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Studies on Impact of Shootings
When someone gets shot, there's an overall cost to society.

Widespread gun crime is limited to a handful of neighborhoods in a handful of cities around Illinois, but the cost of these shootings is estimated at $1 million each, spread far and wide, according so several academic studies cited by state lawmakers.

"The medical costs and incarceration costs are really a fraction of the overall costs," says State Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago). "The greater cost is the indirect economic toll that these shootings have on the economy as a whole."

Those costs include lack of investment and business activity in areas affected by pervasive gun violence, and property values that are half what they would be without the violence.

Fritchey says there's no simple solution. He says the state has failed to adequately fund Cease Fire, which has a record of preventing violence in various neighborhoods in Aurora, Chicago, Cicero, Decatur and East St. Louis. He has also suggested deploying the National Guard to help police in Chicago, where gun violence is a profound problem on only 9 percent of city blocks.

The academic studies estimating the societal cost of gunshots were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Health Affairs, and from the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

(Illinois Radio Network)
06 27 10 by Newsroom
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