Perverting London: the cartographic practices of law

McGhee, Derek and Moran, Leslie (1998) Perverting London: the cartographic practices of law. Law and Critique, 9 (2), 207-224.

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper undertakes a reading of a report submitted by the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to the Wolfenden Committee which was undertaking a review of the law and practice applicable to homosexual offences. The report contains a map of central London showing the distribution of encounters between the police and men who have sex with other men. The map provides an opportunity to examine the relation between law and space. Here law and legal practice are examined as practices of cartography. Using the work of Michel Foucault, de Certeau, historical material and material contemporary with the Wolfenden committee's review, the paper examines the institution of the police as an institution of space. Using recent writings in the fields of cultural and sexual geography, the paper examines the nature of space generated through the panoptic practice of policing. Using Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque, through an examination of plain clothes police operations in public toilets, the authors analyse the transformation of legal practices of policing in liminal space.

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