He's a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, not some slack-jawed rube. Also, the point of the article is that success as gang rappers makes these b

He's a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, not some slack-jawed rube. Also, the point of the article is that success as gang rappers makes these boys targets for other gangs and their lives and options become limited, not that they're a danger to anyone outside of the gang territories. Chicago is a complicated city - the safe parts are among the safest of any American city, and the unsafe parts are so dangerous that it drags the citywide numbers down. See http://www.urbanophile.com/2013/08/12/the-growing-public-safety-inequality-gap-in-chicago-by-daniel-hertz/ http://www.urbanophile.com/2013/08/12/the-growing-public-saf... "Over the last twenty years, at the same time as overall crime has declined, the inequality of violence in Chicago has skyrocketed ... There have always been safer and more dangerous areas here, as there are everywhere; but the gap between them is way, way bigger now than it used to be ... In the early 90s, the most dangerous third of the city had about six times as many murders as the safest third. By the late 2000s, the most dangerous part of the city had nearly fifteen times more homicides than the safest third."