RT Article
T1 French cities’ struggle against incivilities: from theory to practices in regulating urban public space
JF European journal on criminal policy and research
VO 23
IS 1
SP 77
OP 97
A1 Gayet-Viaud, Carole
LA English
YR 2017
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1566535026
AB In France, public policies began defining “incivilities” as a primary topic and target to focus on more than two decades ago. Yet what this term actually means is still somewhat unclear: almost every organization that uses it has its own definition, sometimes its own observatory. Despite, or perhaps because of, its very vagueness, the concept has become widely shared and used, securing itself a place on the agendas of most local security policies, becoming an explicit part of the remits of an increasing number of professionals, from police officers to social workers, including a wide range of municipal agents. The range of situations and behaviors potentially included in the list of “unruly conduct” is seemingly endless, from groups of teenagers hanging out to homeless people privatizing public places, and from using playgrounds as public toilets to noise, garbage, dog fouling, graffiti, queue-jumping, pushing and shoving, street harassment, insults of all kinds, badly parked cars, and so forth. However, not all of them provoke the same public attention. This article focuses on the way disorders are actually defined, measured, and dealt with in practice. Incivilities are often said to be growing because of increasing powerlessness. Our research proves action is far from being merely correlative to the legal capacity for sanction.
K1 Administrative order
K1 Civility
K1 Disorders
K1 Ethnography
K1 Incivility
K1 Policing
K1 Public order
K1 Incivility measurement
K1 Incivility regulation
K1 Local security policy
K1 Public space
K1 Social control
K1 Urban life
K1 Respekt
K1 Polizeiarbeit
DO 10.1007/s10610-016-9335-9