“The Child Is Never Basically Bad”

This chapter focuses on the juvenile justice system and its related efforts to address youth crime in New York City before World War II. From the 1930s to the onset of the war, there was a nationwide tension about how to address crime. In New York City, this debate had racial, political, and social implications that persisted beyond the period. On one side, there were those, such as New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who believed crime in the city was rampant and that an increased carceral sovereignty, including preventive policing, was critical to establish order. On the other side, there were those, such as Jane M. Bolin, who rejected such logic and aspired to advance a neo-Progressive rationale that emphasized the correction of social ills contributing to criminal behaviors—regardless of the numbers. This chapter provides a sketch of Harlem during the Depression era, with an emphasis on black youths and various crime-prevention effortsthey encountered.

“In All Our Harlems”

This chapter recovers the case of the Harlem Six to attest to the firmness of race as a crucial determinant in American notions of crime and delinquency. The progress made in the decade of delinquency was met by systemic and institutionalized racism in the 1960s. Efforts to create a fair and impartial juvenile justice system became a thing of the past, and black youths in New York City bore the brunt of inordinate police practices and, consequently, endured the stigma of criminality henceforth. With anticrime laws such as “stop-and-frisk” and “no-knock,” which contributed to disparate arrest rates and increased police encounters in predominantly black communities, New York City officials established a police state that created a climate for dissension. This tale of criminal injustice reveals the extent to which the community was compelled to go to protect its youths from the overwhelming power of the state.

“Beware of the Cat on the Corner”

This chapter dissects the effectiveness of antidelinquency efforts—from national to local levels. In the 1950s, the decade of delinquency, the United States committed fully to curbing juvenile delinquency in a way comparable to the Progressive-era child-saving efforts, which led to the establishment of the juvenile court system. Shifts in youth behaviors dominated popular discourse at midcentury, and youth crime emerged to the forefront. Considering that youth criminality intersected race, class, gender, and region, as confirmed by the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1953, many people took interest in prevention efforts. In New York City, various agencies and organizations, both formal and informal, put forth efforts to combat youth crime as they saw fit—some more successfully than others—and they ranged from large institutional endeavors, such as the Harlem YMCA, to on-the-ground organizing by the youths themselves, such as the Harlem Young Citizens Council. Even with all the crime and delinquency prevention efforts that emerged, the number of youths arrested, especially black youths, continued to rise, and although this pointed to a function of policy and practice as opposed to changes in behaviors, it reestablished race as the basis of youth criminality.

“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.

“Margie’s Day”

This chapter examines Harlem’s home front during World War II, centered on the 1943 uprising and its lasting impact on police-community relations. The 1943 Harlem uprising joined a series of revolts across the nation in response to long-standing racial resentments and animosities. The Harlem uprising was a direct response to the system of discrimination, segregation, and police brutality that plagued the community up through the 1940s. The upheaval called public attention to the plight of black Harlemites, especially its youths, as they contested the urban landscape and sought equal access to wartime benefits. The excessive policing employed to quell the uprising in Harlem agitated the relations the police had built in the community in the 1930s and negatively influenced youth perspectives of state authority and carceral sovereignty.

Afterword

This chapter discusses contemporary manifestations of racial criminalization of black youths in the context of personal interests in the subject. The tragedies of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray, as well as the community responses to wrongful criminalization practices, police brutality, and state violence, have joined a long history of social injustices in the United States. And as organizations such as Black Lives Matter continue to push for fairer criminal justice practices, it is important to recognize these longer histories as part and parcel of the same struggle.

Introduction

This chapter opens with a narrative vignette of David Campanella, son of Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy, to introduce the central themes of the text—racial criminalization, juvenile delinquency, and criminal justice. It provides clear definitions of key terms and concepts to be employed throughout the book, such as criminalization, carceral, and racial liberalism.Further, it claims its historiographical stakes in the field, which include challenging the notion that racial criminalization was a southern phenomenon, bridging a gap in juvenile justice history between the Great Depression and the Great Society, and broadening the scope of the carceral state to include historical actors beyond the justice system.Finally, it offers briefoutlines of the subsequent chapters.