Abstract
“Banishment,” a provocative term coined by Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert, captures the fusion and implementation of civil and criminal law that now gives cops, lawyers and judges—our law enforcement and the judicial system—the power to amputate “undesirable” citizens, the visible poor, from public landscapes in urban America. Using Seattle as their case study, Beckett and Herbert discuss the evolution of social control mechanisms from the now defunct loitering and vagrancy laws to contemporary civility codes that have led to a variety of legal mechanisms used to recriminalize and ideally control social disorder. Seattle’s Stay Out of Drug Areas (SODAs) and Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAPs) orders, in addition to trespass orders and park exclusion laws are, according to Beckett and Herbert, “a flawed endeavor to use the criminal justice system to address the manifestation of social disadvantage” (p.153).
We continue to use religion and therapy, staples of behavioral explanations of why people are poor, to combat those who are caught when publically misbehaving—what ever that means. Religious salvation, rehabilitation and the rationalization and legislation of morally infused policies dominate our urban poverty policies. What Beckett and Herbert add to this chronicle of less-than-successful policies-in-action is an account of “banishment,” a practice that not only fails to address the underlying economic and political sources of social misery, but further, abandons the possibility of behavioral improvement and rehabilitation. Instead, the problem of social misery and disadvantage has been handed over to the criminal justice system in an attempt to remove the visible poor from prospering urban landscapes.
While Banished’s analysis emerges from an either/or academic, political, and policy discourse that has permeated, and perhaps hijacked the debates over the causes and subsequent solutions in dealing with America’s urban poor, it provides a useful and cogent evaluation of how Seattle moved toward the criminalization of the poor, and by extension, poverty. In the end, even the highly touted and well-meaning problem-solving “therapeutic” drug courts are undermined by this policy of banishment, a policy that, according to the authors, has been justified by two essential goals. First, “to improve the quality of life in allegedly disorderly neighborhoods,” and second, “to encourage the banished to desist from any deviant behaviors in which they may engage” (p. 105).
Beckett and Herbert’s case study of Seattle is well suited to their argument. On the one hand, Seattle is one of the most progressive post-industrial and environmentally friendly U.S. cities with a large progressive citizenry. On the other hand, Seattle is also on the forefront of using banishment practices as a mechanism of social control and spatial exclusion that has come to define urban poverty policy in other U.S. cities. New York, Los Angeles, Portland, and Boston, to name a few, have recently begun to employ one or more methods of banishment. Whether one sees their selection of Seattle in terms of purposive sampling, an example of an extreme case analysis, and/or being in the right place at the right time, does not really matter. By using Seattle to explore banishment, they are able to gain a more comprehensive picture of this practice for their readers. 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.
The authors’ thorough and targeted case study of banishment, as another misguided attempt to solve urban poverty in U.S. cities, seamlessly provides a platform for Beckett and Herbert to advance an alternative approach to quell urban poverty and its associated social dislocations. Harm reduction and housing first, distinct but complementary policies, acknowledge that there will always be men and women who are socially and economically excluded from adequate employment and affordable housing and/or folks who cannot abstain from drugs and alcohol and find themselves working and living in open spaces that make their actions and behaviors vulnerable to public scrutiny. It follows that if we cannot eradicate the sources of such overtly risky behaviors then we should focus on reducing the negative consequences of such behaviors. Health-care, social services and housing policies, such as housing first, are comprehensive approaches designed to reduce the amount of potential harm the disadvantaged might cause themselves and others.
While this is a somewhat worthy goal, resources applied to it thus far have not led to success. Rather than improving the situation, behavior and character of the urban poor, poverty policy in this day and age must reconcile with the political climate and will. Harm reduction is not equivalent to a strong welfare state and provisions for its most disadvantaged citizens. Housing first clearly removes the homeless from a system of temporary housing programs that continue to marginalize them, but does little to promote the building of more affordable housing. Advocates of harm reduction and housing first policies are not blind to the underlying structural manifestations of urban problems, nor their desire to directly address these causes, but they are also pragmatists, and are willing to advance solutions that combat policies such as banishment which cause our most disadvantaged urban residents even more harm. In drafting viable solutions to urban problems, academics and policy makers can learn much from Beckett and Herbert’s case study. “The lesson of the Garden of Eden is not that we should renounce apples. Understanding the causes of homelessness is a good first step in devising policies to deal with it, but still only a first step” (O’Flaherty 1996: 277). The authors reconcile their frustration of wanting to eradicate the suffering of the poor with the urgency in which cities need to address their immediate needs. Beckett and Herbert have made an important contribution in helping us to understand that banishment is clearly not a step in the right direction.