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The Social Organization of Pervasive Penality in the Lives of Young People Experiencing Homelessness

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Abstract

Research affirms that municipal laws regulate and criminalize activities associated with homelessness. Research has yet to explore how these laws intersect with other socio-legal processes to create socially organized relations of surveillance and punishment for those who are its targets. This participatory institutional ethnography began with interviews with precariously housed and homeless youth to learn about their socio-legal histories across a range of public sector institutions. Analysis of interviews revealed common points of friction in young people’s lives, which anchored subsequent policy and legislative analysis. In this article, we show how young people’s early experiences with the police recursively organize how their subsequent criminal-legal work unfolds—particularly, as they spend more time in public spaces that are governed by neo-vagrancy by-laws and provincial safe streets legislation. Analytically, the concept of pervasive penality (Herring et al., Social Problems 67: 131–149 2020) oriented us toward the socio-legal relations that link the activities of young people on the streets with police officers, child protection workers, public transit guards, and other professionals who administer policy and law. Homeless youth are often drawn into relations of surveillance because they are viewed to be in need of protection; over time, however, these same relations position youth as the targets of penalizing policies and laws.

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Notes

  1. Malenfant is now an Assistant Professor.

  2. Thomas was a white, English speaking man who grew up in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia, but lived in Quebec at the time of our interview.

  3. Leah described herself as a queer, white woman. Leah grew up in Quebec, but lived in other Canadian provinces while homeless (e.g., British Columbia and Alberta).

  4. For example, where police officers interpret a young person’s actions as threatening or obstructive, they are several institutionally sanctioned actions they can pursue (e.g., they may detain, search, and/or charge the youth). Where youth perceive an officer’s conduct to be threatening or unfair, they are afforded limited opportunities to act on this concern, beyond an opportunity to register an official complaint after the encounter.

  5. Kevin described himself as a white, English-speaking, intentionally homeless man. He grew up in the province of Ontario, but lived in the province of Quebec at the time of our interview.

  6. Under this same act, a child is anyone who is under the age of 18 years, which explains why in Kevin’s explanation he continued to be picked up and returned by the police even when he was 16 years of age (Child and Family Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.11, s. 3(1)).

  7. Mark described himself as a white, English-speaking New Brunswick man with Irish-English heritage.

  8. A white cis-gendered, bilingual francophone woman.

  9. A queer, bilingual (French–English) young woman of Lebanese ethnicity who grew up in a suburb of Montreal, Quebec.

  10. Lucas describes himself as a white, straight, formerly middle-class, pagan-ish man, who grew up in Ontario, but lived in Quebec at the time of the interview.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the substantive contributions to data collection, coding, and preliminary analysis made by the members of the Youth Action Research Revolution Team (alphabetized by last name): Laurence Adamovicz, Shayana Narcisse, Maxime Plamondon, and Mickey Watchhorn

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the following funders the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, Insights Development Grants Program 430–2019-00166, the SSHRC Vanier Doctoral Scholarships Program, the Pierre Eliot Trudeau Doctoral Fellowship Program, and the SSHRC Canada Research Chairs program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair (Community-Partnered Social Justice), Department of Sociology, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada

    Naomi Nichols

  2. Assistant Professor, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Jayne Malenfant

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Correspondence to Naomi Nichols.

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Nichols, N., Malenfant, J. The Social Organization of Pervasive Penality in the Lives of Young People Experiencing Homelessness. Crit Crim 31, 1173–1190 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-023-09717-5

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