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

这个项目研究了“街头人民”的人口是如何被警察和其他监管，因为他们住了他们的日子，他们的许多夜晚，在和周围的杂志广场交通中心在泽西城，新泽西。 该项目的目标是理论，声称美国刑事司法机构的功能，要么惩罚性地遏制贫困和混乱的元素在种族化和孤立的贫民窟，或，如果没有这一目标，？仓库？他们在监狱和监狱里。 该项目提出，街头流浪者不会被限制在种族化的贫民窟中。 该研究并不是孤立的，而是假设交通中心内有一个警察局，交通中心内和周围的空间处于持续的视频监控之下，警察只是偶尔逮捕街头人士或试图将他们转移到另一个区域。 这是尽管事实上，大多数街头的人谁经常花时间在杂志广场一贯从事一系列的越轨和犯罪活动。 因此，该项目提出以下问题：在一个据称刑事司法机构的职能是将城市贫民中的赤贫和混乱分子定罪和隔离的社会中，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不能将街头流浪者从交通中心及其周围的空间中驱逐出去，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，这些空间的监管如何发挥作用？ 这些问题的答案对当今美国城市社会控制的性质和功能有何启示？该项目旨在帮助了解美国城市贫民是如何管理的。 调查结果将与广泛的受众有关，包括制定和实施这一领域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.