No Place on the Corner

Winner, 2019 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice, given by the Goddard Riverside Community CenterThe impact of stop-and-frisk policing on a South Bronx community What’s it like to be stopped and frisked by the police while walking home from the supermarket with your young children? How does it feel to receive a phone call from your fourteen-year-old son who is in the back of a squad car because he laughed at a police officer? How does a young person of color cope with being frisked several times a week since the age of 15? These are just some of the stories in No Place on the Corner, which draws on three years of intensive ethnographic fieldwork in the South Bronx before and after the landmark 2013 Floyd v. City of New York decision that ruled that the NYPD’s controversial “stop and frisk” policing methods were a violation of rights. Through riveting interviews and with a humane eye, Jan Haldipur shows how a community endured this aggressive policing regime. Though the police mostly targeted younger men of color, Haldipur focuses on how everyone in the neighborhood—mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, even the district attorney’s office—was affected by this intense policing regime and thus shows how this South Bronx community as a whole experienced this collective form of punishment. One of Haldipur’s key insights is to demonstrate how police patrols effectively cleared the streets of residents and made public spaces feel off-limits or inaccessible to the people who lived there. In this way community members lost the very ‘street corner’ culture that has been a hallmark of urban spaces. This profound social consequence of aggressive policing effectively keeps neighbors out of one another’s lives and deeply hurts a community’s sense of cohesion. No Place on the Corner makes it hard to ignore the widespread consequences of aggressive policing tactics in major cities across the United States.

No Place on the Corner is an important, insightful and nuanced study of the effects of aggressive policing on young people of color in the Bronx. While many scholars have written about the impacts of mass incarceration on people and communities of color, few have delved into how 'public order' policing tactics, especially high volume stop-and-frisk practices, can shape how these young people and their families cope day to day with the fear of the police. This fear is palpable, heartbreaking, and underscores how important it is for policy makers to understand some of the hidden but profound implications of this type of policing. Haldipur manages to combine a keen ethnographers insight along with a real understanding of the sociological and criminological literature on communities and crime and as a result has produced an original and valuable book., No Place on the Corner is an incredibly insightful ethnography showing the devastating consequences of the racially targeted policy of stop-and-frisk policing. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in justice and policing., A focused, emotionally devastating argument against aggressive policing. . . Although the author offers plenty of smart policy recommendations involving the concept of 'community policing,' the personal stories resonate most deeply. . . A sharp portrait of one of the many seriously troubled areas of the American criminal justice systemand one without clear solutions., An important contribution and a great read., Insightful . . . Haldipur finds the loss of freedom in public space 'most devastating and most enduring' . . . [His] focus is fresh and the message of aggressive policing's devastating effects on communities is clear.

Jan Haldipur is Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach.