(The Center Square) – In the year that ended 2022, homicides, human trafficking and motor vehicle thefts spiked and bribery declined, according to a new reporting tool from Illinois State Police.
The agency announced that Saturday it is officially launching a new public website where crime statistics for Illinois can be viewed. The program is part of the Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting Program and adopts the National Incident Based Reporting System to meet FBI reporting standards.
Friday, data was live that reported in Illinois a 48.7% increase in homicides, from 628 in 2021 to 934 in 2022. That’s 306 more homicides in one year. Also reported, human trafficking was up 233% from nine in 2021 to 30 in 2022. Motor vehicle thefts were up 155.5%, from 12,656 to 32,332.
Other crimes up triple digits included gambling, embezzlement, extortion, animal cruelty and counterfeiting.
In a state where several high-profile bribery cases involving elected officials have resulted in convictions with more trials ahead, bribery was down from seven in 2021 to six in 2022, according to ISP data.
“Illinois law enforcement agencies are mandated to report crime data to the I-UCR Program,” the ISP announcement said Friday. “Crime in Illinois Online will be continuously updated as the data reported by law enforcement becomes available in the Illinois NIBRS Repository.”
The website is ILUCR.NIBRS.com. Datasets on crime include crime rate per 1,000 population in individual counties, a crime density map, crime counts by offense and trend comparison charts.
This article First appeared in the center square