Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America

by Jill Leovy

Scholars have made similar findings elsewhere. Despite their relative poverty, recent immigrants tend to have lower homicide rates than resident Hispanics and their descendants born in the United States. This is because homicide flares among people who are trapped and economically interdependent, not among people who are highly mobile.

Prison was safer than freedom for young black men in California, who were much more likely to be murdered outside than in. Some gang members even described incarceration as a reprieve—a temporary break from the terror of the streets, like a soldier’s leave from battle.