“A fair shake: Grief, murder, and the contradictions of juvenile crime” by Professor of Anthropology and Public Affairs Laurence Ralph

American Anthropologist, Volume 127, Issue 1, March 2025, 140-148

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.

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