UNFORGIVING PLACES

Monday, July 28, 2025Unforgiving Places book cover
12:00 p.m. (PT)
75 minutes

Virtual: Zoom

General CLE Credit Available

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Please join Berkeley Judicial Institute as Judge Brett Alldredge (ret.) is in conversation with Dr. Jens Ludwig about Dr. Ludwig’s book UNFORGIVING PLACES.

From the publisher’s page:

What if everything we understood about gun violence was wrong?

In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: Why does gun violence happen, and is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren’t what he expected. Unforgiving Places is Ludwig’s revelatory portrait of gun violence in America’s most famously maligned city. Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while others don’t, Ludwig shows gun violence to be more circumstantial—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches lead us to believe.

Read this Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker article about the book.

The session will be recorded, and the recording will be posted on our website.