Policing Homes, Racing Property: Drug Nuisances, Civil Forfeiture, and Racial Inequality in Philadelphia

Friday, November 22

8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

Location: Vancouver CC WEST, Room 103 & 104

Presenter(s)

Is property raced? My paper addresses this important anthropological question through an

institutional ethnography of home seizures conducted by narcotics police and prosecutors in

Philadelphia. Drawing from observation in courtrooms and on police ride-alongs, extensive

interviews, and ethnographic readings of court records, I critically examine these seizures as

police interventions into the racialized distribution of property and harm in Philadelphia.

Since 1992 the Philadelphia D.A.’s office has auctioned 1,699 properties – mostly

modest rowhomes in poor black and Latino neighborhoods – seized through civil forfeiture.

Although forfeiture developed alongside mass incarceration, it is distinguished from other

carceral state practices by the legal liability it assigns to property rather than persons. Many

owners of seized homes in Philadelphia, for instance, were never charged with crimes. Forfeiture

instead polices the comportment of property owners, drawing from racializing discourses about

the harms of “drug nuisance” properties.

The policing of property in Philadelphia links narcotics law enforcement to urban

austerity imperatives and uneven urban development regimes that intensify enduring patterns of

racial inequality. The D.A.’s office has earned $20 million through auctions of seized properties

since 1992, helping it withstand austerity budgets while displacing that burden onto the city’s

impoverished property owners. The widespread use of forfeiture has compounded recent declines

in Philadelphia’s historically high rate of nonwhite homeownership. Finally, the auction of

seized properties has fueled predatory urban development, serving as an opportunity for those in

the business of betting on the city’s shifting boundaries of race and class.