Wait, Illinois Crime is Now Suddenly at a Record Low?

I have some good news that sadly borders on the almost unbelievable. There's data that shows that the crime rate in Illinois is not only drastically falling, but actually below the national average. Can this miraculous news really be true? Let's dig for facts.

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I saw this conversation on the Illinois sub-Reddit page mentioning words I'm not used to seeing together - Crime in Illinois at record low. As with everything I see shared on Reddit, I needed to do more research to verify if it's really true.

The article the poster linked to was an article by Capital Fax. Not willing to accept that as fact either, I followed their link to data from the FBI's own Crime Data Explorer. I ran a report using their graph and was shocked to learn something. It's true. The crime rate in Illinois is plummeting...or at least it did with the most recent data from 2021 to 2022.

Violent crime in Illinois is the blue line while the national average is the gray. It appears that the perception of violent crime being much worse in Illinois than other parts of America is...not accurate. Allegedly.

I could be a cynic and say that criminals in Illinois are becoming more savvy and not getting caught, but I'm choosing to accept this as the great news it is.

My advice to you is to not take my word for it either. Go to the FBI site and run their data and see the violent crime rate for yourself and make up your own mind if you accept it as truth.