A fair shake
Grief, murder, and the contradictions of juvenile crime
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2260256 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L Ralph (0009-0002-9427-4768, Department of Anthropology Princeton University Princeton New Jersey USA) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 127 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 140-148 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Anthropologist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/aman.28046 |
| OpenAlex | W4407377415 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
This article is an intimate encounter with grief that aims to transform my own field of scholarly study into painful lived experience. The central question of my essay is: When a life is extinguished by street violence, how does a victim's family heal from homicide? The major argument of this article centers around accountability. Drawing from the literature in child psychology as well as the sociology and anthropology of urban violence, I argue that, as a society, our idea of accountability is incomplete. In humanizing both victims and perpetrators of violence, I seek to expand the conception of gang lives by urging my readers to fight against the tendency to reject complexity and gravitate toward purity. As I would come to learn when a teenage family member of mine was murdered, transforming the criminal justice system necessitates that we grapple with contradictory emotions-such as compassion and rage. This is perhaps the greatest and most overlooked aspect of the transformative justice debate today
Biology · Criminology · Grief · Juvenile · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Shake · Sociology · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Engineering · History · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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