Crime and Policing in a Changing Social Context (From Themes in Contemporary Policing, P 15-28, 1996, William Saulsbury, Joy Mott, and Tim Newburn, eds. -- See NCJ-166841)

• NCJ Number: 166843
• Author(s): A Bottoms; P Wiles
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: Independent Cmtte of Inquiry into the Role and Responsibilities of the Police
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom
• Note: Summarized from the second part of a paper entitled, "Crime and Insecurity in the City," presented at a conference of the International Society of Criminology, Leuven, Belgium, 1994.

Annotation

This paper considers some significant economic and social developments in contemporary societies, particularly in Britain, and the ways in which they are relevant to aspects of crime in the city.

Abstract

The social geography and the crime maps of the contemporary city have changed as the result of the demands of international capital and business and changes in the production process. Developments in economics and in communication and transport technology have created a global metropolitan culture and consumer market that offers a wide range of choices of self- identity and lifestyles that those without money can only acquire by illegal means. As the highest income earners earn more and the lowest earners proportionately less, a disadvantaged "underclass" may emerge that might either result in an increase in crime in the city or develop into a culture of hopelessness. The decline of traditional group affiliations in Western societies could be associated with an increase in crime, and with demands for harsher forms of social controls. Widespread use of technical control devices to prevent crime may increase individual feelings of security but may be most successful in reducing the less visible forms of crime such as fraud. The resources of the public police in Britain are being stretched by trying to respond to a wide range of both international and specialized local control needs. With an increasing tendency for the social world to be perceived as a series of private realms and interests that take responsibility for dealing with their own problems, the role of the public police is being undermined by the growth of private policing. Increased international travel and tourism has resulted in the development of facilities that are international in style and provide secured, protected, and normalized environments that are becoming the model for "defended locales" in all cities. A strategy of social control for cities based on a series of private defended locales is fragile, because it will only be effective until the defenses are breached. 18 references