Hope and Struggle in the Policed City:
Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia
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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 to convince the white middle-class to resist desegregation and support tough on crime policing in the 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 racially biased policing tactics and incarceration against black and poor residents. 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. Using newspapers, archived news reel, municipal court dockets, census records, oral histories, interviews, police investigation reports, housing project pamphlets, and maps, this book demonstrates 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 focusing on Philadelphia specifically, this book emphasizes 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.
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Resolve Philly News: "Local historian Menika Dirkson brings her book talk to the library she grew up in" By Maleka Fruean
Big Questions with Nigel Ousey (G'town Radio Show Episode): "Talking with Menika Dirkson: Hope and Struggle in the Policed City"
Big Questions with Nigel Ousey (G'town Radio Show Episode): "Talking with Menika Dirkson: Hope and Struggle in the Policed City"