Summer Safety Analysis: Chicago Crime Trends

As we head into the summer months, we expect to feel Chicago’s gun violence challenge even more acutely. By analyzing historical data, we hope to provide Chicago’s violence prevention stakeholders with insights about how to focus scarce resources and interventions toward the people and places most likely to be impacted.

Main findings:

• During the summer months, shooting incidents reach their peak, accounting for 38% of the total annual incidents, with July alone contributing to 12% of these tragic incidents.
• The surge in summer shootings is highly concentrated both spatially and temporally. Approximately a quarter of all 1000 x 1000 ft. grid cells in Chicago (1736 of 6942 total cells) observed 93% of all summer shootings from 2019 – 2023. Notably, over half of the summer shootings occurred between the late evening and early morning hours, from 8 PM to 3 AM, especially on weekends.