Regulation and Social Control of Incivilities Routledge Studies in Crime and Society Series

The increasing trend and prevalence of incivilities-targeting punitive regulatory measures across Europe raises important issues regarding the legitimacy, effectiveness and impact of such formal social control. Regulation and Social Control of Incivilities addresses the pertinent issues of current punitive regulation and the social control of incivilities, their trends, criminological explanations, political, spatial, cultural, representational and policing dimensions as well as the underlying behaviour it targets.

Part I explores issues surrounding the regulation of incivilities, drawing examples from several European countries including Spain, Italy, Great Britain, Belgium, Slovenia and Hungary. It inspects the legal form and content of the prohibition of incivilities and the social factors that can help explain it, as well as the effectiveness and societal impact of various anti-nuisance measures. Part II focuses on social control and the representation of incivilities, including the construction and control of public nuisance in Belgium, the spatial and cultural aspects of incivilities and of law enforcement against them, the media representations of incivilities in the British and Flemish press, and the intersections between migration and control of incivilities when policing in the Netherlands.

This book brings together international scholars to examine the ways in which understudied European countries approach the issue of anti-social behaviour. This multidisciplinary text will be of interest to students, scholars and policymakers concerned with issues of social control, incivilities and criminalisation.

1. The rude, the bad and the ugly: penalising incivilities in Europe (Nina Peršak)

Part I: Regulation of disorder and uncivil behaviour

2. Criminalising through the back door: normative grounds and social accounts of the incivilities’ regulation (Nina Peršak)

3. The top-down instruments for governing crime and disorder: what lessons can be drawn from the Italian experience (2007-2011)? (Marco Calaresu)

4. Punitive decriminalisation? The repression of political dissent through administrative law and nuisance ordinances in Spain (Manuel Maroto)

5. Tackling homelessness through criminalisation: the case of Hungary (Léna Podoletz)

Part II: Social control and representations of incivilities

6. Normalisation of behaviour in public space: the construction and control of ‘public nuisance’ in Belgium (Stefaan Pleysier)

7. Understanding uncivil behaviour through urban space and culture (Anna Di Ronco)

8. Media representations of incivilities in the British and Flemish press (Nina Peršak)

9. Over-policed? Tackling incivilities and the intersections with migration control (Joanne van der Leun)

Part III: Concluding thoughts

10. Dimensions, concerns and effects of addressing uncivil behaviour through punitive law (Nina Peršak)

Nina Peršak is a research professor at the Faculty of Law, Ghent University, Belgium. She holds a doctorate in law from University of Ljubljana and an LL.M. (Law) and M.Phil. (Social and Developmental Psychology) from University of Cambridge. Her research interests lie in the fields of criminology, criminal law, criminal legal philosophy (in particular criminalisation theory), human rights, victimology, sociology of law and social psychology. She is the author of Criminalising Harmful Conduct: The Harm Principle, its Limits and Continental Counterparts (Springer, 2007) and editor of Legitimacy and Trust in Criminal Law, Policy and Justice: Norms, Procedures, Outcomes (Ashgate, 2014).