridgeport crime rate
- Brighton Park crime rate
- Burnside crime rate
- Calumet Heights crime rate
- Chatham crime rate
- Chicago Lawn crime rate
- Clearing crime rate
- Douglas crime rate
- Dunning crime rate
- East Garfield Park crime rate
- East Side crime rate
- Edgewater crime rate
- Edison Park crime rate
- Englewood crime rate
- Forest Glen crime rate
- Fuller Park crime rate
- Gage Park crime rate
- Garfield Ridge crime rate
- Grand Boulevard crime rate
- Greater Grand Crossing crime rate
- Hegewisch crime rate
- Hermosa crime rate
- Humboldt Park crime rate
- Hyde Park crime rate
- Irving Park crime rate
- Jefferson Park crime rate
- Kenwood crime rate
- Lake View crime rate
- Lincoln Park crime rate
- Lincoln Square crime rate
- Logan Square crime rate
- Loop crime rate
- Lower West Side crime rate
- McKinley Park crime rate
- Montclare crime rate
- Morgan Park crime rate
- Mount Greenwood crime rate
- Near North Side crime rate
- Near South Side crime rate
- Near West Side crime rate
- New City crime rate
- North Center crime rate
- North Lawndale crime rate
- North Park crime rate
- Norwood Park crime rate
- Oakland crime rate
- Ohare crime rate
- Portage Park crime rate
- Pullman crime rate
- Riverdale crime rate
- Rogers Park crime rate
- Roseland crime rate
- South Chicago crime rate
- South Deering crime rate
- South Lawndale crime rate
- South Shore crime rate
- Uptown crime rate
- Washington Heights crime rate
- Washington Park crime rate
- West Elsdon crime rate
- West Englewood crime rate
- West Garfield Park crime rate
- West Lawn crime rate
- West Pullman crime rate
- West Ridge crime rate
- West Town crime rate
- Woodlawn crime rate
How We Calculate Chicago Crime Trends
Open about how we define spikes, what we exclude as noise, where the data comes from, and how often the model is wrong.