By 1914, “the majority of prostitution charges were executed through the vagrancy clause of the Tenement House Law.” Thirty-six percent of these convictions were of black women. They were the largest single group prosecuted under this rubric. In the guise of housing reform, the police were given great latitude in the surveillance and arrest of black women and tenement residents. The bulk of the arrests were justified less for what had been done than on the suspicion of who these young women might become.
