Welfare, exclusion and rough sleeping in Liverpool

Abstract

Purpose -The paper aims to explore the relationship between rough sleepers, welfare and policy in the city of Liverpool, taking Liverpool City Council's Homelessness Strategy 2008-2011 as a starting point. The paper takes as its premise the notion of rough sleepers as among the most vulnerable and marginalised in society, and questions how well they are protected by policy. Design/methodology/approach -The approach used is analysis and contextualisation of the strategy document in terms of welfare and criminological perspectives. Findings -The paper posits that the city's European Capital of Culture Status for 2008 has acted as a springboard for further consumerist and regeneration-driven aspirations, facilitated by restriction of entitlement to access city space for groups such as rough sleepers. The piece explores responses to rough sleepers and other "undesirable" city centre space users in Liverpool and contends that their behaviour and activities are criminalised. Ultimately, it is argued that the city, whilst it prioritises its goal of becoming a "world-class city", fails to deliver in terms of its welfare obligations. Originality/value -It is argued that the failure of the strategy to adequately consider the direct needs of rough sleepers renders them subject to other approaches, namely criminalisation. The article is valuable to both academics interested in aspects of social justice and practitioners engaged in policy making, in that it highlights some of the ways in which policy can fail to meet its basic requirements.

Drawing out perceptions: Using drawing as a method to understand public perceptions of homelessness and crime

“…Formal measures have been introduced to clamp down on the activities of those experiencing homelessness, while a combination of formal and informal measures effectively sanitise our streets of this population (Cloke et al, 2010;Garland et al, 2010;Kinsella, 2011;Moore, 2008). Within the context of the CJS, those experiencing homelessness have therefore been constructed as a nuisance or an eyesore at best, and as criminal and dangerous at worst.…”

“…The CJS has a long-standing propensity for criminalising those experiencing homelessness, stemming from the UK’s Vagrancy Act 1824 (‘the 1824 Act’), which prohibited activities commonly associated with homelessness, such as begging, busking, and rough sleeping (Cloke et al, 2010; Kinsella, 2011). Controversially, the 1824 Act is still in force today, and in 2019 there were 1,109 prosecutions made under it (Cromarty et al, 2021).…”