New Study Linking Gun Violence and Social Networks

Updated December 13, 2013

See Op-Ed by Andrew Papachristos in the Washington Post (December 3, 2013)

A new study by Yale sociologists and ISPS affiliates, Andy Papachristos and Chris Wildeman, finds that being part of a high risk social network increases the likelihood of being a victim of gun violence, much more so than other factors, such as race and poverty. The research focused on homicide records from 2006 to 2011 in a particularly violent six-mile square of Chicago and found that “risk of homicide in urban areas is even more highly concentrated that we previously thought.” The study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and is being incorporated into urban police departments across the country, including Bridgeport and New Haven, as part of a violence prevention initiative. The paper was published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Read The Daily Beast blog story (December 13, 2013)

See article in Chicago Magazine (December 9, 2013)

Read MSNBC story (November 29, 2013)

Read CT News blog story (November 19, 2013)

Read NPR story (November 15, 2013)

Read the Yale News article (November 14, 2013)

See Andrew Papachristos in a related video, from The Atlantic (October 1, 2013)