Crime, Disorder and Community Safety: A New Agenda?

256 Pages·2001·1.23 MB·English

by  Roger Matthews

Crime, Disorder and
Community Safety
Major changes are taking place in the crime control industry and by association
in the discipline of criminology itself. These changes, which involve the adop-
tion of local partnership approaches, new forms of managerialism as well as the
blurring of distinctions between crime, disorder and community safety, have
been described as constituting a watershed for criminology. Bringing together
nine original articles from leading national and international authorities on
these issues, this book is both a product of and a reflection on the changing
state of play. The articles address, from a range of different perspectives, the
changing nature of regulation in contemporary society and the simultaneous
reconstruction of the communities which are being regulated. Crime, Disorder
and Community Safetyalso offers a timely commentary on government attempts
to address questions of inequality and social exclusion as well as issues relating
to ethnic minorities and young people.
Roger Matthewsis Professor of Sociology at Middlesex University. John Pittsis
Vauxhall Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Luton.

Crime, Disorder and
Community Safety
A new agenda?
Edited by Roger Matthews
and John Pitts
London and New York
First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
© 2001 Roger Matthews and John Pitts for editorial matter and selection;
individual contributors their contribution
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Crime, disorder, and community safety: a new agenda?/edited by Roger
Matthews and John Pitts.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Crime prevention. 2. Crime. I. Matthews, Roger. II. Pitts, John.
HV7431 .C7 2001
364–dc21 00-065337
ISBN 0–415–24230–4 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–24231–2 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-47099-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-77923-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Notes on contributors viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: beyond criminology? 1
ROGER MATTHEWS AND JOHN PITTS
1 Identity, community and social exclusion 26
JOCK YOUNG
2 Joined-up but fragmented: contradiction, ambiguity and
ambivalence at the heart of New Labour’s ‘Third Way’ 54
ADAM CRAWFORD
3 Evaluation and evidence-led crime reduction policy
and practice 81
NICK TILLEY
4 Crime, community safety and toleration 98
LYNN HANCOCK AND ROGER MATTHEWS
5 ‘Broken Windows’ and the culture wars: a response to
selected critiques 120
GEORGE L. KELLING
6 Ethnic minorities and community safety 145
MARIAN FITZGERALD
7 The new correctionalism: young people, Youth Justice and
New Labour 167
JOHN PITTS
vi Contents
8 Crime victimisation and inequality in risk society 193
TIM HOPE
9 Distributive justice and crime 219
PAUL WILES AND KEN PEASE
Index 241
Illustrations
Tables
1.1 The binaries of social exclusion 43
8.1 Household and area risk factors for household property crime 202
8.2 Indices of individual and area deprivation and affluence 206
8.3 Property crime victimisation, deprivation and affluence 207
8.4 Correlation between property crime victimisation,
(a) household deprivation (b) household affluence, within
levels of areas deprivation 208
8.5 Risk factors for household property crime victimisation
by level of area deprivation 209
9.1 Risks of domestic burglary by household type 232
9.2 OCU rate variability by offence types 236
Figures
6.1 Arrests and searches: London 1997–1999 150
6.2 Searches, population and suspects: London 1998–1999 152
6.3 Recorded racial incidents in England and Wales, 1991–1999 157
6.4 Trends in types of racial incidents recorded by the
MPS, 1997–2000 158
6.5 Victims and suspects of racist incidents by ethnic group, 159
MPS 1997–2000
7.1 The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) 170
8.1 Inequality and property crime 203
8.2 Property crime rates and poverty concentration 210
9.1 Property crime by area crime levels 229
9.2 Property crime by area victim prevalence 230
9.3 Property crime by area victim concentration 231
9.4 Inequality at force and OCU level 233
Contributors
Adam Crawford is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the
Deputy Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, University of
Leeds. He is the author of Local Governance of Crime (1997), Crime
Prevention and Community Safety (1998) and co-editor of Integrating a Victim
Perspective within Criminal Justice (with J. Goodey, 2000). He has worked for
