South Chicago Heights, IL has a C safety grade (48/100) with a violent crime rate of 238 per 100,000, 32% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
South Chicago Heights is a small municipal reporter (3,780 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IL and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
South Chicago Heights, IL is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 32% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, South Chicago Heights, IL shows violent crime at 238.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,280.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 32% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
South Chicago Heights reported 9 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,780. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to South Chicago Heights's 238.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Pontiac (237.3), Silvis (241.6), Wilmington (234.6), St. Elmo (242.3). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 238.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, South Chicago Heights ranks 116 of 506 — above 390 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +138.9% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 275.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 238.1 in 2024 (-13.7%). The highest observed value was 571.7 in 2022 and the lowest 238.1 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 6.8% of the 133 Part I offenses reported in South Chicago Heights for 2024, against a median of 11.3% across comparable Illinois cities — a gap of 4.5 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 79.0% of reported property offenses in South Chicago Heights, against a cohort median of 70.2%. The remainder is burglary (10) and motor vehicle theft (16). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate South 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.
Based on 9 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,780. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 1.6 Census sq mi, South Chicago Heights logged 78.4 property and 5.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
South Chicago Heights's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (74% of 133 offenses; mix index 5,661).
Violent offenses are only 7% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
South Chicago Heights offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (1.6 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 | 124 | 3280.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 98 | 2592.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 16 | 423.3 |
| Burglary | 10 | 264.6 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 9 | 238.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 7 | 185.2 |
| Robbery | 2 | 52.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 3,988 | 275.8 | 3410.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 3,939 | 279.3 | 660.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,848 | 571.7 | 2416.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,806 | 394.1 | 2259.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,780 | 238.1 | 3280.4 |
South Chicago Heights Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind South Chicago Heights's 133 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 South Chicago Heights in population. Their populations run from 3,710 to 3,855, against 3,780 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
South Chicago Heights sits at 238.1/100K violent (grade C); the Illinois cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, South Chicago Heights reported 9 violent crimes and 124 property crimes, for a total of 133 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, South Chicago Heights's violent crime rate decreased by 39.6%, and the property crime rate increased by 45.2%.
The most common crime type in South Chicago Heights is larceny-theft, accounting for 73.7% of all reported crimes (98 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: South Chicago Heights is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how South Chicago Heights's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 South Chicago Heights, IL rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the South Chicago Heights, IL FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. South Chicago Heights is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,780 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.