VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERSCRIME AND CRIME PREVENTION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
By Prof. Sir Anthony E. Bottoms*

I. INTRODUCTION
In this first paper, my aim is to provide some basic information, and some key concepts, which can guideus as we try to take forward the main theme of the 129th International Senior Seminar, namely ‘Crime
Prevention in the Twenty-first Century’.
I want to begin by reminding you of the contents of the first two paragraphs drawn up by the Course
Organisers when they set out the formal Rationale of the 129th Seminar. These paragraphs are as follows:
Economic growth and development of modern industry have promoted migration of people fromother areas. The living conditions in urban areas have worsened as a consequence, slum areas haveemerged and street crime has expanded. Economic growth and other factors have also altered the social
fabric; for instance, the extended family has shifted into a nuclear family, and the erosion of human ties in
the community has promoted a breakdown in the traditional form of the community. This has beenaccompanied by a weakening of normative consciousness in the community and it is a cause of thedeleterious change in the community environment.
This enervation of living conditions and social environment accompanied by urbanization has also
affected crime trends. For instance, in urban areas, crime such as larceny, robbery, violent crime and drug
related crime have drastically increased. At the same time, the type of offences committed by organizedcriminals, youth, juveniles and foreigners have become more serious. This phenomenon generates“feelings of insecurity” in the majority of people who are living in urban areas. This increase in crime has
adversely affected the “quality of life” in the community and it will be a serious cause of hindrance to thesustainable growth of a country.
In this short passage, very many different ideas are touched upon — for example, relating to theeconomy, the family, the community and community norms, migration, crime trends, ‘feelings of insecurity’,and so on. In the first part of my paper, I want to try to consider some of these issues systematically, before I
move on to the topic of crime prevention.

II. RECENT SOCIAL CHANGE
History, of course, looks very different in different countries. In the United States and Canada, forexample, very few buildings are more than two hundred years old, but that seems very recent by thestandards of the great European and Asian civilisations.
In European social thought, a concept that has recently acquired some persuasiveness is that of ‘latemodernity’. To understand this term properly, we have to understand what ‘modern’ means in the context ofEuropean history. In a nutshell, it has two main reference points:

First, in Europe the ‘modern’ period replaced the mediaeval period; and in terms of social organisation,
the pre-modern feudal system was, by stages, gradually dismantled and eventually replaced by capitalism.
The advent of capitalism, in turn, eventually resulted in the Industrial Revolution, leading to a hugemigration from the countryside to industrial cities.
Secondly, in European thought the ‘modern’ period refers to the period of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’,
when a scientific world-view was increasingly adopted by educated people, replacing earlier and more
* Wolfson Professor/Director, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

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RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

traditional thought-forms. The dominant feature of the scientific world-view is, of course, that it is an openended quest. In principle, any scientific concept can be falsified or modified by the next discovery or the next
experiment; thus, scientists learn to set up hypotheses to test the validity of current ideas. When such amethod is fully adopted, all knowledge becomes provisional.
Theorists of ‘late modernity’ argue that we are still experiencing the long-term consequences of thearrival of modernity. In the last half-century, however, modernity has in various ways significantly speededup. During this period, our lives have in many ways changed beyond recognition. These changes have
unfolded differently in different countries, but let me just remind you of some of them, which link very muchwith the themes introduced by those who wrote the Rationale for this International Seminar (see above). I
shall divide the changes into three main clusters, relating to the fields of technology; the economy; and thefamily and community.

A. Technological Changes
Let me briefly take you back 45 years, to the beginning of 1960. During that year, in my country (theUK), something called “Subscriber Trunk Dialling’ was introduced. This meant that, when someone wishedto make a telephone call to a different town 50 miles away, it was no longer necessary to be connected by ahuman operator; one could actually dial direct. At that time, also, the police in the UK had no personalradios. Most households had a television, but all television was black-and-white, and there were only twochannels available. Computers existed, but they were about the size of a large room, and only specialists
could operate them. There were no communications satellites, so it was not possible to have events on theother side of the world beamed instantly into one’s sitting room.
I could go on, but there is little point. Clearly, in less than half a century, our everyday lives have beentransformed by technological advances. These radical changes have, of course, in many ways been hugely
beneficial. But they have altered our daily routines and our working assumptions, and we need to bear this inmind as we think about crime prevention in the twenty-first century.

B. Economic Changes
One of the most profound economic changes is that created by so-called globalisation, which is closely
related to the technological change we have just considered. In the 1960s, many countries had fixed foreignexchange rates, and tried to defend them against currency speculation. Most countries have now abandoned
such strategies, because of the ease with which computers can now transmit money around the world on a
24-hour basis. Other aspects of globalisation have been the growth of multinational corporations, and anincreasing migration of populations across national boundaries, both temporarily (business and tourism) andmore permanently (migration for economic reasons, and for political reasons to avoid regimes perceived as
threatening).
Another important economic change in many countries is a growing divide between rich and poor. In theUK, for example, in the thirty-year period 1971-2000, using stabilised prices the gap between the highestearning tenth and the lowest-earning tenth of households rose from a difference of £200 to a difference of£450 per week (see Figure 1). Among the factors creating this increased division are very high rewards paid
to a few who are considered skilled entrepreneurs; and, at the other end of the spectrum, the abolition ofmany unskilled jobs which have now been replaced by automated processes. And clearly, a growing divide
between rich and poor might in some circumstances be of relevance for criminological explanation.

