In December of 2017, Danielle Allen sat down with PBS Newshour correspondent Jeffrey Brown to discuss her book, CUZ: The Life and Times of Michael A.

“You have this terrible situation, young kids are kinda caught between a fight, between these very powerful gang organizations on the one hand and a very powerful state on the other. And the state is fighting the criminal gangs of course, but the nature of the fight is so violent and so. brutal that young people get caught up in it and the course of their life is set on a very dangerous path. I think of it as a degree of difficulty question…. We have to consider the degree of difficulty that pertains to the choice set given to particular young people. And young men, ages 10-14, in the middle of a city, man the choice set that we as a society have created for them is just horrible.” Dr. Danielle Allen