Lacino Hamilton: Forcing people to evacuate a neighborhood or entire section of a city cannot be achieved by democratic means. It is inconceivable that anyone would vote to displace themselves, right? This explains why police, courts and prison are often used to remove and disappear some people. I was either stopped, arrested and/or conveyed to the police station once or twice a month for the entire 10 years I lived in and frequented the Cass Corridor, supposedly for “identification purposes,” by regular beat police. Mind you, these same beat police worked the area for decades and were familiar with me, my friends and extended members of my family. I was told that if I did not like the treatment, I could always move.
A number of comprehensive studies admit that neighborhoods in Detroit, Baltimore, Brooklyn and Chicago, among other places that have undergone gentrification, created large populations of internal refugees and displaced and disappeared people. Unfortunately, these studies do not say to where they disappeared.
A much more nuanced understanding of the social role of “redevelopment” is required in order for society to give up the usual way of thinking about imprisonment being the inevitable consequences of crime. For many of my friends and neighbors and me, imprisonment did not result from inevitable “crime,” but rather imprisonment was linked to the agendas of social planners, politicians and real estate developers, and resulted due to the extraordinary powers given to the police and courts. More here.