A recent report from a pair of scholars at the University of Illinois, Chicago, found that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the United States:
During 2017, the latest years for which figures from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) are available, there were 25 public corruption convictions in the Northern District of Illinois, which includes all of Chicago and the northern third of Illinois. This is down from 30 in 2016 and down from an average of 33.6 per year over the last 10 years. There were a total of 34 cases of public corruption convictions in all of Illinois, proving that public corruption is not just a big city problem.
Statistics compiled by the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section show that from 1976 through 2017, a total of 1,731 individuals were convicted of public corruption in the Northern District of Illinois (Chicago). In the same time period, the Central District of California (Los Angeles) convicted 1,534; the Southern District of New York (Manhattan), 1,327; Florida Southern (Miami) 1,165; and the District of Columbia (Washington), 1,159. These five districts, Chicago, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Miami and Washington D.C. led all of the 93 federal judicial districts for the 47-year period since 1976.
The complete report can be found here (docx).
The same report found that Illinoisis the third most corrupt state but that’s misleading since they’re including Washington, DC as a state. Among actual states Illinois’s only real competition is Louisiana, a distinction of sorts since Louisiana is notoriously corrupt.
However, make no mistake Los Angeles, New York, and Miami are highly corrupt as well. Size and corruption go hand in hand.
It also bears mentioning that many of the candidates presently running to be Chicago’s next mayor have connections to the corrupt Illinois Democratic establishment and in all likelihood one of them will ultimately be elected. Short version: little future improvement is likely.
