North Shore Towns Among State's 50 Safest

Despite Chicago gun violence that has contributed to a spike in the national murder rate — and drawn criticism from the president — the state of Illinois still boasts some of the safest places to live nationwide. Now, a new report highlighting the safest places to live within the Land of Lincoln has found seven of the top 50 are located along Chicago's North Shore.

And the safest Illinois towns aren't necessarily the smallest. According to Safewise, a home security and safety advice website, highly populated towns like Wheaton and Hoffman Estates are among the state's safest. And, based on the FBI's 2015 uniform crime report, more than a dozen cities in Cook County — the second most-populated county in the nation — are among the 50 safest in Illinois.

Safewise released its safest cities report on Monday, noting that the average violent crime rate among the Illinois list was 86 percent lower than the national average. And several towns — Inverness, Gilberts, Spring Grove, and Palos Heights — reported no violent crime at all. (Subscribe to your local patch in Illinois for the latest breaking news and our daily newsletters.)

To compile the data, Safewise reviewed eliminated cities with less than 5,000 residents and cities that did not submit a complete crime report to the FBI. Then the group narrowed it down to the number of reported violent and property crimes and calculated the likelihood of these crimes occurring out of 1,000 people.

Here is the complete list of the 50 safest cities in Illinois, according to Safewise:

1. Inverness
2. Waterloo
3. Winfield
4. Western Springs
5. Gilberts
6. Campton Hills
7. Hawthorn Woods
8. Manhattan
9. Willow Springs
10. Channahon
11. Spring Grove
12. Lindenhurst
13. Lakemoor
14. Lake in the Hills
15. Mascoutah
16. Bartlett
17. Palos Heights
18. Buffalo Grove (Up from 25)
19. La Grange Park
20. Clarendon Hills
21. Palos Hills
22. Hampshire
23. Mount Zion
24. Homer Glen
25. Northfield (Up from 147)
26. Deerfield (Up from 28)
27. Charleston
28. Cary
29. Pinckneyville
30. Monticello
31. Lincolnshire (Down from 20)
32. Wauconda
33. Winnetka (Remains at 33)
34. Mahomet
35. Roselle
36. Lake Forest (Down from 30)
37. Wheaton
38. Prospect Heights
39. Hanover Park
40. Greenville
41. Morton
42. Highwood
43. Frankfort
44. Troy
45. Burr Ridge
46. Huntley
47. Chatham
48. Hoffman Estates
49. Lake Villa
50. Glencoe (Up from 71)

» To read more about the data, visit the Safewise website.

Other north suburban towns to make the top 100 include:

51. Arlington Heights
54. Palatine
59. Rolling Meadows
62. Lake Bluff
65. Mount Prospect
74. Highland Park
80. Northbrook
86. Morton Grove
87. Libertyville
92. Glenview
94. Des Plaines
96. Wheeling

Patch editor Shannon Antinori contributed

_{Top image via Google Maps}