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Soros Justice Fellowships

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Grantees
Susan Phillips
2008

Scholar

Susan Phillips will complete Operation Fly Trap: Gangs, Drugs and the Law, a book that tells the story of an FBI-led task force that attempted to dismantle a drug distribution network in two African American neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Seeking to recast the gang/drug link as an issue of community social justice rather than strictly criminal justice, Phillips recounts the significant damage sustained by the families of those targeted, particularly women and children in poverty. The book demonstrates that the sweep had no effect on overall levels of violence, drug use, or drug sales in the two neighborhoods.

Phillips has studied Los Angeles gangs since 1990. She received a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from UCLA in 1998, where she served as a lecturer for four years. She received a Getty Research Institute Fellowship in 1996 to complete her first book, Wallbangin: Graffiti and Gangs in L.A. Most of Phillips’s work has focused on gang cultural expression and the broader relationship between gangs and the larger society. Her current work was originally funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Phillips teaches environmental and urban studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA.

Los Angeles, CA  | 

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