Professor Andrew Papachristos uses network science to curb gun violence. By Clare Milliken
“When I met Jane*, her son had just been gunned down a block away from her house,” Alantha Miles recalls. Jane was in shock, staring blankly while people around her were crying and wailing. “I walked up to her and asked, ‘Can I hug you?’ And we just stood there for 10 minutes and allowed the tears to come.” (*Name has been changed to protect privacy)
In the months that followed, Miles checked in with Jane weekly. “We would just talk. I would let her yell, cry, whatever she needed,” says Miles. “A year later she was still hurt, of course — she lost her son — but she was living again: loving on her grandchildren, loving on her other children. Every now and then I reach out to make sure she’s still progressing. She has stayed with me every day.”
For almost two years, Miles was a victim services coordinator at Breakthrough Urban Ministries, a nonprofit that provides violence prevention programming, economic support and more to residents of Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood.
During her 24-hour shifts, Miles would rush to scenes of gun violence and survivors’ hospital rooms, meeting with families and friends and providing all kinds of assistance — pain management, wound care and emotional coaching in the immediate aftermath, as well as longer-term help with school supplies and academic and career development services.
Now Miles brings those firsthand experiences to her current role as a research project coordinator at Northwestern’s Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS), which partners with community organizations in Chicago to provide data analysis and research insights that can improve public safety.
Gun violence is a public health crisis. According to a 2024 U.S. surgeon general report, firearm-related injury has been the leading cause of death for U.S. children and adolescents since 2020. Among young people living in large U.S. cities, Black and Latino youth were up to seven times more likely to experience (firsthand or proximity to) a firearm homicide than white youth in the past year. While Black Americans make up 14% of the U.S. population, they account for 60% of those killed by firearm homicide each year, according to a Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence analysis. And gun violence incidents ripple through communities, affecting many more than just those who experience them up close.
Miles is one of several Northwestern staff, faculty and alumni who are working alongside those most affected by the crisis in order to reduce gun violence, understand risk factors and empower communities. Their research shows that violence intervention efforts are making a difference.
Sociology professor Andrew Papachristos has been studying gun violence and intervention programs for more than two decades.
“The most common misconception about community gun violence is that it’s random,” says Papachristos, who is faculty director of CORNERS. “But we know that gun violence is linked to ongoing neighborhood disputes. And we actually know, with some of our science, where and when it’s going to happen.”
The John G. Searle Professor of Sociology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Papachristos is world-renowned for his application of network science — the study of connections among people, institutions and other entities — to our understanding of crime, violence, policing and urban neighborhoods. He developed neighborhood- and city-level maps to show that victims and perpetrators are often part of the same social network and that violence cascades through communities, similar to the way an infectious disease spreads through a school or workplace. His maps for Chicago, Boston, Newark, N.J., Oakland, Calif., and elsewhere show the links between incidents of violence within each major city.
These network maps demonstrate that gun violence is concentrated in small social networks and exposure to violence has an enormous impact: If one person in a network gets shot, others in the network face a significant increase in their own victimization risk. Understanding how shootings are connected can inform community-based violence prevention strategies.
In 2021 Papachristos, who is also director of Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR), founded CORNERS. Housed within IPR, the center comprises a multidisciplinary team of neuroscientists, sociologists, lawyers, social workers, data scientists, geographers and others who collect data and update these network maps to analyze the reach and impact of gun violence — and, importantly, the impact of violence reduction initiatives.
CORNERS works closely with community violence intervention (CVI) programs, which provide a broad range of services intended to improve community members’ lives, including mental health services, legal support, mentorship, and recreational and educational opportunities.
CVI programs typically operate in communities that have been disproportionately affected by racism and economic and educational inequities. They rely on teams of street outreach workers and victim advocates like Miles to de-escalate conflicts and offer resources to those most at risk of violence.
CVI workers often live in or near the neighborhoods in which they work. Many have experienced gun violence themselves, and some CVI workers were formerly incarcerated or involved with gangs. With their on-the-ground knowledge of the social connections within a given area, Papachristos says, CVI workers can diffuse conflicts and even prevent gun violence. But their work extends far beyond violence prevention — CVIs are “community institutions,” he says.
“A lot of times, young adults do not have mentors. They don’t have people who are giving them a stern hand but love at the same time,” Miles explains. “CVIs provide guidance and a nonjudgmental environment. They help people understand that you don’t have to take a life in order to get what you need.”
CORNERS designs and implements studies of CVIs and their violence reduction initiatives in partnership with practioners and CVI organizations. With this valuable network data, the organizations are better equipped to respond to incidents, prevent violence and provide services to those most at risk.
Soledad Adrianzén McGrath ’98, executive director of CORNERS, says the center takes a “community-engaged approach” to its work. “We have to be in the same spaces that our CVI partners are in,” says McGrath, who is also a research professor at IPR. “We are doing surveys, interviews, observations and other data collection in the neighborhoods. And sometimes we’re just there to break bread because we are also human beings doing work in a really hard field.
“We also provide critically important feedback,” McGrath adds, offering as an example the 2024 Fourth of July weekend, when more than 100 people were shot in Chicago. “We got calls first thing after the holiday weekend,” she says. “Our CVI partners needed to understand what happened. When did the shootings happen? Did they have outreach workers in those communities during those times? We’re providing rapid analysis that helps our partners see a fuller picture of what’s happening.”
CORNERS was able to show that of 132 hotspots — small geographic areas with high levels of interpersonal conflict — where violence interventionists were staffed, only four had shootings over the holiday weekend.
“That’s information that our partners can use to figure out what they need to do the next weekend,” says Papachristos.
Of 132 HOTSPOTS — small geographic areas with high levels of interpersonal conflict — where violence interventionists were staffed, ONLY FOUR HAD SHOOTINGS over the 2024 Fourth of July holiday weekend. |
One of CORNERS’ long-standing partners is Chicago CRED. Launched in 2016, CRED works directly with those most at risk of gun violence on Chicago’s South and West sides. Over approximately two years, participants take part in coaching and trauma counseling, assistance with earning a high school diploma or GED, and job support services. The program also offers housing assistance and support for vocational training.
A CORNERS analysis bears out CRED’s impact, showing a 73% decline in violence-related arrests among those who finished the program compared with a similar group who didn’t participate in CRED.
“Most participants stopped carrying guns, getting into fights, robbing or shooting people,” Papachristos wrote in The Washington Post. “Most important, [CRED] reduces gun crimes, saving lives.”
Another CORNERS partner is Communities Partnering 4 Peace (CP4P), a coalition of 15 CVIs working across 28 Chicago areas and neighborhoods.
“CP4P is trying to reach those at highest risk of gun violence and get people to go in a different direction,” says Vaughn Bryant ’00 MS, executive director of Metropolitan Peace Initiatives (MPI), which provides behavioral health, workforce development and legal aid teams to CP4P. MPI also provides capacity building for CP4P organizations and trains the outreach workers, case managers and victim advocates across the entire CP4P network.
A CORNERS analysis of the CP4P program showed that participants experienced a 44% decrease in gunshot victimization after 12 months of accessing services through CP4P partner organizations, relative to the 12 months before accessing services. Furthermore, a CORNERS review found that at least 383 shootings and homicides were potentially prevented thanks to CP4P’s initiatives.
Northwestern researchers found a 73% DECLINE IN VIOLENCE-RELATED ARRESTS among those who finished the Chicago CRED violence intervention program. “Most participants stopped carrying guns, getting into fights, robbing or shooting people,” Papachristos wrote in The Washington Post. |
CORNERS’ data collection helps find patterns in gun violence that has already occurred — but it also helps outreach workers plan ahead and respond more quickly and effectively to incidents that are likely to occur.
CORNERS partnered with four CVIs in Chicago to create the Street Outreach Analytics Response Initiative (SOAR), a digital dashboard that incorporates network maps and data on arrests, shootings and deaths.
About twice each month, the CORNERS team meets with these four organizations across the city to review network maps of the previous week’s shootings and coordinate responses.
“The network maps are just a starting point,” Papachristos says. “The process of sitting down with our partners and bringing data analytics and human intelligence together is actually what makes SOAR powerful. It links workers as much as it does incidents and events.”
Given their knowledge of street dynamics in the areas they cover, CVI outreach workers often have a hunch about which individuals are most at risk of gun violence. “SOAR is a way for them to validate their intel and intuition, but the process can also provide some information that they weren’t necessarily aware of,” says CORNERS research project manager Dallas Wright ’12, who previously worked for a CVI services provider in Chicago. “And with that they can make an even more informed decision about who may be at the greatest risk.”
Eventually, McGrath says, the team hopes to make SOAR data more mobile-friendly so that street outreach workers can see it on their phones in real time.
A Northwestern analysis of Communities Partnering 4 Peace showed that participants experienced a 44% DECREASE IN GUNSHOT VICTIMIZATION after 12 months of accessing services through CP4P partner organizations relative to the 12 months before accessing services, and at least 383 shootings and homicides were potentially prevented thanks to CP4P’s initiatives. |
Critics of CVI say the programs haven’t yet been shown to make a substantive dent in crime rates. But Papachristos believes such pushback doesn’t capture the full picture.
“In medicine, only 8% of clinical trials succeed. But people don’t say, ‘Well, let’s give up on medicine,’” he says. “But in the gun violence space, when CVIs don’t prevent all shootings, people say, ‘Shut it down.’ And part of the reason is because CVIs are Black and brown organizations that hire people with criminal backgrounds. Shutting down these organizations without giving them an opportunity is a huge harm. This field is just taking off. It’s saving lives. But it’s going to take time and sustained support to see it pay off.”
Furthermore, Papachristos says, focusing exclusively on shootings and victimization data does not capture the full picture of community gun violence intervention.
“CRED participants stopped carrying and using guns, but they were still getting shot,” he says. “CRED didn’t change the neighborhood, but people in the program changed their behaviors. One-third got high school diplomas. Job readiness went up. Mental health went up. That’s a win by any metric.”
Clare Milliken is senior writer and producer in Northwestern’s Office of Global Marketing and Communications.
Papachristos’ gun violence research supports the University priority to harness the power of data analytics. See the priorities.
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Reader Responses
This is EXACTLY the type of research threatened by scattershot government cuts. It took years to get federal funding for gun violence studies. Time to support the continuation of this vital work.
—Mickey Stuart '77, Redmond, Wash.
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