By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
The decision to commit a crime in Chicago has never been easier. Criminals are almost guaranteed to profit because the chances of getting caught and punished have collapsed to near-zero.
It’s a big reason why the city is on target to hit a post-pandemic high in major crimes in 2023, currently up 32 percent vs. last year. It’s also why crime is unlikely to slow down significantly any time soon. Mayor Brandon Johnson doesn’t show any signs of imposing a higher cost on the city’s criminals. And Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans haven’t changed their soft approach to crime either.
The math is pretty straightforward. A demoralized, restricted police force. Plus a 1 in 20 arrest rate. Plus a high rate of unreported crime. Plus a dismal 911 response rate. Plus a city leadership that’s soft on crime. All that equals a near-zero chance of criminals ever getting punished.
Not until the costs of committing crime go way up – and the equation changes – will Chicagoans see any relief.
Equation inputs
Arrests
The chance of getting arrested in Chicago for a major crime collapsed to just 5 percent in 2022. It was already a low 10 percent just four years ago.
More than 68,000 major crimes were reported in Chicago last year. Only 3,228 of them resulted in arrests. Wirepoints’ calculations are based on the Chicago City Data Portal: Crime – 2001 to Present.
The arrest rate for criminal sexual assault? Just 3 percent. Ditto for Motor Vehicle Thefts. Burglaries were at only 4 percent and Robberies, 5 percent.
For thefts over $500, the chance of getting busted is even lower, at just 1 percent. There were just 201 arrests out of 20,041 crimes reported last year. And you’ll avoid arrest 96 times out of 100 across any form of theft, which The New York Times recently reported.
Unreported crimes
It gets even better for Chicago criminals. The above data is just for crimes that are actually reported. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that nationally in 2019, “Only 40.9% of violent crimes and 32.5% of household property crimes were reported to authorities.” So the real chance of getting caught is even lower than the 5 percent.
Soft-on-crime leadership
Criminals are far more likely to get verbal support for the crimes they’ve committed, not condemnation, from Mayor Brandon Johnson. Kids just being “silly,” he said of the city’s recent teen takeovers. They’re not “mob actions,” he argued. We captured both those moments here and here.
And there’s the fact that even if criminals do get caught, the chances of being convicted and sentenced are low. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Chief Judge Tim Evans continue their light treatment of felony weapons charges and issue plea deals on the cheap.
Criminals also know they’re less likely to be detained pre-trial, which Wirepoints covered in Close the revolving door for high-risk offenders in Cook County. There are about 800 more violent defendants out on electronic ankle bracelets at any one time – many of them felons – than there were in 2016. There are thousands more defendants out without any tracking.
With the SAFE-T Act now law, the number of alleged criminals back on the streets before trial will increase further.
911 calls
Yet another part of the calculus is the fact that Chicago’s police aren’t responding to more than half of the urgent 911 calls they receive, part of what are called RAPs, or Radio Assignments Pending. Last year we reported on the 2021 data, which showed just over half of all priority 911 calls weren’t immediately handled.
It was even worse in 2022. Of the more than 780,000 Priority 1 and 2 911 service calls, 60 percent had no Chicago police available to respond.
Those delays included:
- Over 4,700 robbery-related calls, including 470 robberies in progress
- Over 19,400 calls of batteries in progress
- Nearly 2,000 reports of sexual assault, including 150 assaults in progress
- Over 18,000 reports of a person with a gun
- Over 1,200 reports of citizens shot
- Nearly 1,000 reports of citizens stabbed
Making it worse
The simple calculus of Chicago’s criminals is clear when you look at the city’s latest criminal fad: robberies.
The ease of stealing cars like Kias and Hyundais, in combination with new laws prohibiting police from foot and car chases, has emboldened criminals even more.
Criminals are now using those stolen cars to go on robbery sprees neighborhood to neighborhood, sometimes committing as many as 20 robberies within hours of each other, confident they won’t get caught or even chased.
That’s resulted in headlines like these:
- TV news crew robbed while reporting on Chicago robbery sprees; armed men targeted at least 30 people in about 12 hours
- Armed men rob victim, then carjack a nearby delivery driver in Logan Square during Thursday afternoon crime spree
- At Least 19 Armed Robberies Hit Logan Square Area In 2 Days, Police Say
The story that perhaps best captures the restrictions placed on officers to do their jobs is in a recent article by CWB Chicago: At least 23 armed robberies reported Sunday as Chicago cops *again* see a robbery in progress, but don’t chase the offenders:
…CPD police officers on patrol and in a surveillance camera operations center witnessed an armed robbery in progress in the 6500 block of North Western Avenue. “I can see them right now,” the officer radioed. “They got long guns. There’s a unit on scene.”
That patrol unit tried to pull the Durango over as they snaked through the North Side. Officers said four men were inside the SUV with their faces covered, bearing at least one rifle. But not long after the unit started to chase the SUV loaded with armed, masked men who had just robbed someone as Chicago police officers watched, a CPD sergeant ordered the squad car to terminate their efforts to stop the Durango.
At least eleven people were robbed that night, including some after the police supervisor decided to let the group of armed robbers get away.”
More victims of crime
Add all the above and it’s easy to see why criminals face a near-zero risk of punishment.
That also helps explain why the city’s crime numbers continue to rise. Chicagoans have been victimized more than 51,000 times during the first 8 months of 2023 – already more than they were over the entirety of 2019, 2020 or 2021. Only homicides are down compared to last year, by 8 percent – a small decline compared to other major cities.
If the lawbreaking trend continues, 2023 major crimes will total 78,000, some 17% more than in 2022.
For sure, there’s a lot to be done to solve the crime crisis in Chicago. The social challenges and poor educational outcomes plaguing the city will take years, if not decades, to unwind.
But to save lives in the meantime, and to make Chicago safer – one of Mayor Johnson’s key goals – the near-zero cost of committing crimes must rise dramatically. And that means reforging the chain of criminal justice, from arresting to prosecuting to sentencing.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- 204 Chicago homicides in Mayor Johnson’s first 100 days – including four teenagers killed last weekend
- What Chicago requires immediately is deterrence. Stop the bleed. Fast.
- Spree of robberies, car thefts drive Chicago crime to new highs
- Not ‘mob action…they are not baby Al Capones’ says Chicago Mayor Johnson about latest youth violence
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
The cops have it made now, show up and hang out.
I claimed to my private sector boss that I was demoralized so I cannot do my job. Guess what they said??
Our liberal urban politicians have made cynical choices of promoting leniency towards misdemeanor-crimes, even many felony crimes, in three-fold effort: 1) Attempt to characterize crime-prevention as mostly “racist” and misdemeanor crimes resulting from “oppression of poor people”, as prime political position-points, to “virtue-signal” their supposedly solidarity with POC voters. 2) Attempt to solidify their POC base, a cynical assumption that POC voters actually want such leniency and general tolerance towards crimes which negatively affect quality-of-life within their communities the most. 3) Attempt to both economize on government-agency policing and prison costs, by reducing expenditures on both policing and court/prison systems,… Read more »
Progressive views on crime are not cynical, they are wildly popular in urban areas. “Tough on crime” means arresting more criminals. But the reality is that most criminals are minorities. So tough on crime really means arresting more minorities. The minority communities that run cities, and the voters that elect them, are willing to tolerate higher levels of crime to reduce minority arrest rates. The flip side to this, that no progressive will admit, is the unspoken policy to overcharge white and asians, while undercharging minorities. Whites and asians in the suburbs want tough on crime, and Kim Foxx is… Read more »
Who suffers from the Democrat race hustlers’ war on cops/law and order? The black folks who live in the cities those cockroaches control.
I grew up in Chicago, college friends Dad a detective in the violent crimes unit. Used to meet him, and his partner, for a drink after their shift.
Friendly, but, big, and tough. Only took one look from them, criminals stopped in their tracks.
Of course, this was 35 years ago, when you could walk back to union station from depaul after night classes, and without a worry.
Good luck Chicago
Not that its any consolation prize, but the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s were worse than today. The difference between then and now was that crime was spread out over more land mass of the city; but, nicer neighborhoods were relatively crime free. Today, most of the worst crime is contained to a smaller geographic area, but nicer and the now gentrified areas that haven’t experienced crime in nearly 35 years are having nightmares of returning to 1974. The northwest side is getting more crime now than it has probably in the history of the northwest side, as the hispanics take… Read more »
I wonder if politicians are encouraging a higher crime rate so that property values go down. Stores can’t pay rent, landlords can’t pay property taxes, landlords forced to sell buildings cheaply, foreign countries like China buy the buildings.
Or they want law-abiding citizens to get mad and demand a massive death penalty to reduce crime rates.
The law enforcement system in Chicago is dysfunctional at every level.
How could this have occurred without the intent of leadership?
Perhaps this is the greatest crime.
You are now entering the Twilight Zone of reckless political decisions. This has spread so far and so fast that you just need to see a splinter of common sense law enforcement and you then say “that’s how you do it”. Arrest the bad guys protect the victims. No tears, no virtue signaling, just handcuffs and hard time. For that reason it’s all part of a sinister plan to “burn it all down”. The Constitution and Declaration of Independence are routinely ignored and so is the rule of law. What emerges is chaos and when that happens it’s going to… Read more »
Pritzker and Johnson won’t stop until we are worse than California. Then we will be the winner. You have to ask yourself, why is ruining your city and state so important?
IT APPEARS TO BE THE WAY TO CONTROL THE LAW ABIDING PEOPLE
Because they are communists and the criminal is the communists friend, the law abiding and patriots are their enemy.
