ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the actual workings of the ghetto economy that contribute to a public image that so powerfully fuels stereotypes and prejudice about the present-day black ghetto. Everyday life in the inner-city ghetto is characterized by a great number of interpersonal transactions. But these transactions are carried on largely without the benefit of civil law. The civil law in the community has eroded as the police, the justice system, and the municipal authorities have lost credibility-not to mention that the poor tend not to sue others. In the inner-city ghetto community, money earned is quickly spent, and many people walk the streets almost broke. The life course of the young black male in the inner city is shaped by the concentration of poverty in an isolated, segregated community.
