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How Gentrification Fuels Mass Incarceration
When rich people move in, the poor are pushed out — often forcefully
When 19-year-old Lacino Hamilton was sentenced to 52–80 years in prison and spent four years in solitary confinement, he hadn’t committed a crime commonly associated with such a harsh sentence. In fact, he hadn’t committed a crime whatsoever.
As the victim of a scheme to incarcerate poor people of color in an area of Detroit that was gentrifying, Lacino was falsely convicted of having committed a murder he wasn’t involved in. He was only one of many longtime residents displaced from Detroit’s Cass Corridor to make way for wealthier, largely white residents, who flocked to the rapidly gentrifying area in the 1990s.
It’s commonly known that gentrification uproots low-income residents and businesses from their homes as developers transform neighborhoods to cater to middle- and upper-class residents. Over the past several decades, gentrification has transformed many American cities, and its effects on impoverished and minority communities have been overwhelmingly negative.
The process of gentrification generally involves several distinct stages. The first stage involves “government and market disinvestment in either an urban or suburban area.” This is followed by “white flight,” as the…