both the New Zealand Ministry of Justice and the Northern Ireland Office in
relation to crime prevention policy. He is part of a Home Office-funded team
which evaluates youth justice reforms, introduced by the Youth Justice and
Criminal Evidence Act (1999).
Marian FitzGerald is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the London
School of Economics and has researched many aspects of British race rela-
tions policies. Her earliest work was on relations between the main political
parties and ethnic minorities, and she is the author of a report, entitled
Ethnic Minorities and the Criminal Justice System, for the Royal Commission on
Criminal Justice. Her recent publications include a major study of police
searches in London and she is presently co-directing new research into police
community relations in the capital.
Lynn Hancock is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Middlesex University.
Before moving to Middlesex in 1997, she was a Lecturer in Criminology at
Keele University (1993–1996). She held a Leverhume Special Research
Fellowship between 1996 and 1998. Her research ‘Neighbourhood Change,
Crime and Urban Policy’ will be published in her forthcoming book Crime,
Community and Disorder.
Tim Hope is Professor and Head of the Department of Criminology at Keele
University, England. He has held positions at the Universities of Manchester and
Missouri-St. Louis, CACI Ltd., and the Home Office, where he was Principal
Research Officer. His research interests and publications lie in the fields of crime
prevention, community safety, victimology and the evaluation of crime preven-
tion programmes, where he is currently leading a consortium to evaluate the
Home Office Reducing Burglary Initiative. He recently edited Perspectives on
Crime Reduction(2000) and co-edited Crime, Risk and Insecurity: Law and Order
in Everyday Life and Political Discourse(with Richard Sparks, 2000).
Contributors ix
George L. Kelling is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers
University, a Research Fellow in the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is
the co-author (with James Q. Wilson) of ‘Broken Windows’, published in
Atlantic Monthly in 1982, and Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and
Reducing Crime in our Communities(with Catherine M. Coles, 1996).
Roger Matthews is Professor of Sociology at Middlesex University. His current
research interests are centred around issues relating to toleration and public
attitudes towards crime and justice. He has published a number of books
including Informal Justice (1988), Privatizing Criminal Justice (1999) and
Rethinking Criminology: The Realist Debate (with J. Young, 1992). His most
recent book is Doing Time: An Introduction to the Sociology of Imprisonment
(1999).
Ken Peaseis Professor of Criminology at Huddersfield University. He has previ-
ously held Chairs at the Universities of Manchester and Saskatchewan. He is
currently on secondment to the Home Office Crime Reduction Programme
and sits on the Crime Panel of the DTI Foresight Programme.
John Pitts is Vauxhall Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of
Luton. He has worked as a ‘special needs’ teacher, a street and club-based
youth worker, a youth justice development worker and a group worker in a
Young Offender Institution. His recent publications include Planning Safer
Communities (1998), Working with Young Offenders (1999) and Positive
Residential Practice: Learning the Lessons of the 1990s(2000).
Nick Tilleyis Professor of Sociology at the Nottingham Trent University and a
consultant to the Home Office Policing and Reducing Crime Unit. He is the
co-author of Realist Evaluation (with Ray Pawson, 1997) and co-editor of
Surveillance of Public Space: CCTV, Street Lighting and Crime Prevention(with
Kate Painter, 1999).
Paul Wilesis currently Director of Research, Development and Statistics at the
Home Office. Previously, he was Professor of Criminology at the University
of Sheffield. His recent research interests have been in the analysis of
geographical crime patterns and more broadly in the ecology of crime. In the
past he has worked in various areas of research on crime and socio-legal
studies.
Jock Youngis Professor of Sociology and Head of the Centre for Criminology at
Middlesex University. His first book was The Drugtakers(1971) and his most
recent book is The Exclusive Society (1999). He is the co-author of The New
Criminology (with Ian Taylor and Paul Walton, 1973). His current research
interests are in urban and cultural studies, and he is working on a book to be
entitled Strange Days: The Transition to Late Modernity.