iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robert Vargas

@robvargas.bsky.social

358 followers 105 following 115 posts

Professor of Sociology Director of the Justice Project justiceproject.uchicago.edu

Posts Replies Media

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

NEW REPORT - We digitized every ward map in Chicago history and discovered pockets of the city that never changed wards. Is your block one of them? Look up your address on our interactive map and read about the latest UCJP study. uchicago-justice-project.github.io/redistricting/

1197

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

UPDATE - We got some good questions about seasonality, and added a map to the study website comparing response times in the first 9 months of 2025 to first 9 months of 2024. The change in response times is more modest (2 minute improvement on average), but the overall trend still holds.

110

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

NEW REPORT: After Chicago shut down ShotSpotter in Sept. 2024, CPD response times to priority 1 calls improved by an average of 4.2 minutes. Read more here: uchicago-justice-project.github.io/chicago_crim...

11337134

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

CPD & the Crime Lab say 49% of carjackers are youth—but that stat comes from just 15% of cases where someone was arrested. The other 85%? We don’t know who did it. 📊 Misleading data leads to misleading narratives. #DataMatters #Chicago

120

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

000

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

This painting I made sums up the main finding from our donor bias paper. For every $5 dollars donated, CPD made 56 stop and frisks at blocks with 7-elevens. arxiv.org/abs/2504.15140

110

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

This painting is an abstract rendering of the network of donations to San Francisco police departments based on tax return data.

010

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

This painting title “Innovation 1” is a time series graph of the spread of alternative 911 response services in cities across the USA, with Eugene Oregon being the pioneer city on the far left. On the right are all the cities that adopted this policing alternative after 2020.

100

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

I’ll have two paintings on display at this great show in Bridgeport opening tomorrow evening at 7pm. Check it out. The show runs through May.

110

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

*** New Paper *** We visualized historical data on the first land sales in Chicago, discovered a pattern that tells the story of the city's urbanization and sheds light on root causes of neighborhood inequality. More work based on these data is on the way. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

120

Robert Vargas @robvargas.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

A new painting in progress visualizing an underappreciated root cause of Chicago’s neighborhood inequities.

000