Author: Sharon Hartles (2018)
Homelessness should not be a criminal offence. For this reason this review will draw upon a range of published data around the phenomenon to illustrate how and why the UK government has taken such a punitive stance. What this will illuminate is why the criminalisation of homelessness and its legitimacy should be actively contested and decriminalised. Equally, it will shed light on how a top-down approach (government led) to homelessness is constructed into a bottom-up approach (public led).
According to Oxfam (2013) from 1993 - 2008, the shift towards market-based capitalism, underpinned by the social-economic reforms endorsed in the 1980s, resulted in a dramatic increase of the number of people living in poverty in the UK. This situation was further exacerbated by the financial global crisis of 2007 - 2008, which led to the UK government bailing out the British banks to prevent a collapse of the British banking system. The ramification of the government's choice to bail out the banks initially took the form of a stimulus programme which was superseded in 2010 by austerity measures. The policies enacted as a response to the austerity measures, which were (and still are) fundamentality shaped around deep government spending cuts, have had far reaching impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable people in the UK including those affected by homelessness (Oxfam.org, 2013). In a bid to save money the UK government implemented a crime control approach (concerned with promoting security and controlling crime) to homelessness, in favour of a social welfare approach (concerned with promoting equality, inclusion and well-being). This decision to shift to an enforcement-based approach was underpinned by the following political and economic factors: the financial global crisis of 2007 - 2008, coupled with the government's choices to bail the banks out and introduce austerity measures to reduce government spending. This highlights the causes and choices behind why the UK government actively re-categorised and criminalised homelessness.
The financial crisis 2007 - 2008 resulted 1.3 million people in the UK being made redundant between 2007 and 2010 (Lee, 2017), potentially leaving them unable to afford mortgage/rent payments and vulnerable to losing their homes and becoming homeless. Moreover since the onset of austerity in 2010, the estimated number of people sleeping rough in England has increased year on year from 2010 - 2016 (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2017). The Rough Sleeping Statistics Autumn 2016, England report, estimates that 4,134 people slept rough on a snapshot night in autumn 2016. In comparison, 1,768 people slept rough on a snapshot night in autumn 2010. This is notable because rough sleeping has more than doubled in these seven years. However, what the report does not represent, or does not mediate, is the reason behind why rough sleepers are becoming more visible in British cities and public open spaces. The homeless are becoming more visible because support services and hostel availability are diminishing, as a direct result of government spending cuts.
In July 2014, the Home Office published the Reform of anti-social behaviour powers statutory guidance to support the effective use of new powers to tackle anti-social behaviour which takes place in public and open spaces (Home Office, 2014). In the statutory guidance the Home Office stated that public spaces play a vital role in communities, but can be lost to the communities who use them because of the actions of a selfish few who ruin these spaces, such as, those who exhibit homelessness and those who conduct aggressive begging. An analysis of the guidance document serves to demonstrate the significant role that subject positions play in actively constructing perceptions of homelessness. It is apparent that the Home Office has conceived a particularly negative way of talking about the phenomenon of homelessness. The Home Office distorted and normalised through the concept of common sense understandings, its narrative in such a way that it appears to be impartial, and written on the behalf, and in the interests of the community. What this illustrates is how the manipulative use of discourse (language and a way of thinking/understanding) can disguise a top-down approach and authenticate it, as if it were, a bottom-up approach to the perceived problem of homelessness.
The language used by the Home Office (2016) 'the selfish few who ruin community spaces' reflects, constitutes and is constructed through the Home Office's narrative of how homelessness within public spaces should be commonly understood. The Home Office (2014) referred to public spaces as being vital in communities. In this sense those who are included in the terms 'public' and 'part of communities' are those who have a home. In contrast, those who are excluded are those who publicly display homelessness. This powerful form of labelling stigmatises homelessness as othering, the act by which groups of individuals become represented as an outsider or 'not one of us'. An us and them type of approach stigmatises people who are associated with homelessness as unworthy/undeserving of their labels of a 'member of the public' and their label of being 'recognised as a member of their community'. This is significant because homelessness has historically been understood as indisputable and a common sense category (Jacobs et al., 1999). However, definitions of homelessness are not fixed, but can be contested, open to change and debate because they are socially constructed.
The government is able to use its power to socially construct legitimise/formalise its understandings through the enactment of law such as the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (Public spaces protection orders) and enforces this through the crime and justice system. In England, in 2014, 2,365 people were prosecuted and therefore actively categorised/labelled as a criminal for being homeless or committing vagrancy-related offences such as begging, sleeping in the park, street drinking, defecating and urinating in public spaces. Three men were 'nearly prosecuted' for taking food waste from a refuse bin and sixty-two rough sleepers were 'arrested' for accepting money from the public. The government are able to avoid the exposure, opposition, active resistance and the publics outrage to the criminalisation of homelessness because it is actively constructed to be a public led bottom-up response. This demonstrates how the UK government have punitively criminalised homelessness.
