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Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act was intended to place issues of community safety at the centre of the delivery of local services. It implied a shift from a bureaucratic model to network governance. These objectives have not been achieved and the reasons include a lack of clarity in definition, inadequate resources, poor leadership and competing imperatives.

What does the future hold for crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) over the coming year? A number of initiatives pre‐dating the 2005 election are likely to continue to shape the agenda for crime and disorder reduction partnerships over the coming months. However, announcements since the election are likely both to make the government's agenda underlying these initiatives clearer and speed‐up the pace of change.

This article concerns the implementation of the proposals from the Crime and Disorder Act Review. The Review focused on developments in policy and practice in crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) and community safety partnerships (CSPs) since the introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act (1998). These developments, the recommendations promulgated by the Review and their implementation are all discussed.

This article considers the experiences of people with learning difficulties as victims of hate crime. It considers how the Crime and Disorder Act and No Secrets can help identify and prevent hate crime, and examines an example of good practice designed to produce an effective response.

An enormous amount of time is spent talking about the involvement of the voluntary and community sector with crime and disorder reduction partnerships (CDRPs) and yet the reality is that the approach to the way that statutory services work with them continues to be mostly tokenistic. Whilst the government advocates the necessity of closer working relationships with voluntary or community organisations, few of these organisations play an integral part in working alongside most CDRPs as they discharge their responsibilities under the Crime and Disorder Act (1998). This article highlights the importance of CDRPs recognising how well placed the voluntary and community sector is in enabling them to plan, implement and evaluate their work.

The paper seeks to examine the developments from the 1970s to the present that led to the creation of the partnership approach, to ask whether it is still viable in today's world.

Early experiments are analysed together with common problem areas which arose. It charts the interest in these ideas by central government and the implementation of various policies which set the scene for a major step forward in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. It then briefly examines recent public inquiries, together with an experimental project set up in Manchester in 2008 with a Home Office grant, to assess whether the “partnership approach” is still an effective process to address crime reduction.

In conclusion, whilst acknowledging that practitioners in the field are supportive of this “approach”, certain issues remain unresolved. If public support is to be maintained, the paper offers a course of action which would improve the situation.

Notwithstanding the problems and difficulties identified, there is still a general support for the “partnership approach” from the agencies which make up this process; however, it is difficult to assess whether the public is offering the same degree of acceptance. What is clear is that this “approach” has not developed as swiftly and as surely as anticipated.

This article traces the development of ideas and policies linked to the shifting definitions of crime reduction, prevention and community safety. The conceptual changes are often difficult to define due to imprecision and breadth. Community safety is sufficiently broad to be concerned with a range of harms and hazards beyond crime and disorder, which may become the focus of the emerging new forms of government.

In this personal view of a decade of the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), Daniel Gilling argues that New Labour are to be congratulated for bringing about a radical reform in the landscape of local crime control. However, he is also critical of central government's high level of control over CDRP and local police business. His solution is a partnership approach built on stronger local accountability delivered through neighbourhood management structures and facilitated by CDRPs, with central government ‘speaking in a much quieter voice’.

This paper aims to offer an assessment of the partnership approach to reducing crime and disorder after 30 years of experience.

The paper provides an overview of developments in the partnership approach, identifying shifts in the conceptual and operational frameworks over time, as difficulties emerged. The extent to which the partnership approach has been successful is discussed and the prospects for the future role of the partnership working are assessed.

Despite continued problems in relation to information sharing and the identification of clear structures of leadership within partnerships, the overall balance sheet is a positive one. It is suggested that the development of “neighbourhood management” provides the partnership approach with a mechanism that will allow the partnership approach to play a key role in the future reduction of crime and disorder in a period of constrained public sector finance.

The paper provides a rationale for the partnership approach remaining at the centre of the Ministry of Justice's programme for “Transforming Justice”.

This article discusses the implications contained in the White Paper, Building Communities, Beating Crime (CM 6360:2004) for the accountability of crime and disorder reduction partnerships and police forces. More coherent mechanisms are proposed where basic command units and partnerships share the same boundaries.