Following Chicago’s staggering 2012 total of more than 500 homicides, the human toll of gun violence in the Windy City is well-known.
Now, a new Bloomberg analysis released Wednesday has put a price tag on the cost of killings:
$2.5 billion a year.
The multi-billion-dollar figure breaks down to an average of $2,500 per Chicago household, per year, University of Chicago Crime Lab director Jens Ludwig tells Bloomberg.
Some of the costs were intangible, such as impacts to quality of life like keeping children from playing outdoors in a violent neighborhood; others have firm figures attached.
A sampling of Bloomberg’s analysis includes:
$900 — 1,200: Cost of a typical ambulance ride to the ER
$800: “Incremental costs” for an autopsy by the medical examiner
$52,000: Average cost for acute trauma care of of gunshot victims, 70 percent of whom are uninsured
$35,000: Average cost of care at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago where 1/20th of the patients are gunshot victims
Not only does violence destroy local business, but Ludwig tells American Public Media’s Marketplace that every homicide in Chicago reduces the city’s population by 70 people.
Read more at the Huffington Post.
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