Jun 2025
Webinar: Overview of the City of Chicago’s Violence Reduction Dashboard
Topics
Projects
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.
Topics
Projects
This event provided an in-depth look at how the Violence Reduction Dashboard brings together key data on shootings and homicides to help community organizations, policymakers, and other stakeholders make data-informed decisions and better target resources. The conversation also highlighted opportunities for other cities to make similar datasets and tools publicly available.
View the slides
Download PDFSpeakers
The webinar featured insights from dashboard experts, CVI leaders, and community partners, including:
- Garien Gatewood, Deputy Mayor of Community Safety, City of Chicago
- Eric Balas, Senior Data Analyst, Metropolitan Peace Initiatives
- Maritza Moran, Data Analyst, Metropolitan Peace Initiatives
- Javier Lopez, Analytics Manager, Crime Lab
Moderator: Katie Hill, Executive Director, Crime Lab

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.
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.
Latest Updates
Shaping the Future of Policing Through Commander Training
Policing Leadership Academy (PLA) Executive Director Meredith Stricker and Director of Outreach and Engagement Kenneth Corey join the Brooks Bawden Moore, LLC podcast to discuss the academy’s focus on commanders and helping departments across the country reduce violence and strengthen public safety.

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.
