Sharp drop in arrests, other long-term crime trends shown in new Cook County data dashboard
Throughout 2019, Chicago police officers made nearly 80,000 arrests before scaling them back significantly during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the following spring.
Now five years later, that drop appears not to be just a COVID-era blip: In recent years, arrests have rebounded slightly, but annually police still are recording tens of thousands of fewer arrests than they did in 2019.
The trend is among a number of long-term shifts in how the criminal justice system operates in Cook County, according to Loyola University researchers who in partnership with local officials produced a data project that seeks to shed light on how 'shocks to the system' like the pandemic have reshaped how crime and violence are handled in Chicago.
The publicly available data dashboard, unveiled by officials on Tuesday, integrates information from police, the court system, jails and prisons with the goal of creating a fuller picture of how cases move through the system from start to finish. It's funded by the MacArthur Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge and was developed in conjunction with Loyola University Chicago by David Olson and Don Stemen, co-directors of Loyola's Center for Criminal Justice.
'It's a strategic tool to be able to note big trends and for the county stakeholders to use internally in terms of how we talk to each other about overall trends and strategies,' said Ali Abid, deputy director of the Cook County Justice Advisory Council, adding that officials felt it was important to make it available to the public and the media as well.
The dashboard comes at a time when the justice system is still adjusting to major changes, like the elimination of cash bail in 2023 in addition to the massive upheaval brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The system is also experiencing new shifts that may continue to transform how justice looks in Cook County, such as the shuttering of the electronic monitoring program run by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and the policy changes brought by State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke since she took office in December.
'What we've been seeing for a decade is a shift in thinking about how we respond to crime,' said Olson.
Olson said Cook County is the only large county he is aware of with a data system like this one. He noted that it is not designed to explain why changes are happening but rather help stakeholders spot patterns.
'Part of it is to illustrate the interconnectedness of the system despite the fact that agencies are at different levels of government, different branches of government,' he said.
Even though, according to the dashboard, arrests have declined since the pandemic — with police in total making more than 47,000 arrests in 2024 compared with more than 78,000 in 2019 — the researchers noted that incidents reported to police have not seen the same sustained sharp decrease, an indication that police practices may be shifting.
'(Arrests have) gone up a little bit since 2020 but certainly are not back to the levels that you saw before COVID,' Stemen said.
In particular, drug arrests have declined significantly.
'I don't think anyone would interpret this as a 60% drop in drug use in Chicago, but a change in policing habits,' Olson said.
And among those who are charged with a drug offense, a greater share of those people are being sentenced to probation, according to the researchers.
'The use of prison has gone down,' Olson said, as a reliance on diversion and community supervision has grown.
Meanwhile, arrests for weapons offenses have risen in recent years, according to the dashboard, with more than 5,300 made in 2024 versus around 4,600 in 2019.
So far this year, the dashboard has also tracked a rise in the jail population, as well as an increase in people being ordered detained by judges while their cases are pending, though Olson and Stemen cautioned that the 2025 data so far makes up a small sample of the total data.
The Tribune earlier this year reported on a recent uptick in the population of Cook County Jail, as officials examined possible factors such as the new state's attorney's policy-making and judicial decisions.
'It's at least on a trend where it seems like it will continue to increase for a while, but at a certain point it should plateau,' Olson said.
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