Community safety and the quest for security: Holding back the dynamics of social exclusion

Abstract

This paper casts a deliberately critical eye over the government's ‘community safety'proposals as outlined in the UK Crime and Disorder Act 1998, their philosophical origins, their ambiguities and their potential for social exclusion. After an evaluation of some specific proposals in the Act, the paper goes on to suggest that community safety elements within the Act and associated policy initiatives embody three principal dynamics, namely appeals to community, managerialism and inter‐organisational partnerships. Within and between these dynamics lie deep ambiguities and conflicts, which may encourage, rather than hold back, the dynamics of social exclusion. It is argued that the government's proposals — under the influence of a certain brand of communitarian thought — display much confusion as to how ‘communities’ can contribute to the construction of social order. Moreover, the notion of community collides with existing social fragmentation and the commodificalion of security, which may fuel exclusionary elements of community safety practice. The paper goes on to consider the existence of important tensions between the managerialist preoccupations of policy and the rhetoric of ‘partnerships’, which pervade community safety. These can serve to undermine the intentions of legislators. Within the dynamics of crime prevention practice and appeals to ‘community’ there are dangers that ‘security differentials’ become increasingly significant characteristics of wealth and status. For community safety to hold back the dynamics of social exclusion, both government and local community safety practitioners will need to foster the conditions in which partnerships can flourish and to nurture forms of co‐operation, rooted in mutual acceptance of difference and inter‐organisational trust.