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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

City of Order

Crime and Society in Halifax, 1918-35

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. To create a bulwark against further social dislocation, citizens, policy makers, and officials modernized the city’s machinery of order – courts, prisons, and the police force – and placed greater emphasis on crime control. These tough-on-crime measures, Boudreau argues, did not resolve problems but rather singled out ethnic minorities, working-class men, and female and juvenile offenders as problem figures in the eternal quest for order.


352 pages | © 2012

Law and Society


Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Crime, the Rule of Law, and Society

1 A City of Order in a Time of Turmoil: The Socio-Economic Contours of Interwar Halifax

2 The Machinery of Law and Order

3 The Social Perceptions of Crime and Criminals

4 “Miscreants” and “Desperadoes”: Halifax’s “Criminal Class”

5 Women, Crime, and the Law

6 The Ethnic Dimensions of Crime and Criminals

Conclusion: The Supremacy of Law and Order in Halifax

Appendices

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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