Sustainable Security

Sustainable Security and the Place of Justice

ADAM CRAWFORD, from the UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS, made a contribution to the 2012 Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, in the category “Other Criminologiacal Issues,” under the title “Sustainable Security and the Place of Justice”. Here is the abstract: In the criminological literature the prevailing view of crime prevention in England since the 1980s has been that crime prevention has been dominated by situational approaches at the expense of more socially-oriented ones. By contrast, the English approach to social crime prevention remains a largely neglected subject, notably in comparison with other European countries. This paper seeks to address this lacuna and outline the dominant trends in the evolution of social crime prevention in England and the manner in which these have been shaped by wider institutional, political and intellectual influences. It begins with a conceptual discussion of what social crime prevention is taken to mean and its place within wider debates about the recent historic preventive turn in public policy. The paper goes on to provide an overview of policy developments in the field of community safety and the elaboration of the anti-social behaviour agenda both of which have advanced a particular variant of social crime prevention, rooted in a distinct normative understanding of the social causes of crime and the role of the state, communities, families and individual citizens in its prevention. It argues that early intervention, pre-emption and the predictive governance of possible futures are all unifying themes within both individual and community-level social prevention strategies. The paper then turns to illustrate the prevailing trends, fault-lines and enduring themes that converge around the practice of social crime prevention in England through a number of case studies. Finally, it concludes with some speculative thoughts on the potential future direction of developments in England in the light of the current Government’s ambitions.[rtbs name=”criminology”]

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• “Sustainable Security and the Place of Justice”, by ADAM CRAWFORD (Proceedings)