Book Reviews : ADAM CRAWFORD, The Local Governance of Crime: Appeals to Community and Partnerships. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, x + 368 pp., £35.00

Date01 December 1998
Published date01 December 1998
AuthorIan Loader
DOI10.1177/096466399800700422
Subject MatterArticles
604
ADAM
CRAWFORD,
The
Local
Governance
of Crime:
Appeals
to
Community
and
Part-
nerships.
Oxford:
Clarendon
Press,
1997,
x
+
368
pp., £35.00.
This
book
offers
a
forceful
and
extended
reminder
that
crime
prevention
is
not
merely
a
matter
of
finding
effective
measures
to
reduce
offending,
but
is
also
entangled
with
-
and
capable
of
telling
us
much
about -
wider
issues
of
ethics
and
politics.
Taking
as
his
guiding
question,
’what
kinds
of
social
formations
do
we
want
to
foster
and
encourage
through,
and
around,
strategies
of
crime
control?’
(p.
2),
Adam
Crawford
has
two
main
aims.
First,
to
provide
a
theoretical
account
(supported
by
illustrations
from
two
empirical
research
projects)
of
the
ways
in
which
appeals
to
’partnerships’
and
’community’
are
mobilized
within
contemporary
crime
control
strategies.
Second,
to
consider
what
alternatives
might
be
constructed
to
the
undemocratic,
neo-
corporatist
tendencies
that
permeate
the
present.
His
argument
is
that
’we
are
wit-
nessing
a
profound
restructuring
of
the
mechanisms
and
technologies
governing
the
regulation
of
crime’
(p.
4);
something
that
calls
into
question
many
received
ideas
about
the
centrality
of
specialist,
professionalized,
state
institutions
to
crime
control,
and
raises
some
acute
questions
about
legitimacy
and
justice.
The
book’s
thesis
divides
roughly
into
three.
Crawford’s
initial
concern
is
to
trace,
document
and
account
for the
practices
and
rhetoric
of
local
crime
management
that
have
emerged
of
late
around
ideas
of
community,
prevention
and
partnerships
(neigh-
bourhood
watch,
multi-agency
initiatives,
mediation
and
the
like);
discourses,
he
sug-
gests,
that
now
coexist
in
complex
ways
with
the
priorities
and
ethos
of
established
criminal
justice
institutions.
Crawford
argues
(in
preference
to
what
he
calls
the
’dominant
explanations’
of
’system
failure’,
’state
overload’
and
the
’dispersal
of
disci-
pline’)
that
these
attempts
to
reconfigure
the
responsibilities
of
individuals,
groups
and
the
state
are
best
understood
as
responses
to
the
legitimation
problems
facing
government
and
criminal
justice
agencies -
problems
that
have
also,
he
suggests
(though
with
a
proper
regard
for
unevenness
and
contingency),
given
rise
to
privati-
zation,
actuarial
justice
and
the
dictates
of
’new
public
management’.
Crawford’s
second
objective
is
to
develop
a
grounded
analysis
of
how
’partner-
ships’
and
’community’
are
mobilized
within
current
crime
control
strategies.
In
respect
of
the
former,
he
demonstrates -
drawing
on
survey,
interview
and
obser-
vational
research
on
a
number
of
English
community
crime
prevention
initiatives -
how
conflicts
between
agencies
are
creatively
managed;
through
either
the
setting
of
multiple,
ambiguous
goals,
an
’ideology
of
unity’
that
eschews
overt
dispute,
or
by
informal,
’behind
the
scenes’
conversations
among
key
players.
Two
implications
are
then
highlighted.
First,
that
these
neo-corporatist
’policy
networks’
are
in
significant
if
uneven
ways
relocating
social
power
beyond
the
state;
and
second,
that
their
attempts
to
ground
legitimacy
in
non-normative
criteria
(such
as
effectiveness
and
expertise)
generate
severe
democratic
deficits.
Turning
to
’community’,
Crawford
offers
a
thorough
overview
of
the
competing
ways
in
which
this
term
is
deployed
in
contemporary
crime
control
discourse;
a
research-based
account
of
how
certain
community
interests
tend
to
be
either
excluded
from
or
’tamed
by’
local
policy
networks,
and
an
assessment
(drawing
upon
inter-
views
and
documentary
sources)
of
the
difficulties
that
attend
’community’
media-
tion.
He
suggests
that
there
is
an
unresolved
tension
in
much
current
practice
as
to
whether
community
regeneration
is
a
means
of
reducing
crime
or
the
outcome
of
such
a
reduction;
notes
a
slippage
(evident,
he
believes,
in
much
communitarian
writing)
between
the
normative
and
empirical
aspects
of
community,
and
warns
of
the
dangers
of
unpopular
minorities
being
’trampled
under
the
hooves
of
a
community’s
sense
of
moral
order’
(p.
201).
While
not
wishing
to
dismiss
entirely
the
(potential)
value
of
community
involvement,
Crawford’s
concern
is
that -
against
the
backdrop
of
pro-
nounced
disparities
in
income
and
opportunity,
the
marked
spatial
concentration
of

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