Tag Archives: Chicago

Interview w/ Addams Award Winners Josh Pacewicz and John N. Robinson III

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The 2021 Jane Addams Article Award was awarded to Josh Pacewicz and John N. Robinson III for their article “Pocketbook Policing: How Race Shapes Municipal Reliance on Punitive Fines and Fees in the Chicago Suburbs.” Published in Socio-Economic Review in 2021, this article draws on both quantitative and qualitative methods to show how municipal reliance on fines and fees varies across race and class lines in the Chicago suburbs. Josh Pacewicz is Associate Professor of Sociology at Brown University, John N. Robinson III is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. Andrew Messamore and Benny Witkovsky reached out to John and Josh to discuss their article and an abridged version of that discussion is below. Thanks to John and Josh for participating in our interview series!

Let’s start by talking about this paper. What did you seek to find? What did you ultimately find?

Robinson: We originally wanted to take an exploratory look at the problem of fines and fees, which had become a big topic of dialogue in the aftermath of Ferguson. Once we got into the data, we saw that these monetary punishments were concentrated in many Black suburbs, and especially relatively affluent ones. For context, the financial penalties that we found in these communities (mostly traffic fines, but also things like fines for overgrown weeds) differed from those we would find in much poorer areas (see, for example, Alexes Harris’ pathbreaking work, which focuses on the penalties associated with criminal prosecution). The racialized effect of fines and fees in the lives of poor households and communities is more dramatic and impactful over the long-term. But our findings on these relatively affluent Black areas show that these communities are in some ways more like poorer Black communities than their affluent white counterparts. Importantly, we also found that the places dealing with these penalties also suffered a range of other issues that white affluent communities didn’t, including exorbitantly high property taxes, exploitative tax incentive schemes, deficient public services, etc.

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Conference Feature: Where is the Chicago Ghetto?

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Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chicago_north_from_John_Hancock_2004-11_img_2618.jpg

Ray Hutchison
University of Wisconsin­-Green Bay
CUSS Newsletter, Summer 2015, Vol. 27, No. 3

Ernest Burgess’s essay, “The Growth of the  City” presents us with one of the iconic images  in urban sociology and  beyond; the concentric zone model has been  reprinted in virtually every  textbook in urban geography, urban sociology, and  more. Burgess is clear  that the purpose of the  model (or chart, as he  labeled it) is to demonstrate the process of  neighborhood succession, a central concept for  the Chicago School: “In the expansion of the  city a process of distribution takes place which  sifts and sorts and relocates individuals and  groups by residence and  occupation. The resulting  differentiation of the cosmopolitan American city into areas is typically all  from one pattern, with  only interesting minor  modifications. Within the  central business district  or on an adjoining street  is the “main stem” of  “hobohemia,” the teeming  Rialto of the homeless  migratory man of the Middle West. In the zone of  deterioration encircling  the central business section are always to be  found the so­called  “slums” and “bad lands,”  with their submerged regions of poverty, degradation, and disease, and  their underworlds of  crime and vice. Within a  deteriorating area are  rooming­house districts,  the purgatory of “lost  souls.” Near by is the Latin Quarter, where creative and rebellious spirits  resort. The slums are  also crowded to overflowing with immigrant colonies—the Ghetto, Little  Sicily, Greektown, Chinatown—fascinatingly combining Old World heritages and American adaptations. Wedging out from  here is the Black Belt,  with its free and disorderly life.”

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