Near South Side Crime Rate Trends — Chicago
Near South Side is a downtown neighborhood including the Prairie Avenue Historic District, McCormick Place, and the South Loop. Anchored by Soldier Field, the Field Museum and the broader Museum Campus peninsula, and the Metra Electric line.
Near South Side recorded two signals in March 2026, both sustained shifts — structural, multi-month decreases in burglary and vandalism, with nothing spiking and no rare events.
Burglary is down 44.1% against the prior 12 months, 38 incidents vs. 68 the year before — the stronger of the two structural moves. Vandalism is down 27.4%, 215 vs. 296. Every other tracked category also ran below its prior-year level: robbery down 32.3%, homicide down 66.7%, sexual assault down 20.0%, other larceny down 17.8%, motor vehicle theft down 10.8%. The breadth of the decline is as notable as any single category — all eight tracked buckets are lower than a year ago.
Notable signals 0
Nothing notable surfaced this month — every category sits within normal range against its baseline.
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.
- Vandalism has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 215, down 27% from 296 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Burglary has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 38, down 44% from 68 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
Below the volume threshold for a reliable forecast — too few incidents in recent months to project from.
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 Near South Side compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month burglary 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 burglary levels.”
Dunning
38 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Near South Side's 38.
Open page →Kenwood
38 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Near South Side's 38.
Open page →McKinley Park
38 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Near South Side's 38.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Near South Side, 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.