Data Detectives: Homicides in Chicago

Introduction

Woodlawn, Chicago

In Fall 2019, my wife and I undertook a residency to learn the stark realities of life faced by disadvantaged black communities, living in an apartment in theWoodlawn neighborhood on Chicago's South side. Woodlawn is a community with an estimated 35% below the federal poverty line, 17% unemployed, and a per capita income of $19,000 before COVID-19 [Wilson et al. 2017]. Figure 1 shows Woodlawn Police Beat 313 where our apartment was located.

Flourishing Community Initiative (FCI) of Sunshine Gospels Ministries (SGM) operates a violence reduction program on the South side of Chicago, including Woodlawn, with Arnold Sojourner as FCI Director, Joel Hamernick as SGM Director, and Evan Trowbridge as FCI data analyst.

Word on the streets of South Chicago at the beginning of the summer of 2020 was that this was going to be a very bad summer.

At a meeting on 6 August 2020, Mr. Sojourner said he was advised by the police not even to go to his office the previous week because the homicide risk was so great. He added that he didn't have data but guessed that the homicide numbers are even worse than in 2017-which, if he remembered correctly, was a particularly rough summer.