Joseph Richardson Part of 10-Year, $100M Effort to Reduce Gun Violence in Chicago
The “Scaling CVI for a Safer Chicago” Project Seeks to Expand Community Violence Intervention (CVI) Programs in Seven Neighborhoods by 2034
Each month, Joseph Richardson travels from Maryland to Chicago to visit the neighborhood that he was assigned to work most closely with as a co-PI of the “Scaling CVI for a Safer Chicago” (SC2) project, which seeks to reduce gun violence in Chicago by deploying community violence interventions in seven specific neighborhoods over the course of 10 years.
Richardson—who is the co-director of the University of Maryland’s Prevent Gun Violence: Research, Empowerment, Strategies & Solutions (PROGRESS) Initiative and a professor of African American and African studies, medical anthropology and epidemiology—says he is “blessed” to be a part of the effort.
“From day one, I was honored to be selected as the lead for the qualitative research team. This is one of the most innovative CVI projects in the county, and Chicago is the epicenter of CVI in the United States and globally,” he said. “Honestly, it feels like I am a returning student in CVI school. I have learned so much about the science of CVI in such a short period of time.”
Richardson said one of the things that makes the project stand out from others he’s worked on is that it is entirely backed by private investors and corporate partners, including JP Morgan Chase, Northern Trust, MacArthur Foundation, McDonald’s, Hyatt, Ulta Beauty Charitable Foundation, and more. The total amount of funding the project has attracted to date exceeds $100 million.
“To my knowledge, I do not know of any CVI programs funded by private investors,” he said. “I think the interest from the private sector signifies that gun violence is a problem that impacts the social fabric of this country; it is a societal issue that does not discriminate. Gun violence affects all of us.”
“The private sector realizes that gun violence also affects their bottom line,” Richardson continued. “Businesses want to be situated in healthy thriving communities.”
The research team—which is led by Richardson, Northwestern Department of Sociology Professor Andrew Papachristos (Process Evaluation Principal Investigator), and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Professor of American Health Daniel Webster (Impact Evaluation Co-Principal Investigator), who is also a part of Johns Hopkins’ Center for Gun Violence Solutions—officially kicked off the project in August 2024. The effort began with a focus on four of the seven neighborhoods they plan to work with by the project’s completion in 2034.
The four neighborhoods that the researchers are actively working with are Austin (Richardson’s site), Humboldt Park, Little Village and North Lawndale. While they are now building relationships with the community outreach staff and program participants at each location, eventually, the researchers will work with the onsite staff on street outreach and case management. The research team will also help them provide access to behavioral health intervention, education, and employment.
“We are using the first six months of the study for relationship building to develop trust and rapport with the site staff and program participants. This is a unique approach because typically funders do not provide funding to develop relationships before collecting data, but I was adamant that we needed to build relationships first before we started collecting data. The grant provided time for us to do this,” Richardson said.
After the relationship-building phase, the researchers plan to interview 25 CVI program participants at each site, asking them about the impact of the program on their lives; whether the program resulted in them making better decisions regarding situations that may result in them being gun violence victims or the perpetrators; what aspects of the program worked, and more.
“Asking these questions is critically important because the research on CVI often misses the mark by not exploring the perspectives of program participants,” Richardson said.
The researchers will then organize focus groups with CVI program stakeholders—CVI staff, service providers, local business owners, law enforcement and community members—to further evaluate program effectiveness by gathering insights on what specific program components worked, and narratives on what could be improved.
Drawing on Richardson’s expertise with a methodological approach called digital storytelling, interviews with 10-12 study participants will recorded and produced into an informative film similar to Richardson’s docuseries “Life After the Gunshot,” which explores the experiences of young, Black male survivors of violent firearm injury in the District of Columbia and Prince George’s County, Maryland with the healthcare and criminal justice systems.
By 2029, the researchers hope to see these four sites have a 75% completion rate of high-risk individuals who participate in the CVI program, and a decrease in community gun violence incidents in those areas. At the close of 2025, the project had already served approximately 1,000 high-risk individuals, resulting in 125 completing the program and 65 securing job placements.
If the team is able to raise additional funding, at that point, they will shift their primary focus to serving the remaining three neighborhoods: Garfield Park, Back of the Yards, and Englewood.
“Based on the significant cuts in CVI by the federal government, we can no longer solely rely on the federal, state and local governments to fund this life-saving work. We must pivot from our traditional approach,” Richardson said. “The private sector should be a CVI partner. Cities and counties with low rates of gun violence are attractive for businesses and investors. We have invested in policing for decades without seeing the historic drops in homicides that we are currently experiencing across the country. This was the result of an unprecedented level of government funding in CVI, specifically ARPA funds. Based on the reductions in gun violence we have seen over the past few years, the return of investment in CVI appears promising for investors as co-thought leaders in solving one of the most pressing grand challenges in the 21st century.”
Learn More About “Scaling CVI for a Safer Chicago” (SC2)
Published on Thu, Jul 2, 2026 - 9:18AM