The FBI publishes its Crime in the United States report annually. Here are a few quick facts from Crime in the United States, 2007, from available homicide data:

 - Law enforcement agencies submitted SHRs to the FBI for 14,831 murder victims who were slain in 2007.

- Concerning single victim/single offender incidents in which the age of the offender was known, 93.6 percent of the victims were killed by adults (persons 18 years of age or older).  (Based on Expanded Homicide Data Table 4.)

 - Of single victim/single offender incidents, 91.9 percent of black victims were murdered by black offenders, and 82.5 percent of white victims were murdered by white offenders. (Based on Expanded Homicide Data Table 5.)

 - Among the single victim/single offender incidents, 91.1 percent of female victims were killed by male offenders. (Based on Expanded Homicide Data Table 5.)

 - Of the homicides in 2007 for which the type of weapon was specified, 72.9 percent of the offenses involved the use of firearms. Handguns comprised 87.8 percent of the firearms specified. (Based on Expanded Homicide Data Table 7.)

Regrettably, the state of Illinois does not provide much support for this essential data collection about the most heinous crimes. Where state-by-state rundowns are provided, table after table after table in the Crime in the United States series contains the same footnote for Illinois: " Limited supplemental homicide data were received." "Limited supplemental homicide data were received."

The office of Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), in the Justice Dept, says that Illinois does not participate in the FBI's National Incident Based Reporting System:

"Illinois was NIBRS at one time, but currently only 1 agency (Rockford) is reporting NIBRS.  We do not receive much crime data from Illinois, and what we do receive is usually only from the largest cities."

Again regrettably, the slack in city and state reporting for Chicago is not made up by the feds. I already knew, while pursuing statistics on crimes with firearms, that the NDIL in Chicago was less than eager to disclose the number of its prosecutions for firearms. When I first put that question to Randall Samborn, press spokesman for the office, in late March or early April 2007, I was told that the office would have to do a "search" for the number of firearms prosecutions. The 94 US attorneys do annual reports on their prosecutions, by type of crime etc, and send them to main Justice annually or semi-annually.

After pursuing the question through a FOIA inquiry, eventually--almost a year later--I got the answer for the years I was asking about, 2004 and 2005. The numbers are remarkably low for a city the size of Chicago and for a US attorney district described thus (in part) on its glowing web site:

"Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney since September 2001, directs the office, which has more than 300 employees, including approximately 160 Assistant U.S. Attorneys and two dozen paralegals, along with other administrative and support staff. The Northern District of Illinois covers 18 counties across the northen tier of Illinois, with a population of approximately nine million people. The district has a branch office in Rockford staffed by seven attorneys. Both attorneys and staff are committed to a longstanding tradition of public service and community involvement throughout northern Illinois. Each year, attorneys and staff donate hundreds of toys and articles of clothing to needy children, provide programs for children in public schools, and mentor law students. . ."

Randall has not yet replied to another question placed on May 18 of this year, about recent firearms prosecutions. The web site itself indicates that a sizable proportion of firearms prosecutions at NDIL are handled through the Rockford office. Any firearms prosecutions are included in multiple press releases through the web site--one for indictment, another for superseding indictments, another for conviction, etc.--sometimes generating five PR releases for one legal matter.

Contact personnel at main Justice do not know why some statistics would be omitted, or why some agencies in individual states would refrain from supplying data that other states supply across the country. Given the political pressures exerted by the NRA, it is sadly easier to understand why weapons information would be omitted--although, again, those pressures seem to have worked better on some agencies than on others. "Return A Record" cards for 2007 show that the city of Chicago is among very few major U.S. cities that did not include weapons information with the numbers of homicides and other crimes it submits on the cards. (The city of Chicago is the only agency in Illinois that returns these cards. Some states have multiple cities that return them; some states do not.)

In short, firearms information for Chicago is in short supply. Accurate, accessible, up-to-date, transparent data on 1) crimes, 2) weapons, and 3) prosecutions are in short supply, in spite of the tragic school shootings recently reported in Chicago, a rising number of homicides--the overwhelming majority committed with firearms--and even the slaying of a federal judge's mother and husband at her Chicago home in 2005.

One final note: On a slightly different and also grim topic, the numbers are in even shorter supply: The category of major crime known as "forcible rape" seems to be a black hole for Illinois, and for Chicago, judging from the blank columns in the reporting forms.

What are they hiding?