Murder by Structure: How Street Gangs Built the Great American CityAndrew Papachristos, Northwestern UniversityResearch Grant, 2021–2022 Why does violence erupt on the same streets year after year, decade after decade, and not on other streets just a few blocks away? Virtually every city in the United States—whether considered “safe” or “dangerous”—shows the same pattern of violence stubbornly concentrated on the same streets and in the same neighborhoods. Because neighborhoods struggling with violence are often portrayed as “violent” and “dangerous,” it is tempting to fall back on hackneyed and racist characterizations of “bad people” and “bad places.” But such explanations are myopic, ignoring history and the intentional natures of cities. Cities are built. From the tallest skyscraper to the sewer system buried beneath the streets, cities are built upon the plans and decisions of those who wield the power to build or destroy. City planners and city makers determine where kids play and where they go to school. They decide who has access to jobs, health care, food, and justice. On their face, crime maps of our cities appear to show a snapshot of people and their problems. But dig a little deeper and these maps are a record of the decisions and actions of city makers. This book examines how the concentration of violence in particular places results not simply from the policies and plans of powerful city makers, but also from struggles that arise as neighborhoods try to improve the lives of their residents. To this end, the book centers the actions of one of the fiercest defenders of neighborhood identity: street gangs. By tracing the evolution and development of street gangs in Chicago, this book reveals how the crime maps we see today are the product of violent turf wars of the past; not just turf wars between gangs, but also battles between gangs, on the one hand, and the state, urban developers, powerful politicos, the police, and poverty, on the other. This is a story of how white gangs wove their own networks into the political and economic fabric of the city and, on their way up and out of gangland, built barriers (physical and social) to keep Black and Latino gangs from following the same paths out of poverty. When Black gangs tried to improve their own lot, they were met with brutal opposition. Gangland became its own prison, with visible and invisible walls surrounding neighborhoods, schools, and job markets. The patterns of violence we see today rest upon networks of violence and relationships built over nearly a century. Understanding and doing something about violence today, then, requires us to not only acknowledge the past but to understand the way it shapes patterns, conflicts, and violence today. On their face, crime maps of our cities appear to show a snapshot of people and their problems. But dig a little deeper and these maps are a record of the decisions and actions of city makers. This book retells the hidden history of how street gangs built the Great American City. It brings into the foreground those parts of our urban history that are often tucked into alleyways and prison cells. Most city histories portray gangs as antagonists—the danger lurking in the shadows, tucked away in “those neighborhoods” and responsible for crime waves and gun violence. This project explores the crucial moments in the development of a city when the actions (and violence) of gangs fundamentally shaped the city itself. The chapters of the book are organized around these key turning points in Chicago’s history, spanning nearly a century. Part I, Gangland, describes the earliest attempts of gangs to use their street organizations as a path up and out of poverty, chronicling the period of white gang formation and eventual dissipation into city power structures. This part concludes by detailing the emergence of hundreds of Black gangs across Chicago without an obvious pathway for upward mobility. Part II, Street Organization and the War on Gangs, describes the evolution of Black gangs in the 1960s from street corner crews to powerful citywide federations known as gang “nations.” These groups, locked out of the paths of social mobility, developed new avenues for making themselves relevant and fought to bring resources, power, and voice to their own neighborhoods—increased organization that was met with fierce resistance from the state in the form of an emerging “War on Gangs.” Part III, Outlaw Capitalism, recounts how incarcerated gang leaders in the 1980s refashioned their groups into more organized entities as the advent of crack cocaine and the “greed is good” mantra of the 80s ushered in a new era during which organized gang nations orchestrated massive drug markets throughout the city. Part IV, Demolished, documents how a brutal and far-reaching “Second War on Gangs”—precipitated by rising levels of violence in the 1990s intermixed with a national panic around the crack epidemic—unfolded on two fronts. The first front, on the streets, was waged by the police, who developed new tactics limiting where gang members could walk, stand, and live. The second front was in the courts and board rooms, with a massive federal prosecution of Chicago’s largest “corporate” gangs, the demolition of high-rise housing projects, and the closing of “underperforming” schools. The Epilogue describes the current situation in which hundreds of small gangs are scattered throughout the city’s gangland, still searching for a way up and out of poverty—the violence of today, much like the violence of the past, unfolding within the walls of gangland as groups struggle to find paths for a better future.
