“Every Generation Has Had the Habit of Going to the Devil”
This chapter investigates New York City’s postwar crime wave. After World War II, predictions of a postwar crime wave saturated the headlines of newspapers across the country, and law enforcement officers were advised to be on alert for a rise in crime. This chapter examines the crime-wave sensationalism that plagued New York City after the war, debates surrounding the legitimacy of its rhetoric, its causes, its impact on the community, and prevention plans that were put in place to fight it. Black crime discourse reestablished itself in ways similar to the Progressive era, when many reformers, both white and black, attributed criminal behaviors to social conditions. In postwar New York City, these reformers included social psychiatrists, criminologists, and politicians committed to stopping crime. These efforts, combined with a fortified police presence in the city, made it difficult for black youths to escape presumptions of criminality. The crime wave was packaged with racial undertones, which were reinforced by disproportionate arrest statistics and crime data, that synonymized New York’s crime problem and its black residents, mainly youths.