■■ topic paper – police practices
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- K – vs any ‘crime’ impacts
K – securityPolicing is always also a means of regulating and securitizing spacesLIPPERT & WALBY 2013 (Randy, professor criminology @ Univ. Windsor, Canada, and Kevin, ass prof. of sociology @ Univ. of Victoria, Canada, specializing in surveillance and policing, “Introduction”, Policing Cities: Urban securitization and regulation in a twenty-first century world, Routledge, p.2-3 , note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] The title's second, less obvious meaning is that the space and materiality of the urban (Ford 1994) and policing are deeply intertwined. As Michel Foucault remarked in his famous "security, population, territory" lectures, "to police and to urbanize are the same thing" (Foucault 2007: 337) and, more intriguingly, said "police . . . [is] a condition of existence for the urban" (Foucault 2007: 336). These assertions lend understanding to this second meaning of Policing Cities. In much previous work on urban policing, the city is typically an inert background rather than the main stage or the protagonist influencing the outcome of the story. However, the second meaning highlighted by our title refers to the integral relationship between policing and the urban form. This is evident where walls and segregation are stark, as in gated communities (Low 2003; Caldeira 1996) but also where spatial and material divides are subtle and gradual. The space and materiality of the urban should interest all scholars concerned with policing, not only urban planners or architectural theorists. As Julie Berg notes in her chapter on security provisions in South African cities, "urban space itself plays an important role." Nelson Botello makes a similar point about built space and surveillance in Mexico City. These and other chapters about policing in the world's cities underscore that such processes and the urban are entangled; the policing/urban nexus is not incidental. For Foucault "police" connotes not public police but regulation more generally, especially its spatial elements (Elden 2001). In his lectures, Foucault quotes Catherine II on developing a code of police: "The things of police are things of each moment . . . . Police is concerned with little things" (Foucault 2007: 340). It is these little things and spaces in the fleeting moments of urban life, remarked upon in the chapters below, which become subject to "indefinite regulation" (Foucault 2007: 340). Our quoting of Foucault is not to suggest the following chapters are primarily Foucauldian but instead to imply there is more to policing than might first appear, and that the space and materiality of the city need exploration too. Issues of built space and architecture are integral to policing, and policing in turn shapes the city.//// This collection's aim is to move beyond case studies of policing cities - in both senses of the phrase - from one perspective or country by bringing together international scholars from multiple disciplines to interrogate urban policing, securitization, and regulation; to reveal these practices as more intricate and mutable than previously thought; and to consider the thorny and intriguing theoretical and conceptual issues these explorations raise. Some concepts used to make sense of recent developments in the world's cities, like regulation, are old, yet remain vital even where urban populations and conduct are not directly targeted; others, like securitization, are newer, and offer additional ways to think about policing cities. Typically securitization means the regulation and fortification of buildings, spaces, and things (Aradau 2010). In New York City co-op housing arrangements, as Setha Low's chapter reveals, securitization can also mean the "financialization" of life, a process that can detrimentally affect those seeking affordable urban housing. John Flint notes a similar trend across the UK in his chapter on urban public housing. But if policing entails strategies "intended to offer guarantees of security to subjects" (Johnston 1999: 10), then there is overlap among policing, regulation, and securitization practices. Our position is that these practices are inseparable. Certainly policing as the broadest of the three concepts often encompasses regulation and securitization (Walby and Lippert 2012). The overlap of these practices within cities remains underplayed and little recognized in scholarly work. Disciplinary distinctions made about these practices may stunt rather than nurture conceptual cross-fertilization and refinement among criminologists, geographers, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, socio-legal scholars and others seeking understanding of policing cities. K – vs any ‘crime’ impactsTheir portrayals of crime are manipulations – it functions as a rationalization for abandoning the urban underclassMEEKS professor Criminology, Criminal Justice & Emergency Management @ Cal. State University Long Beach 2006 (Daryl, “Police Militarization in Urban Areas: The Obscure War Against the Underclass”, The Black Scholar, Vol 35 No 4, Winter, p.39,, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] As noted previously, a just cause for the urban war on crime would have been a dra- matic increase in the violent urban crime rate. However, as the nationally recognized crime index has reported, violent crimes have steadily declined over the past decade. Welch et al. suggest that the public's perception of social problems, such as urban crime, can be strongly influenced by negative reporting from the powerful elite, and thus elevating that problem to a status that causes grave concern for the well-being of the general public. Is the manipulatively influenced perception of crime really just cause for the war on urban crime and the enemy treatment of the urban underclass? Under the Western democratic model debate on the merits of any war action is required. However, the war on urban crime failed to garner such debate prior to its declaration. Under- taking a domestic war on urban crime would cause concerned individuals to believe that the urban underclass had attacked the social fabric of the powerful elite, because in most cases it is an overt attack that leads to a dec- laration of war. Interestingly, Welch et al. note researcher James P. Sterba's 1992 work entitled "Reconciling Pacifists and Just War Theorists," which discusses the requirements for a just war. According to Sterba just cause for war is usually specified by three require- ments; a substantial aggressive act by the enemy; an offer of conciliatory approaches that must be either hopeless or too costly; and options for aggressive responses that must neither be hopeless nor too costly. One would be hard pressed, under Ster- ba's criteria for just cause for war, to identify any aggressive act by the urban underclass against society's powerful elite, or any conciliatory approaches by the powerful elite which stood to help the urban underclass. The significant shift in urban policy away from revitalization and rehabilitation that began in the 1980s can hardly be expressed as a conciliatory gesture when in fact this shift in urban pol- icy fostered the defunding of social programs that served the urban underclass. But, in spite of the lack of aggressive acts by the urban underclass against the powerful elite and the urban policy shift whose outcomes served to victimized the underclass, an urban war was waged which has isolated and marginalized the underclass. Download 1 Mb. Share with your friends:
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