Episode Details

The television show COPS would suggest that all mobile home parks are community crime centers. The movie 8-Mile, starring Eminem, makes it look like trailer parks are the “go-to” spot for drugs, violence and petty crime of all varieties. But is that stereotype true? The U.S. government answered that question in 2010 with the release of “Trailers and Trouble? An Examination of Crime in Mobile Home Communities” written by Professor William P. McCarty of the University of Illinois, which was part of HUD’s formal “Cityscape: a Journal of Policy Development and Research”. So what did HUD’s research show? Let’s just say that the trailer park crime narrative was more than just a little off-base.