“100% They Are Destroying Our Beautiful Town”: Toxic Conversations About Homelessness on Public Facebook Community Groups

Robillard, Abigail; Howells, Stephanie

doi:10.1007/s10610-023-09553-x

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 24 publications

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“…A final archetype of permanent bad guys is people experiencing poverty, especially homelessness. Law enforcement, news outlets, and social media all typically scapegoat people enduring housing insecurity as criminal and unlawful (e.g., Barak and Bohm, 1989 ; Robillard and Howells, 2023 ). Homelessness is indeed characterized by violence, albeit in the reverse direction; the structural conditions of poverty that allow homelessness to exist and persist are symbolically and materially violent ( Fischer et al, 2008 ; Roy et al, 2014 ), not to mention the added risk among those who are also trans, mentally ill, and/or members of the Global Ethnic Majority (i.e., people who identify as “Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialized as ethnic minorities”; Campbell-Stephens, 2020 , p. 1).…”

Section: Hegemonic Public Safety Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

When safety for you means danger for me: the racial politics of carceral public safety discourse

Rabelo,

Stewart,

Snowden

et al. 2024

Front. Psychol.

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Safety is a human right and universal need, and yet we as researchers and practitioners often take for granted the conditions that help people feel safe. In this conceptual review, we focus on factors that contribute to people’s sense of safety in service of understanding how, when, and where people feel safe. Moreover, we consider how race, power, and privilege shape people’s sense of safety and danger. In doing so, we highlight how public safety is not an objective or static reality but rather a political project that reflects dominant ideologies and serves state interests. We begin this conceptual review with a discussion of how public safety is a social construct whose meaning varies across time, space, and place. Next, we discuss three dominant ideologies that are embedded within collective public safety discourse: permanent bad guy syndrome, the victimization-fear paradox, and the politics of ideal victimhood. Together, these ideologies help to shape carceral public safety frameworks, which is the dominant paradigm in our culture. We then illuminate some of the underlying assumptions within carceral public safety frameworks and their implications for responses to public safety concerns, including elevating the safety concerns of dominant groups while criminalizing undesirable bodies, undermining stigmatized communities’ ability to access public safety and justice, legitimizing suspicion and surveillance, incentivizing carceral responses while diverting resources from safety promotion programs, and altering public spaces. In doing so, we highlight how carceral public safety frameworks reflect and reinforce existing injustices while also contributing to the stigmatization, marginalization, and manufactured precarity of social groups deemed undesirable and therefore unworthy of protection. We conclude with a discussion of alternative models of public safety which are rooted in life-affirming frameworks, which focus on improving people’s material conditions as a means of lessening and preventing the likelihood and impact of interpersonal violence.

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Section: Hegemonic Public Safety Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

When safety for you means danger for me: the racial politics of carceral public safety discourse

Rabelo,

Stewart,

Snowden

et al. 2024

Front. Psychol.

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Addressing Antisocial Behaviour and Toxic Communication Online

Lavorgna

Powell

2023

Eur J Crim Policy Res

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The Great Rise . . . and Then the Great Fall: Toronto Police Service's Enforcement of the Ontario Safe Streets Act, 2000–2022

O'Grady,

Simpson

2024

Canadian Public Policy

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Le présent article repose sur une analyse des statistiques secondaires obtenues auprès du service de police de Toronto (SPT) et du bureau du procureur général de l'Ontario relativement à la Loi sur la sécurité dans les rues de l'Ontario (LSRO). La loi, entrée en vigueur en 2000, ciblait la mendicité agressive, la sollicitation d'un auditoire captif et la disposition non sécuritaire des préservatifs et des aiguilles usagés, ainsi que du verre brisé. Les statistiques révèlent que les contraventions découlant de la LSRO ont augmenté régulièrement à Toronto entre 2000 et 2012, puis ont chuté abruptement entre 2013 et 2021. Les auteurs contestent la proposition du SPT et du Bureau du procureur général selon laquelle cette baisse découle de l'effet dissuasif de la loi, car aucune donnée n'appuie cette hypothèse. Pour expliquer clairement la baisse des contraventions, les cinq facteurs suivants doivent être pris en compte : 1) les changements au nombre d'officiers du SPT sur 100 000 habitants entre 2000 et 2021, 2) le démantèlement de l'unité des mesures de répression ciblées et stratégiques en 2012, 3) les changements aux contraventions émises à l’égard de toutes les violations à la Loi sur le Code de la route de l'Ontario depuis dix ans, 4) les modifications plus générales aux pratiques de contravention liées à la LSRO et 5) l’élimination des contrôles policiers dans les rues. L'article conclut en soulignant que cette baisse sera perçue par les critiques comme une évolution positive, même si elle reflète seulement l'acceptation de l'inutilité de ces contraventions auprès des personnes incapables de payer, et en avançant qu'il serait peut-être temps d'aller plus loin et d'abroger la LSRO, puisqu'elle cible injustement des citoyens marginalisés, y compris les personnes en situation d'itinérance.

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“100% They Are Destroying Our Beautiful Town”: Toxic Conversations About Homelessness on Public Facebook Community Groups

Cited by 3 publications

References 24 publications

When safety for you means danger for me: the racial politics of carceral public safety discourse

When safety for you means danger for me: the racial politics of carceral public safety discourse

Addressing Antisocial Behaviour and Toxic Communication Online

The Great Rise . . . and Then the Great Fall: Toronto Police Service's Enforcement of the Ontario Safe Streets Act, 2000–2022

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