“Chicago Police data shows residents suffered 29,677 violent crimes in the 12 months through August – the highest level in the past five years.” But only 13% of the criminals were arrested, notes the Illinois Policy Institute:
Robberies were the most common at 35% of violent crimes. Next was aggravated batteries at 30% and aggravated assaults at 27%.
Aggravated assaults increased 5.3% – the most of any violent crime in Chicago during the past 12 months – with Black victims in over half the cases. Aggravated assaults involve the use of deadly force but no contact between the individuals, such as an individual being shot at but not hit. The city’s arrest rate for aggravated assaults rose to its second-highest level in the past five years. Still, just 1-in-6 cases resulted in an arrest.
During the past five years, aggravated assaults have consistently peaked at 5 p.m. and reached their lowest levels at 6 a.m. Depending on what time the victim was assaulted, the chances of catching the offender could fall even farther. There was a concentration of assaults in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s home neighborhood of Austin, which reported more aggravated assaults than any other neighborhood during the past year. Overall, 4-in-5 aggravated assaults reported during the past 12 months occurred on the city’s West and South sides.
Black Chicagoans were 5.3 times more likely to be the victim of an aggravated assault compared to white Chicagoans. Hispanic Chicagoans were 3.5 times more likely to be targeted.
As crime has risen, the likelihood that offenders will be arrested has fallen. In 2020, there were 4,299 arrests for Chicago’s 25,043 violent crimes. But in the year from September 2023 to August 2024, there were only 3,862 arrests for 29,677 violent crimes. In the year from September 2022 to August 2023, there were 3,725 arrests for 28,823 violent crimes — meaning there were arrests for less than 13% of all violent crimes.
The Chicago school district is in shambles as the local teachers union, which orchestrated the election of Chicago’s left-wing mayor, has thwarted changes needed to turn things around. The teachers union has fought the closure of failing and empty schools, and under its influence, the Chicago schools want “to spend $1 billion alone on maintenance/upgrades for the 20 most-empty schools.”
Chicago teachers were ordered to give passing grades of “70” to migrant kids who actually failed, because they speak no English, their teachers spoke no Spanish, and the kids thus learned next to nothing.
Breaking campaign promises, Chicago’s left-wing mayor, Brandon Johnson, has sought to get rid of high-achieving high-schools in the name of “equity.”
Violent crime has risen in Chicago, as the city wastes money on soft-on-crime policies rather than investing in more and better policing.
Chicago’s mayor has proposed reparations to reduce Chicago’s high crime rate, but reparations would do nothing to cut crime, and would have more negative than positive impacts.
Chicago’s mayor has proposed left-wing policies that would shrink the quantity and quality of housing in the city.
Thanks to crime havens like Chicago, the U.S. solves only about half of all murders. As a result of low rates of catching criminals, “America incarcerates fewer people per homicide than countries like Australia, Japan, Switzerland, and Austria,” according data provided by Professor Justin Nix. America needs to incarcerate more killers and violent criminals.
As Joe Friday notes at DC Crime Facts, “One of the most basic and consistent findings in criminology research is that increasing the certainty that a criminal is caught is by far the most effective way to deter criminals for committing more crimes.” But low rates of catching criminals in the U.S. make punishment seem unlikely and uncertain, emboldening offenders to commit crimes in the belief that they will probably get away with it.
To catch more criminals, America may need to spend more on its police. Europe spends more of its economy on its police than the U.S. does (it also has a lower murder rate, less than half of America’s). “London has almost double the police officers (~4.4/10k) and constables per capita of San Francisco (~2.4/10k). Paris has almost more than 600% more police per capita (~15/10k) than San Francisco,” Kane says. As Daniel Bier notes, “As a share of GDP, the EU [European Union] spends 33% more than the US on police.” “European countries almost uniformly spend a much larger share on police than US states, though just how much larger varies wildly.”
Catching criminals and keeping them in jail lowers the crime rate, by keeping repeat offenders locked up where they can’t commit more crimes. The typical state prison inmate has five prior offenses, and they commit more crimes after you let them out: 81.9% of state prison inmates released in 2008 were arrested again within a decade. Letting inmates out early increases the murder rate: Most murders in Baltimore are committed by people who previously were convicted of a serious crime, but didn’t serve a lengthy sentence for that crime.
A peer-reviewed 2014 study in the American Economic Journal found that incarceration reduces crime through incapacitation. Studies also find that longer sentences also deter crime better.
When El Salvador increased its incarceration rate, its murder rate fell dramatically, and violence and crime fell enormously. Jailing more criminals saved thousands of lives in El Salvador.
