Community governance, crime control and local diversity

The Labour government elected in the UK in 1997 acted quickly to give local authorities a statutory role in community safety and crime control programmes. This was first recommended by the Morgan Report in 1991, which championed a multi-agency, partnership approach to crime prevention. During the 1990s, community safety programmes developed in many areas, but there was considerable variation between different localities. This article examines the changes in focus, orientation and techniques as crime prevention, mainly undertaken by the police, evolved into community safety, led by local authorities, and finds that the scale and speed of the changes can largely be explained by the effects of the 'reinvention of government', which at the local level has occurred through community governance. One reason for the rise of this 'third way' was the perceived failure of traditional approaches through markets or bureaucracies and the increased inclusion of different agencies and groups through networks. The theory of policy networks, and particularly the idea of power dependency, helps to explain the development of the community safety approach, but also why there have been significant variations in different localities. The article uses findings from the authors' research in Leicester and Nottingham to examine the practice of networking in local community safety partnerships, and focuses on three criteria of governance: coherent and co-ordinated responses to local problems; accountability; and durability. Finally, the paper considers a number of strategic dilemmas that are likely to arise in community safety partnerships and, more generally, in networking as a governing technique, and concludes that this approach is likely to face a number of significant challenges. © 2000 Perpetuity Press Ltd.