Table Of ContentLUKE STREET
LUKE STREET
Housing Policy, Conflict and the Creation of
the Delinquent Area
OWEN GILL
M
cOwen Gilll977
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1977
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.
First published 1977 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi Dublin Hong Kong]ohannesburg
Lagos Melbourne New York Singapore and Tokyo
ISBN 978-0-333-22059-7 ISBN 978-1-349-15829-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15829-4
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For my Parents
'Paradoxically, as the rationalisation of urban life continues,
boundaries enclose some lives more tightly, isolating and
making them more alien and obscure, inspiring illusions
about them, making them more vulnerable. Urban ethno
graphers can explore spaces forgotten or given up for lost,
replacing illusions with maps of social reality. By re
discovering the lives of people in those spaces, by replacing
stereotypes about them with descriptions that convey their
vitality, dignity and humanity, ethnographers may restore
some lost relationships in urban milieux, and in a modest
way reduce the isolation.'
Vic Walters, Dreadful Enclosures: Detoxifying an Urban
Myth, 1972
CONTENTS
Preface IX
1. The Creation of the Delinquent Area 1
2. The Decline of Luke Street 16
3. The Official Delinquents of Luke Street 42
4. External Definitions of the 'Delinquent Area' 55
5. Casey's: Some Introductory Sketches 75
6. The Boys on Casey's Corner 96
7. The Structure of Delinquent Incidents 122
8. Two Morality Plays 145
9. Luke Street in Court 168
10. Housing Policy and the Organisation of Possibility 182
Appendix: Some issues of research methodolog;y 190
Notes and References 197
LIST OF TABLES
2.1 Date of arrival of Luke Street families 23
2.2 Size of Luke Street families 23
2.3 Ages of young people moved to Luke Street 24
2.4 Housing department categorization of families 25
2.5 Housing officials' descriptions of Luke Street
families 26,27,28
3.1 Family members with criminal record 44
3.2 Age of Luke Street offenders 45
3.3 Sex distribution of Luke Street offenders 45
3.4 Date of arrival compared with date of first
offence of Luke Street residents born before
1945 (males) 46
3.5 Date of arrival compared with date of first
offence of Luke Street residents born before
1945 (females) 4 7
3.6 Types of offence (males born before 1945) 49
3. 7 Types of offence (females born before 1945) 49
3.8 Types of offence (males born after 1945) 50
3.9 Types of offence (females born after 1945) 52
9.1 Legal sanctions imposed (males born before
1945) 169
9.2 Legal sanctions imposed (females born before
1945) 170
9.3 Legal sanctions imposed (males born after
1945) 171
9.4 Legal sanctions imposed (females born after
1945) 172
PREFACE
The research on which this book is based started as an
attempt to understand the lifestyle of a group of boys who
regularly came into contact with the police and courts. In the
five years since the project began my perspective has changed.
I have been drawn into issues of housing policy, policing
and urban stereotyping in an attempt to understand the
production of the behaviour that comes to be officially
registered as delinquent. The book is therefore as much,
if not more, about how the policy-makers react to deviant
minorities as it is about how the members of those minorities
react to the wider world.
Just as my perspective has changed so also has the antici
pated readership of this book changed. I had originally
intended to produce a monograph written for other
academics. That is not now my purpose. I hope that the
study will be relevant not only to sociologists but also
to the people who play a part in the creation of the
delinquent area- the town planners, the housing officials,
the police, the social workers and the journalists.
The project was completed between 19 7 1 and 19 75 , during
which time I was employed in the department of sociology,
Liverpool University. I am grateful for the help of a great
many friends and colleagues-particularly Howard Parker,
Mavis Penman, Phil Scratton, John Mays, Joey Wharton,
Noel Boaden, Ken Roberts, David Lowson, Jim Essex, Clive
Davies, Shaie Selzer and Geoff Pearson. I am also of course
indebted to Bugsy and Tari, without whom the project would
never have been finished, and to Dorothy Lewis, who changed
scribblings into typescript. But naturally my biggest debt
of gratitude is to the people of Luke Street, who must remain
anonymous. All writers are apprehensive about their subjects'
X PREFACE
reaction to their work. Although the events described in this
book will now appear past history to them I sincerely hope
that none of them will think I have let them down or
portrayed them dishonestly.
December 197 6 OWEN GILL
1
THE CREATION OF THE
DELINQUENT AREA
The dominant perspective in post-war writing on delinquency
has been that such activity is a subcultural response to the
frustrations of working-class life. This perspective although
producing insights has diverted attention from other factors
in the organisation of urban life which are productive of
delinquent behaviour. Most importantly the relationship
between the power processes that locate particular families
in particular areas and the eventual production of delinquent
behaviour has been ignored. 1
The spatial organisation of urban life was one of the prime
concerns of the early Chicago school. 2 Robert E. Park, the
doyen of that illustrious group wrote in 1929: 'the metropolis
is, it seems, a great sorting and sifting mechanism, which
in ways that are not yet wholly understood infallibly selects
out of the population as a whole the individuals best suited
to live in a particular region or milieu.' 5 The Chicago school
saw the processes of urban selection as intimately connected
with the production of delinquency. Yet since that time
'ecological' and 'subcultural' approaches to delinquency
have become more and more divorced in both American
and British writing.
The intention of this book is to re-examine the relationship
between the urban process and delinquent behaviour. It
looks at the phenomena of the delinquent area and how
it is created in modern British urban society. By 'created' I
mean not only the way areas which support high levels of delinquency
come into existence. I also mean the way they are created in the
minds of those people whose residential location is far removed from
such places.
