NCJ Number
191713
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 91 Issue: 1 Dated: Fall 2000 Pages: 99-160
Date Published
2000
Length
62 pages
Annotation
This analysis of anti-loitering laws argues in favor of public order laws such as anti-loitering laws as preferable to conventional law enforcement in addressing the issue of criminal street gangs.
Abstract
The debate over public order laws has focused mainly on order maintenance as a policing strategy. However, it is more useful to focus on the dimensions of the problem that gang-related crime poses for the inner city. The analysis argues that the emergence of criminal street gangs is the natural consequence of the emergence of an entrenched urban underclass. It also argues that gang crime in an underclass community has a predictable pattern and results in an unstable and demoralized community in which drug trafficking is regarded as one of the few economic opportunities available. Curbing rampant gang criminality in underclass neighborhoods is essential to the ability of other social and economic policies to change underclass communities; it is naïve to think that it is possible to solve the problems of the minority underclass without suppressing gang crime. An anti-loitering strategy is a means of addressing conditions conducive to the success of street gangs without relying on mass incarceration strategies that impose enormously disproportionate burdens on minorities. The use of public order laws is preferable to conventional law enforcement strategies when considered from the standpoint of racial fairness, because these laws allow relatively moderate police tactics to address conditions that facilitate the success of inner-city gangs. These laws are also less susceptible to police abuse than are the tactics they replace. The analysis concludes that public order laws can serve the twin goals of promoting racial fairness and revitalizing the inner city. Footnotes