The Police Dunnit: A Challenging View On Public Housing Crime

a double row of helmeted police form a barrer across a street with a large civic building behind.
A Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, D.C. American Blacks have an enormous bone to pick with the nation's police forces. Buy so far, few have stood up to accuse them of responsibility for public housing crime.

There are a variety of opinions on the causes of crime and violence in America’s public housing. For example, the architects dunnit: their design failures with their low-budget, corner-cutting boxy, unimaginative designs destroy the soul. Tenants are forced to imitate overcrowded rats in a cage and turn on each other1.

A favourite with governments at all levels, together with some (all?) political parties: the tenants dunnit. Tenants are largely criminals and degenerates who don’t deserve what they’ve been given. That makes it convenient and inexpensive to avoid repairs, letting the miscreants live in their self-created squalor, so there! Or heck, bulldoze the lot of them. Let’s get rid of public housing altogether!

As for the common argument that the government dunnit? It’s nearly impossible to untangle that opinion with the one immediately above this.

But now, opinion-wise, there’s a new kid on the block — Maddy Hamlin. Her doctoral research leads her to point the finger at none of the usual suspects, but instead at the police.

The police dunnit! Read more at Syracuse University | News HEALTH & SOCIETY: Public Housing Violence Research Earns Top Honor for Maxwell Doctoral Student

Footnotes

  1. A current development in the form of mass housing akin to public housing illustrates just how atrocious architecture can indeed be: Read more in the CBC: Billionaire defends windowless dorm rooms for California students