Chicago is not important, it ceased being a significant city when leaders decided that enforcing the law was problematic.
Chicago is on the event horizon and the
Mega sucking sound is it slipping into the black hole.
I am very curious as the the liberal’s game plan. I have been told that their goal is to form a federal police force and eliminate all local police so they have more control…I also understand that this is something the great satan Obama wanted.
and we could call the federal police force something like, “Supreme Security”, or “SS” for short.
If they’re hell bent on destroying the country, paramilitary and guerrilla warfare are probably next on their list. I’d post some likely tactics, but I don’t want to give any wackos ideas. Ted’s thug math above is enough demoralizing garbage for today.
If you’re looking for hope, Johnson is making a critical error by pillaging security and basic social services. Establishing and maintaining some form of shadow governance, to fill the void, is generally how opposition groups rise to legitimacy in this type of environment. My advice: join or form a neighborhood security group and meet regularly.
Gangs will control the neighborhoods and fill the void. More likely cartel affiliated gangs just as the Black Hand did the same in the Italian neighborhoods.
The progressive is generally a stupid person who generally disregards the history of the world in favor of their own made up rules. They ultimately degrade into the authoritarian they claim to hate because the only way people follow their rules is by force.
Cartel influence is much more widespread. Especially among the Latin neighborhoods with major ties. All are cancerous and parasitic to their host. No doubt that this has been in play for quite some time.
You might get a preview of what will happen when the Democrats have their upcoming convention in Chicago. My guess is there will be plenty of Federal Police out and about to protect he Democrat heavy hitters. Meanwhile the rest of Chicago will be Chicago but in that Convention area I predeict it will be spotlessly crimeless.
Take a step further to the left. They need to be called for who they are…Communists.
“ Crime Pays “ dude the perfect poster boy for Dem polices. The Republicans should put him on one with the caption “ Vote Blue “. Very effective.
The voters who elected the ruling crowd of incompetent tyrants should be proud about the results of their vote. They asked for it and now they are getting it. The saddest part is that the evidence of the failures of those they elected they still ignore or defend those who are ruining the city, county,state and nation. The voters are idiots, uniformed and complacent. Let them suffer the consequences.
Exactly. I’ve noticed a lack of comments arguing that Illinois deserves better. It’s finally starting to resonate, perhaps even among WP authors, that Illinois does not deserve better. The people that voted for these leaders do not deserve better. The people that didn’t vote for these leaders, yet choose to stay, do not deserve better.
You sound rather gleeful in your condemnation. And awfully confident that some states will remain immune to the problems, because progressives will surely respect state boundaries and leave the “free states” alone.
You all need to stop with this “the people voted for this” myth. Very few voted and Johnson barely won. End of story!
Very few voted because guys like you spam chat forums with anecdotal evidence of overwhelming odds and intimidating accounts of retributive punishment for doing the right thing.
Every single voter in the Chicago Mayoral election made a decision. END OF STORY!
Every voter decided to vote for Vallas, BJ, or decided to not vote. Every one of those voters made a decision that impacted the outcome of the election. Not choosing a candidate is still a decision.
Stop playing the victim. The voters are getting exactly what they wanted.
Well said.
I would like to read the reasoning of those that downvoted your post along with those that downvoted mine below. What’s the big deal? The Mayor even said he is bringing to the people what they voted for.
As for me my plans are to keep plenty of popcorn handy so I can sit back and watch the show of a lifetime brought to us all by the good voters of Chicago, Il.
Don’t expect to get any rational responses. Many comments receive downvotes if the truth is just too upsetting. Just goes to show you how many people love playing the victim.
downvotes are mostly bots.
Anyone who finds watching a city and state destroyed by political power to be enjoyable and humorous will always get my downvote.
what if they feel schadenfreude?
The big deal is that it’s statistically impossible for a bunch of out of state sadists to all focus on propagating the same illogical talking points.
Those that didn’t vote voted to go along with whomever the ones that did vote chose so yes, they voted too and I hope they are happy with their choice.
This situation is exactly what the citizens of Chicago voted for. Now it is time to sit back with a humorous attitude watching the show that the citizenry voted for. The look on those affluent liberal white housewives as groups of lawbreakers invade their streets will be priceless and remember not to feel sorry for them, as they voted for it.
It will get worse when Democrat Purge Law starts
Chicago’s boiling right along now – crime, ‘schools’, taxes-n-public debt, you name it – and the frog’s long past cooked.
Missed its chance to jump out of the now scalding water a long time ago.
Can’t even agree on turning down the burner…..
There’s a new novel out by Dostoevsky set in Chicago circa 2020 called “Crime and nonPunishment.”
Consider this. The economy is not that bad right now. Imagine what will happen if a recession hits, people can’t find work, and stealing is easier than ever. If you think it’s bad now, ……