Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T15:35:03.140Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CRIME, URBAN POVERTY, AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2009

Lawrence D. Bobo*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
*
Professor Lawrence D. Bobo, Department of Sociology, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: bobo@wjh.harvard.edu

Extract

Todd R. Clear, Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 255 pages, ISBN: 978-0-19-538720-9. Paper, $21.95.

Sudhir Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. 303 pages, ISBN: 978-1-59420-150-9. Cloth, $25.95.

In recent years, sociologists have conducted enormously important research on the intersection of urban poverty, crime, and the racial divide. Quantitative stratification sociologist Bruce Western provides a meticulous tracing of the emergence of mass incarceration, tracking its steady development and identifying how and why—both economically and politically—this trend has fallen so heavily on low-income Black communities (Western 2006). Quantitative stratification sociologist Devah Pager carries out remarkably innovative and compelling field experiments showing the terrible toll incarceration takes on the employment prospects and, therefore, the greater life chances of former felons, particularly those who are Black (Pager 2007). And the combined efforts of quantitative criminologist Chris Uggen and quantitative political sociologist Jeff Manza reveal the extraordinary distortion of our local and national politics that results from the practice of felon disfranchisement (Manza and Uggen, 2006).

Type
STATE OF THE DISCOURSE
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bobo, Lawrence D. and Thompson, Victor (2006). Unfair by Design: The War on Drugs, Race, and the Legitimacy of the Criminal Justice System. Social Research, 73(2): 445472.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. and Thompson, Victor (Forthcoming). Racialized Mass Incarceration: Poverty, Prejudice, and Punishment. In Markus, Hazel Rose and Moya, Paula (Eds.), Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Brunson, Rod K. (2007). ‘Police Don't Like Black People’: African-American Young Men's Accumulated Police Experiences. Criminology & Public Policy, 6(1): 71102.Google Scholar
Brunson, Rod K. and Miller, Jody (2006). Young Black Men and Urban Policing in the United States. British Journal of Criminology, 46: 613640.Google Scholar
Garland, David (2001). The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gladwell, Malcolm (2002). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Gladwell, Malcolm (2005). Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Gladwell, Malcolm (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Gregory, Steven (1998). Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hagan, John, Shedd, Carla, and Payne, Monique R. (2005). Race, Ethnicity, and Youth Perceptions of Criminal Injustice. American Sociological Review, 70: 381407.Google Scholar
Hurwitz, Jon and Peffley, Mark (2005). Explaining the Great Racial Divide: Perceptions of Fairness in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. Journal of Politics, 67: 762783.Google Scholar
Jankowski, Martin Sanchez (1991). Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Manza, Jeff and Uggen, Christopher (2006). Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McCall, Nathan (1994). Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Newman, Katherine S. (1999). No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Pager, Devah (2007). Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Sandra Susan (2007). Lone Pursuit: Distrust and Defensive Individualism among the Black Poor. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Stack, Carol (1974). All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi (2000). American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi (2006). Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loic (2001). Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh. Punishment and Society, 3: 95134.Google Scholar
Weitzer, Ronald and Tuch, Steven A. (2006). Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Western, Bruce (2006). Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Wilson, William Julius (1996). When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Wilson, William Julius (2009). More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Young, Alford (2004). The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar