Jens Ludwig: The unforgiving origins of Chicago gun violence

Editor's note: Regular Tribune Opinion contributor Jens Ludwig, Pritzker director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, has a new book, 'Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence,' to be published April 21 by the University of Chicago Press. In this exclusive, lightly edited extract from Chapter One, Ludwig explores what caused three lives of young Chicagoans to change forever.
It was at 69th and Calumet at 10 p.m. on Halloween Eve, 1996, when Brian Willis, age 18, was arguing with Alexander Clair, 23, about a used beige two-door Ford LTD parked in front of Little Hobo's restaurant. Clair had sold Willis the car a few days earlier and complained that Willis hadn't paid for it yet. Willis was angry that Clair had reportedly entered the car earlier that night and tried to take it back. Regarding payment, Willis told Clair, 'I'm not going to give you shit.' Regarding adherence to the transaction's terms, Clair replied, 'If I catch you in the car — if I see the car or I catch you in the car — I'm going to burn the car up.' The two argued in the street for another 10 minutes. Eventually, Willis broke off and ran across 69th, past the car and behind the building at 352 E. 69th St. Clair followed. Meanwhile Clair's girlfriend, Jewel Washington, 25, was trailing behind when she heard two loud gunshots. Those would turn out to be the gunshots that killed Clair, fired from a short-handled, 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with one shotgun blast to Clair's stomach and one to his head. …
Willis was later convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In effect, three lives, not just two, were lost that night.
The two conventional wisdoms
For most Americans, the tragedy at 69th and Calumet in Greater Grand Crossing can be explained in one of two ways.
The first is that shootings like this one stem from characterologically bad people. Whether born bad or raised badly, the perpetrators of gun violence in this view have no moral compass or fear of the justice system. 'I cannot say it any clearer — it is the good guys against the bad guys. These bad guys are violent, they carry guns, and the symbol of our public safety, which is that police uniform, they have total disregard for.' That's from the mayor of New York City. These narratives of 'bad guys' or 'wicked people' are usually accompanied by calls for greater vigilance: for the government to deter or incapacitate criminals by putting more police on the streets; for the building and filling of more prisons; for private citizens to protect themselves by arming themselves.
A second perspective is that gun violence stems from root causes — that is, from a set of social conditions that fuel gun violence. In this view, violence grows where human flourishing doesn't. 'Violence is an expression of poverty' is how a recent mayor of Chicago put it. This narrative often leads to calls to fundamentally transform American society: to desegregate our cities; to end the social isolation of the most vulnerable; to take greater steps to end poverty; to dismantle the prison-industrial complex; to defund the police and the military and channel those resources back into social programs instead.
The data confirms that most Americans believe that crime and violence are due to some version of one of these two conventional wisdoms. In focus groups, Americans say crime is due to 'something inherently wrong within the lawbreaker, such as lack of moral fiber, or due to ecological considerations that influence or force individuals to break the law, such as lack of money.' We see the same thing in surveys. In 1994, around the time President Bill Clinton signed the largest crime bill in U.S. history, seven of 10 Americans were telling Gallup pollsters that crime was due to amoral criminals and the failure of the criminal justice system to stop them. The next, most common explanation was poverty. Of course, these aren't literally the only ideas out there. But they're clearly the ones driving the conversation.
It's not just policymakers and members of the general public who believe these conventional wisdoms. They're what I, the person who studies crime for a living, long believed, too. I grew up reading about Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy and the Son of Sam killings in Time and, later, in books like 'In Cold Blood' and 'Helter Skelter' — violence committed by predators and lunatics. Later, as an economics major in college, I read University of Chicago economist Gary Becker's argument that criminals are rational actors responding to incentives — that crime is a kind of market response to other, less good options. I was also reading the biographies of people like Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, which was to read the stories of lives lost to the violence epidemic, the root causes of which these men were trying to stamp out. These two coexisting schools of conventional wisdom about what causes violence aren't just entrenched; they're unavoidable.
And there is indeed some truth to both ideas.
There are bad people in the world. These are people who lack empathy, are narcissists with a grandiose view of themselves, are pathological liars, have a constant need for stimulation, are manipulative, fail to feel remorse or guilt, and refuse to take responsibility for anything. Many of them show signs of problem behavior in their early years and then engage in antisocial or violent behavior for most of their lives. Some estimates suggest that perhaps 1% of all men in America fall into this group. They can be found in every walk of life: on the street corner, in a police car, teaching in a university classroom, at an investment bank or church, in a Boy Scout troop, or sometimes even in the very highest of political offices. An outsized share of these individuals wind up in prison, although most people who are incarcerated are not in this category. Psychiatrists call them psychopaths.
There is also evidence that the threat of punishment can indeed deter some criminal behaviors. We know this from studying what social scientists call natural experiments, changes out in the world that manipulate policies in a nearly random way akin to the sort of randomized controlled trial that provides gold-standard evidence in medicine. Consider the 2006 mass pardon in Italy, in which 40% of all inmates in the country were released from prison all at once. Their release came with a condition: If rearrested, people would have to serve out the remainder of their original sentence. The released prisoners varied greatly in how much time they had left on their original sentence (from one to 36 months), depending on the luck of the draw as to how far into their prison sentence they were when the pardon was issued. Thus, similar 'types' of people were released facing different punishment levels for committing exactly the same crime. The data showed that those who were facing stiffer penalties engaged in less violence.
Meanwhile, the people who believe violence is borne of the persistent unfairnesses of American society, including its inequality, discrimination and segregation, are also right. Turn on the news and see where the violence happens; it's rarely in the fancy neighborhoods.
This phenomenon is neither recent nor limited to the American context: Wherever groups of people are treated as less-than by a society, crime often follows. …
The root causes of violence, in other words, stem from both economic disadvantage and social disadvantage, including racial and ethnic discrimination. What do the consequences of this disadvantage and discrimination look like in modern-day America? They look like the five Chicago neighborhoods that together account for fewer than 1 in 10 city residents but experience fully 1 in 3 of the city's homicides. It's no accident that these neighborhoods are located in the most disadvantaged, socially isolated, racially segregated, predominantly Black areas of Chicago's South and West sides. In the U.S. as a whole, Black Americans are 13% of all residents but 27% of all victims of police shootings, 33% of all prison inmates, 33% of those arrested for violent crimes and 54% of all murder victims.
The limits of conventional wisdom
The conventional wisdoms that gun violence is caused by either bad people or bad economic opportunities have produced no shortage of policy proposals. The history of these policies illustrates the limits of how we've traditionally characterized the problem and its solutions.
'Get tough' policies (enforcement, imprisonment, public vigilance) have helped improve safety to a degree but only by imposing tremendous harm along the way. For example, the data shows that imprisonment can reduce violence. But the growth in American prisons in the 1970s, and the harms that prisons impose on incarcerated people's health, families and livelihoods, occurred at a rate that had no historical or international precedent. The growth in police spending has helped reduce violent crime, but the frequent gravitation toward 'zero-tolerance' policing has generated substantial human costs as well. The decisions of private citizens to arm themselves has contributed to a flood of gun stores and used guns that make firearms more likely to wind up being used in crimes. All these harms are disproportionately concentrated in the same disadvantaged, segregated communities that suffer the most from gun violence itself.
Meanwhile, reforms meant to stem the root causes of violence — attempts at fixing society's most complicated challenges through policy change — typically run aground when their political proponents reach office. Diminishing political and social returns — ideas that start from good intentions only to end in frustration and disillusion — seem to plague most attempts at addressing America's structural problems, which remain and persist. While poverty in America has decreased by some measures, inequality in both income and wealth has increased. In Chicago, the city's challenge with gangs shows few signs of being resolved. Racial segregation in the city has barely changed for 40 years. In the face of such minimal gains from earnest attempts to fix our biggest social problems, the reflexive 'sending thoughts and prayers' approach to U.S. gun violence somehow seems less vapid: Gun violence, like racial prejudice and inequality, often appears to be the kind of problem that only wishes can solve.
The hope of many that the gun problem might be solved with a single stroke of a legislative pen — that some U.S. president and U.S. Congress will do what no previous government has done and radically reorient gun laws in America — has in practice led to few legislative victories.
Whether that will change anytime soon is far from obvious. As a 2022 New York Times headline put it, 'As shootings continue, prospects for gun control action in Congress remain dim.' What has this collection of policies suggested by conventional wisdom added up to? The answer is: little long-term progress in reducing gun violence. This failure is remarkable in part because of how good the U.S. has been at addressing so many other public health problems. Since 1900, death rates per capita have declined by 38% for heart disease, 84% for strokes, 95% for respiratory diseases like influenza and pneumonia, and around 99% for tuberculosis. Overall life expectancy has nearly doubled. Yet the rate of murders, most of which are committed with guns, is almost exactly the same as it was 125 years ago.
Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago.

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Since Boelter was captured near his home on June 15, after a neighbor spotted him on a trail camera, many of the institutions he belonged to have tried to distance themselves from him. His church released a statement Sunday after the shootings acknowledging "with deep sadness and concern" that Boelter was a member of the congregation, and saying it was cooperating fully with law enforcement's investigation. "We're completely opposed to everything … he did," said Wolcyn, the church member. "It's completely antithetical to our message. Jesus said, 'Love your neighbor.'" The Christ for the Nations Institute also released a statement denouncing Boelter's actions: "We are absolutely aghast and horrified that a CFNI alumnus is the suspect. This is not who we are. This is not what we teach. This is not what we model. We have been training Christian servant leaders for 55 years and they have been agents of good, not evil." In speculating about Boelter's motives, social media users pointed to his appointment to workforce development boards under two Democratic governors. But Boelter voted in the March 2024 Minnesota Republican presidential primary, according to records obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune. And Carlson, his roommate, said Boelter is a Republican who supported Trump. Boelter's letter confessing to the crime was addressed to the FBI, prosecutors say. He signed it, "Dr. Vance Luther Boelter." --- To see raw video and key documents involving Vance Boelter, click this link. --- (Matt DeLong, Jeff Hargarten, MaryJo Webster, Louis Krauss, Sarah Nelson, Elliot Hughes, Paul Walsh and correspondent Thomas James of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.) --- Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.

Miami Herald

16 hours ago

• Miami Herald

Altadena ICE raid highlights fears that roundups will stymie rebuilding efforts

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Their specialties are often crucial to getting projects completed, potentially harming the fortunes of remaining workers who can't finish jobs without their help. "The productive activities of the undocumented and the rest of the labor force are often complementary," the report said. "For example, home building could be delayed because of a reduction in specific skills" resulting in "a consequent increase in unemployment for the remaining workforce." Jerry Nickelsburg, the director of the Anderson Forecast and author of the quarterly California report released Wednesday, said the "confusion and uncertainty" about the rollout of both immigration and trade policies "has a negative economic impact on California." Contractors want to hire Americans but have a hard time finding enough of them with proper abilities, said Brian Turmail, a spokesperson for the Associated General Contractors of America trade group. "Most of them are kind of in the Lee Greenwood crowd," he said, referring to a county music singer known for performing patriotic songs. "They'd rather be hiring young men and women from the United States. They're just not there." "Construction firms don't start off with a business plan of, 'Let's hire undocumented workers,'" Turmail said. "They start with a business plan of, 'Let's find qualified people.' It's been relatively easy for undocumented workers to get into the country, so let's not be surprised there are undocumented workers working in, among other things, industries in construction." The contractors' trade group said government policies are partly to blame for the labor shortage. About 80% of federal funds spent on workforce development go to encouraging students to pursue four-year degrees, even though less than 40% of Americans complete college, Turmail said. "Exposing future workers to fields like construction and teaching them the skills they need is woefully lacking," he said. "Complicating that, we don't really offer many lawful pathways for people born outside the United States to come into the country and work in construction." The recently raided Altadena project had plenty of momentum before the raid, Harris said. The original house burned in the Eaton fire, but the foundation survived, so the developer, who requested anonymity for fear of ICE retribution, purchased the lot with plans to rebuild the exact house that was there. Permits were quickly secured, and the developer hoped to finish the home by December. But as immigration raids continue across L.A., that timeline could be in jeopardy. "It's insane to me that in the wake of a natural disaster, they're choosing to create trouble and fear for those rebuilding," Harris said. "There's a terrible housing shortage, and they're throwing a wrench into development plans." Los Angeles real estate developer Clare De Briere called raids "fearmongering." "It's the anticipation of the possibility of being taken, even if you are fully legal and you have your papers and everything's in order," she said. "It's an anticipation that you're going to be taken and harassed because of how you look, and you're going to lose a day's work or potentially longer than that." De Briere helped oversee Project Recovery, a group of public and private real estate experts who compiled a report in March on what steps can be taken to speed the revival of the Palisades and Altadena as displaced residents weigh their options to return to fire-affected neighborhoods. The prospect of raids and increased tariffs has increased uncertainty about how much it will cost to rebuild homes and commercial structures, she said. "Any time there is unpredictability, the market is going to reflect that by increasing costs." The disappearance of undocumented workers stands to exacerbate the labor shortage that has grown more pronounced in recent years as construction has been slowed by high interest rates and the rising cost of materials that could get even more expensive due to new tariffs. "In general, costs have risen in the last seven years for all sorts of construction" including houses and apartments, said Devang Shah, a principal at Genesis Builders, a firm focused on rebuilding homes in Altadena for people who were displaced by the fire. "We're not seeing much construction work going on." The slowdown has left a shortage of workers as many contractors consolidated or got out of the business because they couldn't find enough work, Shah said. "When you start thinking about Altadena and the Palisades," he said, "limited subcontractors can create headwinds." Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.