Departments

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crime

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    3/8/2023

    Why are the Dems Denying DC Self-Government?

    Historian (and HNN Alum) Kyla Sommers connects the recent Senate rejection of DC's local crime legislation to the history of suspicion of Black political power in the District. 

  • SOURCE: Oxford American
    1/24/2023

    Who Gets to Sing About Revenge in Pop Music?

    by Jewel Wicker

    Do the racial politics of musical genre explain why songs about revenge are celebrated in country music and turned into evidence for the prosecution against hip hop artists (even when the songs in question are fiction)?

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    11/16/2022

    Larry Krasner and the Limits of "Law and Order"

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    Pennsylvania Republicans have launched a futile effort to impeach the reformist Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, defying local democracy to try to score political points through a backlash exploiting white voters' fears of crime. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    11/22/2022

    Is Environmental Damage Really Sabotage by Capital?

    by R.H. Lossin

     The term "capitalist sabotage" describes intentional destructive activity in service of profit, and is a more accurate label than "accident" or "unintended consquence" for the environmental change that will cause a million unnecessary deaths a year over the coming decades. 

  • SOURCE: The Metropole
    11/17/2022

    Immigrant Merchants and Law-and-Order Politics in Detroit

    by Kenneth Alyass

    The Chaldean community of Detroit became a significant middleman-minority through the operation of small stores in working-class and majority-Black neighborhoods. As white flight and disinvestment created increasingly dire conditions, they also became a constituency for aggressive policing. 

  • SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer
    10/2/2022

    Forget Inflation: GOP Reviving Willie Horton (and It's Working)

    by Will Bunch

    "The GOP is partying like it’s 1988 — the year that scary pictures of a felon they called Willie Horton and grainy images of Black crime saved a party equally devoid of actual policies," says columnist Will Bunch. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    6/15/2022

    The Right Celebrated Bernhard Goetz as the Kyle Rittenhouse of the 80s

    by Pia Beumer

    In the context of economic turmoil, urban crisis, and racial division, a broad swath of the American public made Goetz a heroic symbol of restored white masculinity after he shot four Black teens who asked him for money on the New York subway.

  • SOURCE: The Guardian
    4/19/2022

    "More Cops" is Not the Answer for NYC

    by Simon Balto

    The entire, terrifying episode that unfolded across 29 hours in New York was a testament to the futility of spending more money on police, and to the lie that police “keep us safe”. 

  • SOURCE: Protean
    2/25/2022

    Broken Homes of the Drug War

    by David Helps

    Rather than a mistake or an isolated instance of excess, a notoriously brutal and destructive LAPD raid on an apartment complex in 1988 should be seen as part of a political attack on the city's Black poor, enabled by cultural stereotypes of families of color. 

  • SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
    11/5/2021

    Where Did the Public Toilets Go?

    Peter Baldwin offers context for how American cities haltingly adopted and quickly abandoned public toilets, a story that encompasses the racial, gender and class politics of how people interact in urban space. 

  • SOURCE: Crosscut
    10/15/2021

    Beware "Rising Crime" Rhetoric in Seattle Politics

    by Dan Berger

    Progressive prosecutor candidates like Nicole Thomas-Kennedy in Seattle reflect a growing social movement to reverse decades of failed "tough on crime" policies that have accomplished little but swell the ranks fo the incarcerated, says a historian of crime and punishment.