Greenhouse, Linda. "Before High Court, Chicago Defends Approach to Gangs." New York Times. Dec. 10, 1998.
Greenhouse's article covers the argument of the lawyers for the city of Chicago who argued before the Supreme Court that the city's efforts to stop gang violence and crime through pre-emptive means were constitutional. Specifically, the lawyers "defended an anti-loitering law that permits arrests not only of suspected gang members but of anyone else who, standing with 'no apparent purpose' on a public street near a gang member, defies a police order to move on" (Greenhouse 1). The basic argument against the law is that it is vague in naming the conduct which specifically allows an order from the police to "move on". The article is useful in explaining the current status of the law, but the law itself will not do much to prevent gang violence.
Whether the law is ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court or not, it is at least an effort by a major city to deal with the gathering of gang members and to put a damper on gang activities which include violence.
However, Martin Sanchez Jankowski and Sanyika Shakur present arguments which show that the Chicago law examined by Greenhouse and debated by legal authorities is at best a band-aid for a much bigger problem.
Jankowski writes that there are at least two major theories having to do with the violence of gang activity. The first theory argues that violent activity is brought on by drugs. The second theory is that violence by gang members is the result of the feeling among them that they have been "deprived, either by the broader society or by their own community, of the status that is their due and that their use of violence is an effort to establish a reputation that, they hope, will translate into high social status" (Jankowski 139).
It is clear that an anti-loitering law, however constitutional, does not address the central problems pointed out by either theory....