Emma Patchett is a doctoral researcher at Leeds University. Her recent chapter explores the process of asylum seeking and waiting at the border through a spatio-legal reading of Paweł Pawlikowski’s Last Resort. Her monograph Spacing (in) Diaspora: Law, Literature and the Roma (2017) considered literary refractions of migration law in contemporary texts written by authors in the Roma diaspora. Emma’s work has appeared in Polemos , Australian Feminist Law Journal, Border Criminologies, and Counterpress. Tweets @eepwrites
Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) enable local authorities to regulate behaviour through the enforcement of criminal penalties in a specified locality under s.59 of the Anti- Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. A local authority has the power to create a PSPO to cover a specified area if they determine a specific type of behaviour is having, or is likely to have, a detrimental effect on the quality of life of people in the locality. This legislation provides local councils with broad discretionary powers of prohibition and enforcement.[1] Whilst there are a range of hybrid orders aiming to regulate behaviour, PSPOs are spatially and temporally distinctive: they can apply consistently or inconsistently throughout the duration of the Order – s 59 (6) (b) and (c) states that it can be framed ‘so as to apply at all times, or only at specified times, or at all times except those specified’ and can ‘apply in all circumstances, or only in specified circumstances’ – and the boundary can be drawn according to the desires of the local body making the Order. PSPOs have therefore, it is argued, generated ‘new frontiers in exclusion, intolerance and criminalisation’ (Heap and Dickinson, 2018, 184), often explicitly prohibiting activities such as sleeping, begging, or loitering in designated spaces. A recent study by Heap et al (2022) found that those experiencing street homelessness said they felt constantly policed within a PSPO area, fuelled by the high volume of informal interactions with the policing bodies where they were repeatedly told to move on.[2] However, participants ultimately returned to the PSPO area, producing a cycle of dispersal and displacement which neither stopped nor deterred the behaviour causing ‘harm’. Here, there is no recognition of the dynamic and reciprocal way in which all are involved in the shaping of public space, but rather the implementation of a selectively prohibitive framework that puts in place fluctuating partitions.
Although PSPOs have been used to challenge a wide range of behaviours, rough sleeping is a distinctive prohibition, due to its inherent visibility and the fact that any ‘harm’ arising from the Order originates from the act of someone simply dwelling in public space in a way that offends the senses.[3] Martin Heidegger defines dwelling as a practice of ‘cultivation and construction’, the act of inhabiting space by sustaining one’s material presence in an environment (2006, 67-70). This perception of dwelling does not leave much room for the level of disruption, unsettlement and disturbance tied to the experience of dwelling in a particular place as an ‘undesirable’ body. [4] Doreen Massey’s reading of Heideggerian dwelling derives partly from its rendering of place as that which is invariably singular, heavily boundaried and temporally linear (2018, 105-106). For Massey, Heidegger places emphasis on a unified experience which runs counter to the complex and messy lived experience of place (ibid, 106-107). For her, place is something which is not bound to a topological drift towards becoming, but rather a ‘specificity’ which emerges from ‘a particular constellation of relations, articulated together at a particular locus’ (ibid 107). Nevertheless, there is, it could be argued, something to be taken from the understanding of dwelling as cultivation drawn from Heidegger which is useful here when imbued with Massey’s dynamic interpretation of the construction of place. Reading cultivation subversively as part of a mode of production rather than boundary-making conceptualises place as that which is made through its networks of sensory disruption, as well as the specificity of the place itself, in which rough sleeping becomes a practice of dwelling, playing a role in the making of place (Wehman-Brown 2016, 258). In a sense, then, as Tim Cresswell identifies, dwelling is what defines the relationality between subject and the place, and it is this practice of relationality which produces public space (2015, 44-45). For Cresswell, space ‘spreads out from’ place, and is thus reliant on an understanding of place as a site of productive disruption rather than simply a sense of being ‘rooted’, which retains the features of dwelling as a process of cultivation whilst moving beyond Heidegger’s quixotic fantasy (ibid 45, 53-54). For Massey, this ‘throwntogetherness’ is characterised through acknowledgement of the demand for ‘negotiation’, in which place is made through practices of divergent – and sometimes unsettling and confrontational – forms of dwelling (2005, 154).