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129TH INTERNATIONAL SENIOR SEMINAR
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Figure 1: Distribution of Real1 Household Disposable Income2

A further feature of contemporary economies, at least in the West, is the arrival of a consumer economy.
Most Western countries have experienced sustained economic growth during the last fifty years (though
there have been annual fluctuations in the growth rate, with some downturns, normally temporary). A
consequence of this sustained growth is that more households have more to spend, in real terms, than they
did thirty years ago. This trend is well illustrated in Figure 2, which shows that in the UK real household
expenditure rose 2.3 times in real terms in the thirty years from 1971. As a detailed scrutiny of Figure 2 willshow, there is a strong tendency to spend this additional on so-called ‘luxuries’ (foreign travel, recreation,
clothing) rather than on ‘necessities’ such as housing and food. Such trends in turn create a culture of
consumerism, where shopping is a cultural activity valued for its own sake, and adolescents become keenlyinterested in exactly which brand of clothing or footwear, or which kind of mobile phone, they possess, bycomparison with their friends. That kind of consumer consciousness is also increasingly relevant to the
public services, such as education and the police – the public in the West are far more willing to question thedelivery of ‘products’ by the public services than they used to be.
Figure 2: 2001 UK Household Expenditure on Selected Items,
Indexed to 1971 = 100
Communications

786

Household expenditure abroad

669

Recreation and culture

571

Clothing and footwear

350

Education

274

Household goods/services

256

Transport

248

All household expenditure

232

Restaurants and hotels

189

Health180

Housing water and fuel

152

Food

137

Alcohol and tobacco

92

Source: Social Trends.

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RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

C. Family and Community
The Rationale for the 129th International Seminar draws attention to the fact that the nature of family life
is changing, and that ‘the extended family has shifted into a nuclear family’. Moreover, divorce rates haverisen, and there are increasing numbers of one-parent families. A simple statistical indicator of this trend ishousehold size, data for which, for the UK, are shown in Figure 3. Combining some of the data in this Figure,
we may note that in 1971, exactly half of British households contained either one or two persons, but by
2002 the corresponding figure was 64 per cent. By far the largest contribution to this trend came from the
proportion of persons under pension age now living alone. We are, indeed, becoming a more atomized
society. This is a trend that, in the US, has been highlighted by the American commentator Robert Putnam(2000) in his book Bowling Alone. According to the Rationale of the International Seminar, this kind of
atomization is leading to a weakening of normative consciousness in communities. This is possibly the case,and it is a point to which I shall return.
Figure 3: Household Size 1971 and 2002 (Great Britain)
1971

2002

6

15

12

14

Two people

32

35

Three people

19

16

Four people

17

14

One person: under statepension age
One person: over statepension age

Five + people

Average household size

14

7

100

100

2.9

2.4

Source: Social Trends.

Those who argue against this position tend to say that, while geographical communities are less closeknit than they were, technological developments increasingly allow the development of networks of interest,
among those who share a similar sporting, cultural or other interest. Even if this is true, however, as weshall see, geographical place remains a matter of some importance for community safety.
Other important factors of family and community life include the increasing participation of women in all
spheres of life, by contrast with their generally more constrained role in most societies half a century ago. Inmany societies, too, the result of increasing migration (see above) is to create, in many countries,
neighbourhoods that are significantly more multicultural, especially in large conurbations.

D. Overview
The above sketch has provided a necessarily very selective and abbreviated indication of some of theways in which many societies have changed in the last half-century. Clearly, taken together, the highlighted
trends constitute a massive social transformation. In thinking about crime prevention in the twenty-first
century, we therefore need to ensure that we are thinking about crime prevention that is relevant to thekinds of society in which we now live, rather than the kinds of society that existed a couple of decades ago.
At this point, however, an important caveat is in order. There are massive cultural and structuraldifferences between Japan and the UK. These kinds of cross-national differences mean that the generaltrends I have been discussing in the first part of this paper will manifest themselves in different ways in
different countries, and any sensible analyst will always take these local contexts into account. This is apoint that will become more evident as I move to the second part of the paper, on aspects of contemporary
crime.

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III. CRIME AND CRIME-RELATED ISSUES
Figure 4 shows trends in police-related crime, and in detected crime, in England and Wales since 1950.
As will be seen, from the mid-1950s to the early 1990s – a period of 35 years – there was a massive andsustained increase in police-recorded crime. My country was, however, not by any means alone in this kindof experience: most Western countries suffered a similarly large increase over much of this period.
Figure 4: Recorded Crime, Detected Crime and ‘Known’
Offenders, England and Wales 1950-2002
Thousands
7000

6000

Notifiable offences recorded(1)Notifiable offences detected(1)5000
Persons proceeded against(2)Offenders found guilty or cautioned(2)

4000

3000

2000

1000

0
1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

(1) Data from 1950-1997 exclude criminal damage of £20 or under. From 1998 the figures are basedon new counting rules and are for financial years. They include all criminal damage.
(2) Indictable offences with allowance for under-recording where appropriate.

Source: Criminal Statistics England and Wales 2002, Cm 6054.

In The Netherlands, an official government committee of 1985 considered the reasons for this kind ofincrease in crime. They offered two main reasons:First:‘because of greatly increased prosperity many more goods are in circulation which can be stolen or
destroyed than in the past’.
Secondly:‘there has been a decline... in the influence of many traditional social institutions within which the
behaviour of individuals is effectively normalised, such as the family, clubs and associations, the church
and the schools. Society has become more individualistic. In some cases this individualism leads to atendency to satisfy personal needs at the expense of others or of the community. The increased use ofalcohol and drugs also forms part of this pattern of greater individualism’ (Netherlands Ministry of Justice
1985, p. 10).
I will come back to these suggestions in a moment. Before that, I want to draw your attention to two
other important features of Figure 4. First, the increase in detected crime since 1950 has been much slower
than the increase in recorded crime – in other words, the detection rate has gone down considerably. This,perhaps, is explained by our increasingly anonymous society: as we all know, most crime is detected not by
forensic science (although that is very important in some cases), but by good information from knowledgeable
witnesses, and in a more atomized, more anonymous society, such witnesses may be less plentiful. The
second significant feature of Figure 4 is the marked dip in the crime rate in the 1990s. To examine thisfurther, let us take a closer look at these data, in conjunction with national crime survey data.
Since 1981, in England and Wales there have been a regular series of national crime surveys, known
collectively as the British Crime Survey (or BCS). Figure 5 shows police-recorded crime trends since 1981
alongside BCS crime trends, indexing both trends to a starting point of 1981 = 100.

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RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68
Figure 5: Indexed Trends in Crime, England & Wales 1981-2003(On base of 1981 = 100) in: (a) police-recorded crime, (b) crimes that survey
respondents said they had reported to the police (in the British Crime Survey or
BCS), and (c) all crimes noted by BCS respondents.
350
1. Recorded crime rose at the same rate as reported crime until
1991. All BCS crime increased at a slower rate. This isconsistent with a general increase in the reporting of crime by the
public over this period.

