The Jimmy Kimmel news got me thinking of Stuart Hall saying, “Where are the emergent forces? Where are the cracks and the contradictions? What are the elements in public consciousness one could mobilize for a different political program?"

The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents. In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.

ICE just reactivated its contract with an Israeli firm that makes phone-hacking spyware. Here's what you should know. #ICE #NewsUS #Hacking #spyware

Cities so desperately need more help negotiating the terms of their contracts with private entities. What a world we live in where presidents can shutter federal agencies with a flick of a switch but cities can't get out of their contract with surveillance tech firms.

It's a conflict of interest not to have a conflict of interest with the police lmao

Pleased to see attention brought to Chicago’s public-private funding of violence prevention. But feels like the private sector wants it both ways. Celebrate crime declines from programs they fund but opposing taxes for scaling these programs permanently. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/o...

Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s theorizing about lynching in relation to the carceral system helped me understand how—like today—people and institutions may fight over who has dominion over committing racial violence, detentions, and executions, but they aren’t antagonistic to each other’s political project.

Wow

🚨NEW: This is what all networks should do! MSNBC fact checks Trump live during his press conference. The REAL crime stats are put on screen as he reads out his made up figures.

Proud of David Hackett for fielding questions about our study live on WGN. For folks worried about the 54 deaths at locations where the tech was turned off, please note that more deaths occurred at those places when Shotspotter was ON last year. wgntv.com/news/chicago...

A powerful op-ed that should really open some eyes.

With everyone under the sun trying to claim credit for Chicago’s 2025 crime decline, we created this interactive granular map to examine some of the most popular claims. Take a look. If you have claims you’d like us to fact check, let us know! uchicago-justice-project.github.io/chicago_crim...

This is a reason why I've been skeptical about the Mayor's claim that improved clearance rates have contributed to the decrease in crime.

CPD has steadfastly claimed responding officers did not know immigration activity was happening on June 4. But a phone call to OEMC from a police captain in CPD HQ shows he knew it was Homeland Security Investigations—an arm of ICE—but didn't want to broadcast that or "make it a media thing."

Chicago: The city of moving goal posts. I hope Mamdani's people in NYC are taking notes.

State + local budgets will be torpedoed by the deathmonger bill. It will be beyond tempting for your state/local politicians to try to fill in the gaps by seeking the only new federal assistance $ available to help offset huge expenses: billions in ICE $ for policing and jails. Strategize NOW.

Follow @thecity.nyc. We relentlessly investigate people in power & when we have the goods on them, whatever their political position, we hit publish. What we don't do: Publish crap.

NEW YORK, look at me. You need to study the election of Brandon Johnson in Chicago.

Once again, to inject some research into this conversation...although millionaires often threaten to move if taxed, that tends not to actually happen. The millionaire tax flight thing is a myth. See book below ⤵️ www.sup.org/books/sociol...

Some lessons from this great piece. 1) Crime decreases will never satisfy those pushing for surveillance, 2) opponents will frame critics of surveillance cameras as anti-small business, 3) it might be worth doing research on things that ACTUALLY help and hurt small businesses.

The end of Chicago has already happened, which is why our population grew last year.

If the direction of NYC mayoral primary holds, Mamdani’s team needs to prep for what will likely be the most insane propaganda and sabotage campaign in recent history.

"[W]e risk combining two threats: expanded policing powers, and growing private influence. What happens when police departments with unregulated donor relationships are granted emergency powers? Who will they serve when a sponsor’s retail hub is under threat from teen loitering?"

What does a snap curfew mean at a time of rising authoritarianism and privatization? The answer is grim, especially when you think long-term. Wrote about this at South Side Weekly. southsideweekly.com/opinion-who-...

I’ve stepped back from wading into the “race to the bottom-data driven” discourse on crime and policing lately, but the conclusions implied in this article are so wrong its dangerous for the city, the violence prevention community, and law enforcement.

