International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research (ICCCR)
New Directions in Community Safety
A National Conference
3 December 2004, The Council House, Birmingham
The British Society of Criminology has organised this one-day conference in association with the Open University's International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research (ICCCR) and Birmingham CityPride. This event offers delegates opportunities for:
- Experiencing indispensable critical interrogation of current practice, policy, theory & research
- Acquiring information about new directions in the field
- Considering and actively debating pressing issues from various competing perspectives
- Hearing from a range of distinguished key note speakers and workshop facilitators with national and international reputations
Fears over crime, insecurity & disorder have heightened significance in the contemporary UK & beyond. These anxieties have generated a plethora of national & local policies to address public concern. Strategies aimed at tackling crime & disorder, making local communities safer places to live in now sit at the centre of current Government thought and policy.
Experiments in community safety, and its subset of crime and disorder reduction, are rapidly becoming the focal point for debate about the shared future of both criminal justice and social policy amongst politicians, policy makers, practitioners, academics and citizens.
A central claim of community safety is that solutions to criminalised & non-criminalised harms afflicting many neighbourhoods & localities cannot be the exclusive preserve of the criminal justice system. Instead the prevention of crime and disorder and the promotion of safety as a public good is best delivered by involving a wide range of agencies and actors, public, private and voluntary, and most crucially is 'restored' to the local communities themselves.
We are about to enter the 3rd phase of the now statutory local crime & disorder reduction strategies in England & Wales. Future development of community safety remains uncertain & contested.
- Is there a shared understanding of what is meant by community safety as against crime and disorder reduction?
- What are the 'best practice' lessons to be drawn across the diverse conditions and contexts of local community safety work?
This is an ambitious and controversial new field of governance, which remains in a state of almost constant flux as well as lively debate.
Programme details (PDF document, 25 KB)