Banished : the new social control in urban America

"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 currentpractices 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 crimecontrol 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 ramificationsand 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 andsymptoms 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 Read more...