Like so many big cities in the United States, Philadelphia has suffered
from a strikingly high murder rate over the past fifty years. Such
tragic loss of life, as Eric C. Schneider demonstrates, does not occur
randomly throughout the city; rather, murders have been racialized and
spatialized, concentrated in the low-income African American populations
living within particular neighborhoods. In The Ecology of Homicide,
Schneider tracks the history of murder in Philadelphia during a critical
period from World War II until the early 1980s, focusing on the years
leading up to and immediately following the 1966 Miranda Supreme Court
decision and the shift to easier gun access and the resulting spike in
violence that followed.
Examining the transcripts of nearly two hundred murder trials, The
Ecology of Homicide presents the voices of victims and perpetrators of
crime, as well as the enforcers of the law--using, to an unprecedented
degree, the words of the people who were actually involved. In
Schneider's hands, their perspectives produce an intimate record of what
was happening on the streets of Philadelphia in the decades from 1940
until 1980, describing how race factored into everyday life, how
corrosive crime was to the larger community, how the law intersected
with every action of everyone involved, and, most critically, how
individuals saw themselves and others. Schneider traces the ways in
which low-income African American neighborhoods became ever more
dangerous for those who lived there as the combined effects of
concentrated poverty, economic disinvestment, and misguided policy
accumulated to sustain and deepen what he calls an "ecology of
violence," bound in place over time.
Covering topics including gender, urban redevelopment, community
involvement, children, and gangs, as well as the impact of violence
perpetrated by and against police, The Ecology of Homicide is a
powerful link between urban history and the contemporary city.
