Keeping up Appearances: Profiting from Patriarchy in the Nation's `Safest City'

Abstract

This paper explores the history and the political and economic dividends of manipulating urban crime data in the US. It demonstrates data manipulation as an historical and widely practised method of safety construction in cities and discusses why rape is a crime especially prone to statistical corruption. Insofar as hiding rape makes a city appear to be safer than it actually is, it is argued that the practice has taken on greater political and economic significance in this era of mobile capital and interurban competition. These themes are explored in a case study from Philadelphia and the many contradictions that it points to are discussed. Patriarchy, it is concluded, is a tool of economic development that puts all urban women at risk.

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