2018/06/10 by Caitlin Cahill, Cahill, Caitlin, Brett G. Stoudt +15
Social Sciences · #Law, Rights, and Freedoms #Political and Economic history of UK and US #Race, History, and American Society #broken-windows policing #criminalization #gentrification #racial capitalism #slow violence #young people
paper · doi:10.14288/acme.v18i5.1733
openalex publication_date 2018/06/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
In this essay we explore how the politics of global urban restructuring and broken windows policing collude to criminalize and dehumanize communities of color. Drawing upon the intergenerational participatory action research project, Growing Up Policed, our research centers young people of color’s intimate knowledge about the differentiated realms that violence is endured, felt and resisted in their everyday lives. Tracking the “heavy surveillance” of young people growing up in gentrifying, still disinvested New York City, we explore how the spectacle of criminalization obfuscates state violence as it justifies the displacement of communities of color. Our analysis traces how young people of color understand and challenge the “carceral continuum” (Sharpe, 2014), raising critical questions about witnessing, recognition, visibility, and erasure that may be relevant for the current political moment. To conclude, we call for investing in the community as part of imagining an emancipatory urban future.