Comparative European criminology and the question of urban security
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370813482611 |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Author | Gordon Hughes,Adam Edwards |
| Subject Matter | Introduction |
European Journal of Criminology
10(3) 257 –259
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370813482611
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Comparative European
criminology and the question
of urban security
Adam Edwards and Gordon Hughes
Cardiff University, UK
It is nearly 10 years since the European Journal of Criminology (EJC) was launched and
its founding editor, David J. Smith, wrote presciently of both the challenges and opportu-
nities for a vibrant and distinctly European criminology (Smith, 2004). Indeed, the very
diversity of the cultures of European countries, regions and cities arguably provides, in
Smith’s words (2004: 13), ‘more leverage for comparisons’ than many regions of the
world and a unique laboratory for testing the claims of grand narratives of control and
security. We cannot presume, for example, that concepts translate across different cultural
contexts in Europe and yet the very idea of a distinctively European criminology pre-
sumes a common conceptual vocabulary. This special issue explores this problem of
cross-cultural comparison through reference to the concept of ‘urban security’, which has
its origins in policy discourse about the need to frame crime prevention as a problem of
social and economic policy and not just of criminal justice and risk management. The
concept is more familiar in Central and Southern Europe than in other European regions,
and is used more by policy-makers than by academic criminologists. Even so, if there is
an aspiration for criminologists to engage with other public audiences for their work,
then policy constructs and other public discourses on crime need to be addressed, par-
ticularly those that can demonstrate a significant following. As contributions to this
issue of the EJC suggest, the concept of urban security has been used to signify social
and economic responses to certain problems of street crime, civil unrest and social
cohesion.
These are, of course, conventional problems of the ‘home affairs’ of sovereign nation
states, but they have become of increasing interest to the European Union for a number
of reasons in the last decade. In particular it has been claimed that such ‘internal security’
issues cannot be divorced from the transnational organization of serious crimes, such as
human trafficking and the intercontinental trade in narcotics. It has also been the European
Union Commission’s view that neither can such issues be divorced from the increased
migration of European populations across national borders, both within the EU, as a
consequence of the single European market, and from without, as a consequence of
major geo-strategic events on the southern and eastern borders of the Union, in particular
conflict in the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East. Along with such threats to
urban security as the terrorist attacks on transport systems in Madrid in 2004 and London
482611EUC10310.1177/1477370813482611European Journal of CriminologyEdwards and Hughes
2013
Introduction
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