When Gregory Glinsey was fatally shot while buying ice for his mother?s 80th birthday party, the emotional toll on his family was incalculable. The immediate price to the public was $800 for his autopsy.

All told, shootings cost Chicago $2.5 billion a year, or about $2,500 per household, according to Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. Many of those costs are intangibles, Ludwig said, like keeping people from going outside or letting their children walk to school. Reducing even a fraction of the carnage, though, would free up more money than the city expects to save each year from the closing of 49 elementary schools approved yesterday by the school board.


Read More