Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series on crime solutions from Katie Hill and Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

Some of our fellow Chicagoans have come to think of our local criminal justice system as a “ sickness” to be “eradicated . ” Last week, we argued that we should be thinking about enforcement and root cause efforts as complements, not substitutes. But progress on that front will also require some clear-headed thinking about what we mean by “root causes.”

One thing we’ve come to hear a lot here in Chicago is some version of “we’ll never end gun violence until we solve the problem of poverty.” That would be depressing if it were true because, given the difficulty of solving poverty and its geographic concentration, it would be condemning the c

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