Flotilla or armada? Interpreting the practices and politics of three Community Safety Partnerships
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FL OT I L L A O R A R M A DA? I N T ER PR E TI N G T HE PRACT I CE S AN D P O L I T I C S O F T H RE E CO MM U N I TY S A F E T Y PART N E R S HI PS L ayla Sk i nns Institute for Criminal Policy Research, King’s College London, London, UK Correspondence: Layla Skinns, Institute for Criminal Policy Research, School of Law, 26-29 Drury Lane, King’s College London, London WC2B 5RL, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
A b s tra ct This paper is concerned with the practices and politics of three community safety1 partnerships. Community safety has been developing in England and Wales since the late 1980s, but was recently formalized by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Police Reform Act 2002. The paper is based on observation of meetings and interviews undertaken in three partnerships between April 2002 and February 2004. I assess the utility of the typologies employed by Liddle and Bottoms, and Belbin, and argue that they cannot take account of changes in the socio-political context of the CSPs. Instead, the paper develops a nine-pronged typology, based on a nautical analogy, which takes account of the likely impact of changes in governance, managerialism, funding and performance monitoring arrangements. The nautical analogy implies that roles and responsibilities within the CSPs are in need of reform and that there are continuities and changes within the CSPs, which are illustrative of the shift towards late modernity. In addition, the analogy suggests that CSPs are more of a collection of loosely affiliated agencies, that is, a flotilla rather than an armada.
Key wo rds community safety; multi-agency partnerships; joined-up; managerialism; late modernity Crime Prevention and Community Safety (2006) 8, 169–187. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpcs.8150020 Crime Prevention and Community Safety 2006, 8, (169–187) © 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1460-3780/06 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/cpcs
Crime Prevention and Community Safety 170
Co n cep t u al izing p ractitione r i nvo l vemen t
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ommunity safety partnerships (CSPs) were formally introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act (CDA) 1998 and more recently the Police Reform Act 2002.2 Such multi-agency approaches began to emerge, in the 1980s, in the criminal justice arena, as a result of the Five Towns and Safer Cities initiatives in the late 1980s, Government Circulars such as 44/90 and later the 1991 Morgan Report.3 The CSPs are based on the idea that crime and disorder has multiple causes, which require a multi-agency, joined-up approach, to reduce duplication and increase effectiveness. In essence, it is assumed that “many agencies are better than one” at tackling crime and disorder (Liddle, 2001). Many of the principles of the Morgan Report became embodied in the CDA 1998,4 which designated local authorities and the police as the lead agencies responsible for crime and disorder, although more recently the Fire Service, Police Authority and Primary Care Trust (PCT) have also become “responsible authorities”. Since 1998, each of the 374 local authorities in England
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