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

这个项目调查了新泽西州泽西市的期刊广场交通中心内和周围的“街头人”如何在白天和许多夜晚生活时受到警察和其他方面的监管。该项目针对的是一些理论，这些理论声称，美国刑事司法机构的职能要么是惩罚性地将贫困和无序的穷人遏制在种族主义和孤立的犹太人区，要么如果达不到这一目标，就会？仓库？他们被关进监狱和监狱。该项目建议，街头流浪者不会被限制在种族主义的犹太人区。这项研究非但不是孤立的，还假设，虽然交通中心内有一个警察局，交通中心内和周围的空间受到持续的视频监控，但警方只是偶尔逮捕街头的人，或者试图将他们转移到另一个区域。尽管大多数经常在期刊广场呆上一段时间的街头人士一直从事着一系列离经叛道的犯罪活动，但这仍然是事实。因此，本项目提出的问题是：在一个据称刑事司法机构的职能是将城市贫民中的贫困和无序分子定为犯罪并予以隔离的社会中，这种情况怎么可能存在？为什么警察和其他社会控制机构不愿意或无法将街头民众从交通中心内和周围的空间中移走，或更有效地控制他们的行为？如果不是以现有关于城市穷人治理的理论所建议的方式，这些空间的监管如何发挥作用？对这些问题的回答对当今美国城市社会控制的性质和功能有何启示？该项目旨在帮助人们了解美国的城市贫民是如何管理的。调查结果将与广泛的受众相关，包括制定和制定这一领域政策的政策制定者和实践者。

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.