If you watch the national news, Chicago is often painted as a monolith of violence. It’s a talking point. A political football. But honestly, when you actually dig into the numbers regarding murders in Chicago by year, the reality is way more complicated than a thirty-second soundbite. It isn't just one long, upward line of chaos. It’s a series of peaks, valleys, and weird plateaus that tell us a lot about how policy, policing, and even a global pandemic changed the city’s DNA.
Statistics are cold. People are not.
To understand where Chicago is today, you have to look back at the 1990s. That was a different world. In 1992, the city hit a staggering 943 homicides. Think about that for a second. Nearly a thousand people. The city was smaller then, too, which means the rate was incredibly high. Since then, the city has been chasing that downward trend, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing spectacularly.
The Rollercoaster of the 2000s and 2010s
For a while there, things actually looked like they were getting better. Between 2004 and 2015, the numbers usually hovered between 400 and 500. Not good, obviously, but a far cry from the "Wild West" era of the early 90s. Then 2016 happened.
2016 was a massive shock to the system. The city saw 762 murders. Why? Experts like those at the University of Chicago Crime Lab point to a "perfect storm." You had the fallout from the Laquan McDonald video, which nuked trust between the police and the community. You had a fractured gang landscape. Back in the day, big gangs like the Gangster Disciples had a corporate structure. Now? It’s blocks. It’s cliques. It’s personal beefs on social media that turn into shootings.
- 2014: 407 murders
- 2015: 485 murders
- 2016: 762 murders
- 2017: 653 murders
It’s kinda wild how fast things can turn. One year you're seeing a decade-low, and the next, the national media is calling the city "Chiraq." The 2016 spike wasn't just a number; it was a shift in how violence happened. It became more impulsive. More localized.
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The Pandemic Era and the 2021 Peak
Then came 2020. Everyone thought the lockdown would stop the violence. They were wrong.
Actually, the opposite happened. While the world stayed inside, the streets in certain neighborhoods got more dangerous. By 2021, Chicago hit 797 homicides, the highest since the mid-90s. It felt like all the progress of the early 2000s had been erased in about eighteen months.
What caused it? Take your pick. The courts were closed. Social services were shuttered. The economy tanked for the people who were already struggling the most. It’s easy to blame one thing, but it’s never just one thing. It's a house of cards. When the pandemic pulled out the bottom card—the social safety net—the whole thing fell.
Why Year-Over-Year Comparisons Can Be Deceptive
You've gotta be careful with how you read these stats. If you just look at the total number of murders in Chicago by year, you miss the geography. Chicago is a "tale of two cities." In neighborhoods like the Gold Coast or Lincoln Park, the murder rate is lower than in many small towns. But in places like Englewood, West Garfield Park, or North Lawndale, the numbers are devastating.
When people talk about Chicago being dangerous, they usually aren't talking about the whole city. They're talking about specific blocks where the cycle of retaliation never stops. Roseanna Ander from the Crime Lab has frequently noted that violence is hyper-concentrated. If you aren't looking at where these murders happen, the yearly total is basically a useless number. It doesn't tell you who is hurting.
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The Current Trend: Is it Actually Improving?
So, where are we now? As we move through the mid-2020s, the numbers have started to dip again. In 2023, the city saw 617 homicides. That’s a 13% drop from the year before. 2024 and 2025 followed with similar incremental decreases.
Is it cause for celebration?
Sorta. But not really. 600+ murders is still a tragedy. It’s still significantly higher than the mid-2010s. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Mayor’s office often tout these drops as "historic," but if you live in a neighborhood where you still hear shots at night, those percentages don't mean much. The city is trying new things, like the Office of Neighborhood Safety, focusing on "violence interrupters"—people who step in before a beef turns fatal.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
The Factors No One Wants to Talk About
There’s a lot of focus on policing, but let’s talk about the guns. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, right? True. But look at a map. You can drive 20 minutes and be in Indiana, where the laws are... let’s say, different. A huge percentage of the guns used in Chicago murders come from out-of-state "straw purchases."
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And then there's the clearance rate.
That’s the percentage of murders that actually get solved. For years, Chicago’s clearance rate was abysmal—sometimes dipping below 30% for certain types of shootings. If people feel like they can get away with it, or if they feel like they have to take justice into their own hands because the police won't, the cycle continues. CPD has improved this lately, getting closer to 50%, but that still means half of the killers are walking the streets.
Breaking Down the Demographics
The victims aren't just names on a ledger. They are overwhelmingly young Black and Brown men. This isn't a secret, but it's a reality that shapes the political response. If this level of violence were happening in the suburbs or the Loop, the response would be a national emergency. Instead, it becomes a "Chicago problem."
We also see a rise in "victim-offender overlap." This is a fancy way of saying that the people getting shot are often the same people who have been involved in shootings before. It’s a small, interconnected group of people driving a massive amount of the city's total violence.
Actionable Steps for Understanding the Data
If you’re trying to stay informed about Chicago’s safety or looking to get involved, don't just look at the headlines. Headlines want clicks. You want the truth.
- Check the CPD Annual Reports: They provide the most granular data, even if they're a bit dry. They break down homicides by district, which gives you a better "safety map" than a news report.
- Follow Independent Trackers: Sites like The Trace or the Chicago Sun-Times homicide tracker offer more human context than the official city portal. They often include photos and stories of the victims.
- Look at the "Clearance Rate" Specifically: This is the most important metric for city health. If the clearance rate goes up, violence usually goes down over time because the "retaliation" cycle is broken by the legal system.
- Support Community Interrupters: Organizations like Chicago CRED or Build Chicago are doing the actual work on the ground. Supporting them is often more effective than just debating police budgets.
The story of murders in Chicago by year isn't a finished book. It’s a messy, ongoing narrative. We’ve seen that the city can get better—we saw it in the early 2010s. But we’ve also seen how fragile that peace is. Real change doesn't happen with a new Mayor or a new Police Superintendent alone; it happens when the underlying reasons for the violence—poverty, lack of opportunity, and easy access to firearms—are finally addressed with the same urgency as the crimes themselves.
To truly track Chicago’s progress, keep an eye on the summer months. That’s always the tell. If the city can keep the "summer spike" under control, it’s a sign that the new community-based strategies might actually be sticking. Until then, we keep watching the numbers, hoping they continue their slow, painful crawl downward.