During the Great Migration (1916-1970) of African Americans to the North, Philadelphia’s police department, journalists, and city officials used news media to disseminate crime narratives laced with statistics and racial stereotypes of “black invasions,” “urban neighborhood jungles,” “roving black gangs,” and the “culture of poverty” to convince the white middle-class to resist desegregation and support tough on crime policing in the inner city from 1958 to the present-day. However, African Americans experienced double victimization from the proliferation of these crime narratives. Police and journalists used crime narratives to justify the racially-biased policing tactics of hyper-surveillance, daily patrols, excessive force, and incarceration against black and poor residents. Over time, city officials developed a system of racial capitalism in which City Council financially divested from social welfare programs, invested in the police department, and promoted a tough on crime policing program that generated wealth for Philadelphia’s tax base and attempted to halt white flight from the city. My evidence consists of newspapers, archived news reel, municipal court dockets, census records, oral histories, interviews, police investigation reports, housing project pamphlets, and maps to demonstrate that a consequence of tough on crime policing was hyper-surveillance, the use of excessive force, and neglect by officers in the most disadvantaged areas of the city: poor, segregated, and black-inhabited housing projects and neighborhoods. Nevertheless, by looking through the lens of Philadelphia specifically, I emphasize that the budgetary strategy of a city government spending more money on policing and corrections than social welfare programs is ineffective and a form of racial capitalism which relies on criminal scapegoating, continues the cycle of poverty-induced crime, inflates rates of incarceration and police brutality, and marginalizes poor people of color. / History
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/6837 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Dirkson, Menika Belicia |
| Contributors | Simon, Bryant, Berman, Lila Corwin, 1976-, Neptune, Harvey R., 1970-, Hinton, Elizabeth Kai, 1983-, Lombardo, Timothy J. |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 320 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/6819, Theses and Dissertations |
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