LIFE SENTENCE

A gripping and revealing glimpse into Baltimore gang life and the city’s efforts to combat street violence.

With exclusive access to police interview footage, FBI files, and court documents, Bowden focuses his investigative lens on the case of Trained To Go, a Baltimore gang operating in the destitute Sandtown neighborhood, led by Montana “Tana” Barronette, who—at the age of 21—received two life sentences for his involvement in at least 20 killings. The author takes a deep dive into Tana’s life story in an attempt to determine the circumstances that led such a “goofy, genial, smart, poised, ambitious” young man down the “greased path” of violent crime. Working with the U.S. attorney office’s materials and his own extensive interviews with detectives, community members, witnesses, informants, and researchers, Bowden develops a fascinating crime narrative featuring a cast of complex, charismatic characters. As products of their environment, the young members of TTG exhibit a reckless, devastating nihilism, resigned to violent deaths and openly flaunting the spoils of their criminal enterprise as long as they are able. “While morally null, Tana was not mentally ill,” writes the author. “He and the rest of his crew were normal teenagers in an aberrant environment, an extreme product of a violent, oppositional subculture, not just trained to go but bred to go, or kill.” Making a case for the near inevitability of Tana’s fate without denying or minimizing his brutal actions, Bowden presents a damning indictment of the city’s treatment of its most precarious constituents. “Gang violence and white indifference are two sides of the same coin,” he writes, arguing for massive investment in “better schools, better local policing, more counseling and community involvement, stronger gun laws, more employment opportunities…[and] specialized, strategic law enforcement” as critical steps toward ending this self-perpetuating pattern of poverty and violence.

A powerful, nuanced depiction of gang violence in America that makes a strong case for meaningful reform beyond policing.