Editorial

Citation

Smithson, T.B.a.H. (2014), "Editorial", Safer Communities, Vol. 13 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SC-02-2014-0004

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Safer Communities, Volume 13, Issue 2.

 

Perhaps the most significant feature of the current landscape within which crime reduction and criminal justice policy makers and practitioners operate is that crime is falling. Latest figures published by the Office for National Statistics (2014) demonstrate that, in the year ending September 2013, self-reported victimisation in England and Wales was 20 per cent lower than in 2007/2008, representing a reduction in offences captured by that measure of more than half since the peak in 1995. Police recorded crime, which covers a broader range of offences but only includes incidents that are reported, shows a slightly different pattern but the overall trajectory is unmistakeably downwards, with the latest figures 38 per cent below those in 2002/2003. The last four administrations (three New Labour and the current coalition government) have accordingly all presided over diminishing volumes of crime.

Yet this – largely unanticipated – phenomenon has received relatively little academic or media attention; indeed a majority of the public continues to believe that crime is rising. As Alan Marlow points out, in an opinion paper in this edition of Safer Communities, part of the reason for this lacuna is that recent trends pose a difficulty for much accepted thinking in criminology. Theoretical understanding that posits a relationship between levels of crime, on the one hand, and the state of the economy or the extent of relative deprivation, on the other, sits uneasily with the trends shown in the data, giving rise to a “mismatch” between what theories might predict and recent experience.

In a thought-provoking discussion, Marlow considers a range of potentially explanatory factors – including the success of situational crime prevention, relative falls in the cost of consumer goods that undermine the attraction of acquisitive crime, the removal of lead from motor vehicle fuel and the possibility that there is a long-term historical tendency for humans to become “nicer to each other”. He offers an assessment of the plausibility of each. While acknowledging that the figures demonstrate a real reduction in conventional forms of offending, not just in the UK but internationally, Marlow suggests that there may be newly emerging forms of criminality that are yet to be adequately captured in the data. He argues, for instance, that the internet offers huge potential for relatively low-risk criminal activity which in large part goes undetected and under-reported. There is thus a sense in which, Marlow maintains, there has been some displacement from more traditional forms of acquisitive crime to opportunities afforded by the changing world in which we live. Whatever the truth in this regard, it is clear that the changing context has significant implications for those working within the crime reduction arena.

Rogers and Colliandris's practice paper considers how crime reduction agencies might most effectively organise themselves in response to the changing nature of threats in order to best learn the lessons from experience. Rogers and Colliandris uses the example of child sexual exploitation to demonstrate the problem. They points out that agencies are more used to dealing with intra familial abuse than grooming by persons outside the home; new and emerging technologies provide opportunities for potential abusers to contact potential victims in ways that are less amenable to detection through conventional policing methods as they “seek adaptation, novelty and opportunities to subvert, exploit or circumnavigate official responses”. Official responses accordingly need to become sufficiently flexible to accommodate non-conventional forms of harmful behaviour.

Rogers and Colliandris advocates the use of “red teaming” as an organisational tool that promotes clarity of thinking and decision making, helps to break down silos and improves responses to new threats. Derived from military applications, red teaming involves processes that are designed to bring a “devil's advocates” perspective to strategic development by seeking to “get inside the heads of adversaries” (the red team) in order better to anticipate their activities and responses given their goals and culture. Red teaming has been used in the USA to test counter-terrorist plans and is beginning to emerge in the UK, although they argue, it is insufficiently well developed to maximise the potential that might be derived from an organisational commitment to working in that way. Rogers and Colliandris suggest that red teaming, because it involves analysis, creativity and challenging existing operational assumptions “by taking an alternative, contrary position”, might hold the key to avoiding dangers – such as introspection and relying on past practice – that can readily characterise crime reduction agencies in a rapidly shifting external landscape.

It has been proposed that one of the consequences of falling crime is a tendency to shift the focus of policy concern onto behaviours that would not generally attract criminal justice interventions. Mooney and Young (2006) argue that the emergence of an anti-social behaviour discourse is particularly likely where there is a perceived political need for a “tough” law and order agenda. This insight provides a helpful lens through which to view the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Bill currently before Parliament. Alexandra Wigzell's policy paper locates the development of anti-social behaviour legislation in the context a political “arms race” between the major political parties over the past 15 years. It dissects the proposals contained within the legislation, critically analysing the implications for children and young people in particular.

The government has made much of the fact that the Bill will abolish the anti-social behaviour order (ASBO), the use of which has declined sharply in recent years. The measures that are to replace it, the home secretary claims, have benefited from learning the lessons of the “mistakes of the past” and seek to “move beyond the ASBO”. Through a process of careful comparison, however, Wigzell argues that the injunction to prevent nuisance and annoyance and the criminal behaviour order (the functional equivalents to ASBOs on application and in criminal proceedings respectively) share many of the problems of their predecessors and in some respects exacerbate them. One of the concerns to which she draws attention has been addressed since the paper was written. In the face of concerted lobbying and opposition in the House of Lords, the government has accepted that the threshold originally proposed for granting an injunction – engaging in conduct “capable of causing nuisance and annoyance” – was too low and could encompass much typical teenage behaviour. It has accordingly been replaced by the previous definition of anti-social behaviour – conduct causing “harassment, alarm or distress” – which also applies in respect of criminal behaviour orders. Other sources of disquiet however remain.

While replicating the mechanisms of the ASBO for the most part, both of the new orders differ from it in that they can result in the imposition of positive requirements as well as negative prohibitions. Acknowledging that positive interventions may have potential to address the root causes of anti-social behaviour, Wigzell nonetheless notes that their compulsory nature is likely to exacerbate the problem of breach (a significant issue so far as ASBOs are concerned) and the imposition of custody for activity that would not ordinarily warrant imprisonment in criminal proceedings. Children will also continue to be subject to “naming and shaming” which she contends may be a barrier to successful rehabilitation.

Wigzell concludes by noting that, in 2008, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that the UK government should review the use of ASBOs for children with a view to their abolition. Although the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Bill complies with the letter of that recommendation, Wigzell maintains that it fails to address its spirit since the provisions represent “more of the same”, legislating to reintroduce the “ASBO in another guise”.

The fall in youth detected offending provides the starting point for a paper by Sean Creaney and Roger Smith that explores the reversals that have characterised youth justice policy and practice, opening up a “new age of diversion”. A presumption of intervention through the mechanisms of the youth justice system has given way to an expansion in alternatives to formal sanction. This development is underpinned by a target to reduce the number of children who enter the system for the first time, and facilitated by the legislative replacement of New Labour's rigid final warning framework – that mandated prosecution on the third offence at the latest – by a more flexible system of youth cautioning. Falling crime rates may have facilitated this less politicised approach to youthful law breaking but the changes have equally contributed to the decline in detected youth crime, since children who previously would have been drawn into the system are diverted from it.

The authors suggest that the renewed emphasis on responding to youth offending without recourse to criminal justice processes can be seen either as a return to principles of “minimum intervention” of the 1980s, or as representing a “pragmatic retrenchment” in the face of fiscal constraints. While welcoming the “positive indications of a less punitive, less tariff-based” youth justice, Creaney and Smith point to the contradictory nature of the current conjuncture. On the one hand, mainstream services who might be best placed to address the difficulties that give rise to children's offending are facing severe cuts in resources while, simultaneously, interventions available through the justice system are increasingly subject to a “marketisation” that determines who should receive services and the nature of that provision on the basis of meeting profit-orientated targets rather than children's needs.

The final paper in this issue, by Thomas Simpson and colleagues, reminds us that establishing safer communities extends beyond the field of crime reduction. Fire and rescue services have in recent years increasing adopted a preventive role in addition to their more traditional response functions. Focusing on a single fire and rescue service area, the paper reports on the impact of initiatives to deliver home safety checks to selected households and to provide interventions with young people who have been involved in, or are considered to pose a risk of, deliberate fire setting.

During the data collection period, there was a considerable reduction in accidental dwelling fire causalities and the occurrence of deliberate secondary fires across the fire and rescue service area. In the case of the former, the decline was considerably greater than the regional average and a group of similar areas used as a benchmark. While the evaluation was not able to demonstrate that the fall occurred as consequence of the community safety initiatives, because other intervening variables could not be excluded, the findings are nonetheless promising.

Lastly in this issue, Margaret Melrose reviews an edited collection dealing with the civil disturbances of August 2011. The book editor, Daniel Briggs, was also guest editor of the special edition of Safer Communities (11.1) devoted to the subject of the riots.

Tim Bateman and Hannah Smithson

References

Mooney, J. and Young, J. (2006), “The decline in crime and the rise of anti-social behaviour”, Probation Journal, Vol. 53 No. 4, pp. 397-407
Office for National Statistics (2014), Crime Statistics, Period Ending September 2013, Office for National Statistics, London