Our Beloved John Hagedorn Has Joined the Angels.

On Tuesday morning, October 31^st, John Hagedorn died peacefully in his home with his family at his side. We deeply mourn the loss of our dear friend and colleague. John had a long-time affiliation with the Great Cities Institute and in 2016 was given the official title of James J. Stukel Senior Faculty Fellow. He was also Professor Emeritus from the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice. We offer our deepest condolences to his wife, Mary, and to his family.

As many of you know, over the life of his career, he conducted many research projects and published multiple books on the topic of gangs. One of his classics was People and Folks Gangs, Crime, and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City. His most recent book was Gangs on Trial: Challenging Stereotypes and Dehumanization in the Courts. John left a legacy at so many levels, including the many students that adored him.

On the afternoon of April 1, 2024, at Student Center East at UIC (750 S. Halsted) we will be hosting, with the family, an event honoring John and his work. We will feature many of his colleagues as well as former students who themselves have gone on to do incredible work in multiple arenas.

John had great love for his own mentor. On March 11, 2016, thanks to John’s initiative, we held an all-day symposium on Latino Gang Research featuring students of Joan Moore, of which John was one, as was Diego Vigil, Avelardo Valdez, Robert Duran, and Alice Cepeda. Great discussion of the influence of Joan Moore on the type of participatory/collaborative research that they did; on the findings of their research, and the policy implications. Worth the watch.

In 2017, through John’s leadership, we held a meeting to discuss the structure of African American gangs in Chicago. We addressed: How gangs changed in the 21st century and why; How the fracturing of gangs and other changes in gang structure affect today’s patterns of violence; How gang structures and motives for violence differ by neighborhood; and What do these changes mean for public policy and violence intervention. This led to a GCI report authored by John, Robert Aspholm, Lance Williams, Andy Papachristos, and Teresa Córdova, that we titled, The Fracturing of Gangs and Violence in Chicago:  A Research-Based Reorientation of Violence Prevention and Intervention Policy. The report reached policy makers and media and helped reshape the discourse on gangs in Chicago.

In March of last year, we hosted an event on John’s newly released book, Gangs on Trial. You can see some great photos of John. You can also view the video recording of this event.

Below is a reproduction of a March 8, 2022, blog that we wrote in anticipation of that event. Contained in the blog, is something that John wrote for the North Philly Notes.

Gangs on Trial: A Conversation with John Hagedorn

March 8, 2022

Congratulations to the remarkable John Hagedorn for the release of his latest book, Gangs on Trial: Challenging Stereotypes and Demonization in the Courts.

John Hagedorn, Ph.D. is a James J. Stukel Fellow with the Great Cities Institute and Professor Emeritus of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Hagedorn’s first book, People & Folks, Gangs, Crime, and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City, argued for more jobs than jails and applied William Julius Wilson’s underclass theory to gangs. He was the architect of a neighborhood-based, family centered social service reform in Milwaukee that became the subject of his dissertation, published as Forsaking Our Children. He was editor (with Meda Chesney-Lind), of Female Gangs in America: Essays on Girls, Gangs, and Gender, the only edited volume ever published in the U.S. on female gangs.

His interest in Chicago gangs led him to become immersed in the history of the Vice Lords and the importance of race. His global travels further informed his understanding of gangs, which led him to edit the volume Gangs in the Global City based on an international conference at the Great Cities Institute. He was Principal Investigator of a Harry F. Guggenheim study at the Great Cities Institute of why Chicago’s homicide rate did not decline like New York City’s. He argued in 2007 that the decision to not invest in public housing but demolish it was a major correlate of high rates of violence. In A World of Gangs, he applied Manuel Castells’ work in analyzing gangs, arguing that understanding the cultural struggle for identity was crucial in working with gangs.  His 2015 book, The In$ane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia, looks historically at gangs, organized crime, and corruption in Chicago.

We are very excited that we can host our great friend on Thursday, March 17th at 12:00 noon at UIC’s Student Center East in room 302. The Department of Criminology, Law and Justice at UIC is our co-host for this event. RSVP and let us know if you will attend in person or via zoom.

On February 9th, North Philly Notes published a blog from Professor Hagedorn reflecting on his book. This will give you a taste of what you will hear when you join us on March 17th.

