This thesis is concerned with the theoretical debates regarding actuarial justice. The study will undertake an examination of crime prevention methods in order to find empirical evidence of actuarialism within community crime control. Central to this is the contention that techniques of actuarial justice have increased controls over the economically disadvantaged. Moreover, the study will attempt to establish the affect of actuarial justice on the communities it targets. The study is divided into two parts. The first part of the thesis is theoretical, chapter one will consider the themes of actuarial justice for the purposes of setting out, in detail, the elements central to actuarial justice. The second chapter is concerned with a discussion of eroding privacy rights, which 1 suggest have risen with a growth of actuarial justice. Part two of the thesis is empirically based and has been conducted primarily through interviews and observations. Three chapters will investigate: policing; strategies of community safety and Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). These practices will aim to specifically outline the technologies, techniques and practices of crime control that can be attributed to actuarial justice. I should like to acknowledge my gratitude to my supervisor. Professor Dick Hobbs, for his continued help and support. The empirical research for this thesis has required the co-operation of many professionals from police stations, CCTV monitoring units as well as a number of council departments. Thank you to all those who were willing to share their time with me. Finally, to my lovely family: mother, father, Ralph and Yvonne thank you for your never-ending patience and kindness.

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This thesis develops an understanding of the social factors and spatial dynamics informing public perceptions of (in)security and how diverse social groups interpret endeavours by public authorities to provide reassurance and manage crime and disorder in two areas of Leeds. It incorporates insights from urban geography, geo-spatial analysis and contemporary social theory, combining social research methods to capture the nuanced and lived experiences informing perceptions of (in)security in public space. The empirical findings are based on 22 focus group interviews with 121 residents of various ethnic and age groupings, leading to the development of local perceptual maps, and ten one-to-one interviews with long-standing residents. These data are embedded within detailed area profiles, including insights from interviews with 16 professionals involved in the delivery of reassurance. The findings suggest that perceptions of insecurity are not constant, universal or widespread but have particular temporal, social and spatial dimensions, principally influenced by a lack of mutual trust, social tensions and negative area reputations. The thesis highlights the contested nature of neighbourhood safety, whereby processes of diversity, social identity and 'ownership' shape perceptions of social interactions in particular locations as unpredictable and potentially volatile (e.g. parks and housing estates). The physical character and appearance of public spaces emerge as secondary factors in residents' assessments of their personal safety. The findings indicate the importance of social processes informing insecurity and, especially, the issue of social trust, for professionals involved in the delivery of reassurance. The thesis raises concerns about the widespread assumptions underpinning certain visible public reassurance strategies; specifically, their paradoxical capacity to offer reassurance and simultaneously undermine a community's collective sense of well-being, whilst potentially engendering neighbourhood stigma. It therefore identifies challenges for formal agencies seeking to reassure diverse publics. More generally, it maps the contours and implications of a socio-spatial perspective for the study of crime and insecurity.

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This thesis aims to apply economic analysis to the broad concept of community safety, focussing on the city of Portsmouth, England. Detailed data sources include: a residents’ survey, police figures and administrative records of community support services. Assorted statistical techniques are used to uncover: who blames parents, what drives perceptions of drug problems, who is most effected by fear of crime, what factors determine a successful and timely outcome for substance misusers, potential offenders and victims. It is found that lower income households and those with children, are more likely to consider parental responsibility a problem. Most notably, a tendency to blame the parents very strongly associates with a perception that people in the area do not treat each other with respect. The findings indicate the importance of dissatisfaction with crime prevention efforts (control signals) and perceptions of anti-social behaviour and drug problems in influencing the fear of crime. However, perceptions of quality of life and neighbourhood cohesion do not have a significant influence. There is strong evidence to support the proposition that perceptions and neighbourhood characteristics more strongly inform perceptions of drug use and dealing than personal characteristics. High perceptions in areas of low measurable drug use are less influenced by observations and neighbourhood characteristics, and more so by softer feelings of dissatisfaction, fears and attitudes. Informal social control strongly influences all perceptions of drug problems. Interaction between substance misuse and offending behaviour reduces the chance, and delays the timing, of successfully managing either. Residing in prison significantly reduced successful outcomes, but sped up success for offenders. Direct access support and identifying specific needs, led to successful outcomes faster, albeit countered by delays if provided by voluntary agencies. Floating support consistently reduced success. Demographic information was found not to be significant in determining a successful or timely outcome; action towards seeking work, or attempting to achieve economic wellbeing were more important.

