Policing Nightlife

Nightlife is a place of both real and imagined risk, a ‘frontier’ (Melbin 1978) where apparent freedom and transgression are closely linked, and where regulation of leisure and collective intoxication has been diffused throughout an expanding network of state and private actors. This book explores Sydney’s contemporary night-time economy as the product of an intersection of both local and global transformations, as policing comes to incorporate more and more ‘private’ personnel empowered to regulate ‘public’ drinking and nightlife. Policing Nightlife focuses on the historical and social conditions, cultural meanings and regulatory controls that have shaped both public and private forms of policing and security in contemporary urban nightlife. In so doing, it reflects more broadly on global changes in the nature of contemporary policing and how aspects of neoliberalism and the ideal of the ‘24-hour city’ have shaped policing, security and night-time leisure. Based on a decade of research and interviews with both police and doorstaff working in nightlife settings, it explores the effectiveness of policies governing policing and private security in the night-time economy in the context of media, political and public debates about regulation, and the gendered and highly masculine aspects of much of this work. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, policing, sociology and those interested in understanding the debates surrounding security, policing and contemporary urban nightlife.

The core baseline of Intelligence-led Policing is the aim of increasing efficiency and quality of police work, with a focus on crime analysis and intelligence methods as tools for informed and objective decisions both when conducting targeted, specialized operations and when setting strategic priorities. This book critically addresses the proliferation of intelligence logics within policing from a wide array of scholarly perspectives. It considers questions such as: How are precautionary logics becoming increasingly central in the dominant policing strategies? What kind of challenges will this move entail? What does the criminalization of preparatory acts mean for previous distinctions between crime prevention and crime detection? What are the predominant rationales behind the proactive use of covert cohesive measures in order to prevent attacks on national security? How are new technological measures, increased private partnerships and international cooperation challenging the core nature of police services as the main providers of public safety and security? This book offers new insights by exploring dilemmas, legal issues and questions raised by the use of new policing methods and the blurred and confrontational lines that can be observed between prevention, intelligence and investigation in police work.

Third party policing represents a major shift in contemporary crime control practices. As the lines blur between criminal and civil law, responsibility for crime control no longer rests with state agencies but is shared between a wide range of organisations, institutions or individuals. The first comprehensive book of its kind, Third Party Policing examines this growing phenomenon, arguing that it is the legal basis of third party policing that defines it as a unique strategy. Opening up the debate surrounding this controversial topic, the authors examine civil and regulatory controls necessary to this strategy and explore the historical, legal, political and organizational environment that shape its adoption. This innovative book combines original research with a theoretical framework that reaches far beyond criminology into politics and economics. It offers an important addition to the world-wide debate about the nature and future of policing and will prove invaluable to scholars and policy makers.

Explores how urban nightlife is experiencing a 'McDonaldisation', where big branded names are taking over large parts of downtown areas, leaving consumers with an increasingly standardised experience.

Which public and whose space? The understanding of public space as an arena where individuals can claim full use and access hides a reality of constant negotiation, conflict and surveillance. This collection uses case studies concerning the management, use, and transgression of public space to invite reflection on the way in which everyday social interaction is framed and shaped by the physical environment and vice versa. International experts from fields including geography, criminology, sociology and urban studies come together to debate the concepts of order and conflict in public space. This book is divided into two parts: spaces of control, and spaces of transgression. Section I focuses on formal and informal surveillance and the politics of control, using case studies to compare strategies in spaces including Olympic cities, luxury skyscrapers, residential neighbourhoods and shopping malls. Section II focuses on transgressive or deviant behaviour in public spaces, with case studies examining behaviour in nightlife districts, governance of homelessness, boy-racer culture and abortion protests. The epilogue concludes the book with an exploration of possible future avenues for research on public space, and a critical appraisal of the concept of public space itself. This interdisciplinary collection will be of interest to students, researchers and professionals in the areas of criminology, sociology, surveillance studies, human and social geography, and urban studies and planning.

A surprising history unfolded in New Deal– and World War II–era New York City under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, members of the NYPD had worked to enforce partisan political power rather than focus on crime. That changed when La Guardia took office in 1934 and shifted the city's priorities toward liberal reform. La Guardia's approach to low-level policing anticipated later trends in law enforcement, including "broken windows" theory and "stop and frisk" policy. Police officers worked to preserve urban order by controlling vice, including juvenile delinquency, prostitution, gambling, and the "disorderly" establishments that officials believed housed these activities. This mode of policing was central to La Guardia's influential vision of urban governance, but it was met with resistance from the Black New Yorkers, youth, and working-class women it primarily targeted. The mobilization for World War II introduced new opportunities for the NYPD to intensify policing and criminalize these groups with federal support. In the 1930s these communities were framed as perils to urban order; during the militarized war years, they became a supposed threat to national security itself. Emily M. Brooks recasts the evolution of urban policing by revealing that the rise of law-and-order liberalism was inseparable from the surveillance, militarism, and nationalism of war.