I have spent more time in courtrooms the last few decades than I have on street corners or playgrounds. Over the same period, I have written many more court reports as an expert witness than I have journal articles as an academic. Why? Turning my attention to “gangs in court” was a conscious choice based on some fundamental beliefs I have on the uses of research and on my determination to challenge injustice.

First, the question raised by sociologist Alfred McClung Lee, “Sociology for whom?” has long streamed through my head on a continuous loop. Lee’s 1976 presidential address to the American Sociological Association attacked careerism in sociology. My mentor, Joan Moore, as well as my role model, Kenneth Clark, both argued that research should consciously benefit the community, or it would be used by elites for their own interests. Clark’s haunting question, “What is the value of a soulless truth?” became my credo, accompanying my slogan, “Research – not stereotypes.” From my first study on gangs in Milwaukee, I was conscious of the implications of my research. In the 1980s I told my People & Folks respondents—the “top dogs” of gangs in Milwaukee—that the purpose of my research was to provide evidence that “jobs – not jails” was a better solution to Milwaukee’s gang problem.

In other words, I believe research needs to be understood outside of “truth for its own sake,” and deliberately designed to benefit those in powerless communities, especially those who are stigmatized and demonized. If social scientists will not defend the powerless, what values do we have? Did we understand sociologist C. Wright Mills when he called on social scientists to challenge the rationalization of society?  

Second, I realized frustration/aggression theories of violence are not only applicable to the streets. Just go to any trial of a gang member and listen to the angry tone of the prosecutor saying the community is “fed up” with gang violence and wants… well, prosecutors often say “justice” when they mean “revenge.”

Social psychologist Craig Haney teaches us that sentencing is not based so much on the criminal acts of flawed human beings, but on the belief the accused has an evil character— “unstoppable evil” was what one of my defendants was called. Evidence of the criminal act is secondary to what prosecutors believe is the less than human nature of the accused. Demonization was taken literally in one of my first cases, when the defendants were labeled “Followers of Our Lord King Satan”, a law enforcement make-believe acronym for Georgia’s FOLKS gang.

Violence is hard, sociologist Randall Collins concluded, and in order to justify it and overcome our deeply embedded inhibitions. Philosopher David Livingston Smith argues the victim needs first to be dehumanized. On the streets rival gang members are called “Slobs” or “Crabs” or some other non-human appellation. You are killing an “it” not a “he” or “she.” I found that is precisely how it works in the courtroom, with a predictable racist tinge. Gang members, typically Black or Hispanic, are dehumanized—another of my defendants was called a “mad dog.” What do you do with a mad dog? If you can’t kill it, you lock it up and throw away the key. What better description is there of today’s sentencing policy? 

I began my expert witness work in 1996 opposing a possible death penalty for Keith Harbin, who was then on trial. At that time, there were few academics willing to consult with the defense, and hesitant to risk the ire of law enforcement. There clearly was an unmet need. From the start, I saw my expert witness work as an extension of my social responsibility to confront racism and dehumanizing policies and practices.

So, it is as simple as that. My “life in court”—and this book—are the results of my particular circumstances, the general punitive nature of today’s mass incarceration society, and my belief in the social responsibility of research.

We will miss John beyond words. But we will never forget him.

May he rest in peace.

Executive Summary:

The U.S. immigration crisis has reached a new boiling point. Apprehensions by federal agents of people crossing the U.S. Southern border is at a near-record high. For the past year, tens of thousands of asylum seekers have appeared in cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver, many of them dispatched northward in buses by the governors of Texas and Florida. The newcomers have overwhelmed local governments as municipal leaders frantically try to provide them emergency shelter, food and other basic services, while the news media constantly note the surprising number of destitute and displaced Venezuelans among them. That emergency assistance, however, has sparked a growing backlash from the general public, particularly among Americans who advocate clamping down on immigration, but also among some low-income Black and Latino residents in those cities whose communities have suffered years of neglect by the same local governments. Many of those residents have voiced increasing alarm about the sudden diversion of scarce tax funds for the siting of temporary migrant shelters in their neighborhoods.

But few media accounts have examined the way U.S. foreign policy toward specific Latin American countries has directly fueled the current crisis. Nor have those narratives acknowledged the long history of U.S. intervention and wealth extraction in the region, which, together with decades of neglect of Latin America’s social needs by both Democratic and Republican administrations in Washington, has led to more than six decades of massive human migration from that region to the U.S.

