Jens Ludwig is a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago and director of its Crime Lab. He studies the economics of crime and how behavioral science and data science can help solve social problems with a special focus on gun violence. Trained as an economist in a field that often disparages psychological research, Ludwig, in his latest book Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence (2025), observes: “It might be tempting to label behavioral-economics theories about gun violence a ‘psychological explanation’ for the problem. I don’t love that label.”

The reason Ludwig doesn’t love that label is that many economists harbor deep prejudices against the theories of decision making that underlie behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and behavioral ethics. But if you read Ludwig’s book, you will see that the same research provides the foundation for all three fields of study. Hence our interest in this book here at Ethics Unwrapped, where we often emphasize behavioral ethics, the science of moral decision making. (see our video at: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/behavioral-ethics)

People across the political spectrum are concerned about the epidemic in gun violence in the U.S., where crime and violence are substantially worse than in other rich nations. Why this disparity? Ludwig argues persuasively that “Gun Violence = Guns + Violence” and that we’ve failed to solve the challenges created by these overlapping yet discrete problems because we have diagnosed them wrongly.

Ludwig believes that conservatives mostly get it wrong when they trace crime to the bad character of criminals. Because of the fundamental attribution error, they assume that people do bad things because they are bad people. The data does not support this theory, and conservatives’ solutions—zero-tolerance policing, more jails and longer jail terms, only make things worse. Youngsters often come out of jail more criminally-inclined than when they went in.

Liberals mostly get it wrong, Ludwig thinks, when they trace crime to the poverty and deprivation in which so many criminals live. The data doesn’t support this theory either, and government policies to attack these social problem often reduce poverty but generally have done little to reduce violence.

These conservative and liberal theories aren’t entirely wrong, but they are “tragically incomplete” according to Ludwig, who supports his contentions throughout the book with references to randomized, controlled trials (RCTs), the best kind of scientific support. He focuses much of his discussion on two neighborhoods in Chicago – Greater Grand Crossing and South Shore. Demographically, these two neighborhoods seem to be nearly identical. Both are poor and inhabited primarily by racial minorities. Yet South Shore has only half the gun murders of Greater Grand Crossing. Much of the book unravels the mystery of this disparity, which traditional theories cannot account for.

Ludwig notes that both conservatives and liberals assume that people are acting rationally when they make the decision to murder others with their gun. Conservatives assume that this is what bad people naturally choose to do when they have limited economic options. Liberals similarly assume that people are making rational economic choices brought on by their poverty or other desperate circumstances.

We often worry about the wrong things when we consider guns and violence. Serial killings make for great drama in movies, television, and podcasts, but account for less than 1% of total killings. Honest citizens reasonably fear being robbed by bad guys with guns, but robberies contribute less than 10% of all murders. Gangs are clearly a problem, but in Chicago, less than 9% of murders are gang-related.

While both conservatives and liberals generally assume that murderers are making rational choices to kill given the circumstances confronting them, studies show that 70-80% of murders stem from arguments. Twenty years of FBI data show that 23% of murders are “instrumental” (“I choose to do this to get money”), while 77% are “expressive,” involving crimes of passion, including rage.

Ludwig has read Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman who won the Nobel Prize (in economics, by the way) by showing that more than 90% of human decisions are made intuitively, emotionally, and nearly instantaneously by what he calls our brain’s “System 1.” A tiny percentage of our decisions are made slowly, effortfully, and deliberately by our brain’s “System 2.”

Ludwig observes:

Most people who attempt murder don’t seem to have a sustained intention to kill the other person. The intent to harm seems to be more fleeting. That means the lethality of the weapon the person has at hand in that moment matters a lot for whether someone winds up dead or not. The combination of lethality and effortlessness of guns versus other weapons like knives and baseball bats makes crime more deadly” (p. 40)

Oftentimes arguments go from harsh words to gunshots in less than ten minutes. Ludwig adds:

The idea that gun violence and other crimes are caused by immutable features of people’s characters simply doesn’t fit with facts like the steady decline in criminal offending starting in late adolescence…or the remarkable variation of gun violence by time (in Chicago, for instance, shootings are about twice as common on the weekends as they are during the week, and twice as common in June as in January). Nor can it explain why gun violence varies so dramatically by place, including across very short distances—such as across Dorchester Avenue, separating Greater Grand Crossing from South Shore….” (p. 73)

 

Liberals try to improve the economic circumstances of the poor in order to reduce violent crime, but “…murder rates don’t increase during economic downturns but, if anything, decrease….” (p. 98) Liberals also enact gun control laws of various types, but so many guns are already on the streets that these laws tend to have little effect on crime.