The Safer Cities Programme in England as a whole implemented over 3,600 crime prevention schemes in 20 cities between 1988-1995 (total costing £30 million). The large-scale evaluation of the Programme's impact on domestic burglary has estimated that, overall, schemes of the Safer Cities Action reduced burglaries by 56,000 and were cost-effective (a saving of about £31 million). Using two cities: Bristol and Coventry within the Safer Cities Programme as a case study, this research aims to explore some of the accuracy issues in the GIS processing involved in the evaluation. This thesis a) describes how spatio-thematic accuracy can be estimated using Monte Carlo and dasymetric methods within the context of the Safer Cities Programme Evaluation, b) thereby provides a precise quantitative statement on the errors involved in the geographical data processing; and c) examines how spatial errors may affect the conclusion of the Evaluation using multi-level modelling. On average, the results show that the overlay method used in the Evaluation has over-estimated the household counts by 3.6% and 5% for Bristol and Coventry respectively. Subsequently, the Safer Cities Programme Evaluation has underestimated the action intensity by -0.8 and -9% and the burglary risk by -7% and -5% (for Bristol and Coventry respectively). Multi-level modelling shows that the mean errors due to the spatial interpolation estimated by the Monte Carlo dasymetric method are -.5%, 2.3% and 0.7% for Coventry, Bristol and the two cities combined respectively. In all cases, these are well within the standard errors generated by the overlay method. It is concluded that spatial and thematic errors have no significant impact upon the conclusions of the Safer Cities Programme Evaluation. However, spatial analyses show that potential burglary hot spots might have been missed as a result of such errors in crime pattern analysis. The analysis of the error distribution shows that a geographical area would have a higher error rate if it has: dense population; is near the city centre; or has an irregular geographical boundary. The implications in GIS applications, and crime prevention for decision and policy makers are discussed.

Using a combination of ethnographic methods this research portrays the effects of Bourdieu's concept of habitus in Community Safety Partnership (CSP) work in an English unitary council. The foundation for the research lies in Hughes and Gilling’s (2004) research with CSP managers, which suggests that those who undertake such roles have an outlook on their work that follows a social welfare agenda. This contrasts with the managerial approach to welfare and crime that developed in the late 1970s. The originality of this work lies firstly, in its method of investigation - the author has been an active member of the partnership since 2002 - and interaction with those for whom community safety is a core activity (council CSP teams and the police) and those - like the author - who may be considered as lay members. Secondly, what was found contrasts with the organizational discordance found in other CSP research (Skinns, 2005 and 2006; Ellis et al, 2007) and in other similar partnership work (Burnett and Appleton, 2004; Hodgson, 2004). The partnership is successful Organizational constraints did not seem to override the social democratic habitus of both the core and lay members of the CSP. The spirit of CSP work is illustrated in a small unitary authority in a period that saw a shift from the discourse of New Public Management (NPM) to that of the Big Society. The latter two notions, while present as theory, did not seem evident in practice as what emerged was a CSP managing to deliver services in difficult political and economic circumstances especially in terms of domestic abuse.

Offenders’ treatment motivation has been linked to improved treatment engagement (Sellen et al, 2009; Campbell et al., 2010) and in turn treatment completion is associated with better rehabilitation outcomes (McMurran & Theodosi, 2007). Custodial education has been suggested to reduce reoffending (e.g., Zgoba et al., 2008) and so it may be useful to develop ways of motivating offenders to participate in custodial workshops and education classes. Firstly, the exploratory study investigated post-release employment issues in short-term offenders (STOs) sentenced to custody of less than 12 months. Secondly, the main study described a feasibility study examining STOs’ motivation to participate in education. The Personal Aspiration and Concerns Inventory for Offenders (PACIO) is a goal-based motivational interview aimed at enhancing treatment motivation and assessing its adaptive and maladaptive dimensions (Campbell et al., 2010). Firstly, the PACIO was used as a preparatory motivational intervention to investigate its effect on education participation compared with STOs who received the PACIO plus a motivational interview (PACIO plus) and a non-intervention. Secondly, the effect of education participation on reconviction rates was investigated. Thirdly, the influence of adaptive motivation (AM) and learned helplessness/ powerlessness (LH/P) profiles were investigated in terms of education participation. The PACIO and PACIO plus did not increase STOs’ motivation and education participation. However, education participation reduced reconviction. AM and LH/P did not predict education participation. Since these results did not confirm the hypothesised outcomes, it is not feasible to use the PACIO or the PACIO plus to improve and assess STOs’ motivation for and participation in custodial education. Future research should focus on developing an effective preparatory motivational intervention for STOs to participate in education.

