An Intellectual and Political History of Crime, Poverty and Public Safety

Abstract

This thesis explores intellectual debates over the relationship between crime and poverty with a focus on Chicago's public housing projects as a case study. During the late twentieth century, Americans' understanding of crime and poverty underwent a fundamental shift from the ideas of the "sociological reformers" to the "tough on crime consensus." Influenced by emerging criminological research, politicians and policymakers altered their crime control and public safety strategies. Once believing that crime could be prevented by eradicating poverty and investing in social programs, in the early 1970s, their focus shifted to retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation. Chicago, however, had a different - yet hightly important - trajectory in regards to public safety. Using its public housing projects as testing grounds for crime control and practices, the city largely defined what it meant to be "tough on crime" in the late twentieth century.