Our Commitment to Public Safety
Our North Star is to make Chicago the safest big city in America.
The Civic Committee—which comprises senior executives of the Chicago region’s leading employers—harnesses the full power of the business community through high impact programs and platforms that inspire collaborative action to make the Chicago region a better place for everyone to live, work, and do business.
Key to this mission is ensuring the public safety of the city we love and call home. As Chicagoans, we are all affected by violent crime. It harms communities and undermines human flourishing in many ways: creating enduring trauma, undercutting student learning, depressing economic activity, damaging Chicago’s reputation around the world.
The Civic Committee is helping to reduce crime and gun violence to unlock Chicago’s full potential. Research shows that by making our city safer, we will protect mental and physical health, improve educational outcomes for our children, spur investment and economic growth, drive tourism, and encourage population growth.
Our Goals
Improving public safety is a complex undertaking that requires businesses, community organizations, philanthropies, and government agencies to work together on a comprehensive, shared plan in a sustained effort over time.
The Civic Committee formed a Public Safety Task Force in October 2022 to identify ways for the business community to leverage its distinctive capabilities and assets to contribute to creating a safer Chicago for all. Our efforts complement and support the wide range of existing work other organizations are and have long been leading to improve public safety across the city.
The task force identified 5- and 10-year goals that can be achieved through the collective efforts of police and other public servants, violence interrupters, workforce development experts, philanthropists, business leaders, and all other organizations and individuals working toward a safer Chicago.
Our Strategies
Our crime reduction goals are supported by four ambitious strategies.
Community Violence Intervention (CVI) is a strategic, community driven approach to reducing gun violence that identifies and supports the small number of individuals at highest risk of perpetrating or becoming victims of violence through targeted, evidence-informed strategies. Our investment in scaling these programs represents our most direct intervention strategy.
Hiring local talent is one of the most impactful ways businesses can contribute to Chicago communities’ prosperity and reduce gun violence. We are working with employers, communities, and implementation partners to help companies hire more South and West Side talent through four proven employment pathways.
Effective public safety requires strong institutions—including law enforcement, prosecution, courts, corrections, and emergency services—working together with communities to create a safer Chicago for all. We identify specific areas where business expertise and resources can drive improvements in operational effectiveness, community engagement, and leadership development, without compromising the essential autonomy and public accountability of these vital institutions.
Strong local economies are essential to addressing public safety challenges in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Community economic development is a cornerstone of our comprehensive approach to reducing violence in the city. By focusing on the restoration and revitalization of historic commercial corridors, we aim to complement our other violence reduction strategies and implement a multi-faceted approach to building safer communities.
Why These Strategies
The Public Safety Task Force developed these violence reduction strategies to leverage our Members’ strengths and the Civic Committee’s ability to identify key partners and opportunities.
The strategies cut across a holistic range of sectors and activities, acknowledging that complex problems require multi-faceted solutions. We are supporting intervention efforts by helping to scale neighborhood-based Community Violence Intervention (CVI) programs, which provide direct intervention with the highest-risk potential shooters and victims. This work has the most immediate impact on reducing violence in Chicago.
We are also pursuing several prevention strategies, chosen because research shows that each is a critical element for creating opportunity and growth for people and places with histories of violence.
Our Hiring Initiative focuses on employment for people who have completed CVI programs as well as broader efforts to increase employment in neighborhoods with a history of violence and trauma. We address Public Safety Infrastructure to enhance community policing, improve how police are deployed, communicate more effectively with citizens, and improve training for leadership. And we are facilitating investment in key commercial corridors that span neighborhoods to enhance Community and Economic Development.
Each of the four strategies enhances and builds on the success of other strategies, creating a virtuous cycle that reduces shootings and homicides and results in a safer city for us all.
Community Areas of Focus
We’re focusing our work on parts of the city that are experiencing the most violence and trauma. The map below shows where each strategy is being implemented.
