Jan 2021
Reducing Crime Through Environmental Design: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Street Lighting in New York City
Topics
Methodologies
This paper offers novel experimental evidence that violent crimes can be successfully reduced by changing the situational environment that potential victims and offenders face. We focus on a ubiquitous but understudied feature of the urban landscape—street lighting—and report the first experimental evidence on the effect of street lighting on crime.
Topics
Methodologies
Webinar: Overview of the City of Chicago’s Violence Reduction Dashboard
The Crime Lab hosted a webinar that explored the City of Chicago’s Violence Reduction Dashboard—a publicly available tool launched to support efforts to reduce gun violence through transparent, real-time data.
Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
Crime Lab Pritzker Director Jens Ludwig authored a book that argues the lack of progress in reducing gun violence ultimately stems from our having misunderstood the nature of the problem, and that behavioral science gives us a new way to understand – and solve – gun violence in America.
Local Gun Violence Dashboards
Chicago’s Violence Reduction Dashboard, launched by the Crime Lab in 2021, is featured in a toolkit created by Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund as a part of its Gun Violence Data Fellowship.
Valuing the benefits of reducing firearm violence in the United States
This paper estimates the monetized value of the impact of reducing firearm violence and how that value is distributed across the population.
Latest Updates
The federal help Chicago really needs
The Policing Leadership Academy’s Meredith Stricker and Kenneth Corey penned an op-ed discussing the recent spotlight on crime in the U.S. and the academy’s focus on building the capacity of police commanders managing jurisdictions with the highest rates of violence.
Trump says he’ll expand his focus on crimes to other Democratic-led cities
Mariah Woelfel for NPR and WBEZ Chicago speaks to the Crime Lab’s Kim Smith about the notable drop in violent crime in Chicago so far in 2025 and the strategies in place to prevent violence in communities.
The Politics of Crime Are Perilous for Left and Right Alike
The New York Times’ Shaila Dewan speaks with Crime Lab Pritzker Director Jens Ludwig about the politics of crime in the U.S.
