Which Chicago neighborhoods had the highest violent crime rates in 2024 and 2025?
Executive summary
City and research data show violent crime in Chicago is concentrated in a set of South and West Side neighborhoods; community areas like Englewood, West Garfield Park and Austin repeatedly appear among the highest in violent-incident and homicide rates in 2024 and into 2025 (Englewood highest counts for aggravated batteries; West Garfield Park among highest homicide rates) [1] [2]. Citywide metrics improved in 2025 — the city reported historic declines in violent crime and a large year‑over‑year drop in homicides through mid‑2025 — but neighborhood disparities remain extreme, with the deadliest areas experiencing many times the homicide rates of the safest neighborhoods [3] [4].
1. Neighborhood-level concentrates: the South and West Sides dominate the list
Multiple local analyses and police data point to the South and West Side community areas — notably Englewood on the South Side and West Garfield Park and Austin on the West Side — as having the highest counts and rates of violent incidents and aggravated batteries in 2024 and continuing into 2025 (Englewood reported the most aggravated batteries in 2024; Austin ranked high in total violent incidents through August 2025) [1] [5] [2]. These neighborhood names recur across city reports, local investigative outlets and third‑party trackers as the most affected community areas [1] [2].
2. What “highest violent crime rates” means here: counts, rates and specific offenses
Reporting differs by metric: some sources emphasize raw counts (e.g., Englewood reported 594 aggravated batteries in 2024) while others use per‑capita homicide or violent‑crime rates by community area (West Garfield Park cited among highest homicide rates, roughly 97.7 per 100,000 in one 2024 snapshot) [1] [2]. Chicago’s municipal dashboards and research centers allow filtering by community area so one can compare homicide rates, shootings, aggravated batteries, robberies and broader FBI‑style “violent crime” definitions — results shift depending on which offenses and denominators are used [6] [4].
3. Citywide improvement in 2025, but not evenly distributed
City and national analyses documented substantial declines in violent crime and homicides through the first half and summer of 2025 — Chicago saw fewer homicides and lower violent‑crime levels compared with recent years and led large‑city declines in some measures, per the mayor’s office and Council on Criminal Justice summaries (city reported dramatic year‑over‑year drops and CCJ noted homicide declines through mid‑2025) [3] [7]. Nevertheless, University of Chicago Crime Lab and other researchers stress that despite overall drops, violent crime in 2024 remained higher than the five‑year average in key categories and that the disparity across neighborhoods persisted — the deadliest areas can have dozens of times the homicide rate of the safest areas [4].
4. Competing narratives and measurement disputes
Political and media actors have used different frames: some outlets and advocates emphasize dramatic citywide reductions in 2025 and attribute them to policing changes and community interventions [8] [3], while other commentators and fact‑checkers note Chicago still ranks high on some homicide metrics depending on the comparison group and data source (FBI vs. CPD vs. CCJ) and that the city’s 2024 homicide rate varies in rank when analysts change population cutoffs or data sets [9] [10]. That difference in framing — citywide improvement vs. persistent high rates in certain neighborhoods — stems from reliance on differing datasets and the choice of per‑capita vs. total counts [9] [3].
5. Practical takeaway: where to look for the precise neighborhood lists and numbers
If you need exact rankings and per‑capita rates for 2024 and 2025 by neighborhood, authoritative, downloadable sources include the Chicago Police Department’s public dashboards and CompStat reports and the City’s Violence & Victimization dashboard, plus research products from the University of Chicago Crime Lab; these let you filter by community area, police district or beat to reproduce per‑100,000 rates and counts [6] [11] [4]. Local investigative reporters and data sites have already used those feeds to single out Englewood, West Garfield Park, Austin and similar South/West neighborhoods as the most violent in recent years [1] [2].
Limitations and open questions
Available sources consistently identify the same community areas as worst‑affected, but they vary in whether they report counts or per‑capita rates and which offenses are included; that produces different “top” lists [1] [2] [6]. Sources do not provide a single canonical list of the top neighborhoods by one uniform metric for both calendar‑year 2024 and all of 2025 combined; to produce that you must choose a metric (e.g., homicides per 100,000, aggravated battery counts, or total violent crimes per 1,000) and pull the underlying CPD or CCJ data via the dashboards cited above [6] [7].
If you want, I can pull together a ranked table for 2024 and for the first half / summer of 2025 using CPD and City dashboard figures (specify whether you want per‑capita rates or raw counts and which offenses to include) [6] [11].