North Park Partners with Firehouse Community Arts Center in Violence Reduction Study

North Park University's Center for Civic Engagement partnered with a local community organization to prove their efforts to lessen neighborhood violence have significantly reduced crime.

Founded in 2003, the Firehouse Community Arts Center in North Lawndale engages local children and teens in various art programs to prevent them from joining gangs or participating in criminal activity.

North Park's Assistant Professor of Psychology Amy Governale, along with two student workers, concluded crime had dropped 73.7% since 2020 after parsing four years' worth of crime statistics. Using data from 2021 to now, they tracked three two-mile-wide areas in the North Lawndale neighborhood, examining the number of police responses and encounters, 911 calls, and ShotSpotter alerts.

One especially effective way to track the program's success is to compare North Lawndale to other neighborhoods where crime has also fallen. When Governale and her group did so, they discovered the decrease-specifically in homicides, fatal shootings, and aggravated batteries-in North Lawndale has been so dramatic that parts of the neighborhood are no longer considered high-crime areas.

For instance, homicides were down 30% in the area the Firehouse Community Arts Center serves compared to a decrease of 14.6% in the rest of Chicago. Violence and gang-related 911 calls in the area decreased by 35% over the same three-year period, and non-fatal shootings declined by 80%.

"There's a sense of awareness that the people who used to create terror on our streets are not doing that as much because they're with us, learning to cook and creating art," Firehouse founder Rev. Phil Jackson told WGN-9 TV recently.

Governale is excited about how North Park can engage with other institutions to provide similar services. She said her two student workers, Jayla Sotelo and Nora Nunez, have become highly proficient in parsing and analyzing data.

"They're extremely well-trained in crime analysis, and for us to go to places and offer this skill to community groups, people are extremely impressed," Governale said. "It's something they can take with them after college and use to help non-profits."

Now, the Firehouse is widening its reach by collaborating with local corporations and sports teams, such as the nearby Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks, to assist in job placement for teens it mentors.

For more information about the Firehouse Community Arts Center's work, go to thefcac.org.

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