300

3. Recorded crime decreased at a lower rate relative
to reported and all BCS crime - consistent with anincrease in the proportion of reported crimes being
recorded.

Indexed (1981 = 100)

250

200

150

100
2. While reported and all BCS crime continued
to rise until 1995, recorded crime increased at
a lesser rate and then decreased, consistent
with a fall in recording over this period.

50

4. 2001/02 to 2003/04 show amore marked increase inrecorded crime due to theintroduction of the NCRS.

Reported (measured by BCS)

Recorded (not NCRS adjusted)

2003/04

2002/03

2001/02

1999

1997

1995

1993

1991

1987

1983

1981

0

All BCS

Source: Home Office Statistical Bulletin 2004/10, p.37.

The principal reason for carrying out national crime surveys is, of course, because of the known
deficiencies of police-recorded crime data. (A year-on-year increase in police crime data might indicate a realincrease in crime; or alternatively it might indicate that the public are reporting crimes to the police which
they previously would not have reported, or that the police are recording more of the crime that the public
have reported to them.) Plotting recorded crime data against crime survey data therefore acts as a vital
check on the validity of trends in recorded crime.
There are a number of points of detailed interest in Figure 5, and these are set out in the text of thegraph. However, the main point of interest for present purposes is that, for most of the twenty-year period
shown in the graph, there has been a close correspondence in the trends for both police-recorded and BCS
crime. Basically, crime went up, on both indices, from 1981 to 1993, and it went down, on both indices, from1995 to 2001/2. Moreover, the apparent increase in recorded crime since 2001/2 can be shown, by detailed
analysis, to be artefactual (because of a change in recording rules). In a nutshell, therefore, crime has
receded in England and Wales since 1995.
Once again, this kind of experience is by no means unique to Britain. Most Western countries have, withlocal variations, experienced a rather similar reduction in crime in recent years. It has to be said, however,that there are few clearly-understood reasons for this decline.
At the end of the previous section of this paper, I drew attention to the important cultural and structuraldifferences between Japan and the UK. During the period when crime was increasing rapidly in the UK andother Western countries, Japan became famous as a country that was undergoing rapid urbanisation, andeconomic restructuring, yet where the crime rate had remained stable (it even declined somewhat from1950 to 1975) (Figure 6 ). Returning to the explanation offered by The Netherlands’ White Paper (seeabove), this strongly suggested that, of the two parts of that suggested explanation, the second (normative
bonds) was the more important, since of course in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s consumer goods were muchin evidence (indeed, Japan was a world leader in the production of electronic consumer goods).

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Figure 6: Japan Trends in Number of Reported Cases, Number of Persons
Cleared, and Crime Rate for Penal Code Offences (1946-2000)(ten thousand cases)(ten thousand persons)

5,500

350

5,000

Crime rate (professional negligence in traffic accidents)

Number of reported cases

250

3,500
Number of reported cases

200(excluding professional negligencein traffic accidents)

3,000
2,500

150
2,000

Number of reported cases
Number of persons cleared

4,000

Crime rate

300

Crime rate (excluding professional negligence in traffic accidents)

4,500

Number of persons cleared

100

1,500
1,000

50
500

Number of persons cleared(excluding professional negligence in traffic accidents)

0
1946

0
1950

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Source: Criminal Statistics by National Police Agency, and population data by Statistics
Bureau, Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.

More recently, however, the crime rate in Japan has risen sharply, and the detection rate has declined(Figure 7 ). These are very similar to trends experienced in England and Wales in earlier years (see also
Figure 8 for a more detailed set of figures on British detection rates). Is it possible, therefore, that Japan is
now going through its ‘rapid crime rise’ and ‘decline in detection’ period, and that, like Britain and other
Western countries, it will in time achieve its ‘crime reduction’ period? To answer that question properly, we
would of course need a good answer to the question ‘Why has crime reduced?’, and as I indicated earlier, thisis not a topic on which we have validated knowledge at the moment. However, I will return to the issue ofcrime reduction at the end of this paper.
Figure 7: Trends in Number of Crimes and Clearance Rate, Japan, 1960-2002(1,000)
3,000

2,854

(%)
70

84.2
61.0

2,000

50
1,608
1,379

1,000

30
20.8

0

1960

65

70

75

80

Crimes reported

85

90

95

2000 02

10

Clearance rate

Source: Ministry of Justice, Hanzai hakusho (White Paper on Crime), 2003.

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RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68
Figure 8: Detection of Recorded Crime, England and Wales
1973

47%

1978

42%

1983

37%

1988

35%

1993

25%

(London)

1997

28%

25%

1998/929%

22%

1999/00*

25%

16%

2000/01

24%

15%

2001/2

23%

14%

2002/324%(*New and more stringent instructions issued topolice forces re the recording of detections from
April 1999. On a ‘like for like’ basis, detection rates
probably fell by about 2% nationally from 1998/9 to
1999/00 –see Criminal Statistics 1999, p. 26.)

n.a.
Note difference between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’detections: for example, in 2001/2, 19% of recorded
notable offences were cleared up by primary means(charge/summons; caution; offence t.i.c. andpreviously recorded) and 4% cleared up by secondary
means (mainly interviews with convicted prisoners)

Before I conclude this brief discussion of crime trends, I want to consider some British data which have aslightly broader character. That is to say, these data are not strictly speaking about crime rates, nor about
detections, but they all in some way help us to understand contemporary British public beliefs about what isoften called ‘law and order’.
The first piece of evidence (Figure 9 ) concerns the public’s satisfaction ratings in relation to police
performance. Here we notice a marked difference between the first five and the last two matters listed in
the Figure. The first five matters all concern satisfaction with the police when the police are in responsemode – that is to say, when they are called out to deal with a road accident, a burglary or a violent incident;
when they respond to an emergency telephone helpline; or when they respond to public enquiries or reports
in the police station (or equivalent). In each of these types of response-mode incident, public satisfaction isvery high: four-fifths or more of the public declare themselves satisfied with the police’s handling of each ofthese kinds of situations. At the foot of the table, however, we see a very different picture: only two-fifths ofthe public are satisfied with the frequency with which they see the police patrolling in cars or other vehicles;
and only one-fifth are satisfied with the level of foot patrols that they experience.
Figure 9: Satisfaction with Police:
England and Wales, 1999-2000
Average consumer satisfaction with:
Service at road accidents%
91

Response to burglary

90

Enquiry counters

87

Response to 999 calls

82

Response to reported violence crime

79

Level of mobile patrols

43

Level of foot patrols

20

Source: Audit Commission (2001), Local Authority Performance
Indicators 1999 – 2000, cited in Policing a New Century, p. 22.