Conservatives, worried about largely nonexistent “superpredators,” pass laws to put guns in the hands of the “good guys” so that they can protect us from the “bad guys,” but “[t]he best available research suggests these [concealed carry] laws increase violent crime by 20 percent by leading to many more guns out in public places (like cars) getting stolen (gun thefts rise by 50 percent).” (p. 60)

Ludwig believes that the most promising solutions rest on Kahneman’s insight that reducing people’s reliance on System 1 thinking and replacing it with System 2 thinking can drastically reduce the percentage of arguments that lead to murder. In Chapter 8, he offers several such solutions after observing: This book’s central claim is that American gun violence is driven to a large extent by System 1 thinking—the automatic, below-the-level-of-consciousness type of cognition that is useful for navigating the routine parts of life but gets us into trouble when we’re navigating fraught interpersonal interactions. That’s especially true in neighborhoods [like Greater Grand Crossing] where the decision-making environment is particularly demanding—places and settings where social signals are unclear and the consequences of mistakes can be severe. (p. 181)

In Chapter 8, Ludwig offers academic support for his behavioral theories and the solutions that they recommend.

Solution #1. The Clinton Administration launched the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) for Fair Housing Demonstration in 1993. Families in public housing projects in several cities, including Chicago, were invited to use a Section 8 housing voucher to move to a lower-poverty (15% vs. 50%, on average) neighborhood. Virtually all families who applied were Black or Hispanic and the primary reason they signed up for MTO was for safety. Ludwig and his colleagues studied the outcomes for families chosen for MTO and those who weren’t chosen. Although obviously the family’s moral character did not change when they moved, arrests of teenagers for violence dropped 40%. Better neighborhoods equaled less crime, just as other studies show that when teens go to correctional facilities with lots of crime-prone teens or go to a school that is more crime-prone, they will end up in more trouble themselves. Places …unforgiving places… like Greater Grand Crossing can lead to more violence, as behavioral science predicts.

Solution #2. In 1961, Jane Jacobs wrote a book entitled The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she argued for reforms to keep neighborhoods “lively.” A key notion was that informal social control—so-called “eyes on the street,” could be a key to reducing violence. As Ludwig indicates: “If gun violence is motivated by System 1 rather than System 2, then the motivation to shoot someone should often be fleeting rather than persistent [which would be the case if they were inherently bad people]. Time, in other words, gives System 2 a chance to reassess a situation, and a chance for strong emotions to ebb.” (p. 191) Sometimes all you need is a by-stander to intervene to cool things down and thereby avert violence. Ludwig cites studies showing that opening businesses, increasing lighting, and eliminating vacant lots and abandoned homes all reduce violent crime substantially.

Solution #3. Community violence intervention (CVI) organizations aim to defuse situations that threaten violence by reducing the influence of System 1 and increasing the influence of System 2, often by appealing to a person’s self-interest by asking them to consider, for example: “Do you really want to literally end his life and functionally end your own just because you feel he disrespected you?” Studies show that such interventions by CVI counselors, by security guards, and by teachers who are trained can all reduce violence substantially. One study found that training cops to defuse conflict situations on the street can reduce crime by up to 60%.

Solution #4. Another Chicago non-profit called Becoming a Man (BAM) uses psychological principles to help youngsters anticipate and better navigate those 10-minute windows of conflict before they happen. BAM teaches students to perceive and react reasonably to what is going on in their own minds when a conflict arises. Without lecturing the youngsters on morality, it teaches them to anticipate such situations and to engage System 2 in order to turn down the temperature when arguments happen. Studies show BAM reduced violent crime arrests among participants by 50%. Ludwig describes three similar programs around the country that had comparable beneficial results.

Solution #5. During her term as Mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot prioritized reducing the number of guns on the street. In 2022, police confiscated 10,000 guns and Ludwig cites a study showing that a 50% increase in the number of guns would roughly double the number of shootings in Chicago. Fewer guns equal fewer violent crimes.

Ludwig summarizes: “One thing each of these policies has in common is that conventional wisdom suggests it shouldn’t work [according to conventional conservative and liberal views]. None of these policies changes morality or threatens people with harsher punishments.” (p. 213) But all have been tested scientifically and all work. They work, in large part, by engaging System 2 thinking before System 1 makes an irreparable mistake.

On this website, we have often considered Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 thinking in connection with moral decision making. Kahneman’s theories have broader application, thinks Ludwig. We recommend this fascinating book.

Sources

Sara Heller et al., “Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago,” Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 132(1), pp. 1-54 (2017).

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961).

Daniel Kahneman, “Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics,” American Economic Review Vol. 93(5), pp. 1449-1475 (2003).

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011).

Jens Ludwig, Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence (2025).

Jens Ludwig et al., “Long-Term Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Families: Evidence from Moving to Opportunity,” American Economic Review, Vol. 103(3), pp. 226-231 (2013).

Videos:

Behavioral Ethics: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/behavioral-ethics.

Fundamental Attribution Error: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/fundamental-attribution-error.