Policing cities: Incivility, disorder, and societal transformations

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, we have been witnessing a rise in incivility policing across western but also non-western cities. The term "incivility policing" refers to bans and exclusion aimed at drinking alcohol, begging, loitering, sitting in public, and many other kinds of subcriminal conduct. Scholars have observed an increasing readiness to demand legal "solutions" aimed against these kinds of conduct. In this paper, I review two major strands of scholarship dealing with the origins of these calls: First, a rising punitiveness and a "law and order" mentality, inspired by the Broken windows theory and Zero tolerance policies. Second, privatization of space and the rising influence of private actors over public spaces are discussed with references to the concepts of neoliberalism, revanchism, and the right to the city. The effect of incivility policing on vulnerable groups is examined using the example of homeless people in public space. In the final part, I suggest new factors which could help us understand the rise in incivility policing: These include general trust, everyday trust, and the imaginaries of community.

Homeless Clients' Circulation in Emergency Care: Rethinking Poverty Governance as Urban Impasse

“…112 callers who use services to exclude or shuffle people away from the street, shop entrances, staircases of apartment buildings and the like violate the rescue service's mandate and front‐line workers' professional ethics. In this perspective, third‐party calls result in excluding marginalised bodies from specific places, matching Von Mahs' (2013 in Pospěch 2021, p. 7) observation that unhoused people are more likely to encounter anti‐homeless policies and their enactment in urban, private spaces.…”

Invisibilidade para quem? Análise da situação das pessoas em situação de rua a partir da literatura

“…Em sequência, a Classe 3 foi nomeada como Oportunidades. Esta Classe aponta o quanto a esfera pública é responsável para solucionar esse cenário, seja a partir do olhar para o espaço público, seja para as ações que as esferas públicas de gestão devem executar (Fazio et al, 2022;Filgueiras, 2020;Margier, 2022;Pospech, 2021;Viegas et al, 2021).…”

A clean and civil city: Local associations and the moral bordering of Parisian public space

“…Much of this sensorily intrusive waste is attributed 'flawed consumers' (Bauman, 2004) -those groups of people who, because of their exclusion from or lower status within consumer society, do not fit the idealised image of the 'civil' user of public space. Indeed, consumption has become inextricably connected to issues of cleanliness and civility as municipal governments try to police and sanitise public spaces to make their cities attractive for businesses and investments (Pospěch, 2021). Within this paradigm, moral communities based on civility have become communities of civilised consumers, bounded in opposition to the disorder, waste and incivility of those 'bad' consumers who pollute public space (Ranasinghe, 2011).…”