Justice
How to Uproot a 'Tree of Death'
Predictive tools can now track how a single shooting incident triggers a lethal cascade of gunshot violence—and predict who will be targeted next.
A young man who runs with the Black Disciples was shot in the foot in a dispute with rival Gangster Disciples on Chicago’s South Side, the New York Times reported late last year. Days later, two Gangster Disciples caught a bullet in a drive-by a block away. The day after that, the mother of a Black Disciple was shot in the foot, caught in the middle of more crossfire between the two gangs.
These were just a few of Chicago’s 4,368 shootings in 2016, but they’re telling: So much gun violence in American cities follows this tit-for-tat pattern of vendetta between people who know each other. What if there was a way to anticipate that and break the chain?