This report briefly outlines the evidence that U.S. economic warfare against three specific countries – Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua – is a significant cause of the latest migration surge. It argues, furthermore, that progressive U.S. leaders and the general public should advocate for a more humane and responsible foreign policy – one that could not only dramatically reduce migration from the region but also address the mushrooming labor shortage within the U.S.

Author:

Juan González,
Senior Research Fellow, UIC Great Cities Institute; and Co-Host of Democracy Now.

Read the Full Report Here.

On October 11, 2023, Mayor Brandon Johnson delivered his $16.6 billion budget recommendations for the City of Chicago to the City Council. In July, the City of Chicago Office of Budget Management (OBM), the Mayor’s Office of Community Engagement, and the Office of Equity and Racial Justice (OERJ) partnered with UIC’s Neighborhoods Initiative (UICNI) at the Great Cities Institute to co-design and conduct engagement activities around the City’s 2024 budget. The “City of Chicago 2024 Budget Engagement Report” documents the 2024 budget engagement process and provides critical results from the engagement activities.

Activities were available in person at three public roundtables and one youth engagement event, and they were available online. In total, 812 people participated in the budget engagement.

Engagement activities gathered feedback from community members on the budget, reflections on Community-Identified Budget Ideas (community derived budget ideas and needs) and general comments regarding the budget or engagement. Data were collected in July and August 2023 across all budget engagement activities. The most noted request by topic area is as follows:

• Affordable Housing and Services to People at Risk of or Experiencing Homelessness – Develop affordable housing units across many different building types through public and nonprofit organizations, in specific areas of the city, and for designated populations.
• Community Engagement – Improve outreach and communication using strategies such as bus ads, posted information in community centers (e.g., libraries, schools, religious institutions), news media, radio, community boards, and building lists of community leaders.
• Community Safety – Cancel the ShotSpotter contract for community safety to minimize unwarranted surveillance of communities with ineffective technology.
• Environmental Justice and Infrastructure – Increase funding for public transit, including to improve affordability, develop more bus stops, increase CTA reliability, fund the Red Line extension, and ensure cleaner and more youth-friendly transportation.
• Neighborhood and Community Development and Arts and Culture – Increase investment to neighborhoods on the South and West Sides for more equitable distribution of resources to communities (and tracking of resource distribution).
• Public Health and Services and Mental Health – Provide culturally responsive mental health services, with mixed ideas on publicly run and community-run organizations, peer-to-peer approaches, and on-call social workers.
• Youth Services – Provide a greater variety of programming and offerings to occupy them and to build skills outside of school, including after-school programs, sports and clubs, arts, Big Brother/ mentorship programs, substance abuse prevention, financial literacy, gang prevention, literacy, music, sexual awareness, summer programs, tutoring services, and youth programs.

To inform the development of department budgets and the Mayor’s 2024 budget proposal, all ideas and comments collected from participants during the 2024 engagement were shared in August 2023 with City department leaders and staff. In addition, interim survey findings and data were shared with the OBM, the Mayor’s Office of Community Engagement, and the OERJ in early September 2023. Of note, Mayor Johnson mentioned new budget investments in his 2024 budget proposal that were also requested by community participants during the budget engagement (found in the City of Chicago 2024 Budget Engagement Report in the detailed results by topic area) including, but not limited to:

• Provide a $250 million investment in homelessness supports, from flexible housing, shelter operational support, and low-income home repair assistance.
• Reopen two shuttered mental health clinics as part of a pilot program in existing city buildings.
• Double the number of staff on the Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement teams that provide an alternate response to mental health calls.
• Hire new detectives by promoting 70 officers to detective since he took office, and in the budget recommendations by creating 100 additional detective positions.
• Reinstitute the city’s Department of Environment to provide support for environmental protection.
• Expand youth jobs with 76 million dollars to fund an additional 4,000 youth summer jobs next year, with the goal of 28,000 positions in the summer of 2024.
• Address lead service line replacement with an over $53 million investment.

To track progress internally, the OERJ released the City of Chicago 2024 Equity Report which reports department plans through numbers and narratives to track progress on racial equity goals. Equity was used as a lens during roundtable conversations and informed departments during their budget requests over the summer. All budget documents released by the city reside on the Office Budget and Management Microsite.