Crime Lab Can jobs plus therapy for at-risk men cut gun violence?
Crain's Chicago Business / June 7, 2018
By Roseanna Ander & Eddie Bocanegra
A young man we know has spent more than three of the last seven years in prison. Anthony wants the next seven to be different. So do we.
Anthony, 22, is a father of two young children who lives with his mother and grandmother in Austin. He grew up there and followed the adult men in his life into the streets. He has been arrested for robbery and been shot multiple times. A felony charge for possessing a firearm landed him in prison, and he hasn't been able to find work since.
Anthony's story is all too familiar in Chicago. In 2016, guns killed 27.8 people out of 100,000 in the city, a rate seven times that of New York despite being a city one third the size. The University of Chicago Crime Lab estimates the financial toll of this violence at $4.4 billion, fueling population loss and increasing economic inequality. Though astronomical, this figure pales beside the devastation it causes for families and communities.
