The Criminalization of New Orleanians in Katrina’s Wake http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Kaufman/[1/8/2018 12:24:22 PM] Home ssrc.org The Criminalization of New Orleanians in Katrina’s Wake By Sarah Kaufman Published on: Jun 11, 2006 Sarah Kaufman is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at New York University and a former criminal defense investigator for the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. Her current research focuses on the sociology of punishment and the production of morality, health and illness. New Orleanians in the Media Symbolic and Practical Interpretations of the Hurricane Katrina Disaster in New Orleans By David Alexander The Tale of the Three Pigs: Taking Another Look at Vulnerability in the Light of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina By Greg Bankoff The Evacuation of Older People: The Case of Hurricane Katrina By Bill Bytheway Worst Case Katrina By Lee Clarke The Geography of Social Vulnerability: Race, Class, and Catastrophe By Susan Cutter An Imperfect Storm: Narratives of Calamity in a Liberal-Technocratic Age By Alex de Waal Seeing and Not Seeing: Complicity in Surprise By Virginia R. Dominguez Finding and Framing Katrina: The Social Construction of Disaster By Havidán Rodríguez; Russell Dynes Women and Girls Last?: Averting the Second Post- Katrina Disaster By Elaine Enarson Our Toxic Gumbo: Recipe On Saturday, September 4, five days after Katrina came ashore, an estimated 25,000 people continued to wait to be rescued in New Orleans. The Superdome was “hell on earth” according to local officials, and 1700 hospital patients and personnel had been without power, food, water, or sanitation for five days. An article in the Times Picayune offered hope to its readers: State officials have set up a temporary booking and detention center in New Orleans to deal with those accused of killing, raping, looting and otherwise terrorizing the tens of thousands of people who were trapped in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and awaiting evacuation…It has capacity of 750 people, and is the start of rebuilding and relocating the criminal justice system of New Orleans, officials said. "We are in business," said Louisiana Corrections Secretary Richard Stalder. (Filosa 2005) In light of the citizens’ of New Orleans multiple needs, why was the jail the first institution to be “in business” after the city’s destruction? In addition, why was the mass media so attentive to the looting and violence in New Orleans during this first week? In order to answer these questions, we must situate them in the context of America’s criminalization of poverty. Social scientists have long claimed that “natural” disasters are not natural in their social consequences. Instead, the distribution of damage exposes previously existing social fissures in any community. In this forum, Stephen Jackson argues that “the scale of a disaster’s impact has much less to do with, say, an