The Code of the Street and African-American Adolescent Violence
In the article “The Code of the Street and African-American Adolescent Violence,” Erik A. Stewart opposes the research that Elijah Anderson has done. Anderson explains high rates of violence among African-American adolescents. Observing life in a Philadelphia African-American neighborhood, Anderson saw that economic disadvantage; Stewart begins by using the example of Anderson’s research on urban communities. The discussion on how Elijah Anderson conducted research on the living in poor and violent environment can cause young people to adopt the code of the street as a life style guide. With a synopsis made by Elijah Anderson which informed people of the reasons why the result of the observations were true. The reasoning was that urban communities lack either education or came from ‘broken homes.
This Research in Brief presents research exploring Anderson’s thesis; researchers conducted repeated interviews with more than 800 African-American adolescents (ages 10 to 15) and their primary caregivers in Georgia and Iowa over a two-year period. The researchers looked for developmental relationships between neighborhood and family characteristics, reported experiences with racial discrimination, expressed street code values and self-reported violent behavior in young people. With that part you can conduct the OJJDP of 1974 to help the adolescents. Which relates to the “synopsis of the street code,” the author stated that “muggings, burglaries, and drug-related shootings, all of which may leave their victims or innocent bystanders dead, are now common enough to concern all urban and many suburban residents. The inclination to violence springs from the circumstances of life among the ghetto poor, the lack of jobs that pay a living wage, the stigma of race, the fallout from rampant drug use and drug trafficking, and the resulting alienation and lack of hope for the future” (Anderson, p1). Anderson’s theory presents a bridge between the environmental and cultural factors
This Research in Brief presents research exploring Anderson’s thesis; researchers conducted repeated interviews with more than 800 African-American adolescents (ages 10 to 15) and their primary caregivers in Georgia and Iowa over a two-year period. The researchers looked for developmental relationships between neighborhood and family characteristics, reported experiences with racial discrimination, expressed street code values and self-reported violent behavior in young people. With that part you can conduct the OJJDP of 1974 to help the adolescents. Which relates to the “synopsis of the street code,” the author stated that “muggings, burglaries, and drug-related shootings, all of which may leave their victims or innocent bystanders dead, are now common enough to concern all urban and many suburban residents. The inclination to violence springs from the circumstances of life among the ghetto poor, the lack of jobs that pay a living wage, the stigma of race, the fallout from rampant drug use and drug trafficking, and the resulting alienation and lack of hope for the future” (Anderson, p1). Anderson’s theory presents a bridge between the environmental and cultural factors
Bibliography: Latessa,Allen.Ponder (2010) Corrections In America 12th edition, , prentice hall Inc Stewart, E.A., Simmons, R.L. (2009) The Code of the Street and African-American Adolescent Violence. Washington: U.S. Department of Justice