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What explains this very striking difference in results? It seems that the public still trusts the police agreat deal in relation to their handling of incidents in those situations where the public calls directly on themto act. But the public also seems to be saying: ‘we do not see nearly enough of you on our streets, and inother public places’. That in turn suggests a degree of insecurity among the public with regard to their senseof ‘safe passage’ in public places. I shall return to this point shortly.

Figure 10 provides data in answer to annual survey questions in which respondents are first asked
whether, in their view, the national crime rate has increased in the previous year; and secondly, whether thecrime rate has increased in the area where they live. Looking first at the data about beliefs about the national
crime rate, this question has been asked regularly since 1996, i.e. in a period during which crime has been
consistently falling (Figure 5 ). Yet, in each year, more than half of the public believe that the national crime
rate has risen, and in some years this figure has risen to over 70 per cent. Indeed, since the year 2000, one
third of respondents each year actually say that the crime rate has increased ‘a lot’, although in reality it isfalling.
Figure 10: England & Wales: Beliefs about Change in Nationaland Local Crime Rates[% believing that the crime rate had increased over the previous year (numbers inparentheses are % believing it had increased ‘a lot’)]
Year

National

Local

1992

—

68 (33)

1994—

64 (40)1996

75 (29)55 (31)

1998

59 (29)46 (29)2000

67 (34)50 (30)2001

56 (31)49 (30)2001/264 (34)50 (29)2002/372 (38)54 (22)

Source: (England andWales): J. Simmons et al., Crime in England and Wales 2001/2002, Home Office
Statistical Bulletin, pp. 79–80, and update for 2002/3.

The data for beliefs about crime trends in local areas generally speaking present a similar, although more
modified picture; substantial percentages believe that local crime has increased, but these percentages are
consistently smaller than when assessing national crime rates. The difference between the assessments fornational and local rates almost certainly reflects the fact that, for national rates, the public has nothing but
national media reports on which to base its judgement, whereas for local areas they have more immediate
sources of information. This difference highlights the potential importance of the media in contemporarysocieties, and the way in which they can convey messages to the general public, not all of which areaccurate.
The most important question to emerge from a consideration of Figure 10 is, of course, why are publicbeliefs so spectacularly out of line with the official figures about crime rates? In a nutshell, the answer to thisquestion seems to be that ‘the public feels insecure’ and does not believe the official figures. To understand
why they feel insecure, however, we will have to probe a little more deeply into some other data.
As well as asking respondents about victimizations for various crimes, the British Crime Survey also
regularly asks people whether various kinds of so-called ‘anti-social behaviour’ (sometimes also called‘disorders’) are a problem in the area where they live. These disorders include noisy neighbours, teenagers
hanging around in the streets, litter, damage, and visible drug use. Figure 11 gives data on subjects’
responses to these questions since the early 1990s. And here a very interesting pattern emerges.
Remember that crime has gone down steadily since 1995 (Figure 5 ). Yet if we compare the 1994 figures to

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RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No.68

the 2002/3 figures for disorders, the rate for every single disorder has increased during that period. (Though
there are some welcome reductions in the most recent year, for reasons that are not yet clear.)
Figure 11: England & Wales: Anti-social Behaviour Indicators
Percentage saying very/fairly big problem in their area
1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

2001/02
interviews

2002/03
interviews

2003/04
interviews

Noisy neighbours or loudparties

8

8

8

8

9

10

10

9

People using or dealing
drugs

14

22

21

25

33

31

32

25

Teenagers hanging aroundon the streets

20

26

24

27

32

32

33

27

Rubbish or litter lying
around

30

26

26

28

30

32

33

29

Vandalism, graffiti andother deliberate damage toproperty

26

29

24

26

32

34

35

28

Unweightedbase

10,05914.5207,97814,937

9,663

32,82436,45037,891

Why, then, have perceived disorders worsened while crime has reduced since 1995? There are, of course,
two possible underlying factual possibilities here. They are:First, the public has correctly perceived the level of local disorders, which really have increased, althoughcrime has receded;
Secondly, the public is wrong; anti-social behaviours have not increased, and it is merely an anxious publicwhich believes that they have increased.
It is impossible from the BCS data themselves to sort out which of these possibilities is more likely to becorrect. However, in general, we know from previous research that usually public perceptions of local
disorders bear some relation to the underlying factual situation, but that, in addition, the public tends tointerpret that underlying factual situation in the context of wider understandings of a series of other matters,
including especially:• an understanding of the history of that particular area, and whether it is seen as generally speaking
improving or deteriorating; and• an understanding of the degree of social control that the authorities in the area are exercising. Do
they, in short, care about residents’ anxieties? Is the level of police presence adequate? Is the street
lighting adequate? and so on.
In other words, overall it seems likely (though not certain) that the data in Figure 11 are the end result of
a complex mixture of processes – some increases in disorders, but often interpreted through the spectaclesof residents anxious about the future of their areas. Either way, perceived disorder has increased eventhough crime has decreased, and that is an important issue in its own right.
I want now to turn to an ongoing research project in England which helps to throw some further light onthese matters. The research was born out of discussions between the Chief Constable of Surrey (a county inthe south of England, close to London) and researchers at his local university, the University of Surrey.
These discussions took as their starting point the facts, highlighted above, about the decline in crime andcontinuing public beliefs in high crime, plus other evidence about the public’s fear of crime. From these
initial discussions, the researchers (Fielding and Innes 2002) developed the concept of ‘signal crimes’.
Essentially, Fielding and Innes argued that different crimes and disorders might have differential effects inwhat they signify to a wider audience in terms of fear, to the general public.1 For example, three spousemurders in a smallish town in a year would be unusual, but would not necessarily create widespread fear in
1 Or, more technically, there are ‘social semiotic processes by which particular types of criminal and disorderly conduct [can]have a disproportionate effect upon fear of crime’ (Innes and Fielding 2002: Abstract).

