Banished

The New Social Control In Urban America

Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

The first in-depth analysis of these disturbing new trends impinging on the rights and livelihoods of ordinary citizens across America's cities.
By demonstrating that banishment does not work to either reduce "disorder" or help those subjected to it to improve their lives, this book directly challenges broken windows theory and zero tolerance policing tactics.

Banished

The New Social Control In Urban America

Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Description

With urban poverty rising and affordable housing disappearing, the homeless and other "disorderly" people continue to occupy public space in many American cities. Concerned about the alleged ill effects their presence inflicts on property values and public safety, many cities have wholeheartedly embraced "zero-tolerance" or "broken window" policing efforts to clear the streets of unwanted people. Through an almost completely unnoticed set of practices, these people are banned from occupying certain spaces. Once zoned out, they are subject to arrest if they return-effectively banished from public places.

Banished is the first exploration of these new tactics that dramatically enhance the power of the police to monitor and arrest thousands of city dwellers. Drawing upon an extensive body of data, the authors chart the rise of banishment in Seattle, a city on the leading edge of this emerging trend, to establish how it works and explore its ramifications. They demonstrate that, although the practice allows police and public officials to appear responsive to concerns about urban disorder, it is a highly questionable policy: it is expensive, does not reduce crime, and does not address the underlying conditions that generate urban poverty. Moreover, interviews with the banished themselves reveal that exclusion makes their lives and their path to self-sufficiency immeasurably more difficult.

At a time when more and more cities and governments in the U.S. and Europe resort to the criminal justice system to solve complex social problems, Banished provides a vital and timely challenge to exclusionary strategies that diminish the life circumstances and rights of those it targets.

Banished

The New Social Control In Urban America

Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Banished

The New Social Control In Urban America

Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Author Information

Katherine Beckett is Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Law, Societies, and Justice program at the University of Washington. Her research and teaching focus on the politics of crime, punishment, and social control. She is the author of Making Crime Pay and The Politics of Injustice.

Steve Herbert is Professor in the Department of Geography and the Law, Societies, and Justice program at the University of Washington. His research and teaching focus on the legal regulation of space, especially as practiced by the uniformed police. He is the author of Policing Space and Citizens, Cops, and Power.

Banished

The New Social Control In Urban America

Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert

Studies in Crime and Public Policy

Reviews and Awards

"Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the practices of banishment have returned. In this fascinating and important book, Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert critically engage the renaissance of archaic forms of exclusion in contemporary society. The authors brilliantly demonstrate how this new arsenal of refurbished legal tools--off-limit orders, anti-loitering ordinances, park exclusion orders, civil gang injunctions, public housing trespass programs, SODAs, SOAPs, and ASBOs--increasingly delimit zones of exclusion from which so many of our fellow citizens are banished. This book is a must read for anyone interested in modern society and our current practices of social control." --Bernard E. Harcourt, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Political Science, University of Chicago

"In a striking and original analysis, Beckett and Herbert provide an important case study of new barriers that exclude the poor and homeless from America's urban centers. Erected by municipal government and enforced by police, this new regulation of urban space produces a profound criminalization of poverty. Contributing as much to the study of social inequality as criminology, Banished offers an important lesson in how the formal apparatus of crime control has come to widely regulate the lives of America's urban poor." --Bruce Western, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

"In Banished, Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert powerfully expose the shifting contours of urban social exclusion and marginalization at the street level. They highlight the manner in which banishment is enforced through novel control tools, "civility codes" and policing strategies of spatial exclusion from certain urban zones as well as the impact of such tactics on marginalized groups within the population. This is a story with broad ramifications and relevance beyond Seattle and deserves to be widely read by anyone interested in the fate of modern cities and the changing face of urban social control." --Adam Crawford, Professor of Criminology, University of Leeds

"In drafting viable solutions to urban problems, academics and policymakers can learn much from Beckett and Herbert's case study... Beckett and Herbert have made an important contribution in helping us to understand that banishment is clearly not a step in the right direction." --Gwendolyn Dordick, Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, City College of New York

"Banished is an important contribution to the literature on urban inequality, space and crime, and punishment as they percolate throughout various disciplines. It will be of particular interest to readers of crime and punishment, urban theory, social inequality and justice, and law and society. The range of perspectives in the book helps us appreciate the role of banishment in crime control and to understand how attempts to attack the victims and symptoms of social problems rather than their root causes only produces an increase in both." --Lucia Trimbur, Dept. of Sociology, John Jay College, & Dept. of Criminal Justice, The Graduate Center, CUNY

"This is a book I would recommend for those interested in equality, civility and poverty as well as a more academic audience of teachers, graduate and undergraduate students. It is an enjoyable and informative read. ... In drafting viable solutions to urban problems, academics and policy makers can learn much from Beckett and Herbert's case study." --Contemporary Sociology