Easton, M., Gunther Moor, L., Hoogenboom, B., Ponsaers, P. , Van Stokkom, B. (eds.) (2008). Reflections on Reassurance Policing in the Low Countries, Den Haag: Boom Juridische Uitgevers, Reeks Het groene gras, pp. 227.

Full text

Reflections on Reassurance Policing in the Low Countries

Reflections on Reassurance Policing
in the Low Countries
Marleen Easton
Lodewijk Gunther Moor
Bob Hoogenboom
Paul Ponsaers
Bas van Stokkom
(eds.)
BJu Legal Publishers
The Hague
2008

© 2008 Marleen Easton, Lodewijk Gunther Moor, Bob Hoogenboom, Paul Ponsaers, Bas van Stok-
kom (eds.) / BJu Legal Publishers
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means with-
out written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-90-5454-863-8
NUR 741
www.bju.nl

Contents
Part I Concepts and Questions 1
1 Introductory Notes on Reassurance Policing 3
1.1 The ‘signal crimes’ perspective 3
1.2 The development of reassurance policing 5
1.3 Examination of concepts and methods 6
1.4 Structure of the book 8
Bibliography 13
2 Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of Reassurance Policing 15
2.1 Evaluation 16
2.2 Reassurance policing 18
2.2.1 Visibility and presence 19
2.2.2 Co-production 21
2.3 Signal crimes 23
Conclusion 26
Bibliography 27
Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts 29
3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance
within a Flemish Context 31
Introduction 31
3.1 The British model: reassurance policing 31
3.1.1 Broken windows policy theory and disorder policy 31
3.1.2 Innes and Jones: a plea for ‘tailor-made’ policing on a
micro level 33
3.1.3 Risk signals and antisocial behaviour 34
3.1.4 Implementation of a strategy and pitfalls 36
3.2 Reassurance policing: relation to police models 38
3.3 Added value for Flanders? 41
3.3.1 Opportunity structures in centre neighbourhoods of
nucleated towns 41
3.3.2 The urban grid: diversity of neighbourhoods 42
3.3.3 Incivilities and public order 44
Conclusion 46
Bibliography 48

vi Contents
4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’
Broken Windows Theory 53
Introduction 53
4.1 What is wrong with broken windows theory? 55
4.1.1 The theory 55
4.1.2 The theory criticised 57
4.1.3 Convincing aspects of the theory 58
4.2 Varieties of disorder policing 59
4.2.1 The alternative police strategy in Chicago 60
4.2.2 Reassurance policing in England 62
4.3 Repositioning Dutch community policing 63
4.3.1 Legitimate repressive interventions 65
4.3.2 Symbolic order maintenance actions 65
4.3.3 Limited value of social cohesion 66
Discussion 68
Bibliography 69
5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond
Police Force 73
Introduction 73
5.1 Civilians on reassurance policing 74
5.1.1 Social quality 74
5.1.2 Responsibility for safety 75
5.1.3 Feelings of insecurity/fear of crime 75
5.1.4 Disorder and incivilities 76
5.1.5 Visibility, familiarity and accessibility of the police 77
5.1.6 Public involvement 78
5.1.7 Reassurance concept 79
5.2 Rotterdam-Rijnmond police officers and reassurance policing 79
5.2.1 Objective of community policing 80
5.2.2 Responsibility for safety 80
5.2.3 External influences on objectives 81
5.2.4 Feelings of insecurity of inhabitants 81
5.2.5 Perception of disorder and incivilities by residents 82
5.2.6 Visibility, familiarity and accessibility of the police as
perceived by residents 82
5.2.7 Opinion on reassurance policing as a concept 83
5.3 Reassurance policing and the local authorities 84
5.3.1 Influence on police policies 84
5.3.2 Views on community policing 84
5.3.3 The concept of reassurance policing 85
Discussion 85
Bibliography 88

Contents vii
Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance? 89
6 Why reassurance policing ‘works’ 91
Introduction 91
6.1 Evaluative police research 91
6.2 The role of the police 93
6.2.1 Citizens’ perceptions of the police role 93
6.2.2 Encounters with the police 94
6.3 Aspects of insecurity 95
6.3.1 The construction of insecurity 95
6.3.2 Theoretical aspects 97
The role of the victim 98
The role of the offender 98
6.4 Connecting reassurance policing 100
Concluding remarks 101
Bibliography 102
7 New Security Patrols in Public Places: Reassurance,
Fragmentation, and Marketisation 105
Introduction 105
7.1 Reassurance policing 106
7.2 The rise of the new security patrols 108
7.3 New security patrols in the Netherlands 110
7.3.1 Type I. Completely public new security patrols
(no quasi-market) 112
7.3.2 Type II. Governments purchase public surveillance 113
7.3.3 Type III. Governments purchase private security 114
7.3.4 Type IV. Police charge for their activities 115
7.3.5 Type V. Private security patrol under private auspices 115
7.4 New security patrols and citizens 117
7.5 New security patrol: accepted, but only conditionally? 119
7.6 Marketisation of security and reassurance 121
Concluding remarks 122
Bibliography 123
Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept? 127
8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 129
8.1 The ongoing search for the Holy Grail 130
So ... it’s busy on the concept front 131
Increased attention for feelings of insecurity 131
The ‘emotional society’ 131
But an appropriate answer has yet to be found 132
8.2 Reassurance policing in the UK 132
8.3 An applicable concept for the Netherlands? Some pros and cons 133
8.3.1 Five arguments in favour 133

viii Contents
The Netherlands also seems to have a reassurance gap 134
The ‘signal crime perspective’ also seems relevant in the
Netherlands 135
There is a great need for a clear policy concept 136
Reassurance could offer meaning and expedite the process 136
The concept arrives just in time 137
8.3.2 Five arguments against 137
There is already an abundance of new concepts… 138
The concept suggests too large a degree of manipulability
on the part of the police 138
Where the police can play a part, the concept is too narrow 139
No justice to the tradition of our safety care 140
It may lead some to pull the wrong strings 141
8.4 All in all: a usable concept? 143
8.5 From reassurance policing to public reassurance, the Dutch way 144
Bibliography 145
9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police?149
Introduction 149
9.1 The birth of the blues 151
9.2 Community policing … 153
9.3 … and beyond 157
9.3.1 Problem-oriented policing 157
9.3.2 Broken windows policing – zero-tolerance policing (BW-ZTP) 159
9.3.3 Private and plural policing (PLP) 162
9.4 Reassurance policing (RP) 164
9.5 The future (study) of community policing? 167
Conclusion 169
Bibliography 170
10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 173
Introduction 173
10.1 Fictional policing or circumlocutions 175
10.2 Circumlocutions and community policing 179
10.3 Manic pace of change versus continuity 181
10.3.1 Change 181
10.3.2 Continuity 184
10.4 Updating Bittner and Klockars 186
10.4.1 Keeping up appearances and playing the game 186
10.4.2 Cop culture 188
10.4.3 How to incorporate the rank and file? 188
10.5 Manic pace of change and continuities 189
10.5.1 Community/reassurance policing: part of larger and
more much differentiated policing arrangements 190
10.5.2 Five levels of policing 190
Bibliography 192

Contents ix
Addendum: organisation of the police 194
Part V In Conclusion 195
11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 197
Introduction 197
11.1 Nothing works? 197
11.2 Back to the roots of COP 199
11.3 Diversification 201
11.3.1 Broken windows 201
11.3.2 Zero tolerance 202
11.3.3 Problem (Oriented) Policing (POP) 203
11.4 Perversion of community policing? 205
11.5 Several sources of opposition to COP 206
11.5.1 Internal opposition … 206
11.5.2 … but there is also external opposition 207
11.6 No unequivocally positive results 208
11.7 The problematic notion of ‘community’ 209
11.8 Motions of withdrawal? 210
11.9 Is there a ‘correct’ level of order? 213
11.10 Disorder and decline in marginal neighbourhoods 214
11.11 Fighting social disorganisation 216
11.11.1 Only in key neighbourhoods … 216
11.11.2 … and through integrated safety policies 217
11.12 A maximalist safety approach. Virtue or vice? 218
Bibliography 221
Notes on Contributors 225

Part I Concepts and Questions

1 Introductory Notes on Reassurance Policing
M. Easton, L. Gunther-Moor, B. Hoogenboom, P. Ponsaers, B. van Stokkom
One of the first ever texts on reassurance policing was a small paper published in
Criminology, called ‘The reassurance factor in police patrol’ (1974). Its author,
Charles Bahn, argued that citizens feel more safe when they know that a police
officer or patrol car is nearby. The public wants the return of the beat policeman,
although the metropolis with its transient mobility and fluidity is not exactly the
place where familiar relationships between police officers, storekeepers and resi-
dents are developed. For that reason Bahn stressed that the security offered by the
‘beat cop’ appeared to be a ‘nostalgic dream of a tranquil past that never was’
(1974: 342). Moreover, the preventative patrol experiments in Kansas City demon-
strated that increased frequencies of police patrols did not lead to corresponding
decreases in the crime rate. But Bahn added: ‘Yet the yearning for security sym-
bols remains.’ Even modern urban neighbourhoods need recognisable and highly
visible police officers who ‘offer continuous reassurance’. In the midst of urban
insecurity we need highly identifiable police officers working from ‘fixed posts’;
they symbolize police presence and provide a focal point for the display of social
control.
1.1 The ‘signal crimes’ perspective
A few decades later this ‘basic’ hypothesis of symbolic communication was fully
elaborated in a theory called ‘signal crimes’. In a foundational paper on commu-
nicative policing Martin Innes – with co-author Nigel Fielding (Innes and Field-
ing, 2002) – described the social semiotic processes by which particular types of
criminal and disorderly conduct can impact upon fear of crime. Certain behav-
iours may be construed as ‘warning signs’ that may generate anxiety about future
threats. The presence of crime and disorder in a neighbourhood functions as a
signal to both residents and outsiders that is ‘read’ and used to inform beliefs
about the safety in an area. Different risks may have different ‘signal values’ that
reveal information about potential threats. Thus, not all events are assumed to
have the same ‘signal value’. Certain disorderly behaviours or objects are consid-
ered to have a disproportionate influence in shaping both individual and collec-
tive perceptions of risk or decay. In a comparatively affluent neighbourhood graf-
fiti may be seen as an indicator of potential problems because it has a ‘high disso-
nance’ value. In such areas people may be sensitive to any disorders. By contrast,
in a deprived neighbourhood the addition of more graffiti may be barely noticed.
In such an area where significant physical and social disorders are already
present, people may become ‘de-sensitized’ to any similar new occurrences.

4Part I Concepts and Questions
What are the implications of this theory for policing? Innes stresses that public
reassurance is not generated simply by having more police patrols, as Skogan and
Hartnett (1997) had already shown in their research in Chicago. The crucial fac-
tor seems to be what officers do when they are on patrol and how they gain confi-
dence. Generally one might say that the public wants a police force/police service
that is more responsive to local problems and local needs. The public is especially
concerned about the aggravated ‘in your face indignities’ that they regularly expe-
rience. Innes argues that the police should first develop ways of capturing data on
the low-level signals that are influential in shaping how communities construct
their sense of security. These low-level disorders may function as ‘open source’
intelligence to identify problem hotspots and other specific ‘fear triggers’ that
exist in different neighbourhoods. By consulting citizens the police can collect
information about these ‘signal crimes’ and ‘signal disorders’. At the same time
the police can check whether residents agree about the presence of potential
harms. Subsequently, the police, residents’ groups and other parties involved can
develop ‘control signals’. Innes defines control signals as actions of social control
that communicate a sense of regained peace and order (Innes, 2004a). A control
sign may consist of a litter warden in a specific area, removal of graffiti or taking
action against troublemakers. An example: persistent vandalism signals anxiety
and general concern and may strengthen the tendency to avoid specific streets.
Prompt attention to vandalism is a reassuring sign that ‘something is being
done’. However, police actions could also be viewed negatively (and generate ‘neg-
ative control signs’), for instance when the police fails to inform the public or
react adequately to citizen requests to intervene.
In one formula, reassurance policing aims to identify local incidents and prob-
lems that residents experience as disproportionately troublesome, and find solu-
tions in co-productive ways. Some incidents matter more in shaping perception
of risks and decay; prompt action against these threatening or annoying incidents
is required. Thus, reassurance policing fits well within current trends to raise
confidence in the police and increase feelings of safety in the community.
Innes (2004b) argues that reassurance policing should be a key component of a
‘total policing’ philosophy which recognises that neighbourhood safety is both
objective (local crime rates) and subjective (being worried about threatening
signs). Total policing integrates hard (repressive) and soft (cooperative) methods.
Within a robust problem-solving framework, it uses ‘signal events’ to target
action on those issues that generate the greatest collective insecurity.
Innes agrees that control of neighbourhood safety cannot be achieved by the
police alone. Effective control requires community coordination and support,
involving individuals and institutions outside law enforcement and beyond the
public sector. Joint action with local partners and the public is needed, recognis-
ing that residents are the experts at diagnosing problems in their own areas. Solu-
tions should be negotiated, not imposed. In these respects reassurance policing is
comparable to alternative community policing programmes like the one in Chi-

1 Introductory Notes on Reassurance Policing 5
cago, and it responds to the recent revival of ‘active citizenship’: giving local citi-
zens more say and engaging resident groups and other agencies in the co-produc-
tion of security. Like any other version of community policing there is an inbuilt
tendency to view police work chiefly as peacekeeping and crime prevention. Not
surprisingly therefore, advocates of reassurance policing have the same substan-
tial difficulties in viewing quantitative performance indicators such as arrests and
on the spot fines as 'good police work'.
1.2 The development of reassurance policing
Originally reassurance policing was a response to what had become known as the
‘reassurance gap’: in England and Wales the fall in recorded crime since 1995
was not matched by a corresponding decline in reported fear of crime. Many citi-
zens even believed that crime was actually rising. This problem was first articu-
lated by Chief Constable of Surrey Police Denis O’Connor in the Association of
Chief Police Officers (ACPO). He sought the assistance of Martin Innes and
other University of Surrey researchers to explore the reasons for this gap. By tar-
geting the risks identified by the public, the police might have a positive impact
on their perception of crime. Reassurance policing was seen as a means to
address this ‘gap’.
In 2003 a National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP) was set up in Eng-
land and Wales. The NRPP grew out of trials of reassurance policing in Surrey
Police and the Metropolitan Police Service. The NRPP management team has col-
laborated closely with Surrey University in applying signal crime theory to opera-
tional policing. In 2005 the NRPP was integrated in the new government’s policy
on neighbourhood policing. This change also resulted from the White Paper
Building Communities, Beating Crime, which highlighted how neighbourhood
policing differed from ‘old style’ community policing that lacked a clear crime
focus (Tuffin et al., 2006: 5). A neighbourhood policing package to increase pub-
lic confidence and reduce crime would need therefore a strongly targeted and
problem-solving approach.
The NRPP uses a more practical definition of reassurance policing: ‘Reassurance
policing is a model of community policing which seeks to improve public confi-
dence in policing. It involves local communities in identifying priority crime and
disorder issues in their neighbourhood which they then tackle together with the
police and other public services and partners’ (Morris, 2006: 1). Thus, within the
NRPP-sites the public has a direct input in defining local policing priorities. The
local activities of reassurance policing can be summarised as (Tuffin et al., 2006:
xii):
• targeted policing activity and problemsolving to tackle crimes and disorder
which matter in neighbourhoods;
• community involvement in the process of identifying priorities and taking
action to tackle them;

6Part I Concepts and Questions
• the presence of visible, accessible, and locally known authority figures in
neighbourhoods, in particular police officers and police community support
officers.
The NRPP was conducted in 16 sites, using Innes’ conceptualisation to guide the
police in consulting the public about perceived threats to safety and develop
appropriate action strategies. The outcomes of the NRPP were evaluated in all 16
trial sites in the eight police forces which together formed the programme (Tuf-
fin, 2006). The Home Office’s evaluation presents results from six sites where it
was possible to match control areas. The key findings of the evaluation are quite
encouraging and can be reasonably attributed to the activities of NRPP. Among
other things the programme delivered statistically significant reductions (in com-
parison with measures in control areas) in crime, perceptions of antisocial behav-
iour, an increase in public confidence in policing and feelings of safety.
1.3 Examination of concepts and methods
For some years reassurance policing has been discussed in the lowlands. In 2007
the Dutch Society, Security and Police Foundation (Stichting Maatschappij, Vei-
ligheid en Politie) and the Flemish Centre for Police Studies (Centrum voor Poli-
tiestudies) took the initiative to study reassurance policing with academics and
practitioners during an international residential conference.1 The Dutch Ministry
of the Interior intends to experiment with reassurance policing in some experi-
mental sites. In this volume we want to gain further insight into the possibilities
and pitfalls which are linked to reassurance policing.
What exactly is reassurance policing? Are we dealing with a new, different police
model? Or is reassurance policing simply community policing repackaged? Cer-
tainly, reassurance policing addresses the core issues of community policing:
problem-solving, crime prevention and the mobilization of residents. So does it
offer added value? How do we position reassurance policing within the wider rep-
ertoire of police models?
The NRPP is trying to achieve a whole range of objectives that largely go beyond
‘crime fighting’, including: to reduce fear of crime, to increase public confidence
in the police, to increase community efficacy, and to improve the local environ-
ment, both physical and social (Millie and Herrington, 2005). This is an ambi-
tious programme that may easily raise high expectations; it relies on a ‘total’ or
‘maximalist’ strategy and presupposes intensive control efforts (Loader, 2007).
Are these purposes achievable and practical enough, and can this kind of police
work be integrated into the prevailing police culture?
1. The conference took place in Hoeve Biestheuvel, Hoogeloon in the Netherlands on 22 and 23
March 2007. The conference proceedings have been published in Ponsaers and Gunther Moor,
2007 and Van Calster and Gunther Moor, 2007.

1 Introductory Notes on Reassurance Policing 7
It is well-known that police departments are remarkably resistant to change. The
core work and the underlying organisation always remain much the same, what-
ever new concepts and strategies are introduced. Is reassurance policing qualified
to achieve real change in police services? Or is it the newest myth in the long
chain of police parables? In a certain way reassurance theory itself contributed
raised suspicions, because the aim to close the reassurance gap may be read as a
‘public relations’ strategy. This aim fits in with current tendencies to ‘correct’ the
views of the public, communicate real achievements, fight ‘wrong images’ and
refurbish the legitimacy of the police.
How should we interpret the positive results in the Home Office evaluation?
These (and other) findings suggest that reassurance police practices are actually
able to raise confidence in the police and reduce fear of crime. The way these
findings are obtained and the use of concepts such as ‘fear of crime’ elicit some
questions and comments.
Many inquiries as into the opinions of the public regarding the police find that
the population tends to give positive answers. Possibly the so-called ‘Hawthorne
effect’ is at work here. This effect occurs when people who are usually ignored by
the government react positively when they get attention from that same govern-
ment, regardless of the fact whether that attention actually produces effective
results (Beyens, 2005).
In the literature the relation between ‘fear of crime’ and feelings of insecurity is
still strongly controversial (Elchardus et al., 2003). There is no unanimity regard-
ing the way feelings of insecurity can be measured (Jackson, 2006) and there is
an abundance of definitions and methods available which have an impact on the
results of research. Moreover there is a tension between the measuring of ‘fear or
crime’ and the measuring of more encompassing feelings such as fear and uneas-
iness. Experienced feelings of insecurity are often projected onto criminal acts,
whereas crime itself appears to have only a very small impact on feelings of inse-
curity.2 The question therefore is whether ‘fear of crime’ can be used as a reliable
indicator for the performance of the police force.
Many researchers have pointed out that the effect of police work is very difficult to
measure (Easton and Crucke, 2005). Also in reassurance policing performance
measuring systems are used to assess the impact of police work. But are perform-
ances measured, or perceptions of performances? When the police actively
inform residents as to which areas good work have been delivered and residents
subsequently adapt their perception of insecurity, the police are in fact engaged in
public relations.
2. This strengthens the idea that unsafety is instead be linked to a feeling of dissatisfaction or ‘being
unwell’ in relation to uncertainties in the field of employment, housing, health, and so on. Social
factors such as gender or where one lives appear to play a more important role in this. For an in-
depth literature study see: Elchardus (2003).

8Part I Concepts and Questions
These critical notes are of a general nature and are dealt with by police research-
ers in many different nations. In this volume questions are added that are related
to the specific contexts and backgrounds of the lowlands. The Netherlands has a
long tradition of community policing, co-production and consulting citizens,
whose application in regions diverge strongly. In Belgium community policing
was introduced quite recently by the federal government. In the Netherlands con-
fidence in the police is relatively high compared with many other European
nations, whereas Belgium citizens regained confidence in the police after the
Dutroux-crisis in the nineties (Van der Vijver, 2007). There seems to be no ‘reas-
surance gap’ in the low countries, since in both countries the fear of crime is
slowly declining, together with the general crime figures.
Should the lowlands adopt forms of reassurance policing and if so, which ele-
ments within the ‘signal crime and reassurance package’ would be promising?
How should we interpret the positive effects that were achieved in English reas-
surance police forces, when placed in the context of police practices and routines
in the lowlands? Is it even possible to transfer a strategy from abroad to other
social and cultural circumstances?
1.4 Structure of the book
The contributions in this volume are split up into five parts. Part I is an introduc-
tory section, in which the concepts and methods of reassurance policing are eluci-
dated. Next to this introductory chapter is included a chapter prepared by Martin
Innes, the prominent advocate of reassurance policing theory. In this text called
‘Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of Reassurance Policing’ Innes
first gives a brief summary of the results of the NRPP evaluation that was men-
tioned before. He subsequently focuses upon the three key components of the
reassurance policing process: the visibility and presence of police officers on
patrol, targeting the signal crimes and signal disorders that function as ‘drivers’
of insecurity in neighbourhoods, and the co-production of solutions with com-
munity members and partner agencies. The author examines in which respects
these three components have contributed to producing the outcomes, and regu-
larly refers to findings about the related police strategy in Chicago. He stresses
that the public in the reassurance sites often attend to social and physical disorder
incidents. The ‘signal crimes/disorders’ approach shares this central role of inci-
vilities with broken window policing, but it denies the ‘disorder causes crime’-
nexus that Wilson and Kelling hypothesised.
The three contributions in part II of this volume contain reflections on reassur-
ance policing in different contexts. What might Dutch and Flemish police forces
learn from ‘reassurance’ methods and strategies that have been applied in Eng-
land? In their chapter Marleen Easton and Paul Ponsaers discuss the conceptuali-
sation of reassurance policing as mentioned earlier in this introduction. The
authors first discuss the underlying assumptions of the concept and relate it to

1 Introductory Notes on Reassurance Policing 9
the broken windows theory. Unlike this theory Innes does not presume that inci-
vilities would generate more serious forms of crime. Disorder in neighbourhoods
is more complex than the simple causal relation between incivilities-fear-crime
would suggest. Next the authors try to determine the position of reassurance
policing with respect to the existing police models such as the military-bureau-
cratic police model, lawful policing, community (oriented) policing and the pub-
lic/private police model. Does reassurance policing have the strength to become a
new police model? Easton and Ponsaers answer that question negatively: the con-
cept has an eclectic character and contains a strange mix of aspects borrowed
from other models. Thirdly – and most importantly – the authors check whether
the stock of ideas that lies behind reassurance finds resonance in Belgium, and in
which form. What can this concept mean for security and police policy in Bel-
gium? The authors point out that Belgium does not have a ‘ghetto effect’, an inde-
pendent ‘drive’ of social deprivation in poor neighbourhoods that would invite
disorder policing as it is practised in many American cities. Most crime hotspots
in Belgium are found in strongly urbanised inner city neighbourhoods that no
longer function as residential areas. For these reasons the authors conclude that
community policing in Belgium should not limit itself to a mere public order
policing strategy.
In the next contribution the broken windows theory is again placed in the fore-
front, but Bas van Stokkom does not agree with every criticism that Easton and
Ponsaers raise. He reminds us that the theory was rejected in the criminological
world because it neglected the ‘root causes of crime’; moreover the theory came to
be identified with zero tolerance policing. However, some possibly fruitful
aspects of the theory – attune police strategies to the ‘collective needs’ of the resi-
dents; making use of the ‘preventative capital’ of citizens – were neglected. To
find out its real value van Stokkom states that one must leave behind the mysti-
fied case of New York and make an inventory of various research results on con-
trolling and fighting disorder. In this respect the author discusses the alternative
police programme in Chicago and the reassurance policing programme in Eng-
land. Both programmes make considerable efforts to consult residents when it
comes to assessment and prioritisation of insecurity problems. In the last sec-
tions van Stokkom discusses in which respects disorder policing could renew the
theory and practice of Dutch community policing. He thinks that the consultation
and co-production of control signals may enhance local security, also (and partic-
ularly) in marginalised neighbourhoods in which residents traditionally have less
trust in police and police interventions automatically cause criticism. He identi-
fies many complicating factors but claims that a ‘politics of order’ offers a more
fruitful perspective for policing than ‘classic’ criminological and law enforcement
perspectives.
Cooperation with local inhabitants is a necessary prerequisite to reduce insecu-
rity. This statement also occurs in chapter 5. Luuk Wondergem and Lodewijk
Gunther Moor bring the following question to the fore: Would it be feasible to
implement reassurance policing in the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force? Rot-

10 Part I Concepts and Questions
terdam is a metropolis which has traditionally had many crime and security prob-
lems. Although insecurity levels have dropped recently, insecurity problems con-
tinue to affect residents. Given this background, introducing reassurance polic-
ing could strengthen some classic tasks of community policing, notably co-
production with citizens. The discussion in this chapter is based on findings that
were obtained through group discussions with civilians and retailers, and inter-
views with local authorities and police officers. The findings indicate that the Rot-
terdam citizens endorse the reassurance core methods such as consultation and
co-production. Police officers are far more sceptical as to the usefulness of the
strategy, but agree that the reassurance approach might help to identify local
problems more precisely. Many police officers point at difficulties that might
obstruct implementation, such as bad motivated employees, circulating employ-
ees, and poor democratic quality of consultation. The authors point out that a
minimum basis of social cohesion in the neighbourhood is necessary if reassur-
ance policing is to succeed. This means that the strategy cannot and should not
be implemented in every neighbourhood in the same way. Wondergem and
Gunther Moor conclude that reassurance policing might be implemented suc-
cessfully within the police force, but not plainly as ‘yet another concept’. Conceiv-
ing reassurance policing as a form of further professionalizing community polic-
ing may evoke less resistance within the police organisation.
Part III of this bundle pays attention to the underlying interests and needs of citi-
zens. Do citizens appreciate reassurance policing? Is enhancing reassurance an
appropriate strategy to reduce fear of crime and disorder? Might the reassurance
function also be realised through private security patrols? Which reasons might
explain the potentially positive results with regard to the effectiveness of the reas-
surance strategy?
Most police researchers point out that the effectiveness of the police in reducing
crime is modest. This is also true for other objectives, like reducing feelings of
insecurity or improving the confidence in the police. In his chapter ‘Why reassur-
ance policing works’ Kees van der Vijver wonders why the Home Office studies on
reassurance policing show positive results. Several projects did have a positive
impact: on the level of crime that citizens experience, on their feelings of insecu-
rity and on the attitudes towards the police. What makes this strategy more fruit-
ful than many others? The author discusses several possible explanations and
concentrates on subjective aspects: the opinions, emotions and attitudes of citi-
zens. He first points out that the judgment of the public – and victims in particu-
lar – is not so much orientated on results (tracking down criminals etc.) but
rather on correct police behaviour (showing interest in citizens etc.). Neverthe-
less, citizens live in a world that is to a great extent unpredictable, uncertain and
potentially dangerous. Psychological studies show that they have developed sev-
eral strategies to deal with these threats. Dissonant facts are either reduced or
eliminated. To explain these ‘redefinitions’ Lerner’s theory of the ‘Belief in the
just World’ may be of help. People want to be protected against criminals but do
not tend to consider victims innocent. As long as victims are viewed as blameable

1 Introductory Notes on Reassurance Policing 11
you can maintain the idea that you are safeguarded against the uncontrollable
dangers crime may bring. In other words, we interpret reality in such a way that
the image of a Just World remains intact. In terms of reassurance policing: citi-
zens want somebody to take a stand, regardless of ‘crime solving’ effects; it gives
them a feeling of safety. Van der Vijver thinks that the concept of signal crimes
and disorders is a sensible answer to the perception of insecurity: it demonstrates
that the police are concentrating on the most important problems.
In chapter 7 Jan Terpstra turns attention to the new security patrols that operate
in Dutch public places. The introduction of the new security patrols such as city
wardens, police assistants, private security workers and neighbourhood guards, is
based on the assumption that they contribute to the control and prevention of dis-
order and crime, reassure citizens and make them feel less fearful and insecure.
They could therefore exercise the same functions as the regular police, functions
that are especially stressed within the model of reassurance policing. Terpstra
questions in which respects these new security patrols correspond to these reas-
suring functions. He first describes some of the circumstances contributing to
the rise and increasing importance of the new security patrols and presents a
typology of the new security patrols in the Netherlands. Subsequently the author
discusses the meaning of the new security patrols for citizens. It turns out that
many Dutch citizens want more surveillance and security patrols. At the same
time there seems to be a lot of scepticism among citizens about the new security
patrol officers: apparently they do not have the moral authority and symbolic cap-
ital that regular police officers still possess, and it remains a question whether
they are able to reassure citizens. Terpstra concludes that the marketisation of
security and patrol may have larger negative side effects: the consumerist view of
the police may result in a demythologising of the regular police, which may
undermine the classic ‘reassurance function’.
The fourth part of this volume is devoted to the ‘image-work’ and ‘public rela-
tions’ aspects that many associate with the aim of reassuring the public. Is reas-
surance policing a mystifying concept? In chapter 8 Marnix W.B. Eysink Smeets
examines whether the Dutch should introduce the public reassurance model. The
answer is in the long subtitle: ‘Why the Dutch should be inspired by the English
concept of reassurance policing, but should not copy it blindly.’ The author pro-
vides an overview of the main pros and cons of reassurance policing. He con-
cludes that the concept is valid at a strategic level, but that its epistemological and
implementary validity for the Dutch situation is not without flaws. Some Dutch
studies have already shown the relevance of the concepts of signal crimes/disor-
ders and control signals. Often reassurance policing is considered to be the
answer to the perceived problems involving confidence and safety perception. But
the concept is too narrow, and therefore its validity too is limited. The author does
not expect that implementation will be easy. He foresees the possibility that it will
lead to a sterile kind of technical, instrumental implementation. Eysink Smeets
advocates for using the term ‘public reassurance’ rather than ‘reassurance polic-
ing’. He wants to avoid passing responsibility for reassurance to the police alone.
Public safety should – as expressed in the Dutch ‘integrated safety policy’ – first
and foremost be an administrative challenge.

12 Part I Concepts and Questions
Eysink Smeets points out that the concept of ‘reassurance’ may obscure security
realities. This line of thinking is fully elaborated in the contribution of Bob Hoog-
enboom, called ‘Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Polic-
ing’. He joins police theorists who in earlier decades interpreted community
policing as the latest in a fairly long tradition of circumlocutions whose purpose
is to conceal, mystify, and legitimate police distribution of non negotiable coer-
cive force. Hoogenboom asks the question if reassurance policing could fit within
this ‘fairly long tradition of circumlocutions’, i.e. comforting narratives. To
answer that question he first of all explains the concept of ‘circumlocution’ as
used by Bittner and Klockars and outlines how this concept is applied to commu-
nity policing. Subsequently he discusses some new concepts introduced in
(Dutch) policing in the last decade. The concept of community policing is fol-
lowed by ever more concepts and strategies ranging from new public manage-
ment techniques to ‘broken windows’, intelligence-led policing, and more
recently reassurance policing. The police seem to be locked up in a ‘manic pace of
change’. All these ‘new’ policies, strategies, tactics and operational activities sug-
gest change, innovation and constant adaptations of policing. Hoogenboom
warns that police leaders may use symbolic techniques (‘keeping up appear-
ances’) to retain their relative autonomy. ‘As much as society has a need for fic-
tional police stories, so police leadership has a need for different narratives – and
even myths – to keep authorities and the public at bay with the sole purpose of
safeguarding its autonomy.’ The author concludes that reassurance policing has
meaning mostly on the fictional (symbolic) level; its ‘theoretical quagmire’ clouds
the mighty undertow of policing: reproducing order.
Police and policing, including ‘reassurance’ policing, are both made and imag-
ined. This notion is the starting point of Tom van den Broeck’s contribution
‘Reassuring the public or reassuring the Police?’. The author reviews successive
police innovations on a conceptual level. He contends that most ‘new’ policing
concepts, including reassurance policing, can be understood as varieties of com-
munity policing. What does reassurance policing contribute to the chain of con-
secutive innovative concepts of policing? And why is there anyway need for
another innovation anyway? Hoogenboom maintains that if reassurance policing
becomes a politically inspired strategy to achieve more positive perception of
policing activities, it could be considered (and discredited) as ‘keeping up appear-
ances’. If perception management remains predominant the subsequent ques-
tion is of course: who is going to be reassured, the public or the police? Van den
Broeck concludes that reassurance policing cannot be viewed as a new model or
concept, nor as a mere methodology, but rather as ‘a valuable attempt to find a
new equilibrium between competing approaches’. But he shares the concern that
Easton and Ponsaers have also expressed: by stressing that policing is much more
about order (maintenance) than about crime (fighting), community policing has
unintentionally opened a Pandora’ box. While the original community policing
model wanted to socialise the police, it is perhaps society which has become more
policed. Reassurance policing seems to amplify this trend: the concept of ‘total
policing’ legitimises the expansion of the police role and territory. It widens the

1 Introductory Notes on Reassurance Policing 13
focus of policing towards an ambitious social mission: delivering safety and
(re)building communities.
In the final part we draw up the balance. After sketching the developments within
community policing and its varieties, it is concluded that this type of policing still
arouses much criticism, both within and outside police organisations. Moreover,
this approach does not easily produce positive (prevention) effects and struggles
with a problematic concept of ‘community’. Some think that community policing
is losing its appeal, at least in the Netherlands. Also for that reason some contrib-
utors in this volume advocate for the introduction of reassurance policing. What
are the potential virtues and vices of this ‘maximalist’ police strategy (even if it is
only implemented in key neighbourhoods that suffer most from crime and disor-
der)? Reassurance policing could have far-reaching implications: the police and
other professionals would be allocated broad tasks which could pervade everyday
social life. Another problem is that the dominance of ‘maintaining order’ would
give police officers too much discretionary power, whereas ‘negotiated order’ in
collaboration with residents could put non-participating people – including many
members of minority groups – at a disadvantage. On the other hand, reassurance
policing seems to be capable of bringing back trust in the police and other public
professionals (in marginal neighbourhoods) and for the moment it has produced
some impressive positive effects.
Bibliography
Bahn, C. (1974). The reassurance factor in police control, Criminology, 12, 338-45.
Beyens, K. (2005). Prestatie of perceptie? De burger aan het woord [Performance or per-
ception? The word is to the citizen], Orde van de Dag, 29, 7-14.
Easton, M. and S. Crucke (2005). Performantie bij de overheid. Organisatie: lokale politie
Mechelen [Performance within government. Organisation: local police-force Mechelen].
Gent: UGent en Delta-I (unpublished).
Elchardus, M., S. De Groof and W. Smits (2003). Onveiligheidsgevoelens – een literatu-
urstudie [Feelings of unsecurity – a literature study]. Brussels: Koning Boudewijnsticht-
ing (unpublished).
Consult: http://www.kbs-frb.be/publication.aspx?id=178322&LangType=2067
Innes, M. (2004). Signal crimes and signal disorders: notes on deviance as communicative
action. British Journal of Sociology, 55 (3), 335-55.
Innes, M. (2004). ‘Reinventing Tradition? Reassurance, Neighbourhood, Security and
Policing’. Criminal Justice, 4 (2), 151-71.
Innes, M. and N. Fielding (2002). From community to communicative policing: ‘signal
crimes’ and the problem of public reassurance. Sociological Research Online, 7 (2).
Consult: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/7/2/innes.html
Jackson, J. (2006). Introducing Fear of Crime to Risk Research. Risk Analysis, 26 (1), 253-
264.
Loader, I. (2006). Policing, Recognition, and Belonging. The Annals of the American Acad-
emy of Political and Social Science, 605 (1), 201-21.

14 Part I Concepts and Questions
Millie, A and V. Herrington (2005). Reassurance Policing in Practice: Views from the Shop
Floor, London: British Society of Criminology.
Consult: http://www.britsoccrim.org/volume7/002.pdf
Morris, J. (2006). The National Reassurance Policing Programme: a ten-site evaluation. Lon-
don: Home Office: The Reseach, Development and Statistics Directorate. Findings 273.
Skogan, W. and S. Hartnett (1997). Community Policing, Chicago Style. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Ponsaers, P. and L. Gunther Moor (2007). Reassurance policing: concepten en receptie [Reas-
surance policing: concepts and reception], Brussel: Politiea.
Tuffin, R., J. Morris and A. Poole (2006). The Evaluation of the Impact of the National Reas-
surance Policing Programme. Home Office Research Study 296, http://www.home-
office.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/hors296.pdf
Van Ca lst er, P . an d L. Gunther Moor (2007). Reassurance policing: een alliantie tussen burgers
en politie? [Reassurance policing: an alliance between citizens and police?]. Dordrecht:
SMVP/Gent: Centrum voor Politiestudies.
Vijver, C.D. van der et al (2006). Legitimiteit, gezag en politie. In: K. van der Vijver and
F. Vlek (eds.), De legitimiteit van de politie onder druk? Den Haag: Elsevier.

2 Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of
Reassurance Policing
Martin Innes
Situated in a historical moment that is, according to a number of leading com-
mentators, marked by the presence of a profound and prevalent sense of insecu-
rity, events have conspired to increase the stress upon the public policing appara-
tus across the full spectrum of its activities.3 The ongoing threats to national secu-
rity have stimulated moves to reconfigure aspects of the counter-terrorist
response. At the same time, the transformative dynamics of economic and cul-
tural globalisation are bringing new forms of organised crime to the fore, requir-
ing the development of new and innovative ways of policing to provide protective
services. Concomitantly, there are more local citizen demands for enhanced lev-
els of neighbourhood security in respect of their experiences of crime and antiso-
cial behaviour in everyday life.
Confronted with this array of demands, that are sometimes coherent, but at other
times in competition with each other, police leaders are now constantly seeking
ways to reform their systems, processes, and practices so as to juggle their finite
resources. One manifestation of this ongoing reform dynamic is that there is
increasing interest from within the police service about the available ‘scientific’
evidence for ‘what works’ in delivering the varied objectives of contemporary
policing. Indeed, there is a rapidly growing section of the academic literature that
pivots around this question.4
One of the recurring problems for students of policing interested in identifying
what works and explaining how and why this is so, concerns our ability to ade-
quately capture and represent the complexities associated with even the most rou-
tine policing activities. As Manning (2003) has noted, policing ‘on the ground’ is
enmeshed in a web of situational and structural contingencies. Officers negotiate
these on a regular basis through recourse to a range of what are best termed
‘craft’ skills. These are the ways of doing policing, often learnt informally ‘on the
job’, rather than through prescribed tuition, that officers employ to deliver polic-
ing services to the public in accordance with the range of pressures that they are
subject to.
3. The debates around this issue are ably summarised by Richard Ericson (2006); see also Innes and
Jones (2006).
4. See for example the collection edited by Bayley (1992) and Weisburd and Eck (2004).

16 Part I Concepts and Questions
The idea that effective policing is often more a craft than a science has featured
strongly in many discussions of both crime investigation and foot patrol work. In
this chapter, with my focus restricted to the latter, the accent is upon trying to
unpack some of the craft dimensions of the foot patrol officer’s conduct. But in so
doing, my intention is to illuminate the logics and rationalities that explain how
and why particular strategies and tactics work, in order to start to map out the
bases of what I am terming a ‘science’ of police street craft. Labelling an approach
as ‘scientific’ can sometimes provoke trouble, as it is a term that some believe is
possessed of undesirable positivistic overtones. My deployment of the notion of a
‘science of street craft’ is, however, intended in a more descriptive and pragmatic
way, referring simply to an evidence-based description of the principles govern-
ing how something works. Thus a ‘scientific’ perspective on police street craft
seeks to illuminate how it is very often not purely craft based at all. Rather, there
are distinct principles and logics in play that govern the capacity of this aspect of
policing to secure certain outcomes.
This notion of a ‘science-based craft’ of policing is encapsulated in the approach
adopted by the National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP) that ran in the
UK between April 2003 and 2005. The NRPP formulation of Reassurance Polic-
ing as a style of policing designed to reduce levels of neighbourhood insecurity
whilst increasing public trust and confidence in the police can be understood as
‘reinventing’ some of the core features of earlier ‘community policing’
approaches. But where Reassurance Policing differs from its predecessors and
moves things on is that the policing process developed was more prescriptive,
structured and systematic than was the case with previous iterations. The NRPP
can thus be said to represent a scientific approach to police street craft in that it
set out clearly defined hypotheses about the causal changes required if police
interventions were to reduce insecurity, and boost trust and confidence.
The Chapter starts with a brief summary of the results of the outcome evaluation
of the NRPP to establish what it accomplished. The main body of the chapter
then focuses upon the three key components of the Reassurance Policing process
and unpacks their individual and collective contributions to producing the out-
comes previously detailed. In the final concluding section, some more general
reflections about the role and functions of contemporary policing and the mean-
ings of reassurance therein are provided.
2.1 Evaluation
The programme evaluation of the NRPP conducted by researchers from the
Home Office included both a process and impact study (Tuffin et al., 2006). The
latter was based upon measuring changes over time across a variety of objective
and subjective indicators anticipated as being amenable to being influenced by
the sorts of policing reforms being introduced. The process evaluation compo-
nent was designed to provide some measure of the quality of implementation in

2 Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of Reassurance Policing 17
each site so that this could be related to the outcomes achieved. In all of the sites,
an attempt to introduce a broadly similar policing process was enacted, in accord-
ance with the key components for Reassurance Policing identified below. For the
purposes of the evaluation though, the sixteen sites were split into two groups.
Six of the sites were assigned ‘matched control sites’ that were broadly similar in
terms of their population and problem profiles. In these control sites no reassur-
ance policing type reforms were introduced for the period of the trial. The pur-
pose of these sites was to try and establish whether those with Reassurance Polic-
ing out-performed those without it, taking into account broader macro-level pat-
terns and trends. The other ten sites had no control sites, but were still subject to
both process and outcome evaluations. These were used to explore how differ-
ences in context and setting influenced the results attained.
Overall, the Home Office evaluation found that, taken together, the evidence pre-
sented provides a consistent picture which shows that positive change in key out-
come indicators in the trial sites, such as crime, perceptions of antisocial behav-
iour, feelings after dark and public confidence in the police, was attributable to
the National Reassurance Policing Programme (Tuffin et al., 2006: 93). Compar-
ing the six trial sites with their matched controls, the data gathered from a range
of sources, including a telephone survey of local residents about their percep-
tions, experiences and attitudes, and police recorded crime data, suggested that
across a number of key indicators, on average the trial sites out-performed the
others. Table 1 below summarises some of the key results:
It can be seen that with respect to confidence in the police, on average this was
ten points higher in the NRPP trial sites than in the control sites. Likewise, there
was an average five percentage point difference in self-reported victimisation and
a ten percent difference in the number of people who thought the crime rate was
increasing between the trial and control sites. This latter result is of particular
import because reducing crime, although a predicted benefit of the approach
adopted, was not defined as a key aim for the programme. Rather, the objectives
for the NRPP were to demonstrate the feasibility of engineering decreases in lev-
els of insecurity (including public perceptions of crime and fear of crime), whilst
simultaneously increasing public trust, confidence and satisfaction with the
police.
Table 1 Percentage Difference Between Trial and Control Sites for Key Indicators
Indicator % Difference between Trial and Control Sites
Confidence in police
Self-reported victimisation
Perceptions of crime
Feel safe in area after dark
Know local police
+12
-5
-11
+4
+10

18 Part I Concepts and Questions
Presenting aggregated data as in Table 1 obscures the extent to which there were
significant differences across each of the individual sites in terms of the indica-
tors that registered improvements during the trial period and the variations evi-
dent in terms of how much change took place. Furthermore, some of the sites
actually saw negative changes for some of the indicators, whilst more positive
shifts were present in others. That changes induced by policing have complex
effects upon levels of neighbourhood security is confirmed by the evidence from
the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), one of the largest, best
resourced and most carefully evaluated attempts to implement community polic-
ing yet seen. Indeed, in the very early development of the NRPP, CAPS was an
important influence, although as described later on, the NRPP rapidly developed
its own identity and orientation.
In his interpretation of the CAPS and its achievements, Skogan (2006) methodi-
cally dissects what programme effects were achieved and for whom. His analysis
shows that different segments of Chicago’s citizenry accrued different benefits
from the systematic reforms of the police that were undertaken city-wide. The
patterns involve an intersection of race and class. White, comparatively affluent
residents saw modest gains over the decade concerned, but then their conditions
were not that bad to start with. The largest and most impressive gains from the
CAPS reforms were experienced across the black communities. English-speaking
Latino communities accrued some benefits also, but their Spanish speaking com-
patriots actually experienced a deterioration in their situation. This simply con-
firms how important it is to be aware that the benefits of community policing
reforms may not be uniformly distributed.
One aspect of the CAPS that Skogan’s discussion carefully attends to is the sheer
scale of the struggle that went into reforming the delivery of policing across the
city. At different times the impetus stalled and was only recaptured with consider-
able effort. It is also important to note that the initial gains obtained in Chicago
were fairly modest, but started to accumulate over time and as the reform pro-
gramme developed. The positive outcomes attributed to Reassurance Policing
listed in Table 1 were achieved within the space of twelve months, suggesting not
only that it accomplished impact across a range of indicators, but that this hap-
pened comparatively quickly also. This begs the question ‘how did this happen?’.5
2.2 Reassurance policing
The model of Reassurance Policing that was tested was built upon three key
ingredients. It predicted that in order to boost neighbourhood security in an area,
the police needed to:
5. Of course this raises an altogether different concern about the sustainability of these changes,
which the data from Chicago is much better placed to address than the NRPP.

2 Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of Reassurance Policing 19
• ensure that their officers on patrol were visible, accessible, familiar, and effec-
tive;
• target the signal crimes and signal disorders that function as ‘drivers’ of inse-
curity in neighbourhoods through systematically and proactively developing
community intelligence on such issues;
• co-produce solutions with community members and partner agencies wher-
ever possible.
The combining of these components seemed to work in different ways in differ-
ent neighbourhoods, depending upon both the particular approach adopted by
the police and also the contextual situation in which their interventions were
introduced (Innes and Jones, 2006). In what follows, I seek to explain the partic-
ular contribution that these factors made to the changes induced by this style of
Reassurance Policing.
2.2.1 Visibility and presence
The connection between police visibility and reassurance was first formally artic-
ulated by Charles Bahn (1974). Although his recommendations for increasing the
visibility of patrol officers were somewhat esoteric,6 his basic contention that
police visibility has public value, albeit this may be difficult to calibrate, was nev-
ertheless fundamentally correct. Following the publication of the results of the
Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment that found random police patrol had
no discernable impact upon area crime rates (Kelling et al., 1974), the utility of
traditional uniform patrol strategies was widely and profoundly questioned. What
Bahn’s formulation points to, however, is that whilst uniform patrol may have lit-
tle measurable impact upon recorded crime rates in an area, it may nevertheless
have an important role in shaping citizen perceptions of their security. Ditton
and Innes (2005) suggest that this is because high visibility foot patrols may func-
tion as a form of ‘perceptual intervention’ reassuring people that there is the
capacity for formal social control to be enacted quickly should the prevailing
social order be threatened or breached in some manner.
Early on in the NRPP therefore, a key strand of the research effort was focused
upon investigating precisely what could and could not be achieved through rais-
ing the visibility of police patrols. The findings from this work suggested that
actually the situation was quite complex. In one of the trial sites the police teams
deliberately increased the number of high visibility patrols in the area. Prior to
doing so though, they engaged in a communication campaign to inform the local
population what was going to happen and explain why. When the research team
questioned local people about their reactions to these changes the response was
overwhelmingly positive. In a second site, a similar intervention was introduced,
6. For example, he advocated employing tall red-haired officers and officers standing on podiums in
public places!

20 Part I Concepts and Questions
but crucially, no public communication campaign was performed. In the absence
of an explanation as to why there were suddenly a lot more police in the area,
local people mistakenly interpreted the increase in policing as an indicator that a
critical incident must have taken place. The difference in the public reactions to a
similar intervention thus clarifies that increasing police visibility is not always
and everywhere going to have a positive influence upon public perceptions of
security. Indeed, the engagement of ‘shock and awe’ policing tactics, such as high
profile raids conducted by officers in full public order kit, can raise community
fears and concerns, and have a detrimental impact upon neighbourhood security
(Innes and Jones, 2006).
The research evidence from the NRPP suggested that rather than simple co-pres-
ence (although this is important), the visibility of policing needed to be thought of
as a ‘cognitive’ issue. Thus rather than simply thinking about how much time or
the number of occasions that police officers are seen in an area, from the point of
view of a member of the public, their visibility actually depends upon the quality
of these sightings and what they are perceived to be doing. As such, the notion of
‘presence’ better articulates some of these more nuanced aspects of visibility and
how people react to policing in their neighbourhoods. For there are a number of
methods through which police can enhance their presence that do not rely on
their physical visibility. This is where the linked notions of accessibility and famil-
iarity come into play. For if officers are accessible to people and known to them,
then this buttresses and supports how visible they are perceived to be.
The idea that police need to be visible, accessible and familiar in order to reassure
the public was introduced in a report by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary
in 2001, thus pre-dating the inception of the NRPP by a couple of years. But the
way in which the notions of accessibility and familiarity are used in this report is
slightly misleading in that they omit from consideration some important aspects
of what the public are seeking from the police. Citizens do not just want to be
able to get access to the police, they want to be able to tell an authority figure
about the things that are worrying them and have these concerns taken seriously.
This is in contrast to a system of only being able to contact the police remotely via
telephone. Likewise the significance of the concept of familiarity requires clarifi-
cation by juxtaposing it with what it is not. For the idea of a familiar police officer
implies a scenario in which the person dealing with a call for service will be famil-
iar with the history of a place and its people and will therefore understand the rea-
sons why a particular incident may trigger pronounced concern in a community.
The contrast here is with a purely reactive police response where officers will be
despatched all over a given territory to attend to calls for service but, in so doing,
will never be able to bring to bear a thickly descriptive, detailed and nuanced
understanding about the area concerned and its particular problems.
A major problem with the visible, accessible and familiar conceptualisation of
Reassurance Policing as originally propounded by HMIC is that it posits that
police can have a positive impact upon levels of neighbourhood security without

2 Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of Reassurance Policing 21
requiring any actual interventions to address an area’s situated problems. The
limitations of this overly simplistic and ‘police–centric’ approach were revealed at
an early stage of the NRPP research. A number of forces experimented with try-
ing to make their officers more visible, accessible and familiar, but this failed to
generate the anticipated results when members of the public in these areas were
questioned about it. An explanation for this was identified by the NRPP research
team. They found that whilst increases in visible patrolling seemed to have a
short-term positive impact upon public perceptions, after a while people’s expec-
tations ‘recalibrated’ to the new level of police presence. The intensive and
detailed research conducted by the researchers identified that when people say
that they want ‘more bobbies on the beat’, as they often do when surveyed, what
they really mean is that they want an effective police presence available that is
responsive to their local needs. As such, visibility, accessibility and familiarity are
a necessary but not sufficient condition for reassuring the public.
2.2.2 Co-production
Within the community policing tradition, the idea that solutions to local crime
and disorder problems should be co-produced has been a recurring theme. Two
recent research studies have examined in detail the significance of co-productive
arrangements for the conduct of community-oriented policing work. Patrick Carr
(2005), in an ethnographic case study of a neighbourhood where the Chicago
Alternative Policing Strategy was being developed, identifies that the deliberate
fostering of community-based collective efficacy by the police, was a central
explanatory factor for why, after two failed attempts, the community he was stud-
ying was eventually able to exert enhanced social control over local youth gang
and gun crime threats. Contrastingly though in a second recent study, this time
conducted in Seattle, Herbert (2006) found that contemporary communities are
rarely able to fulfil the demands and expectations that community policing
approaches make of them. Moreover, Herbert is quite sceptical about the depth of
the police’s commitment to engaging with and consulting communities.
Skogan’s (2006) assessment of CAPS and the value of co-production is more pos-
itive though. He found that some of the biggest benefits from engaging with the
police and participating in their social control and problem-solving efforts were
obtained in those communities that most needed such interventions. Impor-
tantly, it was not just white, middle-class neighbourhoods where the police’s
engagement mechanisms established traction, but this also occurred in more eth-
nically diverse and deprived areas. Having said this though, overall, according to
Skogan, perhaps the more significant improvements in co-production related to
the relations between the police and other City Departments whose activities have
some bearing upon community safety.
In terms of its theoretical positioning, the NRPP established a strong accent upon
the value of co-production. In practice though, it was evident that the participat-

22 Part I Concepts and Questions
ing forces adopted different approaches to co-production. Some focused their
efforts upon improving their relationships with partner agencies in the local
councils, in an effort to improve their efficiency and effectiveness in dealing with
physical disorder and antisocial behaviour, for example. This was part of how they
responded to the ways that social and physical disorder incidents often featured
as key triggers for concern in neighbourhoods, as will be discussed in more detail
in the next section. In other sites, the emphasis adopted was more explicitly upon
improving relations with members of the local communities. In two of the trial
sites in Lancashire for example, there was a particular emphasis and success in
getting local people who were living with the problems involved in identifying
and delivering solutions. The police helped to organise ‘community clear up days’
on some of the estates with high levels of physical disorder. They also invited
community representatives to participate in neighbourhood management meet-
ings and in some places, as the process has matured, these representatives have
taken over from the police in chairing these events.
Harnessing the social capital present in communities and the resources pos-
sessed by other agencies is an important dimension in terms of how neighbour-
hood police officers can act upon levels of insecurity. Effective community offic-
ers do not try or need to solve all the problems afflicting an area themselves. They
are able to draw upon a range of local resources that provide alternative ways of
manufacturing solutions according to the nature of the problem concerned. In
some instances this will involve enforcement actions utilising their police pow-
ers. Other problems may be better addressed by other agencies, and for still oth-
ers, sustainable solutions may be found by drawing upon the informal social con-
trol capacity of communities themselves.
It is clear however that, looking across the NRPP trial sites, there were marked
differences in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency of the co-productive work-
ing that was achieved. Synthesizing the trends evident in the empirical research
for this programme, together with the analysis provided by Carr (2005) and Her-
bert (2006), it appears that certain things need to co-occur in time and space if
community members are going to participate in an ongoing and deep relation-
ship with police. The three crucial factors being:
• A shared definition of the situation where there is agreement between co-resi-
dents about the presence of a risk or harm, in the form of ‘signal crimes’ and
‘signal disorders’, that warrant some form of intervention. This is a necessary
condition for people to become motivated to want to try and do something.
However, in the absence of an ongoing problem, or alternatively, if the nature
of the threat posed is too grave, the likelihood of securing a collective desire
amongst community members to engage with the police over time is likely to
be seriously constrained.
• Motivated individuals need to possess sufficient bonds and social organisation
to enable them to engage with the police in a coherent manner and present
their concerns with a collective voice. The capacity to articulate a collective

2 Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of Reassurance Policing 23
dimension to their needs provides a sense of political impetus in terms of how
they are received by the police.
• The police themselves need to have a genuine commitment to co-productive
working.
In the absence of any one of these three factors, it is unlikely that a meaningful
form of partnership working between police and public will develop.
The significance of this formulation is that the evidence from the NRPP suggests
that the desire of many local communities to interact with the police in the ways
envisioned by the architects of community policing approaches may be situa-
tional. In effect, many communities do not require and are not seeking an ongo-
ing and highly inter-dependent relationship with their local police. Rather, from
time to time, in light of the occurrence of particular signal crimes and/or disor-
ders, their concerns or anxieties may become particularly acute, and it is at these
moments that they will look to the police for enhanced support, presence and
action. This concept of ‘situated need’ is important in that it contrasts with many
of the ideas about community engagement that tend to circulate within police
organisations. An assumption seems to have grown up amongst police officers
that one of the indicators of success for community policing programmes is the
capacity to build sustained relationships with local publics. This may however be
an unrealistic and unnecessary aspiration. What the NRPP data seems to suggest
is that for some neighbourhoods the nature and severity of the chronic crime and
disorder problems they experience means that sustained patterns of engagement
will be required. But for many others, what is being sought is a more bounded
interaction that can be activated as and when required. As such, the key require-
ment for the police is to establish mechanisms to enable this to occur.
Engaging with communities was absolutely central to the NRPP formulation of
Reassurance Policing. Its importance lies not only in co-producing solutions, but
also in affording a mechanism for identifying and locating the signal crimes and
disorders that are functioning as ‘drivers’ of neighbourhood insecurity. The
research conducted for the NRPP clearly demonstrated that there are marked var-
iations between individual neighbourhoods in terms of what incidents and inci-
dent types function to signal the presence of risks and threat to people (Innes,
2004). Therefore, a systematic and structured approach to the conduct of com-
munity engagement is a prerequisite for identifying valid and reliable data about
what are the signal events influencing security in any neighbourhood.
2.3 Signal crimes
The Signal Crimes Perspective (SCP) provided the ‘theoretical engine’ for the
NRPP approach. Building upon Umberto Eco’s semiotic (1976), and Erving Goff-
man’s (1972) more symbolic interactionist conceptualisations of the role and sig-
nificance of signalling processes in social life, it was developed to provide a con-

24 Part I Concepts and Questions
ceptually rich understanding of how people interpret and react to the various
risks, threats and harms that they encounter (Innes, 2004). Applied to the prob-
lem of policing communities and neighbourhoods, the SCP offers unique and
innovative insights into social reactions to crime, antisocial behaviour, physical
degradation and social control.
The central proposition of the SCP is that some crime and disorder incidents pro-
foundly alter how people think, feel or act in relation to their security. These sig-
nal crimes and signal disorders can be separated from the buzzing static of the
background noise of everyday life, that derives from the array of incidents that
induce no such cognitive, affective or behavioural changes. It is an approach that
proposes a new way of looking at crime and disorder, and it is for this reason that
it is labelled a perspective. Rather than concerning ourselves with aggregate
crime rates in any area, the SCP suggests that the key influence upon levels of
neighbourhood security are these incidents that when they occur signal the pres-
ence of risk and threat to people.
Importantly, the SCP is founded upon a formal conceptual framework which
specifies that all signals are comprised of an ‘expression’, ‘content’ and ‘effect’. If
any of these are not present, then the incident is not a signal but simply noise.
The expression is the incident itself. For example, if someone says they saw an
assault in the town centre, then assault is the expression. The ‘effect’ is the
change that is induced as a result of an awareness of the incident. So if the person
above said that as a result of seeing the assault they ‘felt afraid’ or ‘ they no longer
visit that part of town’, then these are both effects. As noted above, signal effects
can be grouped together according to whether they influence how people think,
feel or act about their security. Signal contents are connotative in nature and
relate to a sense of risk that is communicated by the occurrence of the incident in
question, thereby connecting an effect to an expression So continuing the assault
exemplar, if the person said as a result of seeing the assault they no longer let
their children go to that part of town, we can detect a sense that they perceive
there to be risks to their significant others.7
As a core component of the NRPP, extensive and intensive research was under-
taken in each of the trial sites in order to identify what the key signals in all of the
neighbourhoods were. This revealed that, in terms of making sense of their
safety, people attend to social and physical disorder incidents more often and
ascribe them greater significance, than they do the more standard types of crime
that police in the UK have increasingly focused their resources on over the past
two decades. The logic for this was concisely articulated by one member of the
public who whilst being interviewed about local problems said: “Yes it is almost
daft, but graffiti is the thing that sort of bothers me more because it is in my face
every day. I mean obviously rape and murder are more horrendous crimes, but it
is graffiti that I see”.
7. A more detailed account of the composition of signals is provided in Innes (2004).

2 Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of Reassurance Policing 25
The salience of disorder has, of course, previously been noted by Wilson and Kel-
ling (1982) as part of their broken windows thesis. They asserted that the pres-
ence of untreated disorder in an area was criminogenic, generating fear that cor-
rodes the workings of informal social control, thereby over time leading to higher
crime. Recent attempts to empirically test this longitudinal explanation of change
have raised doubts about its overall validity (Taylor, 2001; Sampson and Rauden-
busch, 1999).
Although there are certain affinities between them, in that they both recognise
that incivilities and the material traces of these are central rather than peripheral
considerations in matters of neighbourhood security, there are also important dif-
ferences between the broken windows and SCP approaches. Most notably,
whereas Wilson and Kelling (1982) cast disorder as criminogenic, the SCP main-
tains that there are certain crime and certain disorder incidents whose occurrence
in particular situations triggers profound and consequential social reactions. So
some crimes generate insecurity, but others do not. Likewise some disorder inci-
dents change how people think, feel or act about their security, but others do not.
As such, the central concern is not to unpack the trajectory of how disorder pro-
motes crime as per broken windows, but rather how particular incidents give rise
to a range of negative effects at both the individual and neighbourhood levels.
These effects can include things like fear or a less pronounced form of worry,
attempted out-migration out of an area, investing in personal security equipment,
and labelling particular groups (especially youths) as troublesome. By differenti-
ating with precision between the varied effects that individual signal events gen-
erate, rather than misleadingly lumping them all under the broad heading of ‘fear
of crime’, the SCP enables a nuanced and textured analysis of how crime and dis-
order are shaping perceptions of security to be built up.8
Applied to the conduct of Reassurance Policing, this ‘richer picture’ of neighbour-
hoods and their problems has particular utility, in that it provides a detailed diag-
nostic of which incidents and incident types are having a particularly pronounced
impact upon citizens’ conceptions of their security. Contrasted with standard fear
of crime surveys which are typically used to determine which segments of the
population are more fearful, the SCP approach provides a form of information
about crime, disorder and social control events and their effects that has a far
more direct utility for police. For rather than just categorising individuals and
groups according to their fearfulness, it systematically identifies what are the
‘drivers’ of their insecurity. In this regard, it functions as a form of community
intelligence for the police (Innes, 2005).
It is important to clarify precisely what are the implications for the conduct of
policing of understanding neighbourhood problems through a ‘signal crime’
lens. For on the one hand it suggests that police need to widen the range of their
8. For a more detailed critique of the fear of crime concept see Innes (2004) and Ditton and Innes
(2005).

26 Part I Concepts and Questions
‘radar’ in order to be aware of the ‘full spectrum’ of issues that impact upon
neighbourhood security. They cannot reassure people about their safety if they
artificially restrict their remit only to those crimes that are the focus of central
government performance targets. It is now clear and the evidence is irrefutable,
that disorder matters to people. The presence of physical and social disorder can
be troublesome for people because it is liable to be interpreted as a signal, a cue,
that the local social order is unable to exert sufficient social control to prevent the
occurrence of such a problem. Consequently, other problematic issues might rea-
sonably be expected to occur there also.
But at the same time as it requires police to think about this full spectrum of pos-
sible concerns, the SCP delimits the issues that police must engage with. Central
to its approach is the idea that not all the crime and disorder problems that occur
in an area will have an equivalent ‘signal value’. Some problems will be more
influential in a particular context and thus the requirement is that police calibrate
their resources in a way that responds directly to the situated demands and needs
of individual neighbourhoods.
In many ways, having police focus upon those crime and disorder incidents that
exert particular influence over levels of public concern and insecurity marks a
return to some of the traditional craft skills that patrolling officers used to man-
age their beats in previous eras. In a time before police had routine access to
detailed and constantly up-dated crime, incident and performance data, success-
fully managing public order on their beat required an officer to take account of
and focus upon those incidents that might impact negatively upon the percep-
tions and feelings of safety and security of their local community. Albeit in a
more structured, systematic and evidenced format, the SCP advocates something
of a return to such principles. Drawing upon theoretical insights from semiotic,
sociological and social psychological theories, the SCP develops a conceptual
framework that suggests that there are solid principles and rationales for police
attending to those incidents that signal the presence of risk and threat to people.
And for assuming that dealing effectively with these types of incidents represents
an effective route for managing neighbourhood security. In sum then, it suggests
that there is a science to the craft of patrol work.
Conclusion
There are now several largely descriptive accounts of Reassurance Policing in the
academic literature (Herrington and Millie, 2005; Crawford, Lister and Wall,
2003). These have, however, failed to interrogate the conceptual significance of
the idea of reassurance, and the implications it has for how we understand the
form and functions of policing in the contemporary era. For the notion of reas-
surance captures something quite important about the police function, what it
can and cannot achieve, and the public value of policing. Reassurance as a con-
cept recognises that policing cannot provide a total and unassailable sense of

2 Toward a Science of Street Craft: The Method of Reassurance Policing 27
security. Neither does it cling to the rhetorical pretence that the police can really
‘control’ crime. We live in a complex, rapidly changing world where exposure to
and the negotiation of a panoply of risks is now an ineradicable feature of every-
day life, and profound uncertainty and insecurity are increasingly prevalent con-
ditions (Ericson, 2006). The causes of these social problems lie outside of that
which policing can ordinarily directly affect. But what the idea of reassurance
does convey is the sense that, if properly configured and delivered, policing can
mediate and mitigate aspects of the insecurity that is part of our contemporary
existence. By tackling signal crimes and signal events effectively and in a timely
fashion policing may be able to reduce the sense of precariousness and uncer-
tainty that people experience to a more tolerable level. Such modesty in our aspi-
rations is important. For it places limits around what precisely we ask policing to
accomplish.
What the development and evaluation of Reassurance Policing provides is some
sense of definition about the role that the police can and should play in managing
both objective and subjective aspects of living in precarious times. But perhaps
more importantly it integrates into its key processes and systems evidence-based
approaches to managing the perceptual field. In this sense there is a scientific
basis to the craft of policing neighbourhoods.
Bibliography
Bahn, C. (1974). The reassurance factor in police patrol. Criminology, 12, 338-45.
Bayley, D. (1992). What Works in Policing. New York: Oxford University Press.
Carr, P. (2005). Clean Streets: Crime, Disorder and Social Control in a Chicago Neighborhood.
New York: NYU Press.
Crawford, A., S. Lister and D. Wall (2003). Great Expectations: Contracted Community Polic-
ing in New Earswick. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Ditton, J. and M. Innes (2005). Perceptual intervention in the management of crime fear.
In: N. Tilley (ed.) The Handbook of Community Safety and Crime Prevention. Cullomp-
ton: Willan.
Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ericson, R. (2006). Crime in an Insecure World. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Goffman, E. (1972). Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Harper
Colophon.
Herbert, S. (2006). Citizens, Cops and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Herrington, V. and A. Millie (2006). Applying Reassurance Policing: Is it “Business as
Usual”? Policing and Society, 16 (2), 146-63.
Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (2001). Open All Hours. London: HMSO.
Innes, M. (2004). Signal crimes and signal disorders: notes on deviance as communicative
action. British Journal of Sociology, 55 (3), 335-55.
Innes, M. (2005). What’s your problem: signal crimes and citizen-focused problem-solv-
ing. Reaction Essay. Criminology and Public Policy, 4 (2), 187-200.

28 Part I Concepts and Questions
Innes, M. and V. Jones (2006). Neighbourhood Security and Urban Change: Risk, Resilience
and Recovery. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Kelling, G., T. Pate, D. Dieckman and G. Brown (1974). The Kansas City preventive patrol
experiment. Washington D.C.: The Police Foundation.
Manning, P. (2003). Policing Contingencies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sampson, R. and S. Raudenbush (1999). Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces:
A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighbourhoods. American Journal of Sociology, 105
(3), 603-51.
Skogan, W. (2006). Police and Community in Chicago. A Tale of Three Cities. Oxford/New
York: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, R. (2001). Breaking Away From Broken Windows. Boulder, Co.: Westview Press.
Tuffin, R., J. Morris and A. Poole (2006). An Evaluation of the Impact of the National Reas-
surance Policing Programme. London: Home Office.
Consult: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/hors296.pdf
Weisburd, D. and J. Eck (2004). What can the police do to reduce crime, disorder and fear.
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 593 (1), 42-65.

Part II Reassurance Policing in Different
Contexts

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured:
Significance within a Flemish Context
Paul Ponsaers and Marleen Easton
Introduction
Is Reassurance Policing (RP) more than a new concept that is exported from the
United Kingdom to Belgium? Those who drop the term in the middle of the
police environment, will immediately notice that the concept has by no means
has settled and is still perceived as a new buzzword. Many tremble at the idea of
yet another new concept.
In this contribution we discuss the conceptualisation of RP as mentioned earlier
in the introduction of this book. Firstly we want to reflect on the underlying
assumptions of the concept of RP and relate it to the Broken Windows theory.
Secondly we position RP with respect to the existing police models (such as the
military-bureaucratic police model, lawful policing, community (oriented) polic-
ing and the public/private police model) and ask the question whether RP could
become a new police model. Can/must RP be distinguished from the existing
models and if so, on the basis of which characteristics/criteria? Thirdly we will
check the extent to which the ideas of RP resonate in Belgium, and in which
form. What can RP offer to security and police policy to Belgium? How does the
discussion translate in Belgium? In this way we want to anchor the arrival of this
‘innovation’ in the fundamental discussion regarding Belgian security and police
policy.
3.1 The British model: reassurance policing
3.1.1 Broken windows policy theory and disorder policy
Martin Innes and Vanessa Jones offer the policy theories regarding crime, disor-
der9 and feelings of insecurity which are at a premium at this moment in the UK
(Jones and Innes, 2002). For that purpose they conduct a thorough analysis of a
number of recent central policy documents in the UK. They reach the conclusion
9. For the purpose of clarity: in this contribution we use the term ‘incivilities’, which has become cus-
tomary in Belgium instead.

32 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
that the broken windows thesis of Wilson and Kelling has been very influential in
British policy thinking (Wilson and Kelling, 1982).
Innes and Jones point out that the thesis of Wilson and Kelling is a chronology, a
sequence, which implies a causality in terms of causes (incