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How are shootings, domestic violence, and sexual assaults classified and counted in Chicago stats?
Executive summary
Chicago counts shootings, domestic violence and sexual assaults through multiple public datasets and CPD CompStat reports that follow Illinois statutes and local reporting practices; the city publishes incident-level shooting and homicide files (including a GUNSHOT_INJURY flag) and a Crimes dashboard used in public briefings [1] [2]. Reported totals can move independently of actual victimization trends because of reporting practices, dataset scope, statute definitions, and differences between local CompStat figures and FBI or national dashboards [2] [3].
1. How “shootings” get counted: incident-level datasets and a gunshot flag
Chicago’s public data portal provides individual-level homicide and nonfatal shooting victimization records dating back to 1991 for homicides and 2010 for shootings; those datasets include a specific field (GUNSHOT_INJURY_I) indicating whether a victimization involved a shooting (Y/N/UNKNOWN), so counts of “shootings” in city products come from those incident-level entries rather than a separate national classification [1]. CompStat summaries the Chicago Police Department circulates are described as preliminary and note they follow Illinois statutes and local complaint coding, which can differ from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting categories [2].
2. Domestic violence: tracked as a crime category but sensitive to reporting changes
Chicago reporting shows “domestic violence” as a tracked category in city-level analyses and was mentioned among crime types examined in multi-year studies of Chicago trends [4] [5]. However, the Council on Criminal Justice analysis that the city cites examines reported incidents across many categories, and local declines or rises in domestic-violence complaints can reflect changes in reporting behavior, outreach and victim services as much as changes in incidence — available sources document the category in reports but do not detail the local legal definition used by CPD in every dataset [4] [5]. If you need the statutory definition CPD uses in its data fields, available sources do not mention that exact language.
3. Sexual assaults: included in violent-crime counts but affected by underreporting
Sexual assault is explicitly listed among categories the Council on Criminal Justice and other researchers used to say Chicago is down below pre-pandemic levels for many crimes, including sexual assaults [5]. But national and local experts commonly note sexual-assault counts depend heavily on reporting rates; the Council’s dataset shows reported incidents, not estimated prevalence, and the BBC and other explainers caution that FBI violent-crime measures group rape with other offenses, which affects comparisons [5] [3]. The sources here confirm sexual assault is in the datasets but do not provide an independent estimate of unreported offenses — available sources do not mention an alternate victimization survey for Chicago in these materials.
4. Why different sources give different storylines: scope, timing, and methodology
City dashboards, CPD CompStat, the Council on Criminal Justice, and national measures (FBI/UCR-style summaries or news indexes) use different classification rules and time windows; CPD itself warns CompStat figures are preliminary and “differ from the crime categories of the F.B.I. Uniform Crime Reporting System” [2]. The Council’s mid‑2025 review and local press releases both point to sharp declines in several violent-crime categories in 2025, but they rely on reported-incident data and defined sample windows (first half of 2025, etc.), so short-term media claims about dramatic drops can reflect those methodological choices [4] [6] [7].
5. Political narratives and the data: competing claims about cause and credit
Federal, state, and city actors have attributed Chicago’s crime changes to different interventions; for example, DHS touted a quick federal deployment while city leaders and CPD officials credited long‑standing community violence-intervention work and policing changes [8]. WBEZ and other outlets report city leaders push back on quick-cause crediting, arguing seasonal patterns and multi-year local work explain trends — the data sources confirm a drop but do not adjudicate causation [8].
6. Practical implications for interpreting counts and comparisons
When you read “shootings,” “domestic violence,” or “sexual assault” totals in Chicago reporting, check (a) which dataset or dashboard produced the number (CompStat vs. data portal vs. CCJ), (b) the time window, and (c) whether the figure is a reported-incident count or an adjusted rate; the city’s incident-level shooting dataset includes explicit shooting flags but CompStat is preliminary and differs from FBI categories [1] [2]. National comparisons (e.g., “violent crime down X%”) often rest on sampling choices — the Council’s review compared first-half 2025 to earlier periods for 13 crime types [4] [5].
7. What reporting gaps remain and where to look next
Available sources give incident-level shooting files and multi-city trend analyses, but they do not publish the CPD’s exact coding rules for “domestic violence” or a local victimization survey to account for unreported sexual assaults in these excerpts — available sources do not mention those specifics [1] [2]. For deeper verification, consult the City of Chicago data portal datasets cited above and the Council on Criminal Justice report behind the dashboards to compare raw incident fields and methodology notes [1] [4].