Dear Friends and Colleagues:
As all of us in Chicago try to combat a tragic surge in violence, I wanted to share a new Crime Lab analysis that shows an alarming but critically important trend: while the homicide rate has decreased city-wide since its historic high in 1991, the four most violent police districts in Chicago are experiencing a higher rate of gun violence than ever before. This gun violence has exacerbated the city’s safety gap and taken a devastating toll on Black residents.
WHAT IT MEANS: For some Chicagoans, the city is more dangerous than ever before. In fact, in 2020, Black Chicagoans experienced more homicides per resident than any year on record. This violence was heavily concentrated: last year, the gun homicide rate in Chicago’s four most violent police districts was 26x higher than in the four safest police districts. In 1991, the rate was 13x higher -- meaning the safety gap has doubled in Chicago’s most vulnerable neighborhoods since the 1990s. That’s a large reason why life expectancy in these districts is 16 years lower than in Chicago’s safest districts.
WHAT WE’RE DOING: We believe making data like this publicly accessible is critical to both holding elected officials accountable and helping community organizations maintain and ramp up their efforts. That’s why we created a Violence Reduction Dashboard in partnership with community organizations and the City that allows anyone to see how the safety gap is impacting their community in near real-time. We hope it informs how we collectively direct investments, scale programs, and work together to close the safety gap and create a safer Chicago.
WHAT THE DATA SHOW HELPS: Kim Smith and Chico Tillmon of the Crime Lab recently wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune (alongside Live Free Illinois Executive Director Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain) explaining the power of targeting trauma-informed programs to Chicago neighborhoods most in need. “In the same way COVID-19 laid bare disparities in health care access,” they wrote, “the disproportionate number of Black and brown victims of gun violence reveals disparities in access to safety — particularly in a city as segregated as Chicago.” They highlighted the Crime Lab’s updated-evaluation of READI Chicago as one example of how programs can address these disparities and close the safety gap. Participants in READI -- a community-based gun violence prevention strategy -- are 32% less likely to be shot, killed, or arrested for gun violence.
We hope you find this data both sobering and useful. Thank you for your continued support of our work, and more importantly, for the work you do every day.
Best,
Roseanna
CRIME LAB TAKES
By Jens Ludwig
“One of the most striking changes in crime in Chicago over the past year is something few people are talking about. It’s not the utterly tragic 55% increase in homicides in 2020 compared with 2019. It’s the nearly 110% increase in gun carrying, which itself is a major contributing factor to the rise in gun violence.”
CNN | “The Great Debate on Gun Violence”
By Jens Ludwig
“Commentators have increasingly speculated about whether these two conversations will collide, with public safety concerns pushing criminal justice and policing reform to the side. The implicit assumption is the two are intrinsically in tension: either we can reduce gun violence, or we can reform the justice system. But, in fact, the data tell us this ‘zero sum’ view is wrong.”
Chicago Tribune | How Lightfoot, Pritzker can fight our other public health crisis: gun violence”
By Kim Smith, Chico Tillmon, and Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain
“Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, Illinois and Chicago will receive billions of dollars to counter some of the pandemic’s most devastating economic and public health consequences. As Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker strategize how to distribute this funding, they shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to combat another public health crisis COVID-19 has exacerbated: gun violence.”
