Our Approach
Project
Rapid Employment and Development Initiative (READI) Chicago
READI Chicago is a gun violence reduction initiative that provides almost two years of intensive programming to men at the highest risk of shooting or being shot.
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The Crime Lab designs, tests, and scales data-driven innovations to improve the public sector’s response to the dual challenges of America’s gun violence crisis and a criminal justice system that is not truly just. Below find broad categories of our work.
Topics
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Community Violence Intervention
Through a combination of street outreach by credible messengers and behavioral science-informed interventions, community violence intervention (CVI) programs help de-escalate stressful situations before they lead to violence.
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Criminal Justice Reform
We’re advancing long overdue reforms to reduce the harms of America’s broken criminal justice system.
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Gun Violence
In cities across America, communities face high rates of gun violence and significant harm caused by the criminal justice system – both of which disproportionately impact communities of color.
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Policing
If we want to address America’s gun violence epidemic and save lives today, fair and effective policing is essential. But for too many communities, we are failing to deliver that kind of policing.
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Youth Violence
Gun violence is the leading cause of death for young people in America. But youth violence interventions can help keep kids safe and reach those who are the hardest to reach.
Methodologies
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Behavioral Science
By learning more about human decision-making in stressful situations, behavioral science can help us identify better ways to deal with the harms created by gun violence and a broken criminal justice system — and can help prevent these harms before they occur.
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Machine Learning
Machine learning tools continually leverage data to “learn” and improve performance — whether that’s cleaning datasets or analyzing the data within them to make recommendations.
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Policy and Program Evaluation
We work with government agencies and community-based partners to rigorously evaluate gun violence intervention programs and criminal justice policy reforms.
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Randomized Controlled Trials
Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard in research, producing causal evidence about the efficacy and impact of policies and programs.
Explore more of our work
Learn more about all of our projects at the Crime Lab.
Choose to Change (C2C)
Choose to Change (C2C) is a collaboration between two local Chicago nonprofits that aims to reduce youth violence while improving educational outcomes outside of an institutional setting.
Situational Decision-Making (Sit-D)
The Crime Lab and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) partnered to create and evaluate a behavioral science-informed training that helps improve officer decision-making in ambiguous, high-stress situations.
