Crime Lab A Modest But Smart Approach to End Gun Violence in Five Neighborhoods

Chicago Sun-Times / November 30, 2019
By Editorial Board

Consider the daunting odds of redirecting the lives of the young men involved in Chicago’s gun violence.

The neighborhoods they live in accounted for 30% of the homicides in Chicago in 2018. Shootings in those neighborhoods are an everyday thing.

Many of these young men, the shooters, have been shooting victims themselves previously, and more than 80 percent have lost a family member to gun violence. Most have had some involvement with the criminal justice system, whether an arrest, a stay in jail or time in prison.

Given statistics like this, which tell a story of total immersion in a subculture of violence, it’s no wonder that researchers at the University of Chicago Crime Lab are excited by the early success of READI Chicago, a two-year-old program that has focused on turning around the lives of men in five communities — North Lawndale, Austin, West Garfield Park, Englewood and West Englewood — who are at high risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of gun violence.

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30 November 2019