Jens Ludwig
Pritzker Director
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Book release April 21, 2025 – Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, and co-director of the Education Lab. He helped found the Crime Lab and Education Lab to work closely with the public sector to solve pressing social problems. These partnerships have led to important policy changes in cities around the country, including Chicago and New York, and have been featured in national news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, PBS News Hour, and National Public Radio, and the scientific basis for these policies have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals like the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Science, and Nature. In 2012 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science.
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.
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.
Policy Brief: Understanding and Improving Early Intervention Systems
This policy brief is a summary of a research paper entitled “Predicting Police Misconduct” by Greg Stoddard, Dylan Fitzpatrick, and Jens Ludwig.
NBER Working Paper: Predicting Police Misconduct
This paper outlines the results of research on over a decade of Chicago Police Department data that shows it is possible to predict risk of on-duty and off-duty misconduct, allowing police departments to prioritize training and supportive resources.
Clearance Rates
The Crime Lab partnered with the Chicago Police Department to analyze historical trends in clearance rates for homicides and non-fatal shootings and evaluate the innovative Area Technology Center (ATC) model.
Strategic Decision Support Centers (SDSCs)
The Crime Lab and the City of Chicago joined forces to implement data-driven management strategies that address gun violence in some of the city’s most heavily affected communities.
Officer Support System (OSS)
The Crime Lab partnered with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to develop the Officer Support System (OSS), a next-generation, data-driven early intervention system to promote officers’ long-term mental health and wellness.
Becoming a Man
Youth Guidance’s Becoming a Man (BAM) uses insights from behavioral science to help youth navigate high-stakes situations.
Latest Updates
Book Review: What We Get Wrong About Violent Crime
Malcolm Gladwell pens a review of “Unforgiving Places,” a new book by Crime Lab Pritzker Director Jens Ludwig, that reflects on how the book “challenges our assumptions about why most shootings happen—and what really makes a city safe.”
How a study in the Stockholm subway could help prevent violent crime
We need to learn the lessons from an ingenious piece of research done in Sweden and radically change policies around interpersonal violence, says UChicago Crime Lab director Jens Ludwig.
‘Definitely a cause for hope’ UChicago economist says of new book on causes of gun violence
America has a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives gun violence, and it’s prevented us from solving the problem. That’s according to the new book “Unforgiving Places”, by University of Chicago economist and Crime Lab director Jens Ludwig.