The government does not want research around homelessness which makes visible the systemic links with the capitalist system. It wants research which actively categorises homelessness to be caused by individual failure. What is problematic is that the government conceive, constitute and construct categories of homelessness which have real consequences. This is because it funds the research into homelessness and is therefore able to choose what types of research gets funding and what research does not. For this reason there can be implicit political pressure on homelessness experts because the government favours funding research which recommends 'a tweak to its services in a little way'. What this has illustrated is the governments' power to bias research around homelessness from its inception. As a consequence, this results in gaps in the evidence base revealing why it can be challenging to ensure accurate data around the phenomenon of homelessness is received and illustrates why new research needs to be conducted. This categorically demonstrates that homelessness should be decriminalised.
References
Department for Communities and Local Government. (2017) 'Rough Sleeping Statistics Autumn 2016, England', [Online]. Available at
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/585713/Rough_Sleeping_Autumn_2016_Statistical_Release.pdf
(Accessed 12th May 2018)
Gage, S., Munfafo, M., Macleod, J. and Davey–Smith, G. (2015) ‘Cannabis and psychosis’Lancet Psychiatry, vol.2, no. 5, pp. 380.
Home Office. (2014) 'Reform of anti-social behaviour powers - Public and open spaces' [Online]. Available at
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364851/Public_and_open_spaces_information_note.pdf
(Assessed 11th May 2018)
Jacobs, K., Kemeny, J. and Manzi, T. (1999) ‘The struggle to define homelessness: a constructivist approach’, In Huston, S. and Clapham, D. (eds.) Homelessness: Public Policies and Private Troubles, London, Cassell, pp. 11–28.
Lee, G. (2017) 'How many bankers were jailed for their part in the financial crisis?' Channel4.com, 20 November [Online]. Available at
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-many-bankers-were-jailed-for-their-part-in-the-financial-crisis (Assessed 12th May 2018)
Legislation.gov.uk (2018a)'Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014', [Online]. Available at
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/12/part/4/chapter/2/crossheading/public-spaces-protection-orders/enacted (Assessed 12th May 2018)
Oxfam.org. (2013) 'The true cost of austerity and inequality' [Online]. Available at
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/cs-true-cost-austerity-inequality-uk-120913-en.pdf (Assessed 11th May 2018)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Please cite this article as:
Hartles, S (2018) Is it time the UK government decriminalise homelessness? [Online] Available at https://sharonhartles.weebly.com/is-it-time-the-uk-government-decriminalise-homelessness.html (Accessed)
ATTRIBUTION
All works are Open Access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original works are properly cited.
© Sharon Hartles 2022.
Homelessness should not be a criminal offence. For this reason this review will draw upon a range of published data around the phenomenon to illustrate how and why the UK government has taken such a punitive stance. What this will illuminate is why the criminalisation of homelessness and its legitimacy should be actively contested and decriminalised. Equally, it will shed light on how a top-down approach (government led) to homelessness is constructed into a bottom-up approach (public led).
According to Oxfam (2013) from 1993 - 2008, the shift towards market-based capitalism, underpinned by the social-economic reforms endorsed in the 1980s, resulted in a dramatic increase of the number of people living in poverty in the UK. This situation was further exacerbated by the financial global crisis of 2007 - 2008, which led to the UK government bailing out the British banks to prevent a collapse of the British banking system. The ramification of the government's choice to bail out the banks initially took the form of a stimulus programme which was superseded in 2010 by austerity measures. The policies enacted as a response to the austerity measures, which were (and still are) fundamentality shaped around deep government spending cuts, have had far reaching impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable people in the UK including those affected by homelessness (Oxfam.org, 2013). In a bid to save money the UK government implemented a crime control approach (concerned with promoting security and controlling crime) to homelessness, in favour of a social welfare approach (concerned with promoting equality, inclusion and well-being). This decision to shift to an enforcement-based approach was underpinned by the following political and economic factors: the financial global crisis of 2007 - 2008, coupled with the government's choices to bail the banks out and introduce austerity measures to reduce government spending. This highlights the causes and choices behind why the UK government actively re-categorised and criminalised homelessness.
The financial crisis 2007 - 2008 resulted 1.3 million people in the UK being made redundant between 2007 and 2010 (Lee, 2017), potentially leaving them unable to afford mortgage/rent payments and vulnerable to losing their homes and becoming homeless. Moreover since the onset of austerity in 2010, the estimated number of people sleeping rough in England has increased year on year from 2010 - 2016 (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2017). The Rough Sleeping Statistics Autumn 2016, England report, estimates that 4,134 people slept rough on a snapshot night in autumn 2016. In comparison, 1,768 people slept rough on a snapshot night in autumn 2010. This is notable because rough sleeping has more than doubled in these seven years. However, what the report does not represent, or does not mediate, is the reason behind why rough sleepers are becoming more visible in British cities and public open spaces. The homeless are becoming more visible because support services and hostel availability are diminishing, as a direct result of government spending cuts.
