Shifting Paradigms or Just Rearranging Deckchairs? Multi-Agency Work, Marginal Communities and Crime Prevention (From Reducing Criminality--Partnerships and Best Practices, P 1-5, 2000, Adam Graycar, ed. -- See NCJ-186333)

• NCJ Number: 186342
• Author(s): Harry Blagg
• Date Published: 2000
• Length: 5 pages
• Sale Source: Australian Institute of Criminology
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Australia

Annotation

This paper examines the multi-agency, partnership approach to criminal justice, and the role of marginal communities in the process.

Abstract

The multi-agency approach to criminal justice has become part of the policy of later modernity. However, the rhetoric of multi-agency work is not always translated into action, and not all agencies, client groups, or communities benefit equally from the process. The paper suggests that the process of working together needs to be democratized to accommodate the interests of marginal and socially excluded groups and individuals. In many parts of Australia it is of particular importance that the voices of indigenous people are heard within inter-agency forums. Indigenous people are the most repeatedly victimized section of society, particularly in relation to violence, yet few crime prevention initiatives focus on this problem. The negative consequences of using “crime” as the focal point for intervention in social problems within Aboriginal communities are well known. The policy’s “social and historical associations with police racism and violence, deaths in custody, dispossession, and colonization” tend to generate suspicion on the part of Aboriginal people. References