Gordon Hughes

Comparing the governance of safety in Europe: a geo-historical approach

The concept of governance alerts us to the exercise of political authority beyond the nation state. In criminological thought governance has been associated with the preventive turn in crime control strategies in Europe that acknowledge the limits of criminal justice, invoke the direct participation of other statutory as well as commercial and voluntary sector actors and, in so doing, generate new objects and places of control signified by notions of ‘safety’ and ‘security’. The corollary of this preventive turn is a geohistorical approach to comparative criminology that is capable of recognizing the diverse contexts that constitute new governable places and objects.

Communitarianism and law and order

This paper engages critically with the major variants of contemporary communitarian thought on crime and disorder. It begins with an assess ment of the moral authoritarian communitarianism of Etzioni and Dennis. It is then argued that there are different and more radical appro priations of community associated with the work of intellectuals in Europe and Oceania beyond that of moral authoritarianism. In particu lar, the development of radical re-imaginings of community and social justice are identified in communitarian work on ( 1 ) local governance and the re-constitution of civil society, (2) basic income and the common good and (3) restorative justice. In conclusion, it is argued that there are progressive as well as the already widely recognized regressive poten tialities in contemporary communitarian discourses on law and order.

‘Mission Impossible’? The Habitus of the Community Safety Manager and the New Expertise in the Local Partnership Governance of Crime and Safety

It is difficult to ignore the growing salience of the new governance of crime and disorder in many late modern societies. To date there has been limited empirical exploration of the practices and experiences of these new local actors and institutions. This article aims to correct this neglect in the criminological literature by its exploration of the knowledge and skills base and habitus of one of the new partnership experts, the community safety manager (CSM). In particular, the article involves an engagement with recent research findings from Britain together with the more abstract conceptual tools opened up by current debates in critical social and political theory. It begins with a brief history of the community safety occupation during which the key features of the ‘profession’ are explored. Next, the thesis of a hegemonic risk management governmental logic in the field of community safety is critically examined. By exploring specific sites and contexts of community safety ‘work’, doubt is cast on totalizing narratives of neo-liberal transformation currently popular in criminology and sociology. Finally, the possible futures of community safety and crime and disorder reduction when viewed from the contemporary experiences of CSMs are considered.

Diversion in a Culture of Severity

This paper focuses on the recent history and current operation of a well-established multi-agency diversion and crime prevention unit in Northamptonshire in Britain. Four themes are addressed specifically. First, we examine the place of diversionary initiatives in the context of a central government-driven ‘get tough on crime’ agenda. Second, the local conditions and struggles over the fate of multi-agency diversion in Northamptonshire are outlined. Third, we present an empirical overview of the current rationale and routine work of the Diversion Unit. Fourth, we examine the nature of multi-agency practices on the ground and, in passing, test the claims of the influential academic ‘net-widening’ and ‘denial of justice’theses on multi-agency diversion. In conclusion, we argue that a multi-agency case-driven approach to diversion has emerged in response to the renewed ‘culture of severity’around crime control issues.

The community safety ‘profession’: Towards a new expertise in the governance of crime, disorder and safety in the UK?

The role of the community safety practitioner is a newly emerging expertise in local government. A survey conducted with local authorities reveals a relatively fluid and unstructured profession of highly educated or experienced individuals with heavy workloads. Practitioners inhabit a contested policy terrain in which they express a preference for a social regeneration agenda rather than narrower crime specific strategies.

Defining Community Safety Expertise

There are few areas in criminal justice and social policy that have seen such a growth industry as that which has occurred recently in the UK around community safety and local crime and disorder reduction partnerships. In the wake of New Labours flagship legislation, the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act (henceforth CDA), we have seen a massive proliferation in posts dedicated to the pursuit of the by no means easily reconcilable goals of both community safety and crime and disorder reduction. TTiis is most strikingly apparent across virtually every local authority in England and Wales given their statutory duty since 1998 (together with the police and other partners) to develop local partnerships with strategies for reducing crime and disorder. Recent survey research undertaken by one of the authors (Gordon Hughes together with Daniel Gilling) has not only uncovered an unsurprising but rapid expansion in the number of local authorities with clearly designated community safety officers/ managers in post since 1998, but also the growth of an increasingly specialised set of tasks for different members of the increasing numbers of community safety workers operating in teams in the larger authorities and those with a longer history of community safety work both before and since the watershed moment of the Morgan Report of 1991. Anyone looking through the new jobs section of the Guardian Society section on a weekly basis cannot fail to notice the continuing proliferation of new community safety posts and the allied growth of a new institutional complex around crime and disorder reduction, involving project officers, audit and information research officers etc. There is now a growing number of community safety departments which form part, however uneasily, of the local authority structure.

