Gang Loitering and Race

Abstract

The decision of the United States Supreme Court in City of Chicago v. Morales, which invalidating Chicago's gang-loitering ordinance, provides a road map for future public order laws that can address inner-city crime. This article makes the argument for public order laws as an anti-gang initiative that stops short of an approach dependent on massive incarceration, and defends such laws against an attack on grounds of racial fairness. Relying on the work of leading urban sociologists, the article argues that gang crime powerfully attracts inner city (and disproportionately minority) youth, and that any strategy for crime reduction in the inner city must therefore address its attractions. The article then argues that public order laws can disrupt patterns of drug trafficking that are the lifeblood of inner city gangs, without reliance on a regime of mass incarceration that will have far more disruptive effects on minority youth.

Keywords: gangs, inner-city crime, equal protection, policing, loitering, public order laws