An order has the capacity to create normative rules for dwelling, as it has flexible spatio-temporal boundaries: it can be varied to stretch or contract, and to envelop new restrictions or dispose of others. This elasticity, however, obscures the implementation of definitive borders between the ‘local community’ and those who must be exorcised due to their non-normative behaviour. Restrictions are framed not in terms of an equal negotiation between bodies trying to occupy space at the same time, but rather highlight one as an exemplification of harmful activity and the other as a legitimate body who has the right ‘to exercise autonomous control’ and demand ‘ safety’ within public space.[5] Of those PSPOs that do target activities associated with homelessness, the wording is often vague and ambiguous. In effect, the use of this legislation enables local authorities to shirk their responsibilities to provide resources and support, by criminalising behaviour associated with non-sedentary groups (Heap and Dickinson, 2018, 187). Indeed, the use of such sanctions creates carceral borders around public space – but only for certain bodies at certain times. Rather than being seen as a continuation of anti-social behaviour legislation it is perhaps more accurate to view PSPOs as an extension of historical anti-vagrancy laws, which also ‘granted extensive discretionary power to the authorities’ through ambiguous drafting and the ability to adapt and shift in accordance with particular spatio-temporal demands (Roberts, 2022, 186). The ambiguity of PSPOs is a deliberate choice, and it seems that their function is as a performative and punitive means of demonstrating the presence of authority to guarantee the purification of public space, through the construction of fluctuating yet nonetheless carceral boundaries. The specific space covered by the PSPO is, according to statutory guidance, intended to be ‘clearly defined’ and highly visible.[6] Yet, given the large expanse of area many PSPOs cover and the range of activities that may be included, enforcement simply cannot be guaranteed within the specified area (Heap and Dickinson, 2018, 185). As a consequence, many of the problematic behaviours identified by councils either remain unsolved or are simply moved elsewhere: the border wall is porous, invisible, and sometimes performative in practice, yet is nonetheless securitized.
Photograph taken by EP – December 2022
I have walked the 10 kilometer boundary of the City Centre PSPO currently in operation in Leeds City Centre, which prohibited any “person within the restricted area to make, erect, place or deposit any temporary structure on a highway, adjacent to a highway or in any public place without the permission of Leeds City Council.”[7] I spotted only one sign providing notification that there was a PSPO in place, although there may have been others. Leeds is a large, post-industrial city with a diverse population. The canal area by the station, where I started, has seen ‘the conversion of old warehouses into high-budget apartment buildings, the construction of new glass-and-steel office buildings’ (Adami, 2020, 92). At several points I was simply tracing busy four lane roads which divide these areas of regeneration – in which business and speed are prioritised – from the residential areas less favoured by developers. I would turn and find myself fringed by high fences obscuring empty sites for more high-rise development, and then – unexpectedly – would drop down onto the canal path for a while. The relative calm of this once vital access route was broken when I once more found myself climbing back onto a busy main road. Sometimes I couldn’t walk the edge of the PSPO as my path was blocked. The canal and the motorways made ‘natural’ walls. I was looking for the edges, for borders and boundaries that determined this new malleable carceral space which permits local authorities ‘to cleanse spaces of those who do not conform to social or spatial norms’ (Heap and Dickinson, 2018, 187).
Henri Lefebvre argues that ‘public space […] ought to be an opening outwards’ rather than an act of enclosure (1991, 147). It could be asserted that this reflects a form of utopianism which is ultimately out of step with the demands of various communities to regulate, conserve and protect spaces for particular uses, however in this sense I think it is useful to emphasise that Lefebvre does not fetishize public space nor seek to reduce it to a singular communal encounter (Filion, 2020, 75). This is clear from his discussion of the way in which this corporeal entanglement is not simply a case of moving through or existing in space, rather ‘each living body is space and has its space: it produces itself in space and it also produces that space’ (Lefebvre, 1991, 170). Therefore, it is not a matter of re-making public space through a guise of utopian idealism but rather taking as a starting point that there is a certain futility in regulative frameworks which negate the ways in which ‘space is actually experienced, in its depths, as duplications, echoes and reverberations, redundancies and doublings-up’ (ibid 184). Similarly, engaging with Doreen Massey’s concept of ‘throwntogetherness’ demands an acknowledgement of ‘undesirable’ dwelling in such a way that goes beyond simply reiterating the borders and boundaries which segment or surround public space (specifically, here, for rough sleepers) but rather re-frames how that place is practiced through the messy materialism at play .The inherent violence and unsettlement of the concept can be read as a way of responding to the functioning of ‘asymmetrical power relations’ operating through the law, in a particular place (Sparke and Matthews, 2018, 216-217).
