Chicago is held up as crime central. Do the numbers agree?

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You don't need to be a social scientist to know that gun violence increased considerably over the past few years in Chicago.

Everyone is reminded of this each weekend, when the public and media are focused on how many homicides or shootings occurred, pointing to either a rise or fall from the previous weekend or the previous year. Homicides and shootings exact an enormous toll on family members, friends, surviving victims and communities exposed to violence. Because of this, these crimes warrant media coverage, public concern and effective responses by elected officials. Indeed, the public should hold elected officials accountable when those officials advocate for or implement ineffective solutions.

However, constant exposure to these weekend tallies skews our perceptions of crime and violence in Chicago. Further, the focus almost exclusively on these two specific forms of violence — homicides and shootings — potentially leads to the misperception that "crime is out of control" or "there is nothing that can be done."

As professors at Loyola University Chicago, Chicago's Jesuit university, we strive to conduct objective research, using sound scientific principles. It is also part of our Loyola DNA to conduct our work in the service of others, and we care deeply about individuals affected by crime. As such, our goal is to advance fair and effective responses to crime through this research.

A few specific facts about crime in Chicago need to be laid out to place discussions of gun violence into the larger context. The context might surprise many, but more importantly, the lack of this context can steer people to the wrong conclusions about solutions. First, most of the crimes committed in Chicago are not violent crimes. Last year, just 24% of serious crimes reported in Chicago were violent offenses. Rather, most — 76% — were property crimes. And the total number of property crimes reported to the Chicago police decreased almost every single year from 2001 to 2019 (pre-pandemic), falling almost 50% during that period, before seeing a slight (3%) increase from 2019 to 2022.

And while there is a perception that overall violent crime is increasing, the total number of serious violent crimes reported to Chicago police decreased almost every year from 2001 to 2022, dropping 46% from 2001 to 2019 (pre-pandemic), before increasing slightly (2%) from 2019 to 2022. Further, the vast majority (90%) of all serious crime in Chicago does not involve a firearm, and homicides committed with a firearm account for less than 0.5% of all serious crime.

This is not to diminish the severity of homicides and nonfatal gun crimes — e.g., robberies, assaults, batteries, and sexual assaults — but to emphasize that they are rare relative to other crime. Further, and critical to understanding the nature of violent crime in Chicago, the number of violent crimes that do not involve a firearm decreased almost every single year from 2001 to 2022, falling 50% during that period.

Thus, most forms of serious crime have decreased substantially over the past 20 years. The one exception, particularly in recent years, is gun violence. Although gun violence decreased steadily through the early 2000s, Chicago has experienced several annual increases since. Most substantially, between 2019 and 2022, there was a 46% increase in gun violence in Chicago. Despite that increase, gun violence in 2022 was 23% lower than in 2001.

In addition to more gun violence in recent years, the lethality of these offenses has also increased. In the early 2000s, Chicago experienced roughly 30 nonfatal violent crimes committed with a firearm for every firearm homicide; in the past four years, this ratio changed to 15 to 1. This pattern is being seen nationally, not just in Chicago. This increase in lethality could be due to the intent of the perpetrator, larger-capacity magazines increasing the likelihood that at least one bullet will fatally strike a victim, larger-caliber ammunition increasing the likelihood that a wound will prove fatal or a combination of all these.

In any case, this dramatic increase in gun violence over the past few years coincides not only with the pandemic but also with an unprecedented increase in the number of handguns produced and purchased in the United States. And it is likely that some of these legally produced (and mostly legally purchased) handguns are illegally ending up in the hands of young people. While their motivation for possessing a firearm may be fear of victimization, increased status among their peers or to commit a crime, they are also impulsive and don't fully appreciate the impact of their behaviors.

These facts highlight that the overall crime problem in Chicago has been improving, fairly consistently, over the past 20 years. In other words, significant progress has been made to reduce property crimes, such as burglary and theft, and to reduce violent crimes that do not involve a firearm. While decreases may not have been equally experienced across all communities, and public perception may not align with the data, this is evidence that crime can be and is being reduced.

We should apply what we know has contributed to this decline — such as, improved access to behavioral health treatment services, improved responses to crime victims and improved economic conditions — to substantively address the recent high rates of gun violence.

We also should not seek to dismantle programs and policies that have contributed to these long-term declines in crime because they are not addressing gun violence; rather, we need to focus on what works to address this specific, unique form of crime. Everyone wants less firearm violence in Chicago, and everyone wishes there was a simple solution that could be implemented and would produce immediate results. However, we have seen that through the implementation of effective policies and practices, we have achieved success at reducing most other forms of serious crime.

Solutions to gun violence exist, and we need to ensure that these are implemented and sustained to achieve the long-term goals that all Chicagoans want and deserve.

David Olson and Don Stemen are professors of criminal justice and criminology and co-directors of the Center for Criminal Justice at Loyola University Chicago. This article was first published by the Chicago Tribune.