Stuck in the feedback loop: News media, local government policy and the criminalisation of visible homelessness’

Abstract

Cities are perennially concerned with the promotion and maintenance of social order. Its opposite, disorder, is perceived as threatening and disruptive; changing and challenging the constructed atmospheres of public spaces and potentially making inhabitants and visitors feel unsafe. Social disorder may be mundane and material, such as litter or broken windows, or it may be embodied in the figure of 'the criminal'.