Criminal Justice -- Code of the Street -- Participant Observation
What is the Code of the Street?
Informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior including violence
Respect is at the heart of the Code
Respect is hard won but easily lost
Respect means being "treated right" by others
Respect is determined by the individual's demeanor and behavior
Achieving respect and "juice" is a form of protection against being challenged
Maintaining respect and juice requires responding to challenges at many levels
Projecting confidence and the apparent capacity and inclination to respond aggressively or violently if necessary to avoid loss of respect
The Code of the street applies to both males and females but emphasizes very different characteristics based on gender
By the Code, males are expected to guard their respect and respond aggressively to any challenge
By the Code, females are respected based on their attractiveness than aggressiveness
The Code of the street is more important to the male role in society than to the female role
What Produced the Code of the Street?
Produced by a profound sense of alienation from mainstream society and its institutions
Experienced more by poor inner-city minorities, especially among the young
Constitutes a form of cultural adaptation to a complete lack of rust in social control systems of society such as the police and the criminal justice system.
Even promoted in some families that are ambivalent about street codes out of the necessity of protection from and avoidance of street violence associated with ignorance of the Code.
Why is there a Code of the Street?
Street codes provide some of the same functions in poor communities that formal institutions provide within mainstream society
Street codes impose predictability and more structured consequences of certain behaviors in the absence of formal social institutions or formal enforcement mechanisms within poor and disenfranchised urban communities
Street codes also establish alternate goals for social approval and goals defining types of externalized success that is reachable by individuals without the adequate resources to achieve mainstream success and societal approval.
