For WTTW, Chicago’s PBS affiliate, Amanda Vinicky reports that Chicago has witnessed an over-30% reduction in shootings since the city began reinvesting in community violence intervention two years ago. Now, the city looks to double down on its success, launching a Community Violence Intervention effort called Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago.
As Governor Pritzker told the Chicago Tribune, “scaling community violence intervention for a safer Chicago [reflects] an unprecedented effort to gather government stakeholders and community organizations, private stakeholders to meet the needs of those most at risk of gun violence … This has been years in the making, and no other city or state in the nation has a partnership as robust as this one.”
Chicago’s approach to CVI “include streets outreach, behavioral health, workforce development, legal aid, and organizational development” and other “training and support of multiple kinds, from life coaches to career counselors over the course of about a year, until they can be employed and become positive contributors to society.”
Over the next ten years, the initiative aims to ensure that at least 75% of people at high-risk of being a gun violence perpetrator or victim are provided with the kind of comprehensive services proven to reduce a shooting before anyone pulls a trigger. By comparison, only roughly 15% of those at high-risk of shooting or being shot receive CVI services today.
SC2 is launching as a public-private partnership and seeks to raise $400 million through a public-private partnership for the initiative. For the Chicago Tribune, Olivia Stevens reports that “a number of Chicago corporate interests and major foundations have chipped in including the Pritzker Foundation, the Hyatt Hotel Foundation and Crown Family Philanthropies.”
“We recognize that the business community has a role to play in making Chicago safer,” said Hyatt Hotels CEO Mark Hoplamazian, the business community’s public safety task force co-chair, explaining why the company he leads is investing heavily in CVI. “Our goal is to be the safest big city in America.”
The CVI initiative also has support from Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, who told the crowd at the launch that this program is important because, “as the police, we can’t arrest our way out of the situation, and we shouldn’t be trying to do that. What we should be trying to do is build our communities and build our children.”
Related: New research published by the Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research and Science shows that participants in Chicago’s partner CVI programs experienced a 44% decrease in gunshot victimization after 12 months. It also shows a similar sustained decrease for the following 18 months, which suggests a decline over the longer-term in arrests for violent crimes. “From July 2017 through December 2021, CP4P potentially prevented at least 383 Fatal & non-fatal shooting victimizations [and] 605 arrests for violent crime,” the researchers note.