Even within the crime levels expected from a poverty-stricken neighbourhood, the incarcerations contributed by a public housing building in that neighbourhood are far greater, creating pipeline from public housing to prison.
You might wish that it weren’t true, but statistics prove it. This pattern of crime has been observed for decades, via a unique policing relationship between the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).
Yes, stats would seem to show that public housing is the worst of the worst, outstripping even its surrounding neighbourhoods for criminal degeneracy. NYPD and NYCHA have been been working together for decades to help protect law-abiding public housing residents cowering in their hallways, and neighbours cowering on their doorsteps.
Is this a reflection of attitudes that have migrated outwards to define a motherlode of public fear and hatred of public housing behaviour? These days, it pervades the entire continent, not only in the U.S. but Canada too.
At any rate, about now is perhaps right time to freshen up that old saying: “There are lies, damn lies, and . . . statistics.
A recent study by a City University of a New York (CUNY) professor, together with a pair of graduate students with lived experience of public housing, have shown that crime statistics concerning public housing must be carefully evaluated. Compared to surrounding neighbourhoods, is such housing ‘incarceration-riddled?’ Oh yes.
But crime-riddled? That’s another story.
Over the years NYPD/NYCHA cooperation has created a ‘hyper-policing’ environment in public housing, which profoundly skews our understanding of public housing criminality, even as it delivers a steady flow of public housing residents to prison.
If you have any reason to wonder why this relationship between police, public housing and crime exists, the explanations of Professor Van C. Tran may well cause you to look at public housing in a different way.
In a CUNY interview, Tran explains how the study he headed exposes both the causes and the tragic effects of wrong thinking and wrong action in America’s greatest concentration of public housing. The interview is posted on Youtube: Public Housing to Prison Pipeline | One to One
Here’s a link to a print article written by professor Tran (and others) about crime and incarceration rates in NYCHA housing, which is posted by PNAS: Concentrated incarceration and the public-housing-to-prison pipeline in New York City neighborhoods
Affordablehousingaction.org was inspired by Tran’s research to write a separate post that reflects on the interests of other actors in the housing business. Try: Developers + Political Buddies Build A Public Housing Pipeline To Jail
