The Meanings of Graffiti and Municipal Administration
| Author | Mark Halsey,Alison Young |
| DOI | 10.1375/acri.35.2.165 |
| Published date | 01 August 2002 |
| Date | 01 August 2002 |
165
THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
VOLUME 35 NUMBER 2 2002 PP.165–186
Address for correspondence: Mark Halsey, Law School, Flinders University of South Australia,
GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia. Email: mark.halsey@flinders.edu.au; Alison
Young, Department of Criminology, University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC 3053.
The Meanings of Graffiti
and Municipal Administration
Mark Halsey
Flinders University of South Australia
Alison Young
University of Melbourne
This article explores various sociocultural aspects of graffiti, and
examines municipal administrative responses to its occurrence. It is
argued that the diversity of graffiti — in terms of its authors, styles and
significance — poses a number of problems for agencies attempting in
the first instance to classify graffiti (as “crime” or “art”) and in the
second to control its occurrence (whether to “eradicate” or “permit”).
Drawing on discussions with local council representatives and on inter-
views with graffiti artists themselves, the article challenges the stereotyp-
ical view of graffiti artists as immersed in cycles of vandalism and/or gang
violence. Instead, the article brings to light the complex and creative
aspects of graffiti culture and suggests that it is possible (indeed neces-
sary) for regulatory bodies to engage with and promote graffiti culture
and that, further, such engagement and promotion need not be seen as
authorising a profusion of graffiti related activity across communities.
Graffiti is both art and crime. It is also an issue of great significance to local
communities, local government, police, public transport agencies, and young
people. Individuals within these groups can be affected in various ways by graffiti:
some find the activity and/or its results attractive, while others see it as an index of
social decline and youth criminality. Local government agencies and public trans-
port authorities make significant financial outlays in graffiti prevention initiatives
and graffiti removal schemes. Financial costs can also be considerable to private
households, local traders and schools. It has been estimated that “graffiti vandalism
costs the Australian community approximately $200 million annually” (Keep
South Australia Beautiful, 2000). Hundreds of incidents of graffiti and vandalism
are processed as crimes each year. The majority, however, elude either civil or
criminal sanction.
This article has three main objectives.1 The first addresses the tendency (in
some academic writing and in policy-making) to treat graffiti as a relatively
homogeneous and somewhat simplistic phenomenon. The second argues for a
nuanced understanding of graffiti and of municipal intervention in graffiti culture.
Finally, the objective will be to briefly locate graffiti as one in a range of more or
less legitimate signifying practices which flood contemporary social spaces. In
relation to under-theorising the meanings of graffiti, criminology, as will be seen, is
no exception in this regard. As with most disciplines, criminology charts what
might be termed “a domain of objects” upon which it traditionally remarks. Up
until the publication of Sutherland’s revelations about white collar crime, Becker’s
work on social reaction theory, Taylor, Walton and Young’s writings on “new” and
subsequently “critical” criminology, and Smart’s work on crime and gender, it would
probably be fair to say that this domain of objects was quite limited or, indeed,
static. Attention was largely directed toward determining the factors distinguishing
biological and psychological traits of (working class) offenders from so-called
“normal” individuals. The scope for analysing such aspects as the prevalence of
deviance in professional life, the state as a criminogenic force, the inequities in the
way crime is policed, or the role gender plays in offence demographics, was
minimal. But subsequent to the emergence of these projects in the latter half of the
last century, the discipline of criminology – or, in effect, the breadth ascribed to its
objects of concern — changed markedly.
One facet of criminology’s recent evolution is an interest in cultural forms.
Thus, criminological research may now encompass such matters as cinematic or
televisual representations of criminality, the criminological implications of
sadomasochistic sex, and the possible effects of viewing violent media (see e.g.,
Ferrell & Sanders, 1995; Redhead, 1993; Stanley, 1996; Young, 1996; Presdee,
2000). However, the field of inquiry that has come to be known as “cultural crimi-
nology” is still an emerging field, with many lacunae and elisions. The cultural,
criminological, and sociolegal dimensions of graffiti are yet to be critically incorpo-
rated within criminology’s evolving domain of objects. In fact, as criminological
object, graffiti retains the status of being predominantly unremarked. When graffiti
has featured in criminological debate, it tends to be framed within discussions
about (situational) crime prevention (Geason & Wilson, 1990) and/or juvenile
delinquency (Ward, 1973; Collins, 1995). A small number of commentators (such
as Ferrell, 1995) have engaged with the intricacies of graffiti culture, but from the
perspective that graffiti is a subcultural activity performed by a subcultural group,
rather than as a significant aspect of the negotiation of contemporary social space.
The major shortcoming of such framings is that each constructs graffiti always
already in the order of “a problem” — whether the problem be disrespect, disorder,
or a more general dis-ease with the aesthetic quality of urban, and to a lesser
extent, rural landscapes. The quite narrow construction within and beyond crimi-
nology of what graffiti is, and is not, about, has helped suppress discussion of the
complexities associated with graffiti culture (and, moreover, whether it is desirable
or even accurate to speak of a unified thing called “graffiti culture”). Accordingly, it
could be said that the vicissitudes of graffiti have been obscured in the rush to find
a solution to graffiti as problem. Importantly, discussions of graffiti also often do not
take account of the views of its practitioners: in this article, therefore, we draw
upon interviews conducted with graffiti writers by one of the authors.2
166
MARK HALSEY AND ALISON YOUNG
THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
To continue reading
Request your trial