Illinois's comparable FBI window (2014–2024, 11 years) shows declines on both major offense rates — charts below keep the larger |endpoint| move first.
Declining-window verdict
Illinois's violent crime rate fell 23.7% from 2014 to 2024; its property crime rate fell 19.0%. The endpoints agree on the broad direction, but the intervening years still matter.
Peak and trough
The highest observed violent-crime rate was 430.5 in 2017; the lowest was 168.3 in 2021. The latest value lies 42% of the way from that low to that peak, which shows whether the endpoint is close to an extreme or near the middle of the observed range.
Recent direction check
From 2021 to 2024, the violent-crime rate rose 64.9%, compared with -23.7% across the full 2014-2024 window. That difference is why the latest few observations should be read separately from the decade-scale endpoints.
Year-to-year movement
The largest annual change ran from 2020 to 2021: -58.7%. Across the full sequence, 4 year-to-year steps rose by more than 1% and 3 fell by more than 1%. A single sharp step can reflect participation or reporting changes as well as a real change in recorded offenses.
Full-window endpoints
Violent crime moved from 363.6 to 277.5 per 100,000 (-23.7%). Property crime moved from 2055.9 to 1664.8 (-19.0%). These are endpoint comparisons, not proof that every intervening year followed the same direction.
Latest national comparison
For 2024, the state rate was 277.5 per 100,000 versus 352.0 across the state records in this dataset, a gap of 21.2% below. This is a state-level benchmark, not a neighborhood-safety conclusion.
Illinois's violent rate fell 58.7% (-238.9 per 100K) from 2020 to 2021 (407.2 → 168.3) — the sharpest comparable year-to-year step in this window. The largest move the other way was jumped 55.6% from 2021 to 2022 (168.3 → 261.9).
Illinois's violent gap vs the US aggregate moved from 0.1% above in 2014 to 21.2% below in 2024 (-21.2 pp).
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent | Rate | YoY | Property | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Comparable | 12,710,158 | 35,267 | 277.5 | ↓ 5.0% | 211,593 | 1664.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 12,549,689 | 36,662 | 292.1 | ↑ 11.5% | 204,242 | 1627.5 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 12,582,032 | 32,949 | 261.9 | ↑ 55.6% | 176,994 | 1406.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 12,670,797 | 21,320 | 168.3 | ↓ 58.7% | 90,454 | 713.9 |
| 2020 | Comparable | 12,587,530 | 51,253 | 407.2 | ↑ 0.2% | 194,409 | 1544.5 |
| 2019 | Comparable | 12,671,821 | 51,509 | 406.5 | ↓ 0.7% | 229,328 | 1809.7 |
| 2018 | Comparable | 12,741,080 | 52,140 | 409.2 | ↓ 4.9% | 242,824 | 1905.8 |
| 2017 | Comparable | 12,802,023 | 55,107 | 430.5 | ↑ 0.5% | 251,544 | 1964.9 |
| 2016 | Comparable | 12,801,539 | 54,814 | 428.2 | ↑ 12.7% | 257,525 | 2011.7 |
| 2015 | Comparable | 12,859,995 | 48,850 | 379.9 | ↑ 4.5% | 252,262 | 1961.6 |
| 2014 | Comparable | 12,880,580 | 46,838 | 363.6 | - | 264,807 | 2055.9 |
More in Illinois: overview, safest cities, most dangerous, compare. Methodology — FBI UCR / Crime Data Explorer rates per 100,000 for Illinois (2014–2024); Census population where FBI denominators are missing.