The Ecology of Homicide

To understand homicide in the postwar American city requires paying attention to the intersection of racism, segregation, and violence. Or, as the late Eric C. Schneider argues in the posthumously published The Ecology of Homicide, it means grappling “with the ecology of violence ... the spacing and interdependence of people and institutions” (p. xxi). Because Schneider's manuscript was unfinished, Howard Gillette Jr. prepared the six completed chapters for publication and added contextualization. While incomplete—Schneider intended to write an additional chapter—The Ecology of Homicide is valuable for historians of violence, policing, cities, and the carceral state. Using 195 homicide trial transcripts from Philadelphia, Schneider explores why African American men were disproportionately represented in homicide cases between World War II and the early 1980s. Challenging interpretations of homicide as a function of violent subcultures, the “code of the streets,” or in relation to processes of modernization, Schneider is attentive to the role of social context driving homicide, including neighborhood insecurity, precarious masculinity, and police violence. In other words, Schneider provides a needed historicization of violence in the postwar American city

Archaeology · Biology · Context (archaeology · Criminology · Homicide · Poison control · Race (biology · Sociology · Suicide prevention · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Ecology · Gender Studies · History · Medicine · Race, History, and American Society

• To Protect and to Serve

  Open Access•Max Felker-Kantor•Crime and Justice•2024

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