Policing youth probes beneath the media sensationalism surrounding youth crime in order to evaluate the workings of juvenile justice and the relationship between young people and practitioners in a key era of social change. The work of state representatives – the police, magistrates and probation officers – is mapped alongside discipline within families, neighbourhoods, schools and churches as well as the growing commercial sector of retail and leisure. Youth culture is considered alongside the social and moral regulation of everyday life. The book offers an important comparison of England and Scotland, uses a wide variety of sources (including criminal statistics, media, film and autobiography), and combines quantitative research methods with textual and spatial analysis. Individual chapters focus on police officers, the court system, violence, home and community, sexuality, commercial leisure and reform. This significant study will appeal to scholars and students of history, criminology, cultural studies, social policy and sociology.

Public places are places where all citizens, irrespective of their race, age, religion, or class level (social or economic), cannot be excluded. It serves to improve the lifestyle experience of its inhabitants, as well as promote social connections. All citizens are responsible for it and are interested in it, and the intervention for change must be the responsibility of all without exception. As such, bottom-up urban planning is essential for urban environments and for transforming nightlife in public places in order to create more meaningful experiences and instill a greater sense of identity and community. Transforming Urban Nightlife and the Development of Smart Public Spaces analyzes the patterns of transformations of nightlife in public life. The book investigates urban nightlife transformations and the challenge of enhancing the sense of belonging in sensitive areas such as local communities and historical sites. The chapters present new insights to control the chaotic intervention related to the elements of traditional or digital technology, whether from citizens themselves or local authorities. The objective also is to document urban nightlife transformations that enhance the sense of belonging in historical sites. Important topics covered include urban-gamification, digital urban art, urban socio-ecosystems, and reimagining space in the urban nightlife. This book is ideal for urban planners, developers, social scientists, technologists, civil engineers, architects, policymakers, government officials, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in urban nightlife and nightscape and the smart technologies used for transformation.

Police detention is the place where suspects are taken whilst their case is investigated and a case disposal decision is reached. It is also a largely hidden, but vital, part of police work and an under-explored aspect of police studies. This book provides a much-needed comparative perspective on police detention. It examines variations in the relationship between police powers and citizens’ rights inside police detention in cities in four jurisdictions (in Australia, England, Ireland and the US), exploring in particular the relative influence of discretion, the law and other rule structures on police practices, as well as seeking to explain why these variations arise and what they reveal about state-citizen relations in neoliberal democracies. This book draws on data collected in a multi-method study in five cities in Australia, England, Ireland and the US. This entailed 480 hours of observation, as well as 71 semi-structured interviews with police officers and detainees. Aside from filling in the gaps in the existing research, this book makes a significant contribution to debates about the links between police practices and neoliberalism. In particular, it examines the police, not just the prison, as a site of neoliberal governance. By combining the empirical with the theoretical, the main themes of the book are likely to be of utmost importance to contemporary discussions about police work in increasingly unequal societies. As a result, it will also have a wide appeal to scholars and students, particularly in criminology and criminal justice.

The mass shooting at a queer Latin Night in Orlando in July 2016 sparked a public conversation about access to pleasure and selfhood within conditions of colonization, violence, and negation. Queer Nightlife joins this conversation by centering queer and trans people of color who apprehend the risky medium of the night to explore, know, and stage their bodies, genders, and sexualities in the face of systemic and social negation. The book focuses on house parties, nightclubs, and bars that offer improvisatory conditions and possibilities for “stranger intimacies,” and that privilege music, dance, and sexual/gender expressions. Queer Nightlife extends the breadth of research on “everynight life” through twenty-five essays and interviews by leading scholars and artists. The book’s four sections move temporally from preparing for the night (how do DJs source their sounds, what does it take to travel there, who promotes nightlife, what do people wear?); to the socialities of nightclubs (how are social dance practices introduced and taught, how is the price for sex negotiated, what styles do people adopt to feel and present as desirable?); to the staging and spectacle of the night (how do drag artists confound and celebrate gender, how are spaces designed to create the sensation of spectacularity, whose bodies become a spectacle already?); and finally, how the night continues beyond the club and after sunrise (what kinds of intimacies and gestures remain, how do we go back to the club after Orlando?).