ABSTRACT
Hopkins Burke (1998c, 2000) nevertheless notes the ambiguity surrounding the issue of street incivilities. Beggars invariably choose specific urban areas where their close proximity to the public enables them to use tacit intimidation as an aid to their activities and different groups undoubtedly differentially receive the resultant aura of menace. Old people may be fearful and genuinely scared while cosmopolitan young professionals might consider it to be just a colourful segment of the rich tapestry of life. Likewise drunken vagrants gathered menacingly in a bus shelter may force by their presence – albeit silently – young mothers with pushchairs outside into the rain. Those openly urinating in the street after a hard day’s drinking in the full view of mothers collecting their young children from a nearby nursery should surely experience some regulation, management and restriction placed upon their activities (Hopkins Burke, 1998c). Radical proponents of the victimised actor model would recognise that these people are among the poorest and disadvantaged people in society and are invariably targeted by agents of the criminal justice system; on the other hand the wider public surely deserve some protection from their more antisocial activities. This latter ‘left realist’ perspective is revisited in Chapter 16.
