Night time basketball courts didn’t work?
If you and another person get arrested together in Chicago, you’re both part of a loose network of people with a high risk of getting shot in the future, Yale University researchers say in a newly published study.
Only 6 percent of the people in Chicago between 2006 and 2012 were listed on arrest reports as co-offenders in crimes, the study says. But those people became the victims of 70 percent of the nonfatal shootings in the city over the same period.
The study, called “Tragic, but not random: The social contagion of nonfatal gunshot injuries,” was published in the January 2015 issue of Social Science & Medicine. It shows the risk of becoming a gunshot victim in Chicago is “more concentrated than previously thought,” according to Andrew Papachristos, one of the authors.
More than ever, the Chicago Police Department is borrowing ideas from academics like Papachristos to fashion anti-violence strategies. For instance, the department used his social-network theories to generate its own list of at-risk people.
Police Supt. Garry McCarthy believes that list is helping his beat officers concentrate on those people most likely to become shooting victims — or to shoot someone else.[…]
Since March 2013, 40 of the 504 people on the list have been shot, three fatally. Another person was murdered in an incident that didn’t involve a gun, according to the department.
Beat officers have been urged to pay special attention to people on the list because they pose the greatest danger to the public and themselves, said Robert Tracy, chief of crime control strategy for the department. Whenever officers nab someone on the list, they are required to note “two degrees of separation” on the arrest report, he said.
“We’re keeping track of them,” Tracy said. “Arming our officers with more intelligence has helped us drive down crime.”
District commanders have even met personally with some on the list to give them “custom notifications” that they’re being watched and will get arrested if they step out of line. They’re also offered social services to get out of a life of crime.
“This is tough love,” Tracy said.