The University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Challenge of Youth Violence

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The University of Chicago Crime Lab and the
Challenge of Youth Violence

• Harold Pollack
• University of Chicago

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Plan for today

• University of Chicago Crime Labs basic mission
• Two fundamental challenges in violence prevention
• Passing baton to Jens Ludwig who will describe
  one aspect of our work in greater detail.

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The University of Chicago Crime Lab

• Successful innovation requires learning from
  experience
• The University of Chicago Crime Lab seeks to
  provide scientific evidence about what works and
  what is cost-effective in preventing crime and
  violence
• An established network of over 25 of the nations
  leading crime policy researchers and academics to
  collaborate on a variety of projects
• Provides technical assistance and rigorous
  evaluations of crime reduction strategies to
  policing and other governmental agencies
  nationwide
• Dissemination of relevant findings to ensure best
  practices are implemented to generate the most
  social good of every dollar spent
• Benefit-Cost Analysis of interventions to provide
  a framework for comparison of the relative
  effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of various
  programs and policies
• Reducing crime and violence is difficult without
  learning from experience
• Which programs work, for whom, why, and how they
  can be improved. And with what cost-effectiveness.

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One face of the problem Hadiya Pendleton

• Hadiya Pendleton shooting right after she
  performed at President Obamas second inaugural.
• Shooting received national attention, including
  presidential visit to BAM group at Hyde Park
  Academy.

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Plenty of other cases faces here in Chicago

• Chicago had 506 homicides in 2012, the most in
  the United States, up from 436 in 2011.
• 10-year-old Nequiel Fowler shot and killed after
  being hit by stray bullet. She was kneeling to
  tie the shoe of her blind little sister.
• January 17, 2013, Tyrone Lawson, 17, was shot and
  killed after a high school basketball game. The
  game ended with an altercation between the teams
  while lining up to shake hands. But tensions
  spilled out into the parking lot and Lawson was
  shot and killed for no apparent reason.
• Maybe more typical Saturday June 2, 2012, two
  groups of teens arguing in the street about
  whether someone stole a bike. As two groups start
  to separate, someone pulls out a handgun and
  fires into other group, hits Jamal Lockett, age
  16, in the chest, who dies at at Northwestern
  Memorial Hospital.

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Many reasons to believe violence reduction
requires fundamental social reforms

• Liberal and conservative arguments for pessimism
  regarding incremental progress.
• Liberal argument.
• Violence fundamental outgrowth of economic
  inequality, blocked opportunities, segregation,
  and discrimination.
• Conservative version.
• Violence fundamental outgrowth of adverse
  cultural trends including family breakdown,
  adverse media messages, and more.
• Both perspectives have some merit. Both also have
  serious limitations as either guides to policy or
  as a lens to predict variation over places and
  over time.

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U.S. surprisingly average in most crimes(from
comparable victimization surveys)
Nation Car Theft Burglary Robbery Sexual Incident Assault or Threat
United States 0.5 1.8 0.6 1.5 3.4
17 Industrialized Nations 1.0 1.8 0.8 1.7 3.5
11 Crimes
21.1
21.3
Australia, Belgium, Canada, Catalonia (Spain),
Denmark, England Wales, Finland, France, Japan,
Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Poland, Portugal,
Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, USA Additional
crimes theft from car, car vandalism, motorcycle
theft, bike theft, attempted burglary, personal
theft Source Van Kesteren et al. 2000
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Except when it comes to gun homicides (rates per
100,000)
Nation Firearm Homicide Rate Non-Firearm Homicide Rate Total Homicide Rate Percentage of Households with Guns
United States 3.1 1.5 4.6 35
United Kingdom 0.1 1.3 1.4 7
Canada 0.6 1.2 1.8 24
Australia 0.1 1.3 1.4 15
New Zealand 0.2 0.9 1.1 23
Sources UK UCR 2009, norc.org (2006) UK UNODC
2008 Small Arms Survey 2007 Canada Beattie
2009, Royal Canadian mounted Police
2010 Australia AU Bureau of Statistics 2009
Small Arms Survey 2007 New Zealand UNODC 2008
Small Arms survey 2007
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Guns in Chicago Motivating Facts

• From 2008 to 2012, over 11,000 people were
  assaulted with a firearm in Chicago
• From 2008 to 2012, 2,347 people have been killed
  in Chicago, 1,941 were killed with a firearm.
• If over 85 of homicides in Chicago are
  committed with a gun and over 70 of gun-related
  incidents occur outdoors/in public spaces
• The illegal carrying of firearms in public
  places is the proximate cause of the vast
  majority of homicides

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Chicago homicides have also declined since the
bad days of late 1980s/early 1990s.
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Unfortunately, our progress is not as great as we
hoped when compared with peers.
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Fundamental equation of many homicides

• Young men disagreement impulsivity gun
• dead body

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Two issues to be addressed

• Helping young people deal more effectively and
  safely with each other and with adult authority
  figures.
• Addressing that gun term in the homicide
  equation.
• CPD recovers more than six times as many guns
  per-capita as NYPD, more than twice as many as
  LAPD.

