The Dark Ghetto revisited: Kenneth B Clark’s classic analysis as cutting edge criminology
| Author | Randolph R Myers,Tim Goddard,Elliott Currie |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480614553524 |
| Published date | 01 February 2015 |
| Date | 01 February 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Theoretical Criminology
2015, Vol. 19(1) 5 –22
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480614553524
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The Dark Ghetto revisited:
Kenneth B Clark’s classic
analysis as cutting edge
criminology
Elliott Currie
University of California, Irvine, USA
Tim Goddard
Florida International University, USA
Randolph R Myers
Old Dominion University, USA
Abstract
In this article we revisit one of the classic works of the 1960s on crime and delinquency
in poor communities: Kenneth B Clark’s Dark Ghetto. Our exploration reveals its
insights to be extremely relevant today both in understanding the roots of the self-
destructive violence that tears at those communities and in thinking about how to
combat the structural conditions and individual mentalities that generate it. Beyond the
specific theoretical and methodological lessons that can be gleaned from Dark Ghetto,
Clark’s work serves as a much-needed illustration of how theoretical insights derived
from intensive qualitative research that is attuned to political, historical, and economic
realities—and their human consequences—can enhance criminological theory, and align
with progressive movements for social change.
Keywords
Community action and delinquency, community-based organizations, institutionalized
pathology, Kenneth B Clark, violence reduction
Corresponding author:
Elliott Currie, Department of Criminology, Law & Society, University of California, Irvine, 2301 Social
Ecology II Irvine, California 92697, USA.
Email: ecurrie@uci.edu
553524TCR0010.1177/1362480614553524Theoretical CriminologyCurrie et al.
research-article2014
Article
6 Theoretical Criminology 19(1)
Introduction
The United States’ four-decades-long experiment with criminal justice intervention as
poverty policy has altered poor communities in ways, and by degrees, that we are only
beginning to understand in any systematic way: as with slavery and Jim Crow segrega-
tion, the aftershocks of this experiment will reverberate for decades. And yet a cycle of
violence continues in the same neighborhoods most heavily subjected to this punitive
approach. While there may be some short-term “effects” from our massive investment in
incarceration, the best evidence suggests that it has deepened the roots of violence and
injustice by making poor communities poorer and an unequal society even more so. In
this way, any apparent achievements brought on by punitive policies are paid for by
externalities that work against long-term prospects for both public safety and social
justice.
While structural conditions remain at the center of many of our theories of crime, too
many criminologists appear reticent to confront, in their policy recommendations, crimi-
nogenic structural conditions that reinforce the unequal distribution of power, resources,
and opportunities in US society. It seems that much criminological scholarship today
understands these conditions, but either ignores them for a host of methodological (or
sometimes ideological) reasons or glosses over them, on the grounds that “we already
know this” or “there’s nothing we can do about them”. Other theoretically innovative
work that takes the structural roots of crime seriously sees the state of affairs as too dire
to do much at all—opting, in the face of worsening social, economic and environmental
instabilities, for resignation over public engagement.
The current situation cries out for criminological theory that foregrounds structural
considerations and puts forward enduring solutions that maximize both justice and the
safety of communities. In building that kind of theory, we think it is important to revisit
some of the more penetrating efforts by past theorists, some well-known and some less
known in our field, and hold them up to new scrutiny in the service of the larger task of
building a theoretically strong and innovative criminology. As a start, in this article we
revisit Kenneth Clark’s 1965 book Dark Ghetto because it explicitly and pointedly
explores the relationship between structural conditions and crime, while illustrating in
vivid detail how social action and civic engagement might alleviate both violence and
injustice.
We hope to show that Clark was, and is, an important theorist for a progressive crimi-
nology, whose ideas are extremely relevant today in understanding the roots of the self-
destructive violence that tears at economically devastated neighborhoods. Dark Ghetto
describes in detail the system of mutually reinforcing social relations that form the core
of crime-ridden neighborhoods—constructing a holistic framework that is all too rare in
today’s criminology. Clark’s work not only focuses on the criminogenic consequences of
racialized inequality at the community level, but also sketches out some key ideas on
how community residents might be mobilized to challenge it—and in the process, spark
both personal and community transformation. For these reasons, we think that revisiting
this classic work will be valuable to those hoping to craft a more robust, less destructive
crime policy: one that builds on the considerable evidence base of modern criminology,
while still foregrounding, as does Clark, matters of power, privilege, and social justice.
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