Under Siege Poverty and Crime in a Public Housing Community

by DeKeseredy, Walter S.; Alvi, Shahid; Schwartz, Martin D.; Tomaszewski, Andreas E.

• ISBN13: 9780739107041
• ISBN10: 0739107046
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-11
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

Under Siege is one of the first books of its kind. It vividly describes the devastating consequences of living in a public housing community damaged by the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, government cutbacks, and other alarming structural transformations that currently plague the United States and Canada. Walter DeKeseredy and his colleagues build on the rich theoretical perspectives developed by feminist scholars--as well as those constructed by Jock Young, Robert Sampson, and William Julius Wilson--as they present both the qualitative and quantitative results of a case study of six public housing estates located in an impoverished urban area. This groundbreaking book provides an in-depth analysis of predatory crime victimization, intimate partner victimization, public racial and sexual harassment, and the relationship of all these harms to the residents' perceptions of their neighborhood social disorganization/collective efficacy. Under Siege is uniquely valuable both for its rich theoretical basis and for its transparent presentation of the authors' research methodology. It is a thought-provoking sociological contribution that offers progressive strategies for ameliorating both poverty and crime in North American public housing complexes.

Author Biography

E. Andreas Tomaszewski is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
The Historical, Political, and Economic Context of the West Town Study	p. 1
Predatory Crime Victimization, Illegal Drug Use, and Alcohol Consumption in West Town: Incidence and Sociodemographic Risk Factors	p. 35
Violence Against and the Harassment of Women in West Town	p. 59
The Role of Perceived Social Disorganization and Collective Efficacy	p. 83
The Failure of Neoconservative Policy	p. 103
Rethinking Crime Prevention in Public Housing	p. 125
The QNLS Instrument	p. 143
Face-to-Face Interview Schedule	p. 155
References	p. 159
Index	p. 181
About the Authors	p. 183
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