Capacity Building

We help public safety partners maximize their impact by providing technical assistance and evidence-based recommendations to inform program design, implementation, and scaling.

Gun violence can’t be solved by research alone – it takes government agencies, community-based organizations, and community members working together to put research findings into practice. That’s why the Crime Lab partners with agencies and organizations to build their capacity by embedding analysts in-house, conducting independent project evaluations, and providing data-driven tools and recommendations. 

Latest Updates

Overview of the City of Chicago’s Violence Reduction Dashboard
Event
UChicago Crime Lab
Jun 2025

Overview of the City of Chicago’s Violence Reduction Dashboard

The Crime Lab will host a webinar on Wednesday, June 4th that will explore 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.

The Alumni Dispatch: Leveling Up with the CVILA
Q&A
UChicago Crime Lab
May 2025

The Alumni Dispatch: Leveling Up with the CVILA

Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy (CVILA) Program Manager Alesisia Cobb sat down with alumni DuJuan “Zoe” Kennedy (Cohort 1), Tracie Campbell (Cohort 2), and Rahaman Kilpatrick (Cohort 3) to discuss the ways their CVILA experience has contributed to their professional growth.

We’ve Been Thinking About Gun Violence All Wrong
Op-Ed
TIME
May 2025

We’ve Been Thinking About Gun Violence All Wrong

Jens Ludwig, Crime Lab Pritzker Director and author of “Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence,” pens an op-ed for TIME Magazine arguing that the root cause of gun violence is not what we think it is — rather than a deliberate, rational act, most shootings start with arguments that escalate and end in tragedy because someone has a gun.