Night-time safety · Chicago · data through October 2026

Is Chicago safe at night?

50% of Chicago's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 21% of them fall between midnight and 6am. That share swings from 39% to 60% depending on which neighborhood you are in — which is the whole point: the question worth asking is not whether Chicago is safe after dark, but where and by which route.

These figures describe when reported incidents happen, not how dangerous a street is. Somewhere with a night-time crowd reports more after dark because more people are there — that is a fact about footfall as much as about risk, and it is why the tables below show the count and the share side by side.

Most reported incidents after dark

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Near North Side	2,508	52%	25/100
2 The Loop	2,094	39%	23/100
3 Lake View	1,562	58%	37/100
4 South Shore	1,474	47%	29/100
5 North Lawndale	1,466	50%	30/100
6 West Garfield Park	1,299	48%	33/100
7 Humboldt Park	1,250	48%	34/100
8 Greater Grand Crossing	1,144	52%	38/100
9 Uptown	1,143	44%	35/100
10 Grand Boulevard	1,069	48%	38/100
11 East Garfield Park	1,040	51%	39/100
12 Austin	1,030	53%	40/100
13 Auburn Gresham	1,009	49%	40/100
14 West Town	972	48%	43/100
15 Near West Side	914	48%	44/100
16 Kenwood	912	47%	42/100
17 Logan Square	874	59%	52/100
18 Woodlawn	818	49%	44/100
19 Washington Park	793	52%	46/100
20 Douglas	790	47%	45/100
21 Chicago Lawn	785	50%	46/100
22 Edgewater	779	46%	46/100
23 West Englewood	775	51%	46/100
24 South Chicago	774	52%	47/100
25 Near South Side	773	52%	49/100

Changes most after dark

Ranked by the share of reported incidents that fall between 6pm and 6am, against a Chicago median of 51%. A high share is not a high total — a quiet neighborhood whose few incidents mostly happen at night sits near the top — so the count is shown beside it.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents	Index
West Lawn	60%	445	76/100
Logan Square	59%	1,472	52/100
Edison Park	59%	112	93/100
Lake View	58%	2,680	37/100
Hermosa	58%	930	59/100
Clearing	57%	417	76/100
Garfield Ridge	56%	261	84/100
Dunning	56%	364	78/100
East Side	56%	580	71/100
Norwood Park	56%	257	84/100
Belmont Cragin	55%	1,206	53/100
Albany Park	55%	1,181	53/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
The Loop	39%	5,307
North Park	41%	199
Mount Greenwood	42%	132
Lincoln Square	42%	1,012
Pullman	43%	375
O'Hare	43%	588
Uptown	44%	2,605
Englewood	44%	1,740

Common questions

Is Chicago safe to walk at night?

50% of Chicago's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 21% fall in the small hours between midnight and 6am. That is a description of when incidents are reported, not a verdict on the city: the figure varies far more between neighborhoods than it does between cities, from 39% to 60% here. The useful question is which neighborhood and which route, not whether a whole city is safe.

Which neighborhood in Chicago has the most reported crime at night?

Near North Side, with roughly 2,508 reported incidents between 6pm and 6am — 52% of its total. Somewhere busy usually tops this list because more people are out, so read it alongside the daytime picture on its own page rather than on its own.

Which neighborhood changes most after dark?

West Lawn is the most night-concentrated in Chicago: 60% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a Chicago median of 51%. A high share does not mean a high total — a quiet neighborhood whose few incidents mostly happen at night will rank high here — which is why the table shows the count beside it.

How does SafeRoute use this at night?

The app scores each walking route against the same Chicago PD data, and can weight it toward the time you are actually walking rather than a flat all-day average. It also shows how much of each route runs on lit streets, and lets you share a walk.

Methodology

Every incident reported to the Chicago Police Department carries an occurrence time, which is bucketed into daytime (6am–6pm), evening (6pm–midnight) and the small hours (midnight–6am), split weekday against weekend, and weighted by severity so violence counts for more than shoplifting. A neighborhood's night share is the weighted proportion falling between 6pm and 6am; its night count is that share applied to its total. The city-wide chart weights each neighborhood by its own volume, so a busy centre is not averaged against a quiet suburb as though they were the same size.

Each incident reported to the Chicago Police Department (from CPD's CLEARMAP data) is weighted by severity — violence counts for more than shoplifting. For every neighborhood we sum weighted incidents within 1 km of its center, and normalize against citywide crime rates onto a 0–100 index, higher = safer. Boundaries are the City of Chicago's 77 official community areas, the stable units the city itself reports on. Time-of-day charts use Chicago PD incident timestamps, severity-weighted. Locations are published at block level for victim privacy. Pages regenerate as new data is published.