City of Order

Interwar Halifax was a city in flux, a place where citizens debated adopting new ideas and technologies but agreed on one thing modernity was corrupting public morality and unleashing untold social problems on their fair city. In this context, citizens, policy makers, and officials turned to the criminal justice system to create a bulwark against further social dislocation. Officials modernized the citys machinery of order courts, prisons, and the police force and placed greater emphasis on crime control, while residents supported tough-on-crime measures and attached little importance to rehabilitation. These initiatives gave birth to a constructed vision of a criminal class that singled out ethnic minorities, working-class men, and female and juvenile offenders as problem figures in the eternal quest for order. Michael Boudreaus in-depth study of crime and culture in interwar Halifax, the first of its kind, shows how tough-on-crime measures can compound, rather than resolve, social inequalities and dislocations.