Jens Ludwig and Chief Bill Scott: The Unexpected Origins of Gun Violence
Join Crime Lab Pritzker Director Jens Ludwig for a book talk and signing at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, CA for his upcoming book, “Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence.”
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, April 23
Time: 6:00pm – 7:00pm PDT
Location: 110 The Embarcadero, Taube Family Auditorium, San Francisco, CA 94105
Agenda
5:30pm – Doors open
6:00pm-7:00pm – Program
7:00pm – Book signing
About the Event
In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: Why does gun violence happen? And is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren’t what he expected. Unforgiving Places is Ludwig’s revelatory portrait of gun violence in America’s most famously maligned city.
Ludwig says his research disproves the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people; he says it shows most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while others don’t, Ludwig says gun violence is more circumstantial—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches lead us to believe.
Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig’s immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including “countless hours spent in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald’ses,” Ludwig joins The Commonwealth Club with San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott to discuss his work in behavioral economics. As Ludwig says, progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the 10-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.
About Jens Ludwig
Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. An economist by training, he helped start the Crime Lab in 2008 to carry out R&D in partnership with the public sector to solve society’s most challenging problems, to use the ideas of behavioral science and data science to reduce gun violence and advance justice. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and serves on the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academy of Sciences.
Book release April 21, 2025 – Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
