Chicago Heights, IL has a F safety grade (6/100) with a violent crime rate of 1233 per 100,000, 250% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Chicago Heights (25,802 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IL and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Chicago Heights, IL carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 250% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Chicago Heights, IL shows violent crime at 1,232.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,732.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 250% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 701.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1232.5 in 2024 (+75.6%). The highest observed value was 1902.0 in 2022 and the lowest 701.9 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 1232.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Chicago Heights ranks 5 of 506 — above 501 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +1136.6% against the cohort median of 99.7. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 31.1% of the 1,023 Part I offenses reported in Chicago Heights for 2024, against a median of 11.2% across comparable Illinois cities — a gap of 19.9 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Chicago Heights's 1232.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Peoria (1344.9), Rockford (1080.0), Carbondale (1004.9), Calumet Park (986.9). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 53.6% of reported property offenses in Chicago Heights, against a cohort median of 70.3%. The remainder is burglary (174) and motor vehicle theft (153). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Chicago Heights's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 10.4 Census sq mi, Chicago Heights logged 68 property and 30.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Chicago Heights's 8 active offense types stay diversified (mix index 2,443); larceny-theft still leads at 37%.
Violent offenses are 31% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Chicago Heights offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (10.4 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 705 | 2732.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 378 | 1465 |
| Burglary | 174 | 674.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 153 | 593 |
| Arson | 2 | 7.8 |
| Violent Crime | 318 | 1232.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 233 | 903 |
| Robbery | 68 | 263.5 |
| Rape | 12 | 46.5 |
| Murder | 5 | 19.4 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 29,207 | 701.9 | 1390.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 28,852 | 1077.9 | 1324 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 26,393 | 1902 | 2697.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 26,018 | 1737.3 | 3074.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 25,802 | 1232.5 | 2732.3 |
Chicago Heights Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Chicago Heights's 1,023 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Illinois cities closest to Chicago Heights in population. Their populations run from 24,968 to 26,644, against 25,802 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Chicago Heights sits at 1,232.5/100K violent (grade F); the Illinois cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Chicago Heights at 1,232.5/100K violent and 2,732.3/100K property - matched below outside Illinois (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
1,232.5/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,732.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-29.1% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Chicago Heights reported 318 violent crimes and 705 property crimes, for a total of 1,023 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Chicago Heights's violent crime rate decreased by 29.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 11.1%.
The most common crime type in Chicago Heights is larceny-theft, accounting for 37.0% of all reported crimes (378 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Chicago Heights figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Chicago Heights's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Chicago Heights, IL rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Chicago Heights is scored in the mid-size municipal band (25,802 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.