In the shadow of crime and disorder: The contested politics of community safety in Britain

Crime Prevention and Community Safety

Volumn 2, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 47-60

  Hughes, Gordon ^a  

^a OPEN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

audit culture; authoritarian welfarism; Community safety; Crime and Disorder Act 1998; managerialism; pan hazard harm reduction

Indexed keywords

EID: 0037650371     PISSN: 14603780     EISSN: 17434629     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.cpcs.8140073     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. The author is Lecturer in Social Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University; e-mail: g.h.hughes@open.ac.uk.
2. He would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions made to the shape of this .work in progress. paper by the participants at the seminar series on Rethinking Crime Prevention, held at the Open University, Milton Keynes, earlier this year. Thanks are also due to the two anonymous referees for their critical and helpful comments on an earlier draft.
3. Errors of judgement are of course the sole responsibility of the author.
4. See Hough, M. and Tilley, N. (1998) Getting Grease to the Squeak. Crime Detection and Prevention Series, Paper No. 85. London: Home Office.
5. See Pease, K. and Wiles, P. (2000) Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Tweedledum and Tweedledee? In Ballintyne, S., McLaren, V. and Pease, K. (eds) Secure Foundations: Key Issues in Crime Prevention, Crime Reduction and Community Safety. London: Institute of Public Policy Research.
6. For radical commentators in the latter discipline, community safety smacks of .the criminalisation of social policy.
7. see Gilling, D. and Barton, A. (1997) Crime Prevention and Community Safety: A New Home for Social Policy. Critical Social Policy. Vol. 17, No. 1, pp 63.83).
8. It also departs from the distinct focus of that discipline which is, according to Alcock, .the support of well-being through social action.
9. see Alcock, P. (1987) Introduction. In Alcock, P., Erskine, A. and May, M. (eds) Student's Companion to Social Policy. Oxford: Blackwell, p 7).
10. Furthermore, it is interesting and instructive to note that the British Social Policy Association's supposedly comprehensive students. guide to the discipline just cited has no explicit engagement with the interface between social control, criminal justice and social policy. The silence on developments in community safety and crime prevention in most social policy literature is truly deafening! 5
11. See Pease, K. (1994) Crime Prevention. In Maguire, M., Morgan, R. and Reiver, R. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
12. See Moss, K. and Pease, K. (1999) Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Section 17: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing? Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal. Vol. 1, No. 4, pp 15.19.
13. See Hughes, G. (1998) Understanding Crime Prevention: Social Control, Risk and Late Modernity. Buckingham: Open University Press;
14. Crawford, A. (1997) The Local Governance of Crime. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
15. See Hughes, G. (2000) Understanding the Politics of Criminological Research. In Jupp, V. and Francis, P. (eds) Doing Criminological Research. London: Sage.
16. When we look internationally, there is some evidence of recent government interest in the discourse of community safety and multi-agency partnerships in the anglophone democracies of Australia and New Zealand;
17. Palmer, D. (1999) A Letter from Australia: From Crime Prevention to Community Safety: The Discourses of Ordering. Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal. Vol. 1, No. 2, pp 59.66.
18. This is doubtless linked to the UK's big .export trade. in crime prevention ideas, not least 'sold. by globe-trotting criminologists as well as by practitioners.
19. A rare voice promoting community safety in the USA is that of Elliot Currie, who employs the term quite loosely as part of his critique of the hegemonic .war on crime/drugs. and mass incarceration agenda.
20. see Currie, E. (1997) Market, Crime and Community. Theoretical Criminology. Vol. 1, No. 2, pp 147.72.
21. In mainland Europe, the term appears to have a limited currency, with greater emphasis given to .public safety. and .urban security. More comparative research on local developments across Europe is clearly needed.
22. see Hughes (1998) op cit, pp 149.52.
23. This term is borrowed (or stolen) from Eugene McLaughlin's study of .community policing. in Greater Manchester, where it is used to explore the volatile ways in which the word .community. may be appropriated;
24. see McLaughlin, E. (1994) Community, Policing and Accountability. Aldershot: Avebury.
25. Bottoms, A. (1990) Crime Prevention Facing the 1990s. Policing and Society. Vol. 1, No. 1, pp 3.22.
26. Home Office (1991) Safer Communities: The Local Delivery of Crime Prevention Through the Partnership Approach. Report of the Standing Committee on Crime Prevention. London: Home Office, p 3.
27. Hughes, G. (1996) Strategies of Crime Prevention and Community Safety in Contemporary Britain. Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention. Vol. 5, pp 221.44.
28. Crawford, op cit.
