Table Of ContentCommunity, Crime and
Disorder
Safety and Regeneration in Urban Neighbourhoods
Lynn Hancock
Community, Crime and Disorder
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Community, Crime
and Disorder
Safety and Regeneration in
Urban Neighbourhoods
Lynn Hancock
Senior Lecturer in Criminology
Middlesex University
London
© Lynn Hancock 2001
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-333-76149-6
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hancock,Lynn,1964–
Community,crime and disorder :safety and regeneration
in urban neighbourhoods / Lynn Hancock.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Crime—Environmental aspects—Great Britain.2.Crime–
–Sociological aspects—Great Britain.3.Inner cities—Great
Britain.4.Urban policy—Great Britain.I.Title.
HV6177 .H36 2001
364.4’0941—dc21
00–054530
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vi
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction: Urban Change and Crime 1
2 Researching Neighbourhood Change, Crime and Disorder 26
3 Crime and the Urban Area: Explaining Neighbourhood
Change and Crime 54
4 Regeneration, Community Safety and Local Governance 104
5 Interventions in the Mixed Housing Areas 122
6 Community Responses to Crime, Decline and Disorder 148
7 Conclusions and Reflections 182
Notes 196
References 201
Index 209
v
Figures and Tables
Map 1 Earleschurch streets: spatial divisions 132
Map 2 Earleschurch burglaries, 1994–5 143
Figure 1 Podolefsky and Dubow’s (1981) preliminary
conceptual framework 151
Figure 2 Podolefsky and Dubow’s model for thinking
about variation 156
Figure 3 A model for thinking about variation: revisited 178
Table 1 A summary of data collection methods 31
Table 2 Housing types in Earleschurch 82
Table 3 Housing types in Edgebank 82
Table 4 Housing tenure in Earleschurch 83
Table 5 Housing tenure in Edgebank 83
vi
Acknowledgements
A great number of people deserve thanks for their help with the project
upon which this book is based. Sadly, because ethical considerations
require that certain individuals remain anonymous, I cannot mention
them all personally. Indeed space would also prevent it. However,
special thanks go to the Leverhulme Trust, Keele University and
Middlesex University respectively for their financial support through
the Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship Scheme. Thanks to Jean
Cater at the Trust for her interest in the project. I am indebted to Kate
Bowers and Alex Hirschfield of the Urban Research and Policy
Evaluation Regional Research Laboratory (Department of Civic Design,
Liverpool University) for their help with some of the data used in this
book. Special thanks go to residents in and beyond the study areas in
Merseyside, who must remain anonymous, but whose help and gen-
erosity made this research possible. Appreciation goes to all the indi-
viduals in the agencies who provided information and time. My closest
friends (north and south) deserve more than their acknowledgement. I
am grateful to many people who have generously given their encour-
agement and support, but special thanks to Sandra Walklate, Tim
Hope, Tony Bottoms and Roger Matthews. Staff and students at Keele
University and Middlesex, respectively, have in their various ways, and
perhaps without knowing it, helped to clarify my ideas.
We are grateful to Charles C. Thomas Publishers, Springfield, Illinois,
for permission to reproduce Figures 1 and 2 from A. Podolefsky and
F. Dubow, Strategies for Community Crime Prevention, 1981, pp. 13
and 138.
vii
1
Introduction: Urban Change and
Crime
Many criminological researchers have turned their attention to the
urban context of crime over recent years. In the United States a long
tradition of research has focused upon neighbourhood change and its
criminological consequences. For many the housing market was, and
remains, pivotal to their undertakings (see Skogan 1990). In this
context, of course, the private housing market is pre-eminent and the
public sector highly residualized (Harloe 1995). British writers have
drawn upon these traditions; identifying processes that are common
to both sides of the Atlantic, and others that are not clearly reflected
in the UK, in large part because of the relatively large social housing
sector in this setting.
The local authority controlled housing sector has become increas-
ingly residualized, and recommodified, over the last 20 or so years,
but it remains problematic to apply American-based research to the
British context in a straightforward fashion. Although residualization
may be flowing from the logic of capitalist interests in Europe and
the USA (Harloe 1995), there are ‘nationally varying economic,
political and housing market developments, patterns of urbanization,
ideological factors, institutional arrangements and historical legacies’
(Harloe 1995: 546), which have resulted in national variations in the
provision of social housing. Indeed, there are many sub-national
variations (Hancock 1996a). The overall context may be constraining,
but these conditions are sufficient to create differences in the nature
and pace of residualization (Harloe 1995). The factors leading to
variance also have important consequences for the way we con-
sider changes in housing provision and housing markets and, in turn,
their relationships with neighbourhood decline, regeneration and
crime.
1
2 Community, Crime and Disorder
In Britain, research has also demonstrated ‘housing market’ processes
to be especially significant for determining crime patterns and offender
rates, as their role in creating a particular concentration of ‘at risk’
groups of residents has been revealed (see Bottoms, Mawby and
Xanthos 1989; Bottoms, Claytor and Wiles 1992; Foster and Hope
1993, for example). These studies have tended to focus on local author-
ity controlled housing estates (Baldwin and Bottoms 1976; Bottoms
and Xanthos 1981; Bottoms and Wiles 1986; Bottoms et al. 1989; Gill
1977; Barke and Turnbull 1992; Foster and Hope 1993, for example). In
this context the notion of ‘market’ is problematic; we are often refer-
ring to ‘means of access’ to housing (see Rex and Moore, 1967) and, in
particular, bureaucratic allocation processes.
Some writers, as I show below, have been concerned with changes in
public housing provision and their impact on patterns of disadvantage
and victimization. However, there have been few recent attempts to
analyse other changes in housing policy for their criminological conse-
quences. Some authors have recognized the importance of the changing
balance of tenure for ‘community crime careers’, but they have mainly
been concerned with two main tenure types found in the UK, owner-
occupation and council renting (see Bottoms and Wiles 1986). Other
forms of provision, such as that provided by the (non-profit) voluntary
housing movement, have also been acknowledged (Bottoms and Wiles
1986). And, these contributions have been of enormous value. However,
they have taken place in a different political and policy environment.
One of the main aims of this study is to contribute to ‘community crime
career’ (Reiss 1986) debates through an examination of these phenomena
in the current context and over recent years. Thus, the growing role of
housing association provision, and other changes in housing provision
and consumption, are studied in an area where these processes are rela-
tively well advanced. Many findings are applicable to other areas, at
earlier stages in the trajectory of change.
This chapter begins by examining key changes in the urban environ-
ment in the UK; in urban governance and housing. It notes the links
between new urban divisions and crime. It argues the importance of
looking beyond social housing provided by the local authority when
considering disadvantage and crime. It then considers the importance
of community involvement in urban, including crime prevention, poli-
cies before discussing recent developments, including the Crime and
Disorder Act (1998), and debates. The chapter outlines the approach
adopted in this study, and concludes with brief information about its
setting.
