City of Order: Crime and Society in Halifax, 1918-35Interwar Halifax was a city in flux, a place where citizens debated adopting new ideas and technologies but agreed on one thing -- modernity was corrupting public morality and unleashing untold social problems on their fair city. In this context, citizens, policy makers, and officials turned to the criminal justice system to create a bulwark against further social dislocation. Officials modernized the city's machinery of order -- courts, prisons, and the police force -- and placed greater emphasis on crime control, while residents supported tough-on-crime measures and attached little importance to rehabilitation. These initiatives gave birth to a constructed vision of a criminal class that singled out ethnic minorities, working-class men, and female and juvenile offenders as problem figures in the eternal quest for order. Michael Boudreau's in-depth study of crime and culture in interwar Halifax, the first of its kind, shows how tough-on-crime measures can compound, rather than resolve, social inequalities and dislocations. |
Contents
| 1 | |
The SocioEconomic Contours of Interwar Halifax | 16 |
2 The Machinery of Law and Order | 37 |
3 The Social Perceptions of Crime and Criminals | 74 |
Halifaxs Criminal Class
| 96 |
5 Women Crime and the Law | 126 |
6 The Ethnic Dimensions of Crime and Criminals | 156 |
The Supremacy of Law and Order in Halifax | 184 |
Other editions - View all
City of Order: Crime and Society in Halifax, 1918-35 Michael Scott Boudreau No preview available - 2012 |