Serving UIC's Great Cities Commitment: Solutions for Today's Urban Challenges

On March 17, 2022, we had the great honor of hosting John Hagedorn to speak about his latest book, Gangs on Trial: Challenging Stereotypes and Demonization in the Courts. In the foreword of the book, Craig Haney says, “Hagedorn has written an extremely courageous book, one in which he is willing to assert hard moral truths that cut against the grain of what passes for common knowledge about who commits crime and why.” 

Chicago’s local access TV was there, so if you missed our conversation with John, you are able to view it here via CANTV.  At the end of the program, John received a special tribute from Professors Elijah Anderson, Meda Chesney-Lind, Dick Simpson, former students Drs. Lance Williams and Chico Tillman and current student, Kaitlin Devaney. 

Professor John Hagedorn represents the best of ethnography and helps keep it elevated as one our most significant and useful methodological tools to gain a deep understanding of what is happening – and especially what is happening on the ground.  John’s qualities as a gracious, caring human being carry over into his ethnographic skills.  It takes a certain kind of person to do good ethnography – it takes a willingness to build relationships and to understand people from their points of view, while simultaneously building an analytical framework that considers context, structural factors, and dynamics of social and personal interactions. 

His focus on economic restructuring and the plight of communities devastated by deindustrialization still, unfortunately, rings true.  In 1998, referring to the devastating impacts of economic restructuring, John said, in the second edition of People and Folks, that “history will judge current American policy harshly” and “that left to our current course, we are sure to witness desperate acts of violence and rebellion.” And here we are, witnessing both the failure of urban and economic policies along with ‘desperate acts of violence and rebellion.”  And here John is, decades later, still engaged in the struggle to point policy makers in the direction of creating opportunities and rebuilding communities and against scapegoating and demonizing individuals in gangs. The focus, he argues, is on building “stability and hope.” 

John has brought his fervor and sensitivity to the courtroom where he spent countless hours defending young men and women against stereotypes.  He saw firsthand the tragic impacts of those stereotypes and has shared with us some of what he witnessed when gangs are on trial.  

We congratulate John on his new book and thank him for spending this special time with us. 

Note:

You can view the program on CANTV on the following dates:

Wednesday, March 30th @ 9 am and 9 pm on Chicago cable channel 27

Thursday, March 31st @ 12 pm and 5 pm on Chicago cable channel 27

Friday, April 1st @ 7am, 1 pm and 7 pm on Chicago cable channel 27

Friday, April 1st @ 8 am on Chicago cable channel 19

Video from the Event

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.