Social Science and the Governance of Crime: Crime Prevention Policy Making during the 1980s
| Author | Tim Hope |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12145 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 46, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2019
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 141±68
Social Science and the Governance of Crime: Crime
Prevention Policy Making during the 1980s
Tim Hope*
As with much else in Britain, the 1980s marked a watershed in the
politics of crime control. This article traces the role of criminological
research, developed and articulated by governmental social scientists,
in the evolution of penal policy around the (then) innovative idea of
engaging the community in the prevention of crime. Its central theme is
that although the raison d'e
Ãtre for crime prevention policy and prac-
tice, then as now, can be found in a concern about the deficiencies of
the statutory police in addressing crime, shifting the locus of social
control towards the institutions of civil society was, and remains, a
contested project.
INTRODUCTION
This is a personal and inevitably partial account of the role played by
governmental social scientific research in the governance of crime in
England and Wales during the 1980s. Something happened to render this
decade a watershed in the contemporary history of penal policy: it was the
incubator for new ideologies of penal policy and practice and saw the fall of
older orthodoxies.
1
This epoch witnessed too the rise of novel phenomena of
concern, including the fear of crime,disorder, and incivility, and crime
141
*Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS), 2 Langley Lane, Vauxhall,
London SW8 1GB, England; Open University Harm and Evidence Research
Collaborative (HERC), The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA, England
timothy.j.hope@gmail.com
The author was as a social scientific research officer at the Home Office for England and
Wales for a period spanning the 1980s. There are many former Home Office colleagues
whom I would like to thank for their collegiality and friendship during these years. Above
all, though, I want to record my gratitude to the Heads of Research for whom I worked:
John Croft, Ron Clarke, and Mary Tuck.
1 D. Garland, The Culture of Control (2001).
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
victimization; and the emergence of new governmental forms such as the
multi -agen cy par tners hip. Fi nally d uring t his per iod, Cr imino logy
established itself not only as an academic discipline but also as a harbinger
of emergent replacement discourses of crime and justice, of which the
concept of crime prevention was one.
2
The period chosen also conveniently spans my career in research at the
Home Office and concerns the origins and evolution of crime prevention
policy, in which I was closely involved.
3
After studying Sociology at the
University of Leeds and the London School of Economics, I joined the
Home Office Research Unit (HORU) in 1974 as an Assistant Research
Officer. Staffed by established professional (that is, specialist) civil servants,
HORU was a social scientific research organization, located within a
Department of State, which carried out a programme of research, and
collated research knowledge, intended to provide a basis of advice for policy
making. Empirical research was carried out both by its own staff and by
grant-funded external researchers. HORU was reorganized into the Research
and Planning Unit (RPU) in 1981. Having served as a Principal Research
Officer (Grade 7), I resigned in 1991 to pursue an academic career.
HISTORIES OF THE PRESENT
Both generally and in the specific forms in which it developed in Britain,
theories and practices of crime prevention have been seen as exemplars of a
new kind of governance of crime.
4
The emergence of crime prevention as an
official policy of government also highlights the relationship between
scientific expertise, politics, and practice: in contrast to conventional wisdom
± that practical innovation arises from `basic science' pursued within the
academy, and that policy grows from the representational actions of the
political classes ± many crime prevention ideas emerged as administrative
activity from professionals within government. That social scientists directly
employed by government were able to influence policy making to an
unprecedented degree during this time may not have been due solely to their
expertise (although their `applied' perspective greatly helped) but also to a
vacuum within both the academy and the political classes as to how to
address apparent public concerns and anxieties about crime and justice.
5
142
2 id.; A. Crawford, Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Politics, Policies and
Practices (1998).
3 T. Hope `The political evolution of situational crime prevention in England and
Wales' in Crime Prevention Policies in Comparative Perspective, ed. A. Crawford
(2009) 38.
4 P. O'Malley, `Risk, power and crime prevention' (1992) 21 Economy and Society
252.
5 Garland, op. cit., n. 1.
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
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