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the community at large, because they would be seen as ‘private matters’; but the abduction and murder of a
local schoolgirl on her way to school would almost certainly generate a much more powerful signal of fearthroughout the community. Following this general logic, the key question in considering the apparently
persisting sense of public anxiety (see above) becomes: ‘what is sending signals fuelling the high publicanxiety about crime in Britain today?’
These basic ideas have more recently been developed by Martin Innes into some formal definitions, inwhich the concept of ‘risk’ has replaced the concept of ‘fear of crime’. This change has occurred because
Innes’s more recent work focuses particularly upon the general public’s perception of neighbourhood safety,and ‘risk’ is therefore now primarily understood as a perceived potential threat to neighbourhood safety. The
key formal definitions are:(i) A signal crime is a criminal incident that acts as a warning signal to people about the presence ofrisk.
(ii) A signal disorder is a form of disorderly conduct that indicates to people the presence of risk. Signal
disorders are either ‘physical’, involving degradation to the environment; or ‘social’, involving
behaviour.
(iii) A control signal is an act of social control that communicates an attempt to regulate disorderly anddeviant behaviour. Control signals can be positive or negative.
This set of concepts is now being utilised in a major operational way in a project called the National
Reassurance Policing Project (NRPP) in England. As an integral part of the NRPP, detailed qualitativeinterviews are being conducted by the University of Surrey in sixteen areas across Britain, asking
representative respondents in each area questions about what, in their particular neighbourhood, they would
identify as the key potential ‘risks’, as defined above. The early results from such interviews in six wards areshown in Figure 12.2
Figure 12: National Policing Reassurance Project
Top ‘Signals’ Across Trial Wards
Ward
Signal

1
2
3
4
5
6

A

B

C

D

E

F

Drugs

YouthsYouthsYouthsYouths

Drugs

YouthsLitterGraffiti, Litter& Public
Urination

Vandalism &DamageDrugs

YouthsAssault

DamageDamagePublicviolence &drinking

Damage &Graffiti

Publicdrinking

Burglary

Publicdrinking

Publicviolence &mugging

Racingvehicles andskateboarding

Abandoned /RacingvehiclesAnti-social
neighbours

Mugging

Publicviolence andspeeding

Drugs

MurderBurglary

DamagePublicdrinking

Verbal abuse

Burglary

Verbal abuse

Gangs

Source: University of Surrey

A number of things are striking about the information in this Figure. First, there is some significant
variation by area in the details of the responses. Secondly, however, there are some common themes thatclearly emerge as the first three perceived ‘signals’ of lack of neighbourhood safety in the six wards; namely
youths, drugs, litter/graffiti, damage and public drinking. Thirdly, it is extremely interesting that burglary
does not appear in the ‘top three’ in any of the six areas, and only features at all in three areas.

2 Figure 12 is derived from a presentation made by Martin Innes at the University of Cambridge in April 2004, and is used withpermission.

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What explains the second and third points above? We will have to await the more detailed results of the
University of Surrey’s work before a definitive answer can be given, but provisionally it would seem that theanswer lies in the fact that the commonly identified signals (youths, damage, drugs, etc.) all focus on what
are perceived as disorderly events occurring in public space. Thus, perhaps, these events send a powerful
message to residents (in a way that residential burglaries do not) that ‘my area is out of control’.
Utilising these results, the NRPP (see above) is beginning to alter the focus of police priorities inEngland. Traditionally, the police have prioritised their resources on crime fighting – matters such as
burglary, robbery, and so on – and have tended to ignore or down-play small-scale local disorders. The
realisation that small-scale local disorder can actually lead to very significant public anxiety about living in
the area – often more so than a spate of burglaries do – is leading to a shifting of police priorities towards a
focus on disorders. It is described as a kind of ‘bottom up’ policing – delivering to local publics the policingthat they actually want in their local area.
As I indicated earlier, a traditional phrase used in England to discuss crime issues is the phrase ‘law andorder’. Analysts have, however, realised for a long time that the two concepts are not synonymous – that, forexample, the over-zealous enforcement of the law can result in a sense of resentment in some of thosepoliced, which can ultimately provoke violent disorder. Holding ‘the proper enforcement of the law’ and ‘themaintenance of order’ together can therefore entail maintaining a delicate balance. There has sometimes
been a temptation, in police circles, to emphasise law enforcement and forget the importance of ordermaintenance. But recent experience in England suggests that order maintenance can, in our rapidlychanging social world, actually be of special importance to local residents. The evidence certainly also is thatwhile crime is going down, there remain significant problems, in England, with order maintenance. All thisstrongly reinforces the point that I made at the beginning of this paper, namely that, even in a society where
community, as traditionally understood, is weakening in importance, the safety of places remains a vitalconsideration.

IV. CONTEMPORARY CRIME AND SOCIAL ORDER – THE POLICY RESPONSE
So far, I have discussed some aspects of the changing nature of societies, and I have also consideredevidence about crime and social disorder.
The brief for this paper suggests that I should also discuss ‘measures which have been taken’ or ‘that canbe taken’ by current criminal justice systems, or by crime prevention strategies, in the face of the risingcrime and disorder associated with late modernity.
In the course of a single introductory paper, it is of course possible only briefly to outline some of thesepolicy responses. In this brief outline, I shall consider the responses under three headings – the criminal
justice system, policing and crime prevention.
As regards the criminal justice system, there are two matters in particular that I need to highlight. The
first of these is (in some but not all jurisdictions) the response of a massive increase in the use of
imprisonment. This response has, of course, been particularly prominent in the United States, but on asmaller scale it is very evident also in England. Other ‘late modern’ Western countries such as Germany
have, however, followed such policies to a much more limited extent, and the reasons for these interesting
cross-jurisdictional differences have been examined only to a limited extent.
In the case of England and Wales, it is clear that the greatly increased use of imprisonment in the last
decade, precisely at a time of falling crime rates, means that the average person sent to prison now is sent
for a more minor crime than would have been the case ten years ago. Essentially, what is happening here isthat the increased anxiety of the public is picked up by the media, which tends then to focus on stories which
concern the public a great deal, such as prominent ‘signal crimes’, or allegedly dangerous offenders living in
the community without proper controls. These stories in turn, in a kind of vicious circle, tend further toincrease public anxiety. Politicians, who have to present policies with a view (at least partly) to electoral
success, then tend to emphasise their more punitive policies, and to place less public emphasis on their lesspunitive policies. This general mood is then transmitted also to the judges and magistrates, who makeincreasing use of imprisonment. The increased use of imprisonment has had some incapacitative effect, but

