Night-time safety · Chicago · data through August 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 40% 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 reported incidents after dark

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Near North Side	1,904	52%	26/100
2 The Loop	1,615	40%	23/100
3 Lake View	1,258	59%	36/100
4 North Lawndale	1,194	51%	30/100
5 South Shore	1,173	48%	29/100
6 West Garfield Park	1,002	48%	33/100
7 Humboldt Park	1,000	48%	34/100
8 Greater Grand Crossing	880	52%	38/100
9 Uptown	849	44%	37/100
10 East Garfield Park	833	52%	39/100
11 Austin	825	54%	39/100
12 Grand Boulevard	798	47%	39/100
13 Auburn Gresham	779	49%	41/100
14 West Town	747	48%	44/100
15 Near West Side	704	47%	44/100
16 Kenwood	699	46%	42/100
17 Logan Square	651	59%	53/100
18 Douglas	645	49%	46/100
19 Woodlawn	642	50%	45/100
20 Washington Park	632	53%	46/100
21 South Chicago	616	52%	47/100
22 Edgewater	615	47%	47/100
23 West Englewood	614	51%	46/100
24 Hyde Park	602	48%	48/100
25 Englewood	592	45%	43/100

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%	342	76/100
Lake View	59%	2,120	36/100
Logan Square	59%	1,106	53/100
Dunning	59%	288	78/100
Clearing	58%	324	77/100
Hermosa	57%	753	58/100
Belmont Cragin	57%	937	53/100
West Ridge	56%	789	57/100
East Side	56%	418	73/100
Edison Park	56%	82	93/100
South Lawndale	55%	729	58/100
Norwood Park	55%	204	84/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
North Park	40%	158
The Loop	40%	4,046
Lincoln Square	43%	797
Beverly	43%	239
Pullman	43%	281
O'Hare	43%	461
Uptown	44%	1,918
Englewood	45%	1,302

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 40% 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 1,904 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 and check in on arrival.

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 (via the Chicago Data Portal) 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.