Doctoral Dissertation Research: Regulating the destitute: A case study of how street people are regulated in an urban public space

这个项目考察了在新泽西州泽西城的Journal Square交通中心及其周围，一群“街头游民”是如何度过他们的白天和许多夜晚的。该项目针对的理论是，美国刑事司法机构的职能要么是惩罚性地遏制种族化和孤立的贫民窟中穷人的贫困和无序因素，要么是在没有实现这一目标的情况下“仓库”？他们在监狱里。这个项目提出，街上的人并没有被限制在种族化的贫民区里。这项研究并不是孤立的，而是假设，虽然交通中心内部有一个警察局，交通中心内外的空间一直处于视频监控之下，但警察只是偶尔逮捕街头人士，或试图将他们转移到另一个地方。尽管事实是，大多数经常花时间在杂志广场的街头人士一直从事一系列离经叛道和犯罪活动。因此，本项目提出的问题是：在一个刑事司法机构据称是将城市贫民中的赤贫和无序分子定罪和隔离的社会中，这种情况如何存在？为什么警察和其他社会控制机构不愿意或无法将街头人士从交通中心内外的空间中移除，或者更有效地控制他们的行为？如果不是按照现有的城市贫民治理理论所建议的方式，那么这些空间的监管是如何起作用的？这些问题的答案说明了当今美国城市社会控制的本质和功能是什么？这个项目旨在帮助人们了解美国的城市贫民是如何被治理的。调查结果将与广泛的受众相关，包括在这一领域制定和制定政策的决策者和从业人员。

This project examines how a population of "street people" are policed and otherwise regulated as they live out their days, and many of their nights, in and around the Journal Square Transportation Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. The project takes aim at theories which claim that American criminal justice institutions function either to punitively contain the destitute and disorderly elements of the poor in racialized and isolated ghettos or, failing that aim, to ?warehouse? them in jails and prisons. This project proposes that street people are not being contained in racialized ghettos. And far from being isolated, the study hypothesizes that while there is a police station inside the transportation center and the spaces in and around the transportation center are under constant video surveillance, the police only occasionally make arrests of street people or attempt to remove them to another area. This is despite the fact that most of the street people who regularly spend time in Journal Square consistently engage in a range of deviant and criminal activities. Thus, this project asks: How can this situation exist in a society in which criminal justice institutions purportedly function to criminalize and quarantine the destitute and disorderly elements of the urban poor? Why are the police and other social control agents unwilling or unable to remove street people from the spaces in and around the transportation center or more effectively control their behavior? How does regulation in these spaces work if not in the ways that existing theories about the governance of the urban poor suggest? And what do the answers to these questions suggest about the nature and functions of social control in American cities today? This project aims to contribute to an understanding of how the urban poor in the United States are governed. The findings will be relevant to a broad range of audiences, including policy makers and practitioners who develop and institute policies in this area.