Comparative European criminology and the question of urban security

It is nearly 10 years since the European Journal of Criminology (EJC) was launched and its founding editor, David J. Smith, wrote presciently of both the challenges and opportunities for a vibrant and distinctly European criminology (Smith, 2004). Indeed, the very diversity of the cultures of European countries, regions and cities arguably provides, in Smith’s words (2004: 13), ‘more leverage for comparisons’ than many regions of the world and a unique laboratory for testing the claims of grand narratives of control and security. We cannot presume, for example, that concepts translate across different cultural contexts in Europe and yet the very idea of a distinctively European criminology presumes a common conceptual vocabulary. This special issue explores this problem of cross-cultural comparison through reference to the concept of ‘urban security’, which has its origins in policy discourse about the need to frame crime prevention as a problem of social and economic policy and not just of criminal justice and risk management. The concept is more familiar in Central and Southern Europe than in other European regions, and is used more by policy-makers than by academic criminologists. Even so, if there is an aspiration for criminologists to engage with other public audiences for their work, then policy constructs and other public discourses on crime need to be addressed, particularly those that can demonstrate a significant following. As contributions to this issue of the EJC suggest, the concept of urban security has been used to signify social and economic responses to certain problems of street crime, civil unrest and social cohesion. These are, of course, conventional problems of the ‘home affairs’ of sovereign nation states, but they have become of increasing interest to the European Union for a number of reasons in the last decade. In particular it has been claimed that such ‘internal security’ issues cannot be divorced from the transnational organization of serious crimes, such as human trafficking and the intercontinental trade in narcotics. It has also been the European Union Commission’s view that neither can such issues be divorced from the increased migration of European populations across national borders, both within the EU, as a consequence of the single European market, and from without, as a consequence of major geo-strategic events on the southern and eastern borders of the Union, in particular conflict in the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East. Along with such threats to urban security as the terrorist attacks on transport systems in Madrid in 2004 and London 482611 EUC10310.1177/1477370813482611European Journal of CriminologyEdwards and Hughes 2013

Communities, Crime Prevention and the Politics of Articulation: A Reply to Kit Carson:

Abstract This article is a rejoinder to Kit Carsons seminal two-part essay, Is communalism dead? Reflections on the present and future practice of crime prevention. It aims to foster further debate on “the communal” in the field of crime prevention specifically, and in criminology more generally. In the first part of the article, an argument is made for a progressive discourse on communities built around the theory and practice of radical communitarianism. In the second part of the article, a debate is opened up on the continuing salience of appeals to communities in the contemporary governance of crime, disorder and safety. In particular, two questions — or provocations — are briefly explored in terms of “the instabilities of community governance” and what we may term the problem of “the stranger in community safety”. Finally, the article argues for the rethinking of the relationship of the communal and the critical criminological imaginary.

Review Symposium: Jonathon Simon Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. vii +330 pp. £17.99/

mitted to liberal values and imaginaries, we have to share the world with billions of people in other countries, and, increasingly through migration, also in western countries, who may not share these liberal mentalities. We need to move beyond analysing liberal modes of governing. Part of the agenda of the new realist Governmentality theories must be to examine the interaction between liberal governance and mentalities of governance (including those operating ‘from below’) that are still rooted in patriarchy, and the solidarities of nationalistic, ethnic and religious networks and identities.

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This article sets the scene for the contributions in this special edition of Community Safety Journal. It examines the political contexts of community safety initiatives, compares transatlantic and European traditions and discusses convergent and divergent themes.