There is an updated version of this post with data through June 2018 here: Chicago’s Safest And Most Dangerous Neighborhoods 2018: Murders
As promised last week I looked at the Chicago homicide data for the 12 months ending in June by community area (technically not the same thing as neighborhoods but some people call them that anyway) in order to determine the safest and most dangerous neighborhoods for getting murdered. I took into account the population of each community area (you would expect areas with more people to have more murders) by calculating the number of murders per 100,000 residents. This is actually a very common metric in calculating murder rates.
In the graph below I ranked the community areas from the lowest murder rates to the highest. There are a few things to note:
- Several areas had zero murders so their ranking at the top of the graph is in no particular order.
- The Loop actually has a higher murder rate than you would expect but I believe it is because the population is relatively small and a ton of people commute there every single day of the week. This increases the likelihood of someone getting shot for looking at someone the wrong way or not turning right on a red light.
- Fuller Park actually had the highest murder rate at slightly more than 275 but I cut the graph off at 150 so as not to throw the scale off for all the other areas.
- We’re dealing with some small numbers here – both in terms of the number of murders and the population of any given area. Therefore, small variations from one area to the next can have a huge impact. For instance, what catapulted Fuller Park to the top of the rankings was *only* 7 murders but divided by an exceptionally small population of only 2,543 people.
- To put things in perspective…the world rankings of the most dangerous cities in the world has Caracas, Venezuela in worst place with 120 murders per 100,000 people. Englewood beats that hands down at 132 murders per 100,000 people and that’s based upon a solid 36 murders in the last 12 months.
The graph appears really tiny below but if you click on it it will expand to a much more readable version with scroll bars.
In addition, I plotted all 598 homicides on a map so you can see exactly where all this mischief is happening. The map is interactive so you can pan and zoom, you can open a full page version of the map, you can share it, and you can click on each of the balloons to get more information on the homicide.
Once you zoom in on the map and pan around a bit you can get a much better sense of where the safest and most dangerous neighborhoods are for getting murdered. The community areas are rather large and the homicide incidence can be greater from one end of a community area to another.
#ChicagoCrime #ChicagoMurder #ChicagoHomicide
Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service discount real estate brokerage. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market, get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry, or you just think he’s the next Kurt Vonnegut you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.