Murder Town, USA

Homicide, Structural Violence, and Activism in Wilmington

Author: Darryl L. Chambers, Yasser Arafat Payne and Brooklynn K. Hitchens Series: Critical Issues in Crime and Society

Describes how fifteen men and women (ages 21-48), formerly involved with the streets, studied and did activism on gun violence in Wilmington, Delaware. This team examined how race, ethnicity, gender, poverty, white-wealth and small-city size contributed to a street identity and especially the spread of gun violence.

Product Unavailable

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Description

Far too many poor Black communities struggle with gun violence and homicide. The result has been the unnatural contortion of Black families and the inter-generational perpetuation of social chaos and untimely death. Young people are repeatedly ripped away from life by violence, while many men are locked away in prisons. In neighborhoods like those of Wilmington, Delaware, residents routinely face the pressures of violence, death, and incarceration. Murder Town, USA is thus a timely ethnography with an innovative structure: the authors helped organize fifteen residents formerly involved with the streets and/or the criminal justice system to document the relationship between structural opportunity and experiences with violence in Wilmington's Eastside and Southbridge neighborhoods.

Earlier scholars offered rich cultural analysis of violence in low-income Black communities, and yet this literature has mostly conceptualized violence through frameworks of personal responsibility or individual accountability. And even if acknowledging the pressure of structural inequality, most earlier researchers describe violence as the ultimate result of some moral failing, a propensity for crime, and the notion of helplessness. Instead, in Murder Town USA, Payne, Hitchens, and Chamber, along with their collaborative team of street ethnographers, instead offer a radical re-conceptualization of violence in low-income Black communities by describing the penchant for violence and involvement in crime overall to be a logical, "resilient" response to the perverse context of structural inequality.

Critic Reviews

“" Murder Town, USA covers essential terrain for sociologists and other social scientists to more aggressively venture into such that the complexities of contemporary African-American life can be more fully unpacked. The scholarship is sound and the writing is clear."”

“Murder Town, USA covers essential terrain for sociologists and other social scientists to more aggressively venture into such that the complexities of contemporary African-American life can be more fully unpacked. The scholarship is sound and the writing is clear.”

-- Alford A. Young Jr. author of From the Edge of the Ghetto: African Americans and the World of Work
“Most debates about the urban gun violence epidemic exclude the voices of those who are most grievously impacted. By centering the experiences of street-identified residents of Wilmington, Delaware and situating them within their structural context, Murder Town, USA is required reading for anyone in search of solutions.”
-- Jamie J. Fader author of On Shifting Ground: Constructing Manhood on the Margins

About the Author

YASSER ARAFAT PAYNE is a professor of sociology in the department of sociology and criminal justice; and the department of Africana studies at the University of Delaware. Dr. Payne completed his Ph.D. in social-personality psychology and postdoctoral fellowship (National Institute of Drug Abuse) in New York City’s largest jail, Rikers Island. Dr. Payne’s street ethnographic research program draws on a methodological framework entitled: StreetParticipatory Action Research— the process of involving members of street identified populations in research and local activism. Also, Dr. Payne’s research program focuses on street culture; gun violence; policing and reentry; experiences with work and school; and Gangster Rap music and culture.

BROOKLYNN KRISTINA HITCHENS is an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland. She recently completed a Postdoc in the Department (2020-2021). She is a sociologist and critical criminologist who studies race, class and gender inequities in crime, urban violence and trauma, along with urban policing. Using participatory action research (PAR) methods, she partners with low-income Black communities to reduce racial disparities in gun violence. Her work is primarily qualitative, through the use of ethnography, interviews, and focus groups – and she also utilizes mixed methods.

DARRYL L. CHAMBERS is the executive director of the Center of Structural Equity in Wilmington, DE; and this center houses four Street PAR projects, a gun violence prevention and outreach program and other various youth programs. Mr. Chambers is also a Research Associate at the Center for Drug and Health Studies (CDHS) at the University of Delaware. His responsibilities at CDHS include the SPF-SIG project, the Safe Haven Program, the Suicide Prevention Grant, and Crime Mapping in Wilmington, DE.