Jul 2023
READI Policy Brief
Read the preliminary findings here.
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
Webinar Recording: Validating CJA’s Updated Release Assessment
Crime Lab Senior Research Director Greg Stoddard provided remarks at a New York City Criminal Justice Agency (CJA) webinar on the latest validation study of CJA’s release assessment tool. The release assessment, developed in partnership with the Crime Lab, is an interview used by trained staff members to estimate whether someone will return to court if released pretrial.
Curbing gun violence in Chicago doesn’t require that we first end poverty
Crime Lab leaders Katie Hill and Jens Ludwig penned an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune highlighting the root causes of gun violence and the growing body of research showing that increased neighborhood vibrancy generates surprisingly large changes in the prevalence of gun violence, by as much as 30%.
A fighting chance
In The University of Chicago Magazine’s Fall ’25 issue, Susie Allen profiles Crime Lab Pritzker Director Jens Ludwig to discuss his book, “Unforgiving Places,” which challenges conventional wisdom on gun violence and suggests new approaches to solving the problem.
