Banished: The New Social Control In Urban America

Abstract

Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America by Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert examines way trespass laws have been enacted to authorize law enforcement officers to give people trespass admonishments. A trespass admonishment restricts a person from entering a particular area or district for a specific period of time usually anywhere from three months to a year. If person violates their trespass admonishment, they can be arrested and taken before a judge. The judge may then issue a trespass exclusion which means that person is permanently banned from that area. Violation of a trespass exclu- sion could mean time in prison. Essentially, police officers are free to decide who is suitable to be in a specific urban community. The argument for trespass exclusions rests on argument that the world is fairly neatly divided between orderly and clearly identifiable disorderly (Beckett and Herbert 105), and furthermore that police are qualified to judge this distinction. While Beckett and Herbert's focus is Seattle, Washington, they are quick to point out that this and similar policies have spread throughout most of major cities in United States. Vagrancy laws were abolished in United States in 1960s. They were, in fact, declared unconstitutional by United States Supreme Court. However, much same as Jim Crow laws were enacted through- out southern states to prevent Afro-American people from voting in spite of their constitutional right to do so, trespass laws have been enacted to exclude certain people from occupying public space. As Bernard Harcourt has pointed

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