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Where do Chicagos crime guns come from?
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Whats Promising? Focusing on Illegal Guns Law
Enforcement

• Anti-gun policing policies promising (or simply
  increasing police resources).
• Estimates suggest that Pittsburghs targeted
  policing program against illegal gun carrying may
  have reduced shots fired by 34 percent and
  gunshot injuries by as much as 71 percent in the
  targeted (Ludwig and Cohen, 2003).
• Estimates suggest the 2 percent increase in
  police under COPS led to a 2 percent decline in
  violent crime and a 0.5 percent reduction in
  property offenses (Evans and Owens, 2007).
• Given these estimates, adding 1.4 billion in
  funding for the COPS program could avert between
  6 and 12 billion in victimization costs to the
  American people (Ludwig and Donohue, 2007).
• Key take home point making illegal gun carrying
  a liability and reducing gun use even if you dont
  reduce overall violence or crime would have a
  huge net benefit to society.

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Characteristics of Chicago homicides (and not
just Chicago)

• Young, male, nonwhite
• 90 of victims and perpetrators male
• Majority of victims and offenders lt age 25.
• Only 28/506 non-Hispanic white.
• Guns 83 of homicide victims shot, almost all
  with handguns.
• Public 77 of homicide victims found outdoors
• Impulsive 73 homicides attributed to
  altercation
• Only 10 to gang disputes over narcotics. Gang
  affiliation matters, but in different ways such
  as providing access to a weapon.
• Concentrated 87 offenders, 77 victims prior
  arrest record
• Frequent alcohol involvement 1/3 of young male
  victims found with high BAC levels on autopsy.

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Policy response

• Mainly prison Incarceration rate increased
  seven-fold 1970-2008 we now have 2.3 million
  people behind bars
• Implicit logic model to policy response
• You are an angry 17 year old boy surrounded by
  your friends
• You are susceptible to sensation seeking peer
  influences (brain changes starting in early
  adolescence), myopic decision-making,
  catastrophizing (make negative events even more
  negative), low impulse control / self-regulation,
  hostile attribution bias
• If you pull that 9mm out of your waist band
  something bad will happen or at least it might,
  with considerable delay
• If not enough youth respond to that threat, lets
  add 2 more years onto that 8 year prison
  sentence
• More on this later.

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Rather than change long-term incentives facing
a youth who is not in good decision-making
frame of mind

• Could instead try to improve decision-making
  capacity
• That is, remediate deficits in social-cognitive
  skills such as impulse control, anger
  suppression, future orientation
• These are the strongest predictors of recidivism
  risk among juvenile offenders (Monahan,
  Steinberg, Cauffman, Mulvey, 2009 Dev Psych)
• More important than measures of consideration of
  others, sense of personal responsibility,
  resistance to peer influence
• Large growing body of research shows
  social-cognitive skills correlated with
  schooling, earnings, other outcomes (e.g.,
  Moffitt, Heckman)
• What we havent known is whether it is really
  possible to modify these skills particularly
  among at-risk adolescents
• Not a surplus of successful interventions for
  this population in general

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From the limited progress we have made
What do we know?
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Final thoughts

• We should recognize the value of broadening the
  focus of institutions that can and/or already
  work with at-risk youth
• We should be preventing kids from disengaging
  from school finding ways to re-engage those
  kids who already have
• Social-cognitive skills are just as important as
  academic and vocational skills
• Guns are not the only factor, but they are the
  distinctive reason U.S. homicide rates higher
  than peer democracies
• Multiple incremental changes vs. one home run
• There will never be a single Salk vaccine for
  violence
• At the end of the day, there is no silver bullet
• Goal optimal portfolio of interventions
• We need to be thinking about the portfolio of
  strategies we can rely on rather than looking for
  a one-size fits all approach

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More on one useful intervention from Jens Ludwig