After two terrible years in which gun violence has taken the lives of nearly 1,600 people in Chicago and left thousands more wounded, we are all emotionally drained. That includes police, who are increasingly showing signs of work-related stress and trauma, and people all across Chicago who are increasingly fearful about going out at night or coming downtown.
Under these circumstances, it’s natural to default to familiar answers — more police, longer sentences, tougher laws. But these ideas have all been tried before, and Chicago still experiences more gun violence than any city in America. We have for years. As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
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For the last five years, community-based violence prevention programs have taken a different approach. We work directly with people on the South and West sides who are at extremely high risk of shooting someone or being shot. These men, women and teens have taught us a lot about why gun violence happens and what can stop it.
First, many of today’s shootings are not about drug turf. For our guys, the biggest cause of gun violence in Chicago is retaliation, and a key driver is our low arrest and conviction rates for homicides and shootings. People are getting away with killings every day in Chicago, and in the absence of real justice, we get street justice. Even mass shootings lead to very few arrests and convictions.
Since 2019, there have been over 100 shootings involving our staff and participants, and to the best of our knowledge, not a single one has led to an arrest or conviction. As one participant said to me, “When it’s just us killing each other, nobody cares.”
Chicago desperately needs to rethink policing. For one thing, we ask our police to handle way too many nonviolent and noncriminal activities such as traffic enforcement, mental health or even homelessness. If some of those activities were handled by other professionals, police officers would be free to focus more on shooting suspects and violent crime.
Second, there is still so little trust in many communities of color. Police spend most of their time in cars, and they mostly show up only in a crisis. There are exceptions. Sgt. Vivian Williams grew up in the Roseland neighborhood. She knows our participants by name. She helped negotiate a peace agreement in 2019 between two rival factions that still stands today. Everyone would welcome more police officers on the beat engaging directly with the community.
Third, there is a profound lack of understanding among leadership about everyday life in our high-crime communities. For example, Chicago confiscates more guns than any other city in America, yet there is little correlation between the number of guns confiscated and the number of homicides.
In 2015, the city collected almost 6,800 guns and had fewer than 500 homicides. The following year, it collected 8,400 guns and had 770 homicides. In 2020, Chicago collected more than 11,000 guns and still had about 770 homicides. Last year, it collected over 12,000 guns and had about 800 homicides.
The problem is that most people arrested on gun charges are not likely shooters. Chicago police are mostly arresting people who are simply scared for their lives. They carry guns to go to the store, visit their moms, pick up kids at school or go to work because they don’t feel safe. Even men with a record will take the chance of being arrested with an illegal gun and sent back to prison rather than go out unarmed.
I fully support removing guns from the community, but that approach is clearly insufficient. If we solved more homicides and shootings, fewer people would feel the need to be armed.
Another example of our lack of understanding is the new proposal to empower the city to seize “gang assets.” Very few of these men have any assets. It is more likely the city will end up seizing the home or car of a law-abiding grandmother whose grandson is suspected of illegal activity. It just won’t make us meaningfully safer.
Lastly, look at safety downtown where groups of young people have created havoc. These are mostly just kids with no money and nothing to do. That’s not their fault. That’s ours. They need jobs, positive, credible mentors, safe places to gather and activities that help them build skills and interests. In their neighborhoods, this kind of support doesn’t exist.
Research shows that community-based violence intervention programs are saving lives, but we’re not nearly at scale. At best, we reach 10% of the people at highest risk.
At the same time, we need much more effective policing — both to create a meaningful deterrent and to reduce retaliation. Police must be more focused on finding shooting suspects and building trusting relationships. The failed strategies of the past won’t get us there.
Arne Duncan is founder of Chicago CRED and a managing partner of Emerson Collective. He was U.S. secretary of education from 2009 to 2016.
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