29. Crawford, A. (1994) The Partnership Approach to Community Crime Prevention: Corporatism at the Local Level. Social and Legal Studies. Vol. 3, p 511.
30. Hughes, G. (1994) Talking Cop Shop: A Case-study of Police Community Consultation in Transition. Policing and Society. Vol. 4, pp 253.70;
31. Hughes, G. (1997) Policing Late Modernity: Crime Management in Contemporary Britain. In Jewson, N. and Macgregor, S. (eds) Transforming Cities: Contested Governance and New Spatial Divisions. London: Routledge;
32. Hughes, G., Pilkington, A. and Leisten, R. (1998) Diversion in a Culture of Severity. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice. Vol. 37, No. 1, pp 16.33.
33. In a similar way, Edwards and Benyon point to the example of some authorities using community safety as a conduit for the political reconstruction of the issue of crime prevention as one of social regeneration;
34. see Edwards, A. and Benyon, J. (2000) Networking and Crime Control at the Local Level. Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal. Vol. 2, No. 3, pp 35.54.
35. Clarke, J. (1996) Public Nightmares and Communitarian Dreams: The Crisis of the Social in Social Welfare. In Edgell, S., Hetherington, K. and Warde, A. (eds) Consumption Matters. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, p 10.
36. Hope, T. (1998) Letting Social Policy Off the Hook. Criminal Justice Matters. Vol. 33, p 6.
37. Crawford, A. (1998) Community Safety Partnerships. Criminal Justice Matters. Vol. 33, pp 4.5.
38. Thompson, J. (1998) From Crime Prevention to Crime Reduction. Criminal Justice Matters, Vol. 33, p 21.
39. Blackmore, J. (1998) Government's Agenda for Local Democracy. Criminal Justice Matters. Vol. 33, p 23.
40. Ashworth, A., Gardner, J., Morgan, R., von Hirsch, A. and Wasik, M. (1998) Neighbouring on the Oppressive: The Government's .Anti-Social. Proposals. Criminal Justice. Vol. 16, No. 1, pp 7.14;
41. Muncie, J. (1999) Institutionalised Intolerance. Critical Social Policy. Vol. 19, No. 2, pp 147.75.
42. Hope, op cit, pp 6.7.
43. Garland, D. (1996) The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society. British Journal of Criminology. Vol. 36, No. 4, pp 445.71.
44. On the new penology
45. see Feeley, M. and Simon, J. (1992) The New Penology. Criminology. Vol. 30, No. 4, pp 452.74. On the new rehabilitationism
46. see Robinson, G. (1999) Risk Management and Rehabilitation in the Probation Service. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice. Vol. 38, No. 4, pp 421.33.
47. Hughes, G. and Little, A. (1999) The Contradictions of New Labour's Communitarianism. Imprints. Vol. 2, No. 2, pp 37.62;
48. Fergusson, R. and Hughes, G. (2000) Welfare State: From Security to Responsibility? In Hughes, G. and Fergusson, R. (eds) Ordering Lives: Family, Work and Welfare. London: Routledge.
49. Malley, P. (1999) Risk and Responsibility. Paper presented at the British Criminology Conference, Liverpool, July;
50. see also Audit Commission (1996) Misspent Youth. London: Audit Commission.
51. Clarke, J., Gewirtz, S., Hughes, G. and Humphrey, J. (2000) In the Public Interest?: Audit and Evaluation. In Clarke, J., Gewirtz, S. and McLaughlin, E. (eds) New Welfare, New Managerialism. London: Sage.
52. Audit Commission (1999) Safety in Numbers. London: Audit Commission.
53. Crawford (1998) op cit.
54. Bottoms, A. and Wiles, P. (1996) Crime Prevention and Late Modernity. In Bennett, T. (ed.) Crime Prevention: The Cropwood Papers. Cambridge: Cropwood.
55. Blair, T. (1997) The Third Way. London: Fabian Society, pp 16.17.
56. Clarke, op cit.
57. Stenson, K. (1998) Displacing Social Policy Through Crime Control. In Hänninen, S. (ed.) Displacement of Social Policies. Jyväskylä: SoPhi.
58. Hughes (1996) op cit; Hughes (1997) op cit; Hughes et al, op cit;
59. see also Cooper, D. (1998) Governing Out of Order. London: River's Oram, where examples of radical forces entering and taking control of vulnerable (local) state institutions are discussed.
60. Crawford (1997) op cit.
61. Insights drawn from the now often neglected sociological research literature on professionalization may be particularly productive in helping us explore the fate of this new occupation;
62. see Johnson, T. (1972) Professions and Power. London: Macmillan.
63. The present author has recently embarked on an empirical study of the emerging occupational culture of community safety .experts., and of the negotiations between key 'suitors. such as the Home Office, the Audit Commission and the Local Government Association for the heart and soul of this aspiring .quasi-profession.
64. See Crawford (1997) op cit;
65. Hughes (1998) op cit, ch 5§.§6; Gilling, D. (1997) Crime Prevention. London: UCL Press.
66. See Stenson, op cit.
67. Hope, op cit.
68. Pease and Wiles, op cit.
69. See Moss and Pease, op cit, p 16.
70. The problem of linking the discourse of community safety and of a pan-hazard programme to the wider politics of social justice remains a difficult but crucial one.
71. The present author thanks one of the anonymous referees for highlighting his rather groping efforts to articulate such connections.
72. There is clearly much work still to be done in developing a progressive .replacement discourse. around community safety
73. see van Swaaningen, R. (1997) Critical Criminology: Visions from Europe. London: Sage.