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Five years ago, the Southern Illinois judicial district -- which includes Madison and St. Clair Counties, as well as 36 other counties -- was ranked 43rd out of 93 judicial districts.
As of June, however, Southern Illinois was ranked 10th out of 93 judicial districts on a per capita basis.
Southern Illinois outstripped much more populous judicial districts as Eastern Missouri, Northern Illinois and Washington, D.C., according to an analysis of Department of Justice records conducted by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University.
What's more, federal records show sharp increases in the quality of convictions, with Southern Illinois on track for a 62 percent increase in firearms convictions for 2013 compared to 2012 -- 116 versus 72 -- and a nearly 240 percent jump since 2008-2009, Department of Justice records show.
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