Homelessness, loitering and

urinating in public
Alex Fanghanel
A.n.d.fanghanel@greenwich.ac.uk
 Overview
• Key terms
• Homelessness as a disobedient practice
Loitering
• Drinking
• Urinating in public
 Things to think about
• How far can we think of homelessness as a
disobedient practice?
• What is the relationship between
homelessness, deciding on deviance and the
CJS?
• Consider the importance of WHERE stuff
happens
 Key Terms
• Public/Private
• Capitalism
• Consumerism
 Matter out of place
• Key texts:
• Douglas, M (1966) Purity and Danger,
Abindgon, Routledge
• Douglas, M (1996) Risk and Blame: essays in
cultural theory, London, Routledge
 Loitering and the CJS
• Preceding offense to other public order
offenses
• Used to deter crime - Broken Windows
Theory, Wilson and Kelling (1984)
• A subjective offense
• Who does this criminalise?
Gin Lane, Hogarth, 1751
Beer street
21 Century Gin Lane
st
Drinking, Consumerism and Crime
• Drinkatainment
• Street Drinking
• Fear of crime/Fear of the other
 Nuisance
• Is it ever OK to urinate in public?
• What is nuisance?
• causing a substantial and unreasonable
interference with a [claimant]'s land or his/her
use or enjoyment of that land
(Bermingham,2008: 225)
 outraging public decency
• the act was of such a lewd character as to
outrage public decency; this element
constitutes the nature of the act, which has to
be proved before the offence can be
established,
• and the act took place in a public place and
must have been capable of being seen by two
or more persons who were actually present,
even if they did not actually see it
 "I said to you when you last appeared
that the image of your urinating over
the wreath of poppies at the city war
memorial was a truly shocking one.“
That was no understatement. There
you are, a young man of 19, urinating
on the war memorial erected to
honour the memory of so many other
young men.
I have no doubt at all, and this is
accepted by the prosecution that you
did so because of the vast quantity of
alcohol that you had consumed. There
was no other motive whatsoever.
 Summary
• Non-productive, non-consumptive behaviours
are punished by the CJS
• Difference between private and public
behaviours is salient
• Practice becomes disobedient because of CJS
bias or prejudice?
 be 'homeless' for a night:
• https://centrepoint.org.uk/get-involved/event
s-calendar/corporate-sleep-out-london
• https://www.bigissue.org.uk/event/big-sleep-
out-london