Gang Leader For A Day

In the book, Gang Leader for a Day, a rogue sociologist passionately dives into the lives of one of Chicago’s toughest housing projects in an attempt to develop an insight as to how the urban impoverished lived. Throughout the text it becomes clear that a conflict paradigm is being reflected. A conflict society is based on social inequality, in which some individuals benefit and thrive more than others, which tends to lead to conflict and thus change. This is evident both in the housing projects where a gang known as the “Black Kings” take over and also in the surrounding neighborhoods where the more elite citizens, including persons from the authors university, shy away from associating with the nearby poor black nearby public, thus

In this research study, we will be examining The Social Disorganization Theory derived from The Chicago School of criminology. The purpose of this study is to better understand the social and ecological characteristics of those whom reside within this community and the environmental influences that may have contributed to the increased crime rate; which has significantly lead to mass incarceration within the urban community. This research will examine how many environmental characteristics impact the community and the particular disadvantages which lead to the increase in crimes? We will also assess the different legislative factors that theoretically contribute to the growing rate in poverty, which ultimately leads to an increase in the incarceration rates? Lastly, we will further explain the correlation between poverty and crime, and how it contributes to greater disparities within the community. These questions will be answered by focusing on impoverished communities consisting of primarily African Americans and Latinos.

In the book, Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociology student from the University of Chicago starts out simply trying to understand “how it feels to be poor and black,” and ends up spending years and years figuring out the ins and outs of a gang society (Venkatesh 14). Sudhir receives the chance of a sociologist’s lifetime to see first-hand what life is like in the projects. He follows gang leader, J.T. around and studies his life at the Robert Taylor homes for years. Throughout Venkatesh’s experience he witnesses many things some people go a lifetime without seeing. For example, he was no stranger to seeing people use drugs or get beat up by gang members. One interesting aspect of Venkatesh’s experiment

Shelby defines the ghetto as a primarily black, urban neighborhood with high concentrations of poverty. He identifies two inherent problems, extreme chronic poverty and the behavior demonstrated by residents deemed as deviations from mainstream norms, such as engaging in crime. Furthermore, Shelby refers to two common criticisms concerning ghetto poverty. One asserts that poverty is a symptom of moral depravity in the urban poor as beneficiaries in a perpetual welfare state. Another concentrates on the failure of government to fight poverty and insists on more public assistance. Shelby distinguishes his argument by focusing on the actions of ghetto resident through the principles of justice. He introduces the concept of society in terms of a cooperative scheme in which participants benefit from a mutual advantage. It then follows that individuals who benefit from the scheme must adhere to the civic obligations which enables such a scheme to develop. Consequently, refusal to adhere to these norms of society while benefiting from it violates the principle of reciprocity.

In chapter 5 in the novel Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh he writes about his experience of how he began to tag along with Ms. Bailey more often. Venkatesh says the more time he would spend with her, the more he would understand her work ethics and why she is so important to the community. Since Venkatesh was spending more time with Ms. Bailey he began to help her with food drives and food donations in the community as well as go to meetings that she would run. Venkatesh says the reason that Ms. Bailey was helping the housing projects, community and their building was because it was low on clothing and food for the winter. This portion of the novel teaches us about how many people out there have needs and the altruism in the way some

Tommie Shelby is an American philosopher and a professor of African American studies at Harvard University. In his article “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” Shelby discusses poor, black neighborhoods that have persisted in America for decades due to few public policy efforts to make things better. In his article Shelby brings up two approaches to this dilemma that he opposes. The first is the personal responsibility approach which appeals to American values of hard work and ultimately places blame on the poor rather than the government or society. The Technocratic approach on the other hand does the opposite. It blames the government for failing to fix the social conditions of the poor and refuses to blame the poor themselves even if they have done actions that have not necessarily improved their well-being. Shelby’s approach is a mix between the two. He says that we cannot blame the poor if the injustice of our society has changed the content of their obligations and thus making their behavior reasonable due to the unfair conditions they were subjected to. In other words they are a product of their environment. Shelby wants to get his point across that the existence of ghettos today is evidence that our society impaired by structural injustices and that the ghetto is not only the problem of those living in it, but all of ours.

There are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz, tells a story about the family of LaJoe and Paul Rivers. The book focuses on Lafayette and Pharaoh, two of the younger children in the family, and their interactions with each other, the neighborhood, their family, their friends, and the police. Following the family over three years shows the importance of neighborhood factors when it comes to crime. According to Sampson and Groves (1989), social disorganization refers to “the inability of a community structure to realize the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls”. Many aspects in the book exemplify how neighborhood factors, social controls, and community factors have impacts on crime. The book exemplifies how neighborhood disadvantage can lead to informal social controls, which in turn produces crime. Due to these factors, social disorganization is the best theory to explain the crime that occurs in There are No Children Here.

Chicago has the biggest gang problem in the country (Thomas & Bass, 2009). “There are more gang members per citizen in Chicago than anywhere else in the country” (Thomas, 2009, para 4). The average Chicago gang leader is 43, convicted of murder and lives in the suburbs. That leader on many occasions directs his gang from jail (Main, 2006) and 95 percent of inmates in the Cook County Jail are gang members (Thomas, 2009). Gangs are everywhere today just like they use to be. The high number of gangs causes violence and deaths to rise in Chicago.

So far, both theories are able to explain the crime inequality observed insides neighbourhoods; however, when it comes to explaining the difference in crime rates between neighbourhoods with similarly low levels of poverty, social disorganization theory is not able to fully explain why such difference may occur, as it places a greater focus on the internal dynamics of the neighbourhoods than on the external contingencies (Peterson & Krivo, 2010, p. 92). Based on Table 4.5 of Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial DivideI, minority low-poverty areas have roughly two and a half times more violence than their white counterparts (Peterson & Krivo, 2010, p. 88). Social disorganization theory insists that residential instability (percent of those who owns and percent of those who rent) , population heterogeneity (internal differences, including ethno-racial differences), poverty (percent of those who live in poverty), income, deteriorating neighbourhood, and population loss (percent of those who leave due to deterioration) are mechanisms that leads to the absence of informal social control and increases social disorganization, causing the loss of control over youths who then hang out at spontaneous playgrounds and form gangs with delinquent traditions that get passed down through cultural transmission. If such was the case, then one would expect neighbourhoods with similar and comparable local conditions to have similar average rates of crimes. However,

Those that side with Social Disorganization Theory state that this disparity exists because minorities tend to live in communities that lack organization therefore are likelihood to turn to crime. Studies like those conducted by Clear et al. state that Social Disorganization can be used to explain the overrepresentation of African Americans and Hispanics in the criminal justice system because links have been found between residential mobility and minorities (Clear et al., 2003, p.37) (Rose & Clear, 1998, p.448). Social Disorganization also explains the effect of single parent homes on delinquency stating that as incarceration rates increase chances of moving out of a troublesome neighborhood decreases because more costs are thrown on the shoulders of the single parent out of jail (Clear et al., 2003, 38). Clear et al. also hypothesized that high-incarceration can spread easily which would in turn damage informal social control (1998, p.39) (Rose &Clear, 1998,

One of the most central questions in the study of neighbourhood outcomes is the question of what accounts for the unequal pattern of crime by race and ethnicity, in which the violent crime rate in minority neighbourhoods is often higher than in white neighbourhoods. Among the different explanations proposed, there is a predominant theory: the theory of social disorganization. As described by Dr. Rengifo (2009), the social disorganization theory, forwarded by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay (1942), suggests that the variation in crime rates is linked to the weakened social integration of neighbourhoods which is a result of the presence of delinquent subcultures and structural factors on social interactions that lead to the absence of self-regulatory mechanisms.

Drawing on the themes of the Chicago school, Shaw and Mc Kay also refers to the problems of urban life, which is associated with social structure, such as poverty stricken neighborhoods’ with a lack of institutional controls however, “advocates of the social disorganization perspective argued and sought to explain the distribution of a variety of social problems in which characteristics of the neighborhood had an influence of social problems and not the individual characteristics themselves” (Burfeind and Bartusch, 2006, P. 473).

The purpose of this theoretical review is to serve as an explanation for how and why certain groups act they way they do within their environment. In this section, the paper will point out and connect main theories as to how poor disadvantaged neighborhoods influence behaviors of young adults, making them participate in crime and deviance. This is important to review because it will show researchers the strengths and limitations of certain theories and also help further develop future experimental designs or constructs. There are three main sociological theories that are discussed in this section that include the following: Anomie Theory, Social Disorganization, and Conflict Theory. These sections are then broken into subsections that include: Strain Theory, Institutional Strain Theory, Control Theory, Differential Association, Cultural Transmission, Differential Opportunity, and Delinquent Subcultures.

According to Shaw and McKay (1942), social disorganization is resembling the natural ecological process of invasion, dominance and succession of the developmental pattern of a domain. The maintenance of social ties takes time in a given area and it is often difficult to sustain if new neighbors are frequently generating. Sampson et al. (1997) found that higher residential instability is associated with local crime. The residential turnover in one area may deteriorate the shared sense of community developed over years, resulting in social disorganization. Conversely, neighbors are more likely to know each other, shared value and exert informal social control in a community with low residential turnover. Residents who perceived themselves or being perceived as strangers in a neighborhood will be less willing to take action for the mutual benefit of the community (Bellair & Browning, 2010). Osgood and Chambers (2000) emphasized that social disorganization has nothing to do with the settings of a geographical location but the social relations in the area. Donnermeyer’s (2016) study corroborated Osgood and Chambers’ finding. He affirmed that the population growth in the suburb may disrupt the local network structure and reinforce the negative outcomes caused by economic hardship. The breakdown of collective efficacy is one of the factors for decreasing the capacity for informal surveillance or weakening the ability for community members to intervene when crime occurs, for

First, Social Disorganization Theory is based on the regular occurrence of a neighborhood that is invested in the structure of that community’s affiliation, interaction and communication tie among residents (Warner, 2003). Within certain communities, certain cultures play a vital role keeping communities safe. Studies of inner city neighborhood shine the potential role that culture plays in defining community crime rates (Warner, 2003). However crime occurs when this sense of community is working against the other. In this theory, people lose the ability to acknowledge common values and this is displayed through crime because it is no longer prevented, and masks the life free of crime (Warner, 2003). Researchers Shaw and McKay believe that poor residential areas and ethnically mixed neighborhoods, compete for allegiance among residents when value systems diverge (Warner, 2003). It is important to understand that social disorganization has both facets of culture and structure. Without both of these key elements