In his first year working in Los Angeles&;s Skid Row, Forrest Stuart was stopped on the street by police fourteen times. Usually for doing little more than standing there.
Juliette, a woman he met during that time, has been stopped by police well over one hundred times, arrested upward of sixty times, and has given up more than a year of her life serving week-long jail sentences. Her most common crime? Simply sitting on the sidewalk&;an arrestable offense in LA.
Why? What purpose did those arrests serve, for society or for Juliette? How did we reach a point where we&;ve cut support for our poorest citizens, yet are spending ever more on policing and prisons? That&;s the complicated, maddening story that Stuart tells in Down, Out and Under Arrest, a close-up look at the hows and whys of policing poverty in the contemporary United States. What emerges from Stuart&;s years of fieldwork&;not only with Skid Row residents, but with the police charged with managing them&;is a tragedy built on mistakes and misplaced priorities more than on heroes and villains. He reveals a situation where a lot of people on both sides of this issue are genuinely trying to do the right thing, yet often come up short. Sometimes, in ways that do serious harm.
At a time when distrust between police and the residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods has never been higher, Stuart&;s book helps us see where we&;ve gone wrong, and what steps we could take to begin to change the lives of our poorest citizens&;and ultimately our society itself&;for the better.
Forrest Stuart is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago.