Jun 2025
Webinar: Overview of the City of Chicago’s Violence Reduction Dashboard
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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.
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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
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This study advances theories of violence by bridging sociology and social psychology to show how social cognitions shaped by past violence exposure persist and influence behavior in new contexts.
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.
2025 End-of-Year Analysis: Chicago Crime Trends
Violent crime declined substantially in 2025 across the country, including in our home city of Chicago – which experienced 168 fewer homicides through mid-December 2025 compared to the same period last year.
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.
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