CPD & the Crime Lab say 49% of carjackers are youth—but that stat comes from just 15% of cases where someone was arrested. The other 85%? We don’t know who did it. 📊 Misleading data leads to misleading narratives. #DataMatters #Chicago

The Chicago Sun-Times just dropped a story blaming Chicago’s carjacking surge on one crew of teens: the SRT Boys. The data tells a very different story. 🧵 chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdog...

It was the least violent memorial day weekend in Chicago in 16 years. chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2025/0...

“In the two months that Hopkins has been urging his fellow alderpeople to expand the city’s curfew laws, no one has been seriously injured as a result of the gatherings. In addition, 19 people were killed in Chicago in April, the fewest murders during any April since 1962.”

Oreskes/Conway's book "The Big Myth: How American Business Taught us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" is AMAZING. I'll be putting it in conversation with @equalityalec.bsky.social' s Copaganda at events in Hyde Park and Pilsen next Wed (May 21st). www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-...

Just read @equalityalec.bsky.social's book on "Copaganda." No one has examined media narratives about police and crime this well since Stuart Hall's "Policing the Crisis." Alec and I will be at Pilsen Community Books to discuss it on Wed May 21st, 7pm-8.30. pilsencommunitybooks.com/events/45383

Police tech providers want to ensnare their cop customers in a web of surveillance tools and software. Read more about how these companies are locking your communities into years of privacy-invading technology.

Interesting new paper on crime and voter turnout in Chicago's 2019 and 2023 mayoral elections. Neighborhood crime was associated with lower turnout, which casts doubt on whether campaigns focusing on crime actually result in more votes in high crime hoods. journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Someone should look into this in Chicago/illinois

From @reuters.com: The Trump administration has canceled hundreds of law enforcement grants that funded everything from services for mental health care for police officers to support programs for victims of crime and sexual assault www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

This painting I made sums up the main finding from our donor bias paper. For every $5 dollars donated, CPD made 56 stop and frisks at blocks with 7-elevens. arxiv.org/abs/2504.15140

1/ *** NEW WORKING PAPER *** Do private donations to police departments affect officer behavior? We examined the effect of 7-Eleven sponsoring a Chicago Police gala in 2017 on stop and frisk patterns. We ran the models dozens of times, and the answer was always yes. 
 arxiv.org/pdf/2504.15140

I’ll have two paintings on display at this great show in Bridgeport opening tomorrow evening at 7pm. Check it out. The show runs through May.

*** New Paper *** We visualized historical data on the first land sales in Chicago, discovered a pattern that tells the story of the city's urbanization and sheds light on root causes of neighborhood inequality. More work based on these data is on the way. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

*** NEW PAPER *** On "The Social Structure of Private Donations to Police" in Socius. We explored unique tax return data and discovered hundreds of millions of dollars flowing annually from private donors to local police depts through a maze of pathways. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A new painting in progress visualizing an underappreciated root cause of Chicago’s neighborhood inequities.

A must read

Wrote about what the Trump admin’s plans for rolling back Medicaid expansion would mean for Illinois (with my colleague Tony christiano). www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/07/o...

This piece reminds me of @elizabethjoh.bsky.social's work on police-technology experiments. Quite literally experimenting on communities of color in Chicago.

***NEW PAPER*** It’s publication day for our paper “Academic Copaganda.” We encourage you to read the whole paper before making judgements. Propaganda is a term that shouldn’t be used lightly, but there couldn’t be a more important time to study it than now. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Proud to see Anna Fox’s paper on the dynamics of police neighborhoods out in social problems. It makes use of a clever research design to identify police neighborhoods in Chicago. Check it out: academic.oup.com/socpro/advan...

Multi-million dollar tech surveillance budget in NYC and the guy is found because someone thought he was acting suspicious at a McDonalds. Sure, the photo helped, but are you feeling more secure because of the surveillance? www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12...

Someone please comission this essay because this is the take.

When times are tight, do cities cut police or social service budgets more? In a 🚨new study🚨, I find revenue loss is associated with shallow, temporary cuts to policing and deep, enduring cuts to social services. The article, in Criminology, is free, and I summarize it below. doi.org/10.1111/1745...