Political and anti-violence leaders in Chicago say big investments in community-based violence prevention are paying dividends, and they’re hoping to continue to drive down shootings by expanding the efforts.
Leaders of Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago, or SC2, announced Tuesday that they are expanding violence prevention efforts in North Lawndale, Austin, Humboldt Park and Little Village, where they aim to provide violence intervention services to 75 percent of the people at highest risk of shooting or being shot. Providers in Garfield Park, New City and Englewood are also developing plans to scale up violence intervention efforts.
The expansion was announced at an event at a Little Village high school a day after local business leaders launched a new method of tracking violence prevention efforts in Chicago.
The Chicago Public Safety DataHub, developed by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and NORC at the University of Chicago, will measure the effectiveness of the Civic Committee’s investments in local Community Violence Intervention initiatives, including efforts to create more jobs for South and West Side residents.
The Civic Committee and its philanthropic partners said they have invested $100 million into the expansion of violence interventions in Chicago.
At Tuesday’s news conference, Mayor Brandon Johnson touted Chicago’s declining rate of gun violence.
“This past Fourth of July, for example, was one of the least violent Fourth of July weekends we’ve had in six years.”
Susan Lee, the executive director of SC2, said gun violence in Chicago has declined every year since 2021. Shootings this year are down about 40% and homicides are down 30% compared with 2024, city data show.
Lee said those numbers represent “actual people who are not having to experience the cycle of violence anymore, which so harms our kids, our families and our communities.”
Despite the decrease in violent crime, Lee said “Chicago still has an unacceptable level of shootings and homicides.”
SC2 aims to see gun violence reach a 50% reduction by 2026, compared to the peak in 2021 — a goal that Lee said was within the city’s reach.
“And then our goal is to cut [gun violence] in half again over the coming decade … which would put us on par with some of the safest big cities in America, like Los Angeles and New York.”
The ambitious goals reflect the rapid expansion of Chicago community violence intervention efforts over the last decade, with providers no longer only trying to reach a small number of people but rather blanket entire neighborhoods.
Arne Duncan, the managing director of Chicago CRED, reflected on the early days of Community Violence Intervention in the city, starting in 2016.
“We took a very risky pilot program that we funded privately, not to hire just outreach workers, but to hire guys who still have at least one foot, maybe one and a half, maybe two feet, still in the streets, to keep peace on their blocks,” Duncan said. “We now have over 1,000 men and women who would be locked out of the traditional economy, where people would never look at them. They’re now employed to help keep their blocks safe.”
Duncan said public and private partnerships will play a crucial role in sustaining the work of CVI providers during the Trump administration, which has made substantial cuts to federal grant funding for CVI programs nationwide.
“We’re gonna have no help coming from the federal government,” Duncan said. “They want to see us kill each other. They want to see chaos. They want to see mayhem. And so we’re all we have. The cavalry is not coming, and it’s up to us to be as smart, as collaborative, as committed as we can to try and make this history.”
Anna Savchenko is a reporter for WBEZ. You can reach her at asavchenko@wbez.org.