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it does not of itself explain most of the reduction in crime that has occurred in recent years, either in the
United States or in England. The increased use of imprisonment is of course also expensive, and that is now
leading, in England, to governmental attempts to limit any further increases in the use of imprisonment.
The other recent criminal justice system response that I would like to highlight concerns the increasinguse of offender-behaviour programmes, particularly those based on cognitive-behavioural principles. These
are important not only in terms of their use within criminal justice systems, but also because of theirpotential use for ‘at risk’ children, a group that I shall consider more fully in my second paper. England andWales is one of the jurisdictions which has promoted the development of offender-behaviour programmes
most fully within the criminal justice system. Its experience contains a salutary lesson. The scientificevidence is that such programmes can reduce recidivism significantly, by perhaps 8 percentage points.
However, recent evaluations of such programmes, as applied routinely in England and Wales, suggest muchless promising results. This is very probably because of the so-called ‘roll-out’ problem; that is, that althoughprogrammes are successful when they are delivered by well-trained and enthusiastic staff, when the same
programmes are ‘rolled out’ on a larger scale, and necessarily delivered by less expert and probably lesscommitted staff, their impact can diminish.
The second set of policy responses that I want to consider are those of the police. Essentially, three main
responses have been attempted in this field. The first concerns technological innovation, and the appropriate
use of technology. There is no doubt that this is often helpful, but it needs to be put in perspective. For
example, in the 1970s in England there was a major move to switch from foot patrols to mobile patrols inorder to achieve fast response. Fast response was achieved, but at the expense of a diminution in policecommunity contacts, which in turn led to less public trust in the police than before, a situation that has had
to be corrected by a series of subsequent attempts to reverse matters by listening more closely to publicconcerns (see the discussion of ‘Reassurance policing’ above). One major gain from technological innovationis, however, the ability to analyse data much more easily than before, and this has led to the concept ofproblem-oriented policing which, the evidence suggests, holds much promise. The second major police
response is community policing, and it would be fair to say that many police services are still working out
how best to balance technological developments and community policing. The third response relating topolicing, much evident in England recently but very difficult to deal with effectively, is to focus attention on
the declining detection rate (Figures 7 and 8 ) and to attempt to improve it. Theoretically, this is a soundstrategy, because the evidence from deterrence research is that a higher probability of apprehension and/or
conviction does have deterrent effects – substantially more so than increasing penalties. The ability toprocess DNA samples is of course very helpful in the quest for improved detection, but reversing the trends
of previous years remains a major challenge.
All three of these police-related developments (technology, community policing and ‘narrowing thejustice gap’) can be seen to be intimately linked to the development of, and the characteristics of, latemodernity.
I turn finally to organised crime prevention as a response to late modern conditions. This is in itself aremarkable phenomenon; there is no doubt that formally organised crime prevention activities are now
much more prominent in most countries than they were thirty years ago, and this is a matter that mycolleague Professor Paul Wiles and I first linked to the concept of late modernity in a paper nearly ten years
ago. In that paper, we emphasised that organised crime prevention is partly a product of the public sector,
but also partly a result of private sector initiatives. In the second category, for example, one could point to
the increased sale of alarms and personal protection; the increased use of CCTV in private places such aslarge shops; and the development of what has been called ‘mass private property’, that is, large spaces towhich the public is welcomed, but where the whole area is privately owned (for example, large shopping
complexes and theme parks). The fact that the property is private means that, in such spaces, the owners
can legally exclude persons whom they consider to be undesirable, and they can also introduce their own
rules about how people should behave in the complex, at risk of exclusion. (There is a famous article about
this by Clifford Shearing and Philip Stenning, on social control in a Disney complex.) The evidence is thatthe public prefer ‘mass private property’ shopping areas to traditional high-street shopping – the main
perceived advantages are convenience (for example, in car parking) but also, and crucially for our purposes,
advantages of personal security.

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So, both the public and the private sector have seen an increase in consciously-organised crime
prevention in recent years. What forms have these taken? In our 1996 article, Paul Wiles and I characterised
them into four main types (see Figure 13). First, there are various forms of defensive strategy such as target
hardening – these initiatives are very predominantly ‘situational crime prevention’ measures. Secondly,
there are new forms of guardianship and monitoring. We selected here three particular developments – thegrowth of mass private property, the development of CCTV in public places (which has proliferated very
extensively in Britain since we wrote our paper), and the growth of alternatives to the public police. This
last development has been very evident in Britain in recent years, as local authorities have increasingly
appointed persons such as ‘antisocial behaviour officers’ and ‘community wardens’ to help with social control
in difficult residential areas, and to help to meet the apparently insatiable public demand for a greater senseof security in their local areas. The police, too, now have a group specifically linked to them, known as‘police community support officers’, who are part of the police organisation but have fewer legal powers thanpolice officers.
Figure 13: Some Features of Organised Crime Prevention Activities inContemporary Societies
DEFENSIVE STRATEGIES
Opportunity reduction, e.g. car steering locks, ‘target hardening’
Alarms, Personal Protection
Internal CCTV (in stores, etc.)
Defensive community strategies, e.g. neighbourhood watch
GUARDIANSHIP AND MONITORING
Growth of alternatives to public police
CCTV in public places
Development of ‘mass private property’
CREATION OF NEW FORMS OF SOCIAL ORDER
Formal multi-agency partnerships
Segregation and exclusion strategies
Changed perception of social harms, leading to new kinds of crime prevention initiative,e.g. re drink driving, family violence and abuse
CRIMINALITY PREVENTION
Pre-school programmes
Youth Action programmes and equivalent
Source: adapted from A Bottoms and P Wiles, “Understanding crimeprevention in late modern societies” in
T Bennett (ed.), Preventing Crime and Disorder: Targeting Strategies and Responsibilities (Cambridge
CropwoodSeries 1996), pp. 1-41.

