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:

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).