John M. Hagedorn, The Insane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia

Authors

Thomas Barker, Eastern Kentucky University

Abstract

"In The Insane Chicago Way, Professor Hagedorn opines that the super street gangs in Chicago have fundamentally changed since the 1990s. He provides an “institutionalized history” of the rise and fall of the Spanish Growth and Development (SGD) alliance to document the fundamental changes in Chicago. He rightly concludes that the SGD is “almost completely unknown to the public, the police, the professors and even most gang members” (p. 1). This powerful SGD case study is supported by the author’s long history of gang study and his interviews with gang leaders and street gang members, and with organized crime—Chicago Outfit (Italian Mafia) leaders. His interviews with a retired Outfit leader show the ties between street gangs and organized crime—overlooked by gang researchers who see street gang as “disorganized” crime."

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Barker, Thomas (2016) "John M. Hagedorn, The Insane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia," Qualitative Criminology (QC): Vol. 4: No. 1, Article 6.
Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/qc/vol4/iss1/6