The political and economic context following the election of the Coalition Government in 2010 has had a significant impact upon community safety work in England and Wales. More specifically, the governmental austerity agenda - the term given to policies aimed at reducing sovereign debt through reductions in public expenditure - and the introduction of locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners present a number of challenges for community safety and the local coordination of multi-agency partnership practices around crime and disorder. In addition, the currently dominant discourses and policies of localism and a decentralisation of power have placed greater emphasis on the role of locally situated actors in having to choose how to respond to the external political and economic constraints placed upon them. Borrowing and adapting concepts from regime theory, this research employs a single-embedded case study of community safety in Cardiff to examine how the Cardiff policy ‘regime’ has sought to respond to the current economic and political climate. Building upon the analytical framework offered by regime theory, and utilising a combination of ethnographic observations, interviews and documentary analysis of policy texts over the last two decades, this thesis explores the changes to the governing arrangements in Cardiff, from a well resourced multi-agency community safety team, to the dispersal of responsibility for community safety under the guise of integration and reducing complexity. Demonstrating the opportunities presented by localism the research finds evidence of an attempt to form a governing regime around a ‘transformative’ strategic agenda orientated around ideas of social justice and civic inclusion. However, illustrating the constraints on this freedom afforded to local governing actors, the realisation of this strategic agenda has been compromised by changes to the governing arrangements in Cardiff that have resulted in a degradation of governing capacity for community safety and the hollowing out of community safety expertise in the city. Accordingly, the research finds evidence of a disparity between the transformative rhetoric of the shared strategic agenda, and the fragmented and divergent operational practices of community safety. This use of regime theory makes an original contribution to the nascent conceptual and empirical debate about the contested and uncertain future of community safety in an age of austerity. It highlights the need for further locally situated case studies that can disambiguate the political agency available to local policy actors and the external political and economic constrains placed upon them.

This thesis has two aims. First, it examines how the principles of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) are practically applied by a representative sample of 28 Architectural Liaison Officers (ALOs) across England and Wales. Second, it investigates how CPTED is delivered across Greater Manchester by Greater Manchester Police Design for Security Consultancy (DFSC). The research demonstrates that when presented with a set of residential plans ALOs are, to varying extents, able to identify locations which time shows have higher levels of crime and disorder. Whilst there is a skill exhibited by ALOs, there is a wide range of performance with some ALOs tending to overstate the risks posed. The skill therefore requires finessing to ensure that ALO input is maximally useful. It is argued that those responsible for the application of CPTED should be afforded more training and resources to allow them to develop this skill. Research underpinning ALO advice also needs to be developed. The way in which CPTED is delivered across Greater Manchester is atypical when compared to other forces across England and Wales. CPTED in Manchester is applied by former built environment professionals and a fee is charged for the production of a Crime Impact Statement (CIS). The aim of the CIS is to ensure that CPTED is considered early in the design and planning process. The thesis reports on how the CIS process was delivered during a period of austerity and examines how DFSC liaise with key stakeholders in compiling the CIS. The associated police recorded crime data for four residential CIS developments is reviewed as a means of measuring the extent to which the developments experienced crime and disorder compared to the immediate surrounding area. During the period of analysis no burglary offences were recorded. Analysis reveals that the involvement of DFSC is dependent upon a client being aware of the policy requirement for a CIS to accompany major planning applications. Some clients request a CIS late in the design and planning process, which limits the time DFSC can appraise the scheme and provide a consultative service. The content and structure of the CIS’ varies depending upon when and by whom the CIS is written. Whilst CPTED is an important consideration for LPAs across Manchester, it is only one consideration, amongst others, for planning officers.