Crime prevention and community safety policies from a dynamic and comparative perspective: The cases of Rome and London

Abstract

In the past 30 years, the issue of urban community safety has gained increased social and political relevance, being decisive in the results of national and local elections in Europe and elsewhere. Western countries have responded to increasing levels of fear and insecurity through the diffusion of ‘new prevention’ approaches, giving place to what has been called the ‘preventive turn’. The spread of these new approaches generated a debate around the convergence of policy ideas and solutions. These convergence processes have been widely interpreted as the result of macro-factors such as the deep socio-economic and cultural processes of change impacting post-modern societies, determining a phase of state restructuring rooted on neo-liberal principles. Despite the fact that convergence processes are taking place, significant elements of divergence are still present across Europe. These are attributed to the complexity and heterogeneity of what Hughes defines as ‘geo-histories’ (namely, a place's own geographic and historical context of reference) and to a country's institutional infrastructure. The objective of this work is to offer a contribution to the debate around convergence and policy change processes of crime prevention and community safety in Europe through a comparative analysis of community safety policies in Rome and London. The article concludes that different factors may impact upon policy divergence or convergence at different times. In the period of left-wing dominance up to 2008, local discourses and practices were strongly influenced by the different national and local politics on crime prevention and security, as well as by the different normative framework and governance patterns. However, since 2008 and the shift to right-wing local governments that assumed power, there has been a convergence based on discourses operating more at a symbolic and emotive level. Furthermore, there may be greater continuity in policy between politically different administrations than is immediately apparent.