SOC293H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Social Movement, International Criminal Law, Major Crimes
Lecture 10: Chicago Gangs
Lawmaking
How are legal innovations justified?
- Strategies of volume (high and law)
- Strategies of justification (what’s needed)
Chicago and gang loitering
Chicago tribune crime team tracked shooting victims in Chicago (number of victims increased)
Shooting victims most concentrated in South and West sides of Chicago
Mid 1980s social problem
NYC – buying crack was safe, cheap, etc
Chicago – conservative effort by gangs to keep crack out because they saw the violence coming
- As price fell compared to other drugs, anybody can enter and make profit (needed to sell A LOT)
Although the effort to keep it out, 3 years later, wave of killing hits (homicides)
Gang control, relationships all destroyed
Chicago loitering
Young black men hanging in front of stores – panic from loitering since stores cannot have customers
Early reactions in Chicago
Residents – people held hostage in their own town
Media – laws multiply as neighborhood fears rise
Government – community policing, more prisons, loitering laws
Pressures on justice system: the mayor
Richard Daley – homicides rising to 938, becoming like Colombia, federal government not doing necessary to
keep drugs out
Legal response: Chicago loitering ordinance
Whenever police thinks a criminal street gang member loitering in public place with one or more other person,
he must order them to disperse and remove themselves from area
Loiter – remain in any one place with no apparent purpose
If they don’t order promptly, they are charged or imprisoned
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80000+ stops and 42000 arrests over a 3.5 year period for doing NOTHING
Gang membership is not a crime, standing in a public place is not a crime – nothing + nothing should be nothing
What is a crime?
Criminal street gangs are menacing and destructive regardless of whether their members are violating other
laws. Intimidating presence itself has palpable detrimental effect on people’s well being
They “disrupt community stability” and gang loitering ordinance avoids detracting property values
Counter law – use of law to do something fundamentally was an illegal action but justify with legal action
Role of city council hearings
Alderman Beavers – holding hearing to find out what is going on in neighborhoods and start it by saying that we
want to have a law to make it illegal to loiter
Deputy corporation counsel – they don’t know if they can do it but only if they do a hearing to get the evidence
that we need to get this to work
Chicago: laws against law
State attorney Jack O’Malley – have lawyers make constructive suggestion than legal one (let’s write the law
without legal construction)
Bases for legal transformation
Alcoholics but not gangs still exist, kids unsupervised, and anytime anyone loitering at entrance of business is
doing harm
People were not talking about gang loitering but general disorder in neighborhoods BUT it got molded to be
about gangs
How does law come to e seen as a solution for a problem?
a) Frustration over tools
- Gap in the law that when police show up, they have no mechanism to deal with situation and it frustrates
residents
b) Frustration over resources
- Police are busy so they don’t get their in time (come after the gang is gone)
c) Frustration over police work
- Police asks you questions when they can take care of problem – they give you away AND come with sirens
Residents and Legal uncertainty
It wasn’t the gang that was the problem but the LAW
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
