City of Chicago Mayor’s Office Technical Assistance
The Crime Lab supports the City of Chicago’s Mayor’s Office on several crime reduction projects and initiatives that aim to improve public safety outcomes for Chicago residents.
Challenge
In Chicago, communities face high rates of gun violence and significant harms caused by the criminal justice system. These challenges disproportionately impact high-need, underserved community areas where gun violence and victimization are most concentrated.
Opportunity
To reduce gun violence and advance public safety outcomes, the Crime Lab provides data and analytical support to the Mayor’s Office to inform a more comprehensive citywide violence reduction strategy.
Project overview
The Crime Lab is working to inform Chicago’s violence reduction strategy by leveraging the City’s administrative data, creating predictive analytics, and examining national best practices to identify gaps in the City’s current anti-violence efforts. The Crime Lab is also identifying the most promising strategies that prioritize intervention for individuals at the highest risk of violence and evaluating the impact of these interventions. These evaluations will inform public funding to programs most likely to reduce gun violence and improve safety outcomes for all residents of Chicago.
Years Active
2019 – 2021
Topics
Project Leads
Kim Smith
Director of National Programs and External Engagement
Among other projects, the Crime Lab supports the Mayor’s Office with the implementation, coordination, and evaluation of the Community Safety Coordination Center (CSCC) and the Landscape Scan initiative through the Office of Violence Prevention.
The CSCC leverages existing funding from the City’s budget and federal COVID-19 relief dollars to support violence prevention programming, such as providing accessible data analyses for community outreach meetings in the Back of the Yards, Auburn Gresham, and South Shore neighborhoods.
In 2019, the Mayor’s Office created a new Office of Violence Prevention tasked with marshaling the City’s resources in service of a single, city-wide strategy for reducing and preventing violence. Part of this strategy was to ensure that the delivery of violence prevention programs is informed by data and evidence about their effectiveness and the needs of residents and individuals at the highest risk for violence involvement. To that end, at the request of the Mayor’s Office, the Crime Lab leveraged the City’s administrative data to produce a landscape scan of city programming. This scan provides a starting point for helping the City understand the current state of its violence prevention efforts.
IL Office of Firearm Violence Prevention
The University of Chicago Crime Lab has partnered with the Illinois Office of Firearm Violence Prevention (OFVP) in support of the OFVP’s goal to use data to focus resources. The Crime Lab prepared the following interactive map to support the RPSA Youth Development Services grantmaking process.
United States Surgeon General’s Advisory on Firearm Violence in America
United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a landmark advisory declaring firearm violence in America to be a public health crisis with devastating and far-reaching consequences for the nation’s health and well-being.
Summer Safety Analysis: Chicago Crime Trends
These data visualizations present our summer safety analysis on Chicago crime trends.
2024 End-of-Year Analysis: Chicago Crime Trends
Gun violence remains one of the most pressing challenges in America but there are signs of progress.