Doctoral Dissertation Research: Geographically Targeted Enforcement of Ordinances Restricting Personal Mobility and Actions

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Brought about through community pressures and policing initiatives, ordinances against prostitution and drug use have become widespread in the United States. Public health concerns have been used to justify the exclusion of certain people from urban areas designated by city ordinances. For example, the Seattle City Council established the Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) and the Stay Out of Drug Areas (SODA) ordinances in 1989 and 1991 in response to neighborhood complaints in order to "redline" areas ranging in size from one to several city blocks. Both ordinances resulted in uneven geographic enforcement of public laws in Seattle. The SOAP and SODA ordinances were effective in clearing out some drug- and prostitution-related activities in designated areas, but while they reduced illegal activities in one area, they often intensified them in others. This Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement project will examine the socio-spatial control of prostitutes and drug users and traffickers in urban public space within Seattle's SOAP and SODA zones. This project initially will seek to explain how neighborhood associations convinced the Seattle City Council to establish the zones, focusing particularly on exclusionary discourses mobilized in support of the ordinances. Second, this project will examine the establishment and everyday enforcement of the ordinances by Seattle's police and their effectiveness as realized by participant observation and analysis of crime statistics within and outside the zones. Third, this project will compare responses to the zones by two different types of organizations that function within the zones: (1) social agencies that provide services to prostitutes and drug users and traffickers and (2) neighborhood associations composed of residents and business owners. This largely qualitative research project will be based on data in the form of: City of Seattle public records; interviews with stakeholder groups, public officials, and police; and participant observation focused on the activities of police, social service agencies, and neighborhood associations. These examinations will be supplemented by quantitative analyses of crime and HIV-infection rates within and outside of the city's SOAP and SODA zones.This research aims to extend knowledge on socio-spatial control, namely exclusionary politics and their effects on access to urban public space. This project will provide a comprehensive survey and analysis regarding how discourses surrounding citizenship produce a public space that is exclusionary to those who are not conceived as citizens by structures intact within the city. This research will highlight the discursive construction of criminality and the intense micro-politics of policing space that the designation of criminality invokes. In producing a geographical analysis of policing strategies and discourses, this research is expected to show how federal, state, and municipal agencies influence policing strategies in urban public space. It will examine how local politics in the form of public policy have spatial repercussions on marginalized populations and their access to public space. Results from this research will be shared with publicly and privately funded organizations, including neighborhood associations and social service agencies; City of Seattle policy makers; and the Seattle Police Department. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.