Disorder, punishment and the rehabilitation of place: An examination of the drama of criminal justice intervention in New York's Times Square.

摘要

What role do the police and courts play in the symbolic contests over urban space? What level of political and causal responsibility do institutions of legal regulation bear for the crime conditions of urban commercial neighborhoods? Who are the "villains" and "victims" of low-level nuisance crime and criminal justice campaigns? Taking up these questions, I adopt a contextual constructionist theoretical framework and employ archival/textual methods to conduct a focused discursive history of the changing strategies of formal social control in Times Square from the 1880s through the opening of the Midtown Court in 1993. The Midtown Court is a partly privately-funded arraignment court that was placed in Times Square in order to process "quality of life" offenders. By investigating the history of discursive struggle over crime and disorder in Times Square, I examine the shifting terrain of historical and discursive forces that worked to produce the Midtown Court. I also examine how competing groups attempted to represent the court within the context of the political, economic and institutional battles over the redevelopment of Times Square. Overall, I argue that the community court emerged from the intersection of interests between Times Square's local business interests and criminal justice entrepreneurs. At the instrumental level, the community court was placed in Times Square to exclude the disorderly from Times Square by increasing the harshness of punishments for low-level crimes like shoplifting, prostitution, and illegal vending. Yet, the Midtown Court was also placed in Times Square for its dramaturgical potential. For local business interests, the court functioned as a means to demonstrate that Times Square was being "cleaned up" and a safe site for commercial investment. From the perspective of criminal justice actors, "quality of life criminals" provided a virtually bottomless pool of villains upon which the courts could stage a symbolic victory that could work to partially counter the public challenges to the competence and legitimacy of criminal justice in pre-Giuliani New York City.