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

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.

Image Source: Street Support

Guest Author: Kathryn Bocanegra, PhD, LCSW

Assistant Professor, Jane Addams College of Social Work

Affiliate, Great Cities Institute

Over the past decade Chicago has sustained public criticism in its continual struggle to reduce shootings and homicides. In 2021 there were 797 homicides in Chicago and 3,677 non-fatal shooting victims. Although Black residents represent approximately 30% of Chicago’s population, 81.4% of the homicide victims in 2021 were Black. There is a clear spatial and racial concentration of violent deaths in Chicago. 

As a response to this spike in violence, Chicago’s philanthropic community created a funding coalition to fund 2 innovative approaches to reduce shootings and homicides: a city-wide network of community-based violence prevention organizations (Communities Partnering for Peace), and READI Chicago, an evidence-based initiative targeting men most at-risk of becoming a victim or perpetrator of gun violence. In 2019 the City of Chicago initiated its first Office of Violence Reduction and in 2020 released its first round of community-based grants with $7.5 million going to fund street intervention work of CP4P partners. Central to the work of CP4P, READI Chicago, and the City’s Office of Violence Prevention is street intervention work. 

Street intervention work involves proactive community engagement of individuals who are involved in gangs, cliques, or other street organizations to reduce their risk of violence perpetration or victimization. At a time when distrust in police is exceptionally high, street intervention workers are the primary reference point for safety in Chicago’s Black and Latinx neighborhoods and stand at the epicenter of public debates on reducing violence, defunding the police, and undoing the harms of structural racism. 

We’re always going to be Black and Brown to law enforcement. We’re always going to look like a gang member to the rival gang. We’re always going to be ex-felons, or former incarcerated people that people look at with less regard, or don’t take our words seriously. Or see our line of work as insignificant, or as really a consequence of not being able to do something more and better with our lives.

The work of reducing gun violence, however, involves high levels of stress and trauma. Street intervention workers are first responders who work with individuals who are most likely to be victims/ perpetrators of violence to engage them in a mentoring relationship while connecting them to social supports. As first responders, they frequently respond to homicide scenes, mediate conflicts involving weapons, attend funerals for deceased participants, and witness other forms of trauma associated with community violence. Street intervention professionals differ from other categories of first responders in that the majority of such employees have shared histories with their clients. Many were formerly street-involved, affiliated with street organizations, and were potentially involved in the criminal legal system. Thus, not only do they have similar trauma profiles to the individuals they work with, they are repeatedly exposed to the same traumatic stressors as part of their professional role. Chronic exposure to community violence is a normalized occupational hazard within this profession with unexamined, and potentially negative, consequences.

There are certain areas in Chicago, it’s like, I wouldn’t walk a cat through there. But we help them guys there too, so it pushes me but same time, in the back of my head is like, I don’t want anybody to pull up and start shooting and I end up getting shot and my family’s, you know, bury me or, you know, uh, you know, come to see me in the hospital. You know, to see if I’m gonna make it through. You know, I don’t want my family going through that. But I know it’s a risk that we take every day when we, you know, do what we do.

The study “Between a Bullet and Its Target” involved 35 in-depth interviews with Chicago’s street intervention workers and their supervisors. The findings from the study can be found on the website www.streetsupport.org. The website summarizes:

1. How do street intervention workers describe trauma, on their own terms?
2. What is the impact of this trauma exposure on street intervention workers?
3. Where are their opportunities to improve the support of street intervention workers within nonprofit organizational practice?

It is the hope of the research team that scholars, advocates, and practitioners concerned about building the civilian infrastructure for public safety in Chicago will review the resources available on the website www.streetsupport.org. Safe communities begin with a healthy frontline workforce, and we need to do everything possible to support individuals on the frontline of waging peace in their communities. Their success can be measured in human lives.