Standing before the City Club of Chicago in October 2022, Arne Duncan, managing partner of Chicago CRED, made a pitch for philanthropic support for his violence prevention program.
Philanthropy and the business community take science seriously when evaluating programs’ investment worthiness. Weeks ago, an independent quasi-experimental evaluation of CRED found strong results, reporting a 73% reduction in violence-related arrests.
As Chicago decides whether to renew its contract for SoundThinking’s gunshot detection technology called ShotSpotter, it is essential to weigh the evidence, as city leaders do with public safety interventions like CRED. The city granted an extension to the ShotSpotter contract last summer and must decide whether to renew the contract no later than February.
To date, multiple studies have come out questioning ShotSpotter’s effectiveness. In turn, the company has responded by moving the goalposts, suing journalists and rebranding.
Renewing the ShotSpotter contract amid a body of independent evidence questioning its investment worthiness would not only offend those who take the science of public safety seriously, it would incentivize more companies to follow SoundThinking’s multi-pronged strategy for marketing its questionable technology to the city.
Other cities are skeptical, too. On Dec. 18, 2023, the Durham, North Carolina, City Council voted to let a one-year pilot with ShotSpotter come to an end.
Questionable claims, public misperception
When Chicago signed its contract with ShotSpotter technology in 2018, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration described it as an investment in one of several technologies that would reduce crime.
Studies came out showing the technology had no crime reduction benefit, and the city’s Office of the Inspector General found that ShotSpotter alerts in Chicago rarely led to investigatory stops.
The company then pivoted to selling the product to reduce officer and emergency medical response times to gunshot incidents. Recently, economists tested this claim and found that ShotSpotter alerts in Chicago create a one-minute delay in police dispatch response and a two-minute delay in on-scene arrival.
Perhaps most troubling was a study SoundThinking supported in collaboration with researchers at the University of Cincinnati allegedly showing that community members perceived ShotSpotter as an effective technology.
A closer look at the contract that made this study possible showed it was not an independent evaluation, as the researchers needed to integrate SoundThinking’s input on the research design.
Similarly, results from a 2019 National Institute of Justice-funded evaluation of ShotSpotter in Chicago have yet to be released. This raises the question of whether more unflattering results of ShotSpotter’s efficacy are being delayed from public view until after Chicago’s contract renewal decision.
These studies reflect a common strategy invented by the tobacco industry called “product defense,” which firms use when science or regulatory efforts show evidence of their product’s shortcomings.
If Chicago is going to take seriously the argument made by Police Supt. Larry Snelling that “any technology is going to help officers do the job better,” then it must have checks and balances to safeguard against ineffective or fraudulent technologies. The use of evidence and independent evaluation should not be applied solely to social interventions in the field of public safety.
Consider what a vote to not renew SoundThinking would signal. It would help level the scientific playing field for all public safety tools. It would incentivize tech firms to step up their game and produce effective technologies, as opposed to investing in PR to create the appearance of product effectiveness.
Chicago can set an example for the rest of the country for how a combination of independent journalism, social science and government oversight can inform wiser technology investments. Let’s hope city leaders make the right decision.
Robert Vargas is associate professor of sociology, deputy dean of the social sciences and director of the Justice Project at the University of Chicago.
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