South Central, More than Crime

The South Side of Los Angeles

When many think of the city of Los Angeles, they automatically discuss the “downtown region” which can identified with the convention center, crypto.com arena, and skyscrapers that have become iconic for film and media.

Many times people fail to discuss the other regions of Los Angeles, these being the south and north regions, and if they are discussed they are only done in relation to high crime rates and poverty communities.

While it is true that crime and poverty are present factors within South Los Angeles, using these as the only words to describe the culture is incredibly harmful to the people who live there and the overall representation of the region. So this story will discuss what South Los Angeles has to offer and what crime does to the region.

One of the most important things that must be established is the name of South Los Angeles, or as many residents, myself included call it “South Central”. Growing up this term was the common name of the place in which we lived, with many local gangs identifying it as their stomping grounds, but also many finding comfort in this name, as a place of authenticity and struggles of Los Angeles. I will name it throughout the map because it is both familiar to me and used throughout numerous scholarly discussions.  

Interestingly South Central while seen as an outlier by many, connects directly to the commonly named “Downtown LA”, as the # 81 LA Metro bus line will take passengers right to the convention center, many seeing this as an attempt to forward this notion of the Downtown area holding the most importance.

This map displays the abundance of bus lines throughout South Central, called the LA Metro which spreads throughout all of Los Angeles, allowing for many residents to access parks and places of recreation by a single bus ride.

Unfortunately South Central has become one of the hotbeds for crime and police management. Which has led to massive detrimental effects on its reputation and media portrayal, along with housing changes.

As mentioned earlier, the region of South Central has become synonymous with crime and police antics, as the LA times has been one of the biggest documentators, and in some cases publishers of the crime ridden aspects.

This can be seen most notably through the maps published by the LA Times, which in once instance documented the homicides near South Central Schools (Alicea 475). Such a display automatically portrays children being in direct danger of violent crimes, making South Central appear to be a war zone essentially. 

Such crime reports and violent acts also affect the possibilities of new residents within South Central. As media portrayal and police disturbances have become popularized, many homeowners have spent years fixing and making their homes more appealing to potential buyers, only for violent crime to significantly decrease property values (Bogess 301). This is only worsened by the media's portrayal of South Central as incredibly dangerous and unpredictable.

While the media and many scholars believe South Central LA to be nothing more than a subset of the larger Los Angeles region, in reality, it serves as a representation of the authentic aspects of Los Angeles. This can be seen through the great diversity of food and businesses, which allow residents to experience some level of different cultures, allowing them to become comfortable with outside cultures.

Crime and poverty is definitely an aspect of South Central, but if we use it as the main factor of definition, we build a stagnant image of many communities and people's daily lives, which is wrong.

Lyndsay N. Boggess lboggess@usf.edu, Robert T. Greenbaum & George E. Tita (2013) Does crime drive housing sales? Evidence from Los Angeles, Journal of Crime and Justice, 36:3, 299-318, DOI:  10.1080/0735648X.2013.812976 

Alicea, J. A. (2022). Teaching in the Hood, About the Hood: A Case Study of Teachers in South Central Los Angeles. Urban Education, 57(3), 463-493.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085921995235