Adam Crawford

The local governance of crime : appeals to community and partnerships

1. Introduction 2. The Genesis of the Partnership Approach and Appeals to Community in Crime Control 3. The Shifting Social and Political Context: Questions of Legitimacy and Responsibility 4. Partnerships, Conflicts, and Power Relations 5. The Contestable Nature of Community 6. Fragmentation of the State? 7. Questions of Accountability 8. Local or Social Justice? 9. Towards Conclusions

Networked governance and the post-regulatory state? Steering, rowing and anchoring the provision of policing and security

This article engages with insights from the ‘(post-) regulatory state’ literature in critically exploring the changing face of policing and security. It subjects notions of ‘networked governance’ and ‘responsive regulation’ to empirical examination in the British context. The article illustrates the manner in which state anchoring constitutes a distinctive characteristic of contemporary security governance. It suggests that far from state withdrawal, in relation to the regulation of social behaviour, the British state is engaged in ambitious projects of social engineering in which the deployment of hierarchy, command and interventionism are prevalent. Recent trends in social regulation have seen hyper-innovation against a background of the politicization of behaviour. In this context, the article highlights concerns about the feasibility of ‘responsive regulation’.

Criminalizing Sociability through Anti-social Behaviour Legislation: Dispersal Powers, Young People and the Police

This article explores the impact of dispersal powers introduced as part of the British governments drive to tackle anti-social behaviour. It focuses especially on the experiences and views of young people affected by dispersal orders. It highlights the importance of experiences of respect and procedural justice for the manner in which they respond to directions to disperse. It considers the ways in which dispersal powers can increase police—youth antagonism; bring young people to police attention on the basis of the company they keep; render young people more vulnerable; and reinforce a perception of young people as a risk to others rather than as at risk themselves. It reflects on broader conceptions of youth and public space apparent within the anti-social behaviour agenda.

Appeals to community and crime prevention

This paper considers the growing appeals to the idea of “community” in criminal justice policy and the involvement of actual “communities” in criminal justice initiatives. It draws on a completed two year research study of a number of community-based crime prevention initiatives in the South East of England. The paper considers the nature of “community” to which appeals are made in criminal justice discourse and policies, the contribution of “community” to the practices of social order and the nature of “community representation” and participation in crime prevention initiatives. It is argued that appeals to “community” in crime prevention, and crime control more generally, embody shifts in what constitutes the legitimate responsibilities of individuals, collectivities and the state. This has a number of implications, the first of which is a redrawing of the cost of policing and security services. Additionally, there is an associated shift in blame for failure. Finally, actual “community” involvement in crime control gives rise to new structures and forms of local governance that evoke key questions about the regulation of social relations, the nature of conflict resolution, citizenship, democracy and social justice.

Questioning Appeals to Community within Crime Prevention and Control

This article casts a critical eye over some of the (often ignored) assumptions which underlie recent appeals to community in crime prevention and control. The article considers the philosophical origins, ambiguities and tensions within such appeals. In so doing, it draws explicitly upon the growth of ‘community safety’ and to a lesser extent ‘restorative justice’ in Britain and considers some of the implications to which this shift may give rise. In particular, it focuses upon the manner in which appeals to community converge and collide with changing social relations which may undermine their progressive potential. Specific attention is given to the implications of: increasing social and spatial dislocation; the commodification of security; and policy debates about a growing ‘underclass’. It is argued that there is much confusion as to how, and to what extent, communities can contribute to the construction of social order. Within the dynamics of community safety and crime control practices there are dangers that ‘security differentials’ may become increasingly significant characteristics of wealth and status with implications for social exclusion. This questions the extent to which crime is an appropriate vehicle around which to (re)construct open and tolerant communities.

