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A review by schinko94
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
3.0
This book was recommended to me by a Vox podcast, but I found it less impressive than the person who recommended it did.
One specific aspect in which the book suffers is the way in which Leovy switches between arguing for justice and creating a narrative around several (not very interesting) homicide detectives. If she wanted to create an ethnography about the LA homicide department, she should have done so in a more structurally-efficient way. If she wanted to create an argument revolving around social justice and statistics, then she could have done that without focusing on one specific case, and it still would have been compelling. I understand that she wanted to personalize the issue and also examine the "police side" of homicides in Los Angeles county, but the introduction of new cases, the explanations of department mergers, and the introduction of new detectives are ultimately not presented very well. Sure, it may have been factually accurate, but there are certainly ways that this book as a whole could have been structured much better.
Secondly, I'm not entirely sure that I understand Leovy's overall solution for the problem of black-on-black homicide, which seems to be "solve more homicide cases, and solve them right." That seems like a nice idea, but it does absolutely nothing to address the ways in which racism influences policing, nor does it address other causes of the problem (e.g. poverty, redlining, education levels, etc.). She mentions the fact that the US's law enforcement system is essentially set up to make black men self-destruct via impunity, but I think there are several other causes that could be attributed to the high homicide rate in black communities. Over-policing is one of them, specifically harassment and humiliating policing tactics as Leovy mentioned, but I don't think that more policing and follow-through is necessarily the remedy to the problem.
I seem to be in the minority opinion though. The book is fine, and the hypothesis is interesting, but I don't think that it lives up to the hype.
One specific aspect in which the book suffers is the way in which Leovy switches between arguing for justice and creating a narrative around several (not very interesting) homicide detectives. If she wanted to create an ethnography about the LA homicide department, she should have done so in a more structurally-efficient way. If she wanted to create an argument revolving around social justice and statistics, then she could have done that without focusing on one specific case, and it still would have been compelling. I understand that she wanted to personalize the issue and also examine the "police side" of homicides in Los Angeles county, but the introduction of new cases, the explanations of department mergers, and the introduction of new detectives are ultimately not presented very well. Sure, it may have been factually accurate, but there are certainly ways that this book as a whole could have been structured much better.
Secondly, I'm not entirely sure that I understand Leovy's overall solution for the problem of black-on-black homicide, which seems to be "solve more homicide cases, and solve them right." That seems like a nice idea, but it does absolutely nothing to address the ways in which racism influences policing, nor does it address other causes of the problem (e.g. poverty, redlining, education levels, etc.). She mentions the fact that the US's law enforcement system is essentially set up to make black men self-destruct via impunity, but I think there are several other causes that could be attributed to the high homicide rate in black communities. Over-policing is one of them, specifically harassment and humiliating policing tactics as Leovy mentioned, but I don't think that more policing and follow-through is necessarily the remedy to the problem.
I seem to be in the minority opinion though. The book is fine, and the hypothesis is interesting, but I don't think that it lives up to the hype.