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Detroit and the political origins of ‘broken windows’ policing
Abstract
The authors argue that ‘broken windows’ policing strategies, promoted officially as a means of reducing crime, though criticised by liberals for the potentially discriminatory impact on non-whites, should rather be viewed as an integral component of the state’s attempts to coercively manage the contradictions of capitalism. Taking issue with Wacquant, they stress the need to situate policing strategies in terms of the resistances waged by racialised surplus populations. Examining Detroit, they provide a history, spanning the years between the Great Depression and the aftermath of the Great Rebellion in 1967, which was, at the time, the largest civil uprising in US history, to contextualise the introduction of stop-and-frisk in the mid-1960s. This policy, they argue, was predominantly part of an attempt to contain and repress the political threat emerging from the active and reserve sections of the black working class. They go on to analyse the ‘broken windows’ strategies in contemporary Detroit so as to situate them in relationship to other processes in the now bankrupt Motor City, such as home foreclosures, water shutoffs, and investment and gentrification in the greater downtown area.
... 43 Female participants in || 41 Kelling andWilson 1982. 42 Ferrell, Hayward andYoung, 2008;Thompson 2015;Jay andConklin 2017. 43 Araya López 2020, 188. ...
... We contextualize broken windows-style policing as emergent from the historical trajectory described above. Notable uses of military force against Black populations in the United States include the FBI's infamous series of projects under its COINTELPRO (short for counterintelligence program) to surveil and disrupt the Black liberation movement from the 1950s to the 1970s (Bin Wahad 2007); the deployment of the Michigan Army National Guard-armed with machine guns and tanks-to violently quell the Detroit race riots in 1967 (Jay and Conklin 2017); and the more recent use of military tanks and rubber bullets against Black protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 (Boyles 2019). Self-described political prisoner Dhoruba Al Mujahid Bin Wahad contextualizes these types of events as program[s] of war waged by a government against a people, against its own citizens. ...
... Although individual action can help residents feel more secure, promoting defensible space through greening individualizes crime and makes design, rather than meaningful changes to people's social and economic circumstances, the answer to reducing crime. This is a common critique of the defensible space, broken windows policing, and the Crime Prevention through Environmental Design literature (e.g.Herbert & Brown, 2006;Jay & Conklin, 2017). It brings up the larger question: to what end should a city pursue urban greening? ...
This dissertation contributes to the literatures on post-2007 urban governance and urban greening by drawing novel connections between vacant land reuse, including urban agriculture, and the structures of urban governance. Through a historical analysis of housing vacancy, an institutional analysis of Cleveland’s community development industry’s response to the 2008 foreclosure crisis, and a case study of a vacant land reuse project, I argue that Cleveland’s community development industry shifted towards vacant land reuse and intervention to stabilize property values in response to the foreclosure crisis. This shift reveals a temporary resolution of the failure of subsidized housing construction following the crisis, but does not represent a significant departure from neoliberal community development. While the City has been effective in fostering certain forms of reuse, the heavy involvement of the community development industry and community foundations, combined with a local government facing fiscal pressure, has resulted in a constrained political field of opportunity for vacant land reuse. By devolving the labor of lot maintenance onto residents and continuing to prioritize traditional economic development, many of the possibilities for using vacant land reuse for social and environmental justice have been limited. However, I also show that the incorporation of vacant land reuse within the community development industry in Cleveland was the outcome of a process of weak contestation, negotiation, and path dependency, not a simple imposition of neoliberal ideology. Additionally, my findings concerning reuse projects on the ground reveals the shortcomings of relying on under-resourced resident labor and shows cracks in the hegemony of private property and market logics in high-abandonment neighborhoods. My findings point to the importance of studying how greening projects are interacting with preexisting structures of urban governance. It suggests that the commodification of land and market-based community development places limits on vacant land reuse that directly benefits residents and works towards environmental and food justice.
