Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Introduction
- two Partnerships, quasi-networks and social policy
- three Partnership and the remaking of welfare governance
- four What is a ‘successful’ partnership and how can it be measured?
- five Partnership at the front-line: the WellFamily service and primary care
- six Building capacity for collaboration in English Health Action Zones
- seven Partnerships for local governance: citizens, communities and accountability
- eight Partnerships with the voluntary sector: can Compacts work?
- nine Dangerous liaisons: local government and the voluntary and community sectors
- ten ‘Together we’ll crack it’: partnership and the governance of crime prevention
- eleven Regeneration partnerships under New Labour: a case of creeping centralisation
- twelve Education Action Zones
- thirteen Public–private partnerships – the case of PFI
- fourteen Public–private partnerships in pensions policies
- fifteen Towards a theory of welfare partnerships
- Index
ten - ‘Together we’ll crack it’: partnership and the governance of crime prevention
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Introduction
- two Partnerships, quasi-networks and social policy
- three Partnership and the remaking of welfare governance
- four What is a ‘successful’ partnership and how can it be measured?
- five Partnership at the front-line: the WellFamily service and primary care
- six Building capacity for collaboration in English Health Action Zones
- seven Partnerships for local governance: citizens, communities and accountability
- eight Partnerships with the voluntary sector: can Compacts work?
- nine Dangerous liaisons: local government and the voluntary and community sectors
- ten ‘Together we’ll crack it’: partnership and the governance of crime prevention
- eleven Regeneration partnerships under New Labour: a case of creeping centralisation
- twelve Education Action Zones
- thirteen Public–private partnerships – the case of PFI
- fourteen Public–private partnerships in pensions policies
- fifteen Towards a theory of welfare partnerships
- Index
Summary
The emergent discourse of partnership in post-war crime control
Until the 1990s, anyone looking for a post-war history of crime prevention in the UK would, for the most part, have been forced to read about it in the margins and footnotes of texts on policing, courts and penalty. Traditionally, ‘crime prevention’ was deemed to be either the obvious, self-evident outcome of formal processes of criminal justice – the apprehension, prosecution, sentencing, punishment and reform of offenders – or ‘unfocused’ preventive activities associated with government-sponsored publicity campaigns about house and vehicle security (Gilling, 1997). Within the criminal justice system, the police had front-line responsibility for preventing crime, most obviously through law enforcement and the apprehension and prosecution of criminals.
With the publication of the report by the Cornish Committee in 1965, the case was presented for police forces to appoint specialist officers to encourage a more ‘scientific’ approach to crime prevention (Home Office, 1965). It was recommended that these officers should build and maintain relationships with private and public sector organisations to impress upon them the importance of taking responsibility for preventing crime. The Home Office Standing Committee on Crime Prevention was established in 1967 to coordinate national and regional crime prevention publicity. However, Weatheritt's overview of the status of crime prevention within the police in post-war Britain concluded that:
Crime prevention has not become part of mainstream policing and the specialist crime prevention service has been left to languish in something of a policing backwater. There is evidence that a lot of specialist crime prevention work fails to make an impact. The arrangements for identifying and disseminating ‘good practice’ within the police service are rudimentary. Whatever the expressed commitment of senior officers and successive governments to the view that prevention is the primary object of policing, the crime prevention job remains an activity performed on the sidelines while the main action takes place elsewhere. (Weatheritt, 1986, p 49)
In the wake of such criticisms, the beginnings of a partnership model of crime prevention can be discerned in the Home Office's Review of criminal justice policy, published in 1976 (cited in Gladstone, 1980).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Partnerships, New Labour and the Governance of Welfare , pp. 149 - 166Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2002