What does “crime” mean for Chicago?

Crime by community area means the indicators Chicago Police Department publishes for Chicago (2016–2025). They are reported incident or offence counts, not arrests, charges, or a safety score. The same heading in another city is not the same offence.

Where do the numbers come from?

Police figures come from Chicago Police Department. Area boundaries come from City of Chicago · community areas. Rates, when a denominator exists, use U.S. Census Bureau · population and are shown per 10,000 residents. A missing year, indicator, or boundary stays missing.

How often is this updated?

The site is updated periodically, with no fixed public schedule and no live feed. Comparable charts use full years. A year-to-date control, when the page has one, labels the partial year separately.

What does this not show?

Drug offences and overdose deaths are separate series, not part of these community areas. There is no single cross-city crime index. Counting rules and source links are on the Chicago about page.

Chicago · Methods & sources

Know what you’re looking at.

Public records, community-area boundaries, visible limitations. The context behind every Chicago chart.

2016–2025Full years shown

77 areasCommunity areas

CPDPolice data source

01 · Reading the timeline

One incident file, with a local theft cut.

Counts use Chicago’s Crimes - 2001 to Present file, grouped by the incident year on each row. 2026 is year-to-date, through 2026-09-26. It is a separately labelled partial year and is excluded from the ten-full-year comparison.

There is no mid-series change of reporting system in this extract. The definitions still differ from Toronto: assault includes battery, and theft over keeps only descriptions that state over $300 or over $500.

02 · Scope

5 local indicators.

These are selected Chicago Police categories, not all recorded crime. A shared indicator name does not make the Chicago and Toronto series comparable.

Assault: ASSAULT plus BATTERY. Criminal sexual assault and homicide are excluded.
Auto Theft: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT.
Burglary: BURGLARY.
Robbery: ROBBERY.
Theft Over: THEFT rows whose description states OVER $300 or OVER $500. Other theft descriptions, including retail theft, stay out.

Hate-crime and money-laundering sources have not been added for Chicago. Their views explain that coverage gap. The indicators above cannot stand in for either subject.

03 · Place & population

Community areas, counts and rates.

The map uses the City of Chicago’s 77 community areas. Reports already carry a community-area number. The dashboard shows those totals; it does not plot individual incident locations. Streets and place labels come from a locally hosted Protomaps/OpenStreetMap snapshot.

0.03% of full-year indicator records had no community area. Those 386 reports remain in the city totals, so area sums are smaller than the citywide total.

Counts are the default. Rate per 10,000 divides the count by resident population and multiplies by 10,000. Citywide rates use annual Census Bureau city estimates. 2016–2019 use the 2010-based vintage and 2020–2025 the 2020-based vintage, so the denominator changes base in 2020.

Community-area rates use a fixed 2020 Census population. Each block group is assigned to the area containing its internal point. That is an allocation, not an annual community-area estimate.

04 · Source records

Follow the numbers.

Chicago Police Department · Crimes - 2001 to PresentIncident file ijzp-q8t2, aggregated by year, type, and community area ↗City of Chicago · Community area boundariesCommunity-area polygons, dataset igwz-8jzy ↗U.S. Census Bureau · 2010-based city estimatesChicago city population for 2016–2019 ↗U.S. Census Bureau · 2020-based city estimatesChicago city population for 2020–2025 ↗U.S. Census Bureau · 2020 Illinois populationBlock-group population used for community-area rates ↗

Police data and boundaries: City of Chicago. Population: U.S. Census Bureau, a United States government work. The crime extract keeps official category names and drops offense descriptions that are outside the five indicators.

This site provides applications using data that has been modified for use from its original source, www.cityofchicago.org, the official website of the City of Chicago. The City of Chicago makes no claims as to the content, accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of any of the data provided at this site. The data provided at this site is subject to change at any time. It is understood that the data provided at this site is being used at one’s own risk.

About this data

How to read these figures

What does “crime” mean for Chicago?: Crime by community area means the indicators Chicago Police Department publishes for Chicago (2016–2025). They are reported incident or offence counts, not arrests, charges, or a safety score. The same heading in another city is not the same offence.
Where do the numbers come from?: Police figures come from Chicago Police Department. Area boundaries come from City of Chicago · community areas. Rates, when a denominator exists, use U.S. Census Bureau · population and are shown per 10,000 residents. A missing year, indicator, or boundary stays missing.
How often is this updated?: The site is updated periodically, with no fixed public schedule and no live feed. Comparable charts use full years. A year-to-date control, when the page has one, labels the partial year separately.
What does this not show?: Drug offences and overdose deaths are separate series, not part of these community areas. There is no single cross-city crime index. Counting rules and source links are on the Chicago about page.

Full methodology →