Thirdly, Paul Wiles and I drew attention to the creation of new forms of social order, of which the mostprominent, in Britain, is the so-called local ‘crime and disorder partnership’. These existed at the time of ourpaper, but in a voluntary form. Since 1998, however, every local authority area in England and Wales has
been obliged by statute to create one of these partnerships. The partnerships involve a range of agencies –the police, the local government authority, education, housing, social services, and so on – and they are
required to develop analyses of crime in their areas, and to coordinate plans for crime reduction.
The final category which Paul Wiles and I discussed was criminality prevention programmes, focused on
those deemed to be at risk of becoming offenders. We highlighted pre-school programmes and youth action
programmes, but since that date many other initiatives focused on ‘at risk’ children have been developed.
Taken together, these four main developments in organised crime prevention constitute a fairly majorsocial transformation. They are both a response to, and themselves part of, the developing social world oflate modernity.

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V. SOME THEORETICAL ISSUESIn this final part of my paper, I would like to introduce you to some theoretical concepts related to latemodernity. These concepts, in my view, may be of assistance in helping you to think about what is possible,
and what is not possible, in terms of contemporary crime prevention. Necessarily, I shall have to be highly
selective, so I will focus on only three issues.
First, I would like to consider what I regard as the extremely helpful characterisation, by the British
sociologist Anthony Giddens, of what he describes as ‘environments of trust in pre-modern and modern
societies’. Human beings are profoundly social creatures; anthropologists tell us that they are virtually neverfound living alone. The social life of humans is, therefore, intensely important to them; but it is also very
complex. How do I know what Mr X really thinks of me? Can I trust Mrs Y to do what she has said she will
do on my behalf?
The concept of trust is, as these examples, indicate, of profound importance to ongoing human social life.
Giddens suggests that the nature of trust profoundly shifted as European societies moved from the premodern to the modern era – and, by definition, in ‘late modern’ societies the characteristics of modernity
have become more overt and apparent. Figure 14 summarises Giddens’s position. At the top of the Figure,
we note his suggestion that in pre-modern societies – continuing, of course, into many contexts ofmodernity such as rural villages – the ‘general social context’ is of the ‘overriding importance of localized
trust’. This is then manifested in particular in three ways, all of which reproduce and consolidate localized
trust; they are kinship relations (including extended as well as nuclear families), the local community itself,
and religious cosmologies.
Figure 14: Characterization of Environments of Trust in Pre-modern
and Modern Societies
Pre-Modern
General context: overriding
importance of localized trust

ModernGeneral context: trust relations vested
in disembedded
abstract systems

1. Kinship relations as an organizing
device for stabilizing social ties
across time-space
2. The local community as a place,providing a familiar milieu

1. Personal relationships of friendshipor sexual intimacy as means ofstabilizing social ties
2. Abstract systems as a means ofstabilizing relations acrossindefinite spans of time–space

3. Religious cosmologies as modesof belief and ritual practiceproviding a providential
interpretation of human life and ofnature3. Future-oriented, counter-factual
thought as a mode of connecting
past and present

4. Tradition as a means ofconnecting present and future,
past-oriented in reversible time
Source: A. Giddens (1990), The Consequences of Modernity, p. 102.

Giddens’s suggestion is that in modernity, and even more in late modernity, the general context of trust
shifts so that, increasingly, trust relations move away from localized trust and into ‘trust relations vested indisembedded abstract systems’. Many examples could be given of this: Giddens’s own example is of getting
on an aeroplane, where it is necessary to trust many things (the engineers, the flight computer, the pilot’s
training, the air traffic controllers, and so on), but none of these are localized or interpersonal. Rather, wetrust the abstract systems of the computer programmes, the pilot’s training course, and so on.
Of course, personal relationships in such societies continue to exist alongside trust in abstract systems.
But increasingly, our identity is not so much made for us by the context into which we were born (we arenot, for ever, one of the Smith family from Wyboston village); rather, we move around more frequently,
creating and choosing friendship relations, and relationships of sexual intimacy, to a greater extent than in

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the more static pre-modern world. Hence the increasing social atomization referred to in the Rationale forthis International Seminar. But although this kind of very fluid and flexible society gives us, as individuals,
much more freedom than we had before, it can also create considerable anxieties as we seek to navigate ourway through a complex world where social interaction is necessary for everyday life, but the patterning ofthat life is not nearly as fixed as it was in an earlier era. These anxieties Giddens describes as ontologicalinsecurity, that is, insecurities that can cut right to the heart of ourselves as social beings. This analysis has
obvious links with the research findings from the University of Surrey previously described – it is the safeand predictable negotiation of public space which is so important to residents in the achievement ofneighbourhood safety, and where this is not available, there can be genuine insecurity. So, Giddens’s analysis
helps us to understand, I believe, why it is not just crime that matters in our contemporary late modern
societies, but disorder.
I have so far not commented on the final entry in each of the two columns in Figure 14. I have to confessthat they are written in an extremely obscure way. Nevertheless, what Giddens is saying here is profoundly
important. In pre-modern societies, tradition connects past, present and future. Traditional ways of farming,
courtship, burial and so on are handed down from generation to generation. Fathers teach sons, and mothers
teach daughters, that ‘this is the way we do things’, and so tradition (the past) becomes part of the present,
as it is faithfully reproduced. Moreover, tradition is regarded also as a good guide to actions to be taken in the
future. Customs are sometimes changed; but the importance of tradition creates considerable feelings ofstability.
By contrast with a village chief in pre-modern times, late modern managing directors of businesses very
rarely say that the past is a good guide to the future. Rather, they create ‘corporate plans’ and ‘businessplans’, based on what they regard as the strengths and weaknesses of their organisation, and a carefulanalysis of the opportunities and threats it may face in the future. (These are known as ‘SWOT analyses’.)Thus, there is a deliberate element of future projection in the creation of corporate and business plans;
future risks are assessed, and, so far as possible, measures are taken to reduce those risks, and to seize
opportunities for advancement of the goals of the organisation. But next month, there may be some external
event that will throw all these calculations into doubt; then one has to reassess the potential opportunities
and threats. It is, accordingly, a continuous process of looking into the future, and adjusting plans as one goesalong. All this has, you will notice, a great deal in common with the experimental method in science, which is
why Giddens is right to say that the switch from the trust in tradition to the trust in ‘future-oriented
counter-factual thought’ is an integral feature of the move from pre-modern to modern to late modern
societies.
At the beginning of this section, I indicated that I would consider three theoretical contributions. The
second of these is to be found in the work of the Dutch criminologist Hans Boutellier (2000), who has
focused attention in particular on the question why, in contemporary Western societies, victim-oriented
approaches are of growing importance in criminal justice. The Restorative Justice movement is, in many
countries, a particularly prominent example of this trend, but in most Western countries there have been
many other victim-oriented developments. In England, for example, since 1970 we have seen a greater
encouragement to courts to use compensation and reparation orders; the introduction of consultations withvictims and their families before offenders who have committed serious crimes are released from prison; thedevelopment of a national network of Victim Support Services; strong encouragement to police andprosecutors to keep victims informed about the progress of a prosecution; and so on. Boutellier’s argument
is that all this is connected to a shift in the understanding of morality in the contemporary world. Fixed‘codes’ of morals, such as the Judaic Ten Commandments, no longer attract majority support, and moral
judgements on many issues are more contested than they used to be. In this situation, members (especially
younger members) of contemporary societies can relate much more easily, morally speaking, to the real
sufferings of a flesh-and-blood victim than they can to an abstract moral code. On this reading, restorative
justice – especially where the victim is actively involved in the proceedings – is attractive in social policy
terms because the tangible loss and injury suffered by the victim helps to provide an element of
moral_clarification in an uncertain situation. More generally, supporting and protecting the victim is seen to
be a way of buttressing the norms of our late modern world. None of us wants to be a victim, so this focus on
and support for the victim is a way of emphasising what has been called the ‘negative golden rule’ in ethics:
i.e. don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself.

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My third and final theoretical dimension concerns managerialism, which is a very pervasive feature of
criminal justice services in many late modern societies. The reasons for the growth of managerialism are nothard to discern: as societies become less able to achieve order through informal and self-regulatorycommunity social controls, there is a natural tendency to try to ‘manage’ desirable outcomes, using of course
the data increasingly available to senior managers through modern information technology.
Figure 15: Aspects of Managerialism inContemporary Public Services
1. Efficiency and effectiveness
2. Systemic approach, including:(i) inter-agency co-operation(ii) identification of targets and Key Performance Indicators(iii) aggregate thinking, hence individual as a ‘unit within aframework of policy’
3. Actuarial approach to risk management
4. Consumerist dimension

In Figure 15 I have listed four key aspects of contemporary managerialism. The first is a stress on
efficiency (delivery of services for the lowest unit cost) and effectiveness (delivery of services to meetcertain specified organisational objectives). Clearly, both of these objectives require good information
technology. Then, secondly, and arising from the first point, there is an increasing tendency to think of thecriminal justice system as a system, a mode of thought that has profound consequences. As a Dutch scholar
put it as long ago as 1986, perhaps in a slightly exaggerated way, but making an important point nonetheless:Criminal policy is no longer occupied primarily with concrete offenders, nor with problems of doing
justice, but with the management of the aggregate phenomena of social activity, with criteria for selective
law enforcement, with quantitative regulation in the organisational processing of offenders (Peters 1986,
p. 32).
Within such systems, so-called ‘organisational targets’ or ‘key performance indicators’, imposed bygovernments, become of overriding importance, and the individual offender is increasingly viewed as a unit
within the conceptual framework of the organisational policy. Also, various criminal justice agencies are
urged to work more closely together than they have done before, in order to deliver overall system goals set
by the government.
The target-oriented character of modern organisations obliges them always to be thinking about future
performance, a point that links strongly with Giddens’s discussion of the importance of abstract systems andfuture-oriented goals in late modern societies (see above). As we saw earlier, such modes of thought
produce a strong tendency for future risk to become a dominant concept in thinking of contemporary
managers, and in the criminal justice system this takes the form of an increasing preoccupation with the
future risks posed by offenders. Complex actuarial systems assessing offenders’ future risks are now
routinely built into some criminal justice systems, including that in England and Wales; though how theselink with more community-oriented initiatives such as restorative Justice is still being worked out.
Finally, in modern organisations there is a strong tendency to want to carry out surveys of ‘customer
satisfaction’. In the criminal justice system, the offender is rarely seen as a legitimate customer, but victims
and the general public certainly are, and their views are regularly sought in both national and local surveys.
This is, of course, an offshoot of the ‘consumer culture’ previously described.

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VI. CONCLUSION
At an early point in this paper, I briefly discussed the suggestion (in the Rationale of this International
Seminar) that increasing social atomization is leading to the weakening of normative consciousness insocieties. In a context such as that of Japan, which in recent years has seen significant crime rate rises, thisis a very natural hypothesis to raise; and, as I have indicated, a very similar suggestion was made by The
Netherlands Government in 1986, and widely accepted by other commentators.
However, the decreases in crime since 1986, in a number of Western countries including Britain, raise
important questions about this hypothesis, at least as regards the longer term. Here there is an intriguing,
but I have to admit wholly speculative, possibility. Following the social upheavals of the Industrial
Revolution, crime in England eventually declined in the early twentieth century, after a new urban form ofsocial organisation had developed. Perhaps something similar is occurring now in the West – that following
the upheavals of the arrival of ‘late modernity’, and the weakening of traditional norms that it created, we are
now working out a new way of living in late modernity, with a new kind of normativity. I repeat that this isspeculative, but it perhaps gives us something to build upon as we think about crime prevention in thetwenty-first century. In doing so, however, it is important to remember the lesson of an earlier part of thispaper, which is that even if crime is decreasing, we need to pay close attention to local social disorders,which may be just as much (or even more) a matter of concern for local residents.

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