The potential for urban surveillance to help support people who are homeless: Evidence from Cairns, Australia

Abstract

Numerous studies have documented how surveillance practices, such as CCTV, are deployed to support ‘revanchist’ responses to homelessness wherein punitive policing and urban design practices are used to exclude people who are homeless from prime urban areas. However, few studies have considered the capacity of surveillance to facilitate supportive responses to homelessness. In this paper, we explore this supportive capacity through an ethnographic case study of responses to homelessness in the regional Australian city of Cairns. We demonstrate that, whilst surveillance is deployed to police the homeless in Cairns, it is also used to facilitate social services to access and engage with them, for example by using CCTV as a means to coordinate supportive street outreach activities. We conclude from this that there is no necessary relationship between surveillance and punitive/revanchist responses to homelessness, therefore efforts should be made to document and promote its positive uses alongside critiquing its punitive ones.