The Unequal City: the Mass Criminalization of the Urban Poor
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 12-2018 The unequal city: the mass criminalization of the urban poor. Elizabeth Michele Jones University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Geography Commons, Political Science Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Jones, Elizabeth Michele, "The unequal city: the mass criminalization of the urban poor." (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3077. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/3077 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE UNEQUAL CITY: THE MASS CRIMINALIZATION OF THE URBAN POOR By Elizabeth Michele Jones B.A., University of Louisville, 2004 M.A., University of Louisville, 2006 J.D., Georgetown Law Center, 2009 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban and Public Affairs Department of Urban and Public Affairs University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky December 2018 Copyright 2018 by Elizabeth Michele Jones All rights reserved THE UNEQUAL CITY: THE MASS CRIMINALIZATION OF THE URBAN POOR By Elizabeth Michele Jones B.A., University of Louisville, 2004 M.A., University of Louisville, 2006 J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2009 A Dissertation Approved on November 1, 2018 By the following Dissertation Committee _______________________________________________ Dissertation Director Dr. David Imbroscio ________________________________________________ Committee Member Dr. David Simpson ________________________________________________ Committee Member Dr. Margath Walker ________________________________________________ Committee Member Dr. Timothy Weaver ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my mother Mary C. Jones for her unconditional love and support. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Timothy Paul Ryan Weaver, for his critical feedback, guidance, and patience during the course of completing this work. Dr. Weaver was most instrumental in seeing this dissertation come to fruition. I would also like to thank the PhD program director and committee member Dr. David Imbroscio, for his direction during this process as well and for helping me see this research through to the end. Thank you to my other committee members, Dr. David Simpson and Dr. Margath Walker, for their constructive criticism and for serving on my committee. Lastly, I would like to thank the Louisville residents who agreed to be interviewed for this study. I greatly appreciated their candor and transparency and their time. Also, I am indebted to the countless people who were incredibly supportive and facilitated the interviewing process from the Baxter Community Center, The Table, Portland Neighborhood House, and the many volunteers who helped canvass and recruit. iv ABSTRACT THE UNEQUAL CITY: THE MASS CRIMINALIZATION OF THE URBAN POOR Elizabeth M. Jones November 1, 2018 Exploring and understanding the widespread use of arrests and incarceration in urban neighborhoods of concentrated poverty is the subject of this dissertation. The research addresses gaps in theoretical debates about the causes of mass criminalization that position the phenomenon as the result of either neoliberalism or racism. In addition, the dissertation explores the impact of mass criminalization on urban citizenship. Urban citizenship is a theoretical frame that considers the substance of the economic, social, political, and mobility dimensions of city life. The research methodology is a case study of two impoverished neighborhoods in the city of Louisville, Kentucky that incorporates both qualitative and quantitative data. The researcher systematically analyzed interviews with 72 residents in the neighborhoods of Russell and Portland using the frames of urban citizenship to answer how mass criminalization impacts the lives of urban residents. The findings of the dissertation show ubiquitous carceral state interventions into the poor neighborhoods in the study create spaces of attenuated citizenship. The interviews show how carceral state interventions shape the lives of residents along social, political, and economic lines and in their ability to move freely throughout their community and access public space without state interference. The research also illuminates how urban governance for the poor often occurs through processes of surveillance and punishment, despite government interventions being antithetical to the philosophy of neoliberalism. Finally, a major theoretical contribution of the dissertation is the way it engages the race and class debate surrounding the carceral state by interviewing individuals from a predominately black and a predominately white v neighborhood. The findings from the interviews show that class strongly influences the impact of the carceral state in a way that crosses racial lines, making a consideration of both integral to a full understanding of mass criminalization in urban neighborhoods. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: THE ENIGMA OF MASS CRIMINALIZATION & THE CARCERAL STATE EXPLOSION…………………………………………………………………......... 1 CHAPTER TWO: RACE, NEOLIBERALISM, & THE CARCERAL STATE……………13 CHAPTER THREE: EXPLORING IMPACTS, CITIZENSHIP, & THE CARCERAL STATE……………………………………………………………………………………....53 CHAPTER FOUR: THE CASE STUDY & METHODOLOGY………………………….. 80 CHAPTER FIVE: HYPERSEGREGATED AND HYPERPOLICED……………………107 CHAPTER SIX: COMPLICATING RACE & THE CARCERAL STATE…...………….148 CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSIONS…………………...……………………………….170 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………..200 CURRICULUM VITAE……………………………………………………………………211 vii CHAPTER ONE: THE ENIGMA OF MASS CRIMINALIZATION & THE CARCERAL STATE EXPLOSION “The sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects are the product of democratic will.” – Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World & Me Over the course of fifty years, the American carceral state has become the most expansive in the globe. No other industrialized country incarcerates its citizenry at a rate even remotely approaching that of the United States. Home to 5% of the global population, the U.S. houses 25% of the world’s prisoners (Justice Policy Institute, 2000). A South African legal scholar once remarked to me, “You Americans do love your prisons,” a statement not without empirical support. In 2012, “there [were] more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America- more than six million- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height” (Gopnik, 2012). According to Bruce Western (2006), “Between 1970 and 2003, state and federal prisons grew sevenfold to house 1.4 million convicted felons serving at least one year behind bars” (p.3). The reach of the carceral state and mass incarceration are not uniformly dispersed across the American landscape. In fact, the rate of prison incarceration nationally has declined 14% since reaching its height in 2007. Kentucky, however, stands in contrast to national trends as prison populations in the state continue to rise. Between 2016 and 2017 Kentucky had the third highest rate of prison incarceration growth in the nation with a 3.7% increase over the course of the year (Vera Institute, 2018). The charts included 1 below created by the Vera Institute using national data, show that jail incarceration rates in both the state and in Jefferson, County remain higher than the national average. In Jefferson County, Kentucky, black people are incarcerated in jail at a rate higher than that of their white counterparts. The unequal dispersion of mass incarceration points to variations in the unfolding of the political economy in space and highlights the need for thoughtfulness surrounding state and local carceral state institutions. Figure 1. Vera Institute Comparison of County, State, and National Jail Incarceration Rates. Jefferson County, Kentucky; Kentucky; and the United States. 2018. 2 Figure 2. Vera Institute Comparison of Jail Incarceration Rate vs. County Population by race in Jefferson County, Kentucky. 2018. 3 Figure 3. Vera Institute Comparison of Pretrial Incarceration Rate State vs. National Average. 2018. Due to the sheer size and scope of the extensive carceral state and its unequal concentration in space, particularly where poor people of color reside, one must ask what are the impacts of these persistent, punitive state interventions on the communities in which they are concentrated? And further, what can we learn about the political economy and race when so many residents from a particular subsection of the population experience incarceration? Critical to answering these questions is first moving beyond a consideration of felony convictions and prison stays, to consider the broader phenomena of mass criminalization and the various capacities of the state to surveil and punish. Jack Chin (2012) notes the reach of the carceral state, “includes the more than six million in control of the criminal justice system