Jens Ludwig
Pritzker Director
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Expertise
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.
New York City Release Assessment
The Crime Lab partnered with New York City leaders to update its pretrial release assessment to be more accurate and equitable with the aim of helping judges reduce pretrial incarceration by identifying the vast majority of low-risk defendants who can be released without bail or other pretrial conditions.
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.
Latest Updates
Curbing gun violence in Chicago doesn’t require that we first end poverty
Crime Lab leaders Katie Hill and Jens Ludwig penned an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune highlighting the root causes of gun violence and the growing body of research showing that increased neighborhood vibrancy generates surprisingly large changes in the prevalence of gun violence, by as much as 30%.
A fighting chance
In The University of Chicago Magazine’s Fall ’25 issue, Susie Allen profiles Crime Lab Pritzker Director Jens Ludwig to discuss his book, “Unforgiving Places,” which challenges conventional wisdom on gun violence and suggests new approaches to solving the problem.
Researchers: Violence intervention and policing should complement, not compete against, each other
The Crime Lab’s Executive Director Katie Hill and Pritzker Director Jens Ludwig discuss evidence-based solutions to crime, including violence intervention and data-driven policing, in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune.