ABSTRACT
The concept of community safety emerged in the early 1980s as a progressive alternative to the narrowly focused situational techniques associated with the term ‘crime prevention’, which had been developed to respond to rising levels of recorded crime in the post-World War II period. While situational crime-prevention measures were designed to limit opportunities for criminal activity in particular localities, community safety offered a broader approach that looked beyond the confines of crime-focused interventions and towards the active promotion of safe neighbourhoods. The perspective promoted by community safety appealed to the emotionally driven, engaged and active citizen rather than the cold and rationally calculating ‘homo economicus’ of traditional crime prevention theory. Where previous crime-prevention measures typically involved professional top-down interventions to control crime in a given local area, community safety imagined more inclusive policy and practice focused on the needs of local people, and engaging local people in the design and implementation of community-specific solutions to rising levels of fear and insecurity.