‘Urban safety, anti-social behaviour and the night-time economy’

The contemporary city is a contested space and its governance is the subject of complex global economic forces, local interests and political struggles as well as a response to the changing face of governing alliances in residential and commercial areas, forms of consumption, commercially-generated crime and disorder and cultural expressions of leisure. This article seeks to provide a thematic introduction to the manner in which the regulation of contemporary British cities has been influenced by concerns with tackling anti-social behaviour and promoting civility. It argues that in governing urban safety, the normative governmental agendas that seek to remoralize and cleanse city spaces and promote certain values of appropriate consumer-citizen, often clash with commercially-driven imperatives to (excessive) consumption and the allure of cities, for some, as places of difference that exhibit relaxed normative constraints; most notably in the night-time economy. It argues that the manner in which these forces are played out is conditioned by the interplay between different actors and organizations, as both regulators and regulated, some of whom have assumed new responsibilities in the governance of urban safety. The resultant pressures have produced mixed experiences of the city as a meeting place for loosely connected strangers, as a place of indulgence and as a place of cultural expression.

The patchwork shape of reassurance policing in England and Wales

This article presents an overview and assessment of recent reforms that have contributed to a pluralisation and fragmentation of policing in England and Wales. It considers the emergence of new forms of visible policing both within and beyond the public police. These include the growth of private security guards and patrols, local auxiliaries such as neighbourhood wardens and the introduction of second tier police personnel in the shape of the new police community support officers. To varying degrees plural forms of policing seek to offer public reassurance through visible patrols. The article goes on to explore the complex nature of relations between the “extended police family” and the different modes of governance they suggest. It concludes with a consideration of the future shape of reassurance policing.

Temporality in restorative justice: on time, timing and time-consciousness

Restorative justice has been the subject of much theoretical criminological debate and policy innovation. However, little consideration has been given explicitly to issues of temporality and the challenges they raise. Yet, at its heart, restorative justice provides a rearticulated understanding of the relationship between the past and future; one that seeks to marry otherwise tense and ambiguous dynamics of instrumental and moral reasoning, along with risk-based and punitive logics. This article explores a number of dimensions in which questions of time, timing and time-consciousness are implicated in conceptions and practices of restorative justice. It highlights the social, plural and contested nature of time and temporalizations with relevance to restorative justice. It points to new lines of enquiry and analysis with inferences for the implementation of restorative values and conceptions of justice. It concludes with reflections on the multiple temporalities inferred in shifts of scale in the application of restorative justice.

Social values and managerial goals: Police and probation officers’ experiences and views of inter‐agency co‐operation 1

Recently an ‘inter‐agency’ approach has assumed the status of a panacea to the ills of contemporary criminal justice and crime prevention in Britain. This article reports on a survey of police and probation officers in one English county. The survey examines the views and experiences of rank‐and‐file officers to the enhanced role of inter‐agency co‐operation, in general, and in relation to community‐based crime prevention, in particular. It considers the varying degrees of resistance to, and support for, inter‐agency work both within and between police and probation organisations. The survey identifies a number of shared anxieties which transcend organisational boundaries and their implications for inter‐agency work. It reveals a further ideological divide among both police and probation officers between those who reference their views on inter‐agency co‐operation in relation to the objectives of smooth management and those who see it as informing and/or facilitating a fundamental moral or social aspect o...

Justice De Proximité - The Growth of ‘Houses of Justice’ and Victim/Offender Mediation in France: A Very Unfrench Legal Response?

Initiatives in mediation and reparation have developed significantly across diverse European countries, none more so than in France over the last decade. This article seeks to situate and explain the recent growth in France of the ‘Maisons de Justice’ (Houses of Justice) and victim/offender mediation they offer. This explanation is connected to an understanding of the increasingly dominant discourse of ‘justice de proximité’, its dynamics and its place within French juridical politics. The article draws upon ESRC funded empirical - observational and interview-based - research conducted in the Lyon and Paris areas during 1997. The article goes on to interrogate the implications of these institutions and practices for the present state of French criminal justice. It is argued that through the analysis of these ‘very unFrench’ legal responses we can prise open fundamental ambiguities and debates at the heart of French legal and cultural life in a period of momentous socio-legal challenge and flux. It is suggested that these institutions and practices embody, at the same time as trying to resolve, significant contradictions within French legal culture.