rookery

rook +‎ -ery

rookery (plural rookeries)

1. A colony of breeding birds or other animals.
2. A crowded tenement.
3. (Britain) A place where criminals congregate, often an area of a town or city.
   • 1980, Jerry White, Rothschild Buildings: life in an East End tenement block, 1887-1920‎, page 128:

     The Flower and Dean St rookery had been home to many of those who lived at least partly by street crime.

   • 1995, Cyrille Fijnaut, Changes in Society, Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe:

     These rookeries sustained criminal social systems that provided schooling in crime for the young and newcomers.

   • 1998, Stephen Inwood; Roy Porter, A History of London‎, page 522:

     In the Victorian imagination, crime and the criminal class were always associated with rookeries, the dense slum areas in which criminals were said to live.