Housing Tenure, Homelessness and Contact with the Criminal Justice System

• In Event: Neighborhood and Justice: Policing, Criminal Justice Contacts, and Recidivism

Abstract

Do legislative changes alter the lives of the citizens who are subject to them? How do any changes which do occur take place, and with which intended and unintended consequences? What happens when systems which have previously been quite tightly regulated suddenly become much less well regulated? How long might it be before any distributional changes are detected, and for how long might such changes (for good or bad) shape the lives of citizens? Using longitudinal data from the UK, this paper will explore the changes in sitting tenants’ right to buy their council house, examining the ways in which national level policy change aimed at achieving one set of goals (providing families with their own homes, reducing the control of councils and weakening the Labour voting bloc) may have also altered experiences of housing, homelessness, other life outcomes and contact with the criminal justice system not just for those for whom the policies were initially designed (adults living in council owned properties in the 1980s) but also for subsequent generations (most typically their children). The paper therefore explores the ways in which life-courses can be transformed across successive generations.

Author

• Stephen Farrall, University of Sheffield (UK)