Austin Crime Rate Trends — Chicago
Austin is a Far West Side neighborhood, the largest community area in Chicago by population, bordered by Oak Park to the west and the Eisenhower Expressway to the south. Anchored by the Austin Town Hall, the Madison Street and Chicago Avenue commercial corridors, and a long stretch of CTA Green Line stations.
Three categories moved in Austin this month — two one-month below-trend signals and one sustained structural shift. The mix is narrow but consistently pointed in one direction: property crime and robbery are both running lower than their established baselines, with no spikes or rare events in the picture.
Vandalism registered the sharpest single-month signal, with a 12-month total of 1,218 against a baseline of 1,429. Robbery moved in two ways: a one-month drop and a sustained shift, with the trailing 12 months at 339 incidents compared to 563 the year before — down 39.8%. Aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft, and other larceny also all declined year-over-year, though none crossed the signal threshold this month.
Notable signals 2
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 1,218 incidents — about 15% below the 1429 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 339 incidents — about 45% below the 613 average from prior years.
All categories, last 24 months
Each panel: recent monthly count vs. trailing 12-month context. MoM is the most recent month vs. the one before; 12mo YoY compares the trailing year to the year before that.
What's been quietly true for a year
Spikes get attention. Sustained shifts shape policy. These are multi-quarter patterns where the past 12-month total differs meaningfully from the year before — they often precede the baseline resetting.
- Robbery has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 339, down 40% from 563 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
What next month likely looks like
Forecasts trained through March 2026, with a likely range we're 95% confident the actual count will fall inside. Categories with too little recent volume — or violent categories at the neighborhood level — show no forecast and are surfaced through signals above instead. See the methodology page for the gating rules.
Aggravated Assault
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Arson
Burglary
Homicide
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Motor Vehicle Theft
Other Larceny
Robbery
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Sexual Assault
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Vandalism
How Austin compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month vandalism volume — a pragmatic v1 of peer matching. Demographic / housing-stock peer matching isn't built yet (we deliberately don't ingest income or race data alongside crime). Volume similarity has the right intuition: “neighborhoods experiencing comparable vandalism levels.”
Near West Side
1,222 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 above Austin's 1,218.
Open page →South Shore
1,079 incidents over the past 12 months — 139 below Austin's 1,218.
Open page →Auburn Gresham
899 incidents over the past 12 months — 319 below Austin's 1,218.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Austin, excluding generic crime taxonomy. Useful as texture — what kinds of specifics show up here that don't show up elsewhere.
Hour-of-day, day-of-week, and seasonality
Distribution of bucketed incidents in this neighborhood 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.
How we built this page
Data → Anomalies → Forecast → Page
Incident data is pulled from SFPD's open dataset, mapped to 10 NIBRS-aligned categories, and aggregated to neighborhood × category × month. Anomalies are surfaced using strict thresholds (~p < 0.01). Forecasts are Prophet with low-count gating; violent categories at the neighborhood level skip the forecast and show rare-event / streak signals instead.
Spike rule: 12-mo total > baseline mean + 2.5σ AND ≥ 20 incidents AND 6-mo confirms. Drop rule: 12-mo total < baseline mean − 2.5σ AND baseline mean ≥ 20. Rare event: any incident in the last 90 days, no prior comparable in ≥ 5 years.