Workin It

by Leon E. Pettiway

Margaret, Charlie, Virginia, Tracy, and Laquita are all drug users who are involved in regular criminal activity: prostitution, burglary, shoplifting, robbery, drug selling, petty theft, and various kinds of fraud. This title describes their lives, how they came to be where they are, and where they hope to go.

252 pages, Paperback

First published October 7, 1997

About the author

Leon E. Pettiway (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), the Venerable Lobzang Dorje, is Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has conducted research that integrates geographical and criminological theories to explain crime patterns in urban areas. In that regard, he has published articles on the impact of race and ghettoization on patterns of crime participation, the role of environmental and individual factors in arson, the relationship between an individual's drug use and criminal participation in the formation of crime partnerships, and the criminal decision-making process of addicts and nonusers in light of various environmental cues. Upon the conclusion of a major field research project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, he completed Honey, Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay, and on the Streets, a Finalist for the 9th Annual Lambda Literary Award (Temple University Press), which examined the lives of drug addicted, gay transvestites who commit a variety of crimes, and Workin' It: Women Living Through Drugs and Crime (Temple University Press) which chronicled the drug use and crime participation of a group of inner-city women. Before his retirement, his intellectual work centered on the construction of knowledge and how Eastern and Western philosophical traditions might be integrated into criminological theory and the administration of justice.

He is a fully ordained Buddhist monk, one of only a handful of African-Americans monks in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. In retirement, he focuses his attention on his spiritual practice, teaching Buddhism, and writing.

Reviews

[Karah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leon Pettiway must exude a spirit of nonjudgment for these women to open up in such a fashion. They polished nothing about themselves. Warning: anyone who disdains women using coarse language nedds to avoid this book. Each woman discussed everything with graphic and rude vernacular. They sound unschooled formally but they're cognizant of manipulative tactics.

This book needs to circulate more.

[Tsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

So wonderful. He is an amazing sociologist. Not only did his interview subjects trust him, he treated them all with the compassion, respect and dignity they deserved.