Working Together Toward Safer Communities: Reflections from READI Chicago
Sep 08, 2021
- Description
This new report from READI Chicago examines the launch and progress of the initiative over its first four years, and the ways lessons from this innovative response to urban violence are helping to inform violence prevention across the country.
READI launched in 2017 in partnership with seven local community-based organizations. By providing training and capacity building to long-standing community-based organizations with pre-existing community relationships and deep ties in their neighborhoods, READI has become a scalable model that can be replicated across the country to help build safer communities for all.
READI is seeing success in keeping individuals safer. Preliminary research on the READI program from the University of Chicago Crime Lab shows that READI works with the men most at risk for gun violence involvement, they stay engaged in the program, and they have 79% fewer arrests for shootings and homicides compared with a randomized control group.