... Most notably, broken windows policing, which advocates a zero tolerance approach to minor infractions as a means to maintain social order, has criminalised socially annoying, benign conduct like loitering and crimes of poverty like unauthorised street vending. 24 As 'the political expression of neoliberalism at the urban scale', broken windows policing 'has regulated space appropriate for capital, targeting the poor, people of color, queers, trans and gender-nonconforming people, immigrants, the homeless, and youth when their existence is not conducive to the accumulation process,' 25 Jordan Camp and Christina Heatherton argue. These policing strategies not only terrorise entire communities, but they also create the contact with law enforcement that can ultimately lead to an immigrant's deportation. ...
This article focuses on the histories, current challenges, and future directions of the sanctuary movement in the United States, which is becoming a central front of resistance to the administration of Donald Trump. The article is comprised of three main components. It discusses the history of the US sanctuary movement and situates it in the context of the rise of neoliberalism and its attendant escalating criminalisation, particularly since the 1980s, when the first iteration of the movement began. The article then discusses the limits of sanctuary, rooted in the movement’s liberal framework that risks reproducing the exclusions it has sought to dismantle. It nevertheless argues for the importance of sanctuary in opposing the Trump regime, while advocating that the movement adopt a more radical framework and solidarity-organising strategies inspired by the prison abolition movement.
After several decades of Whites fleeing large metropolitan areas, they are now increasingly gentrifying urban neighborhoods and communities. This analysis uses data from the 2000 decennial census and the 2012 and 2017 American Community Survey to assess the growing presence of Whites in U.S. cities. The analysis examines the extent to which Whites have experienced an increase in their percentage share of the populations of 212 majority non-White communities with 50,000 or more inhabitants over two time periods (2000 to 2008–2012 and 2008–2012 to 2013–2017). The results show that 39 communities have experienced an expanding relative presence of Whites in one or both periods. Whites generally are growing at a faster pace than Blacks and Latinos in these communities and there are large socioeconomic gaps favoring Whites. The article concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the findings.
Proactive policing has been a preferred approach among American law enforcement agencies for decades. While most of the systematic studies done in this area focus on the effect of proactive policing programs, limited research has analyzed factors that cause police departments to adopt a particular style of proactive policing. Using propositions primarily derived from social disorganization and broken windows theories and path analysis, this study examines the characteristics and associates of everyday activities of the Differential Response Team (DRT)—a proactive policing team—in Houston, Texas. Our findings suggest that DRT activities are driven mostly by neighborhood characteristics and the occurrence of reported serious crimes. The most significant predictor of DRT activities is violent crime rate of a neighborhood.
During the 1960s, the Ford Foundation was one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the United States. This article examines the shifting strategies which Ford deployed in an attempt to tackle urban disorder in U.S. cities between 1965 and 1982. From 1966 to 1969, Ford engaged in a series of experimental projects which sought to dampen unrest through “community action” and grassroots mobilization, many of which required working with Black Power organizations. Yet, after this generated considerable political controversy, the foundation shifted toward funding liberal police reform, establishing the Police Foundation in 1970, a Washington-based organization whose research provided the intellectual underpinning for “Broken Windows” policing. Studying the Ford Foundation’s programming during this period can illuminate the understudied contribution of liberal philanthropy to the rise of the carceral state, as well as the connections between the grassroots antipoverty efforts of the 1960s and the punitive turn of the 1970s.
The size, scope, and implications of the carceral state, particularly for urban communities of colour, are currently grossly underestimated. This article suggests the need to move beyond the traditional debate about mass incarceration in the US to show how the ubiquitous imposition of fines and fees for low-level offences has wide-reaching poverty-enhancing and racially disparate effects. The author argues that local government institutions such as the police and courts, which comprise the carceral state at neighbourhood level, engage in daily practices that reflect the colourblind racism of neoliberalism, including revenue-generation, which necessarily produce and reinforce race and class inequalities. The American state has always managed and controlled black labour; the author compares the imposition of fines and fees in the wake of black Emancipation and Jim Crowism to the current practice of fines and fees functioning within the paradigm of neoliberal colourblind racism.
This study sought to investigate the rates and correlates of homelessness, especially mental illness, among adult jail inmates.
Data from a national survey of jail inmates (N=6,953) were used to compare the proportion of jail inmates who had been homeless in the previous year with the proportion of persons in the general population who had been homeless in the previous year, after standardization to the age, race and ethnicity, and gender distribution of the jail sample. Logistic regression was then used to examine the extent to which homelessness among jail inmates was associated with factors such as symptoms or treatment of mental illness, previous criminal justice involvement, specific recent crimes, and demographic characteristics.
Inmates who had been homeless (that is, those who reported an episode of homelessness anytime in the year before incarceration) made up 15.3% of the U.S. jail population, or 7.5 to 11.3 times the standardized estimate of 1.36% to 2.03% in the general U.S. adult population. In comparison with other inmates, those who had been homeless were more likely to be currently incarcerated for a property crime, but they were also more likely to have past criminal justice system involvement for both nonviolent and violent offenses, to have mental health and substance abuse problems, to be less educated, and to be unemployed.
Recent homelessness was 7.5 to 11.3 times more common among jail inmates than in the general population. Homelessness and incarceration appear to increase the risk of each other, and these factors seem to be mediated by mental illness and substance abuse, as well as by disadvantageous sociodemographic characteristics.
The United States currently has the largest prison population on the planet. Over the last four decades, structural unemployment, concentrated urban poverty, and mass homelessness have also become permanent features of the political economy. These developments are without historical precedent, but not without historical explanation. This book traces the rise of the neoliberal carceral state through a series of turning points in US history including the Watts insurrection in 1965, the Detroit rebellion in 1967, the Attica uprising in 1971, the Los Angeles revolt in 1992, and events in post-Katrina New Orleans in 2005. The book argues that these dramatic events coincided with the emergence of neoliberal capitalism and the state's attempts to crush radical social movements. Through an examination of the poetic visions of social movements—including those by James Baldwin, Marvin Gaye, June Jordan, José Ramírez, and Sunni Patterson—it also suggests that alternative outcomes have been and continue to be possible.
Objective: This study sought to investigate the rates and correlates of homelessness, especially mental illness, among adult jail inmates. Methods: Data from a national survey of jail inmates (N=6,953) were used to compare the proportion of jail inmates who had been homeless in the previous year with the proportion of persons in the general population who had been homeless in the previous year, after standardization to the age, race and ethnicity, and gender distribution of the jail sample. Logistic regression was then used to examine the extent to which homelessness among jail inmates was associated with factors such as symptoms or treatment of mental illness, previous criminal justice involvement, specific recent crimes, and demographic characteristics. Results: Inmates who had been homeless (that is, those who reported an episode of homelessness anytime in the year before incarceration) made up 15.3% of the U.S. jail population, or 7.5 to 11.3 times the standardized estimate of 1.36% to 2.03% in the general U.S. adult population. In comparison with other inmates, those who had been homeless were more likely to be currently incarcerated for a property crime, but they were also more likely to have past criminal justice system involvement for both nonviolent and violent offenses, to have mental health and substance abuse problems, to be less educated, and to be unemployed. Conclusions: Recent homelessness was 7.5 to 11.3 times more common among jail inmates than in the general population. Homelessness and incarceration appear to increase the risk of each other, and these factors seem to be mediated by mental illness and substance abuse, as well as by disadvantageous sociodemographic characteristics.
America's urbanites have engaged in many tumultuous struggles for civil and worker rights since the Second World War. In Whose Detroit?, Heather Ann Thompson focuses in detail on the struggles of Motor City residents during the 1960s and early 1970s and finds that conflict continued to plague the inner city and its workplaces even after Great Society liberals committed themselves to improving conditions. Using the contested urban center of Detroit as a model, Thompson assesses the role of such upheaval in shaping the future of America's cities. She argues that the glaring persistence of injustice and inequality led directly to explosions of unrest in this period. Thompson finds that unrest as dramatic as that witnessed during Detroit's infamous riot of 1967 by no means doomed the inner city, nor in any way sealed its fate. The politics of liberalism continued to serve as a catalyst for both polarization and radical new possibilities and Detroit remained a contested, and thus politically vibrant, urban center. Thompson's account of the post-World War II fate of Detroit casts new light on contemporary urban issues, including white flight, police brutality, civic and shop floor rebellion, labor decline, and the dramatic reshaping of the American political order. Throughout, the author tells the stories of real events and individuals, including James Johnson, Jr., who, after years of suffering racial discrimination in Detroit's auto industry, went on trial in 1971 for the shooting deaths of two foremen and another worker at a Chrysler plant. Bringing the labor movement into the context of the literature of Sixties radicalism, Whose Detroit? integrates the history of the 1960s into the broader political history of the postwar period. Urban, labor, political, and African-American history are blended into Thompson's comprehensive portrayal of Detroit's reaction to pressures felt throughout the nation. With deft attention to the historical background and preoccupations of Detroit's residents, Thompson has written a biography of an entire city at a time of crisis. © 2001 by Heather Ann Thompson. 2017 by Heather Ann Thompson. All rights reserved.
The fact that we are devoting an entire double issue of Monthly Review to one man's assessment of our present national condition does not mean that we agree with everything James Boggs has to say, any more than publication of his work in MR means that Mr. Boggs shares all the views of the editors. Our reason for publishing these pages is that we think Mr. Boggs has things to say that all Americans, and especially Americans of the Left, ought to listen to. He knows the American labor movement from the inside, and he knows the mood of working-class Negroes because he is one. When he speaks of the American Revolution, he is not using a figure of speech. He means it quite literally. In fact he thinks that the American Revolution has already begun. He also thinks that it will be a protracted, painful, violent process in which not only will Negroes clash with whites but Negroes will clash with Negroes and whites with whites. And there is no end in sight and will not be until Americans finally come to realize that their responsibility is nothing less than the building of a classless society capable of making use of the prodigious powers of modern technology for genuinely human ends. They will not come to this realization and assume this responsibility except to the extent that they purge themselves of the accumulated corruption not of years or decades but of centuries, and this can be achieved only through struggle, suffering, and sacrifice. To this, we can only say amen. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
This exciting new study provides an original and provocative expos of the crisis of global capitalism in its multiple dimensions - economic, political, social, ecological, military, and cultural. Building on his earlier works on globalization, William I. Robinson discusses the nature of the new global capitalism, the rise of a globalized production and financial system, a transnational capitalist class, and a transnational state and warns of the rise of a global police state to contain the explosive contradictions of a global capitalist system that is crisis-ridden and out of control. Robinson concludes with an exploration of how diverse social and political forces are responding to the crisis and alternative scenarios for the future.
Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II. This Princeton Classics edition includes a new preface by Sugrue, discussing the lasting impact of the postwar transformation on urban America and the chronic issues leading to Detroit's bankruptcy. © 1996, 2005 by Princeton University Press. All rights reserved.
As a rule, crime and social protest rise in periods of economic crisis in capitalist society. During times of economic and social instability, the well-to-do become increasingly fearful of the general population, more disposed to adopt harsh measures to safeguard their positions at the apex of the social pyramid. The slowdown in the economic growth rate of U.S. capitalism beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s—converging with the emergence of radical social protest around the same period—was accompanied by a rapid rise in public safety spending as a share of civilian government expenditures. So significant was this shift that we can speak of a crowding out of welfare state spending (health, education, social services) by penal state spending (law enforcement, courts, and prisons) in the United States during the last third of a century. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.
Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
Testimonio del activista político afroamericano James Boggs (1919), quien da cuenta de su participación en movimientos antirracistas y obreros en Estados Unidos y en la organización política de izquierda Correspondence Publishing Committee (1951-1962), desaparecida un año antes de la primera publicación de este trabajo y a la que también pertenecía su pareja, la feminista y socialista chino-americana Grace Lee Boggs (1915). Tras la disolución de dicha organización, el autor continuó en su trabajo en la empresa automotriz Chrysler (1940-1968) y desempeñó un papel muy influyente en las alas radicales de los movimientos por los derechos civiles en Estados Unidos.
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