Chicago, IL has a F safety grade (16/100) with a violent crime rate of 540 per 100,000, 53% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · very large city
At 2,638,698 residents, Chicago is a very large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against IL and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Chicago, IL carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 53% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Chicago, IL shows violent crime at 539.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,472.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 53% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 539.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Chicago ranks 28 of 506 — above 478 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +441.7% 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.
Share of the state cohort
The 105,871 Part I offenses reported here are 46.9% of the 225,516 reported across all 506 comparable Illinois cities in 2024. A city this large moves the statewide municipal total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 2,638,698 rather than as a uniform shift.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Chicago's 539.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Hazel Crest (540.2), Rock Island (544.1), Urbana (544.4), Belleville (532.0). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 986.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 539.8 in 2024 (-45.3%). The highest observed value was 986.9 in 2020 and the lowest 285.4 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Chicago'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.
On a very large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 227.7 Census sq mi, Chicago logged 402.3 property and 62.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Chicago leans on larceny-theft at 58% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,935.
Violent offenses are only 13% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Chicago offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (227.7 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 | 91,626 | 3472.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 61,185 | 2318.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 22,663 | 858.9 |
| Burglary | 7,778 | 294.8 |
| Arson | 462 | 17.5 |
| Violent Crime | 14,245 | 539.8 |
| Robbery | 8,847 | 335.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 3,386 | 128.3 |
| Rape | 1,551 | 58.8 |
| Murder | 461 | 17.5 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 2,693,598 | 986.9 | 2233.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 2,721,948 | 285.4 | 1119.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,652,124 | 540 | 3138.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 2,628,298 | 606.9 | 3440.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 2,638,698 | 539.8 | 3472.4 |
Chicago Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Chicago's 105,871 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 in population. Their populations run from 89,466 to 176,688, against 2,638,698 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Chicago sits at 539.8/100K violent (grade F); the Illinois cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Chicago at 539.8/100K violent and 3,472.4/100K property - matched below outside Illinois (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
539.8/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,472.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-11.1% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Chicago reported 14,245 violent crimes and 91,626 property crimes, for a total of 105,871 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Chicago's violent crime rate decreased by 11.1%, and the property crime rate increased by 0.9%.
The most common crime type in Chicago is larceny-theft, accounting for 57.8% of all reported crimes (61,185 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Chicago's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (very large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Chicago's very large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Chicago, 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 is scored here as a very large city UCR reporter (2,638,698 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.