In July 2014, the Home Office published the Reform of anti-social behaviour powers statutory guidance to support the effective use of new powers to tackle anti-social behaviour which takes place in public and open spaces (Home Office, 2014). In the statutory guidance the Home Office stated that public spaces play a vital role in communities, but can be lost to the communities who use them because of the actions of a selfish few who ruin these spaces, such as, those who exhibit homelessness and those who conduct aggressive begging. An analysis of the guidance document serves to demonstrate the significant role that subject positions play in actively constructing perceptions of homelessness. It is apparent that the Home Office has conceived a particularly negative way of talking about the phenomenon of homelessness. The Home Office distorted and normalised through the concept of common sense understandings, its narrative in such a way that it appears to be impartial, and written on the behalf, and in the interests of the community. What this illustrates is how the manipulative use of discourse (language and a way of thinking/understanding) can disguise a top-down approach and authenticate it, as if it were, a bottom-up approach to the perceived problem of homelessness.
The language used by the Home Office (2016) 'the selfish few who ruin community spaces' reflects, constitutes and is constructed through the Home Office's narrative of how homelessness within public spaces should be commonly understood. The Home Office (2014) referred to public spaces as being vital in communities. In this sense those who are included in the terms 'public' and 'part of communities' are those who have a home. In contrast, those who are excluded are those who publicly display homelessness. This powerful form of labelling stigmatises homelessness as othering, the act by which groups of individuals become represented as an outsider or 'not one of us'. An us and them type of approach stigmatises people who are associated with homelessness as unworthy/undeserving of their labels of a 'member of the public' and their label of being 'recognised as a member of their community'. This is significant because homelessness has historically been understood as indisputable and a common sense category (Jacobs et al., 1999). However, definitions of homelessness are not fixed, but can be contested, open to change and debate because they are socially constructed.
The government is able to use its power to socially construct legitimise/formalise its understandings through the enactment of law such as the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (Public spaces protection orders) and enforces this through the crime and justice system. In England, in 2014, 2,365 people were prosecuted and therefore actively categorised/labelled as a criminal for being homeless or committing vagrancy-related offences such as begging, sleeping in the park, street drinking, defecating and urinating in public spaces. Three men were 'nearly prosecuted' for taking food waste from a refuse bin and sixty-two rough sleepers were 'arrested' for accepting money from the public. The government are able to avoid the exposure, opposition, active resistance and the publics outrage to the criminalisation of homelessness because it is actively constructed to be a public led bottom-up response. This demonstrates how the UK government have punitively criminalised homelessness.
The government does not want research around homelessness which makes visible the systemic links with the capitalist system. It wants research which actively categorises homelessness to be caused by individual failure. What is problematic is that the government conceive, constitute and construct categories of homelessness which have real consequences. This is because it funds the research into homelessness and is therefore able to choose what types of research gets funding and what research does not. For this reason there can be implicit political pressure on homelessness experts because the government favours funding research which recommends 'a tweak to its services in a little way'. What this has illustrated is the governments' power to bias research around homelessness from its inception. As a consequence, this results in gaps in the evidence base revealing why it can be challenging to ensure accurate data around the phenomenon of homelessness is received and illustrates why new research needs to be conducted. This categorically demonstrates that homelessness should be decriminalised.
References
Department for Communities and Local Government. (2017) 'Rough Sleeping Statistics Autumn 2016, England', [Online]. Available at
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/585713/Rough_Sleeping_Autumn_2016_Statistical_Release.pdf
(Accessed 12th May 2018)
Gage, S., Munfafo, M., Macleod, J. and Davey–Smith, G. (2015) ‘Cannabis and psychosis’Lancet Psychiatry, vol.2, no. 5, pp. 380.
Home Office. (2014) 'Reform of anti-social behaviour powers - Public and open spaces' [Online]. Available at
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364851/Public_and_open_spaces_information_note.pdf
(Assessed 11th May 2018)
Jacobs, K., Kemeny, J. and Manzi, T. (1999) ‘The struggle to define homelessness: a constructivist approach’, In Huston, S. and Clapham, D. (eds.) Homelessness: Public Policies and Private Troubles, London, Cassell, pp. 11–28.
Lee, G. (2017) 'How many bankers were jailed for their part in the financial crisis?' Channel4.com, 20 November [Online]. Available at
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-many-bankers-were-jailed-for-their-part-in-the-financial-crisis (Assessed 12th May 2018)
Legislation.gov.uk (2018a)'Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014', [Online]. Available at
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/12/part/4/chapter/2/crossheading/public-spaces-protection-orders/enacted (Assessed 12th May 2018)
Oxfam.org. (2013) 'The true cost of austerity and inequality' [Online]. Available at
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/cs-true-cost-austerity-inequality-uk-120913-en.pdf (Assessed 11th May 2018)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Please cite this article as:
Hartles, S (2018) Is it time the UK government decriminalise homelessness? [Online] Available at https://sharonhartles.weebly.com/is-it-time-the-uk-government-decriminalise-homelessness.html (Accessed)
ATTRIBUTION
All works are Open Access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original works are properly cited.
© Sharon Hartles 2022.