The PSPO therefore brings to light more than simply issues with vague or over-reaching legislation, to the much more complex challenge of acknowledging ‘who is included or excluded in participating in the daily practices of urban life’.[8] It also calls attention to the way in which invisible carceral boundaries are drawn for certain bodies, with little opportunity for judicial oversight. Rather than simply witnessing this clearly defined boundary (which, let me emphasise, is a boundary line in operation for some people, at certain times), my research aims to unsettle the legal production of place by conceptualising the role of non-normative dwelling in the making of public space.
References
Adami, E. 2020. Shaping public spaces from below: the vernacular semiotics of Leeds Kirkgate Market. Social Semiotics, 30 (1), 89-113.
Cresswell, T. (2015). Place an Introduction, 2nd edn, Wiley.
Filion, P. (2020). Lefebvre and contemporary urbanism: The enduring influence and critical power of his writing on cities. The Routledge Handbook of Henri Lefebvre, The City and Urban Society, M. Leary-Owhin and J. MacCarthy (eds), Routledge, 69 -77.
Heap, V., & Dickinson, J. (2018). Public Spaces Protection Orders: a critical policy analysis. Safer Communities, 17(3), 182-192.
Heidegger, M. (2006). Building dwelling thinking.’ Visual Culture, J. Morra and M. Smith (eds), Routledge, 66-76.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson, Blackwell.
Massey, D. (2018). Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place. The Doreen Massey Reader, J. Peck and others (eds), Agenda, 103-108.
Sparke, M. and Mitchell, K. (2018). Lampedusa in Hamburg and the ‘throwntogetherness’ of global city citizenship. Doreen Massey: Critical Dialogues, M.Werner and others (eds), Agenda, 215-231.
Wehman-Brown, G. (2016). Home is where you park it: Place-making practices of car dwelling in the United States. Space and Culture, 19 (3), 251- 259
[1] See Manifesto Club, ‘ PSPOs: the use of ‘busybody’ powers in 2022’, 19th July 2023 < https://manifestoclub.info/pspos-the-use-of-busybody-powers-in-2022/> accessed 25th July 2023.
[2] The 2022 report for this study, conducted by researchers Vicky Heap, Alex Black and Chris Devany at the Helena Kennedy Centre, University of Sheffield, can be accessed here: https://www.shu.ac.uk/helena-kennedy-centre-international-justice/research-and-projects/all-projects/impact-of-anti-social-behaviour-tools-and-powers-on-street-sleeping-homeless-people
[3] See Liam Geraghty, ‘Homeless people are being ‘disproportionately criminalised’ by anti-social behaviour laws’, 28th September 2022, Big Issue, <https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/homeless-people-targeted-police-pspo-anti-social-behaviour/>accessed 12 September 2023.
[4] See Liam Geraghty, ‘Most rough sleepers say they’re treated unfairly by police, damning study reveals’, 18th March 2024, Big Issue, < https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/rough-sleepers-mistreatment-police-homeless/#:~:text=Most%20rough%20sleepers%20say%20they,by%20police%2C%20damning%20study%20reveals&text=The%20incident%20which%20saw%20a,a%20new%20study%20has%20found> accessed 1st April 2024.
[5] Home Office, ‘Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014: Anti-social behaviour powers Statutory guidance for frontline professionals’ (Home Office 2013 [revised 2023]), 338.
[6] See Local Government Association, Public Spaces Protection Orders – Guidance for councils (Local Government Association, 2018) – 9-17.
[7] Public Spaces Protection Order Number 3 of 2023 (the “order”) Leeds Metropolitan District.
[8] See Ben Sander and Francesca Albanese, (2018) An examination of the scale and impact of enforcement interventions on street homeless people in England and Wales, Crisis.