>> First off tonight, Chicago's violence prevention programs are facing an uncertain future.

That's because Chicago's federal COVID-19 relief funds that helped pay for these programs are set to run out and with city and state officials grappling with multibillion-dollar deficits and little hope of help coming from Washington.

Questions remain over.

What happens next for these programs?

Our Heather Sharon joins us now with a deep dive into this uncertain moment for violence prevention efforts, header.

So let's start with the basics.

What exactly do we mean when we talk about violence, prevention community violence intervention?

Well, it is the theory that it is better to stop a crime or an incident of violence before it occurs rather than sending an officer after it happens to sort of enforce the law, make an arrest or provide emergency 8.

>> This seeks to address what some people call the root causes of crime abuse, trauma, poverty by dealing with those issues before people get involved with in a life of crime.

Do they work to stop crime and violence?

So the initial studies of these programs which I have long been sort of funded in Chicago by business and philanthropic groups say yes, they do.

But the issue is is that they have not been expanded citywide or to scale.

And until that happens, and these programs have a permanent place in the city and the state's budget.

It will not pay dividends to produce Chicago's crime rate, which of course, remains higher than other big cities like New York and Los Angeles.

So back in 2021 then Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced plans to use 136 million dollars in federal COVID-19 aid funds to fund the violence prevention efforts.

>> Were those promises fulfilled?

Know?

We've reported a lot about the problems that the city has had in getting those federal covid-relief funds out the door.

>> By the time she had left office, those pledges that being produced by nearly 40%.

And in fact, the city has only spent 44 million dollars nearly 2 billion dollars in federal COVID-19 relief on violence prevention programs.

Now the city has another 31 million dollars budgeted for these programs that they can spend through the end of 2026.

But after that, there's no clear source of funding state federal, local for these programs.

In that case, what happens next?

Well, it is a moment of great uncertainty for groups like Chicago CRED who are out there doing this work and say if they can only get a substantial amount of money, they can show that this is really the way to address crime and violence rather than hiring more police officers, which seems almost impossible at this moment.

But it's not clear that the city is going to dedicate necessary resources.

Meanwhile, of course, the folks on the ground who are doing that work, they have their work cut out for them.

Had a Sharon.

Thank you for your reporting.

Thanks.

Brandis.

And you can read Heather's full story as well as watch documentaries on