Gang Leader for a Day: Book Review

In Policing Gangs in America, Charles Katz and Vincent Webb describes every issue in American Gangs today. The ultimate goal of this book is how the gang officers work and the different kind of atmosphere they work in. Their job isn’t like other law enforcement jobs. It’s one of the more dangerous occupation in the Criminal Justice system. These gang officers focus on how they react to public gang issues.

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 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

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

Neon then embarks on a plan to take over a low-income apartment building to manufacture and distribute the crack. All the gang members of the CMB take roles in accomplishing Neon’s vision and are deeply involved in criminal activity from drug deal to murder. Criminal activity is common with gang life and the most predominate factor is drug dealing which gang members see as their only option to make money. The family atmosphere instilled by the gang “…reinforces members’ commitment to gang membership, drug sales, and to the retaliatory violence that is often necessary to protect what they perceive to be theirs…” (Bellair).

Determined to help his audience - people who stereotype against and do not understand gang life - find commonalities with gang members, Fr. Boyle shares his experiences with gangs in Los Angeles. At the beginning of the novel, Fr. Boyle articulates his thesis and expresses his purpose for sharing his experiences when he states, “Though this book does not concern itself with solving the gang problem, it does aspire to broaden the parameters of our kinship. It hopes not only to put a human face on the gang member, but to recognize our own wounds in the broken

Even though gangs provide a sense of support, the "values" instilled in members are horribly dangerous to society. Murders and drive-by shottings go unpunished more often than not in areas like the Henry Horner Homes. Gangs have become powerful enough that high-ranking members who are forced to face the law are protected by high-priced attorneys and investigators (163).

Gangsters Without Borders by T.W. Ward is an ethnography about the El Salvadorian gang Mara Salvatrucha. Wards spent years earning the trust of these youth in order to complete his research. Starting out Ward had three broad goals in mind to develop a clear view of gang members and gang life. The second objective of Wards, “To observe how gang members changed over time as they matured into adulthood,” peaked my interest in this ethnography.

1. Chapter three, Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?, expresses an intriguing thought by authors, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. The Freakonomics authors follow a courageous man, Sudhir Venkatesh, a student at the University of Chicago, in his effort to understand and research the mysterious drug dealing business. Venkatesh first approached dangerous gangs and dealers in Chicago with a simple survey to learn more about them. After stumbling upon a branch of the “Black Gangster Disciple Nation”, Venkatesh wanted to take his study further. J.T., this specific branches leader, was interested in Venkatesh’s survey and initiated him as a spectator to his group. Venkatesh was integrated with this group for six years an acquired an immense amount of information on drug and gang groups. Thankfully, J.T. kept documents on the group 's wages. By looking at these books, Venkatesh was able to identify the hierarchy of a typical drug cartel. Which is where the main question of chapter is answered. Only the people on the top of the system made good money, for example, J.T. Contrary to popular belief, lower jobs of this business like foot soldiers make only $3.30 an hour, below minimum wage. Despite the fact that the foot soldiers are the ones who physically put their life on the lines. This style is compared to major corporations such as McDonald 's for a more context comparison. However, the people that are

The examples given of strain theory within Gang Leader for a Day has a very strong showing with regards to the Four Metrics for Evaluating Theory, which is used to prove how stressors can induce people to engage in criminal activities in order to achieve a positive goal or need. In regard to the first of the criteria, Logical Consistency, Scope, and Parsimony; strain theory within Gang Leader for a Day should be considered a strength because it demonstrates the reasoning behind engaging in unlawful activity: the locals relying upon J.T. to deal with a suspected rapist instead of the police, a woman working as a professional prostitute so that she can afford to take care of herself and her family, etc. Pertaining to the second of the Four Metrics of Evaluating Theory: Testability, strain theory is considered to be a weakness because not everyone described within Gang Leader for a Day resorted to a life of crime: i.e. the pastor. The third criteria, Empirical Validity is a strength because there exists a plethora of research that demonstrates the existence of a connection between motive and crime: the beating of C-Note for not following orders. Finally, the fourth criteria: Usefulness and Policy Implications, the information gathered by Venkatesh while writing Gang Leader for a Day would be considered to be a strength since the information within it can be used as a source of data for stakeholders, politicians, law enforcement, and the courts that will enable all involved to understand the influences that can cause an individual to partake in a life of crimes and it will assist them in making decisions and implementing policy designed to

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.

This chapter is about a man named Sudhir Venkatesh he is 25 years old. He is a University student studying Sociology. After Sudhir has attended two seminars by the college he is invited to do a study on how black people live day to day. After finding a specific building he was looking for, the Robert Taylor projects, he walks right in. When walking in from left to right he could see the use of drugs. Right off the bat Sudhir is treated like an intruder, even though he is there for information and is not known around the city of Chicago. The gang that Sudhir runs in to in this book is everything but pleasant if you’re not their "own kind". Sudhir is called a Mexican, the only reason he was called Mexican was because of the way he looked. The gang, the

In chapter 2 of Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day, Venkatesh spends time with a Chicago drug kingpin nick named J.T. During his time spent with this kingpin, Venkatesh explores the troubled projects of Chicago such as the Robert Taylor complex and begins to learn the inner operations of the kingpins business. He learned that J.T ran the central operations of these miniature complexes and ran his illicit business like a legitimate corporation with an established hierarchy. He also learned that these apartment complexes were often united through the community being so knit close together, with all of them being understandable towards J.T illicit operations and each other’s vices. This can be noted through the estimation that “15 percent

Essentially, Venkatesh thought by being a rogue sociology major taking on such a gutsy experiment would lead to his advisors being astonished for his courage and bold efforts, but he himself never thought that he would see the day where this type of assignment would lead to him being a good friend to a gang leader who come from a totally different background and upbringing than him as well as spend as much as ten years with JT and under JT’s protection so that this experiment could be completed successfully and provide insight. As time went by and Venkatesh got deeper into the gangs activities he knew he had to keep it a secret from his advisors because he had now crossed the line from being an onlooker to a player in one of Chicago’s most notorious city gangs.

Becoming a drug dealer on the streets of Chicago neither serves to increase one’s life expectancy nor helps to gain some goodwill from the neighborhood police department. But then why do people want to make a living out of dealing cocaine? The reason for such a life choice is because of incentives. The incentive people respond to in this case is money. Cocaine dealers configure their whole identity around crime, gang affiliations, and drugs because of money. A crack dealer and a gang boss to most people does not seem like a glamorous profession; however, for people growing up in poverty stricken neighborhoods, drug dealing and gang ties look to be rather lucrative ventures.