Once back in Chicago, however, friends kept telling him about the
epidemic of violence in inner-city neighborhoods. As he began to study
the problem he came to the view that gun violence in poor neighborhoods
did indeed resemble the epidemics he had treated in Africa. Maps that
charted gun violence showed clustering — just like maps tracking
infectious diseases. The greatest predictor of violence was a prior
violent incident, which also mirrors epidemics.
In 2000, he founded CeaseFire (now known as Cure Violence),
a Chicago-based organization that treated violence in one such local
cluster — in West Garfield, one of the toughest neighborhoods in the
city — as a public health problem rather than a criminal justice issue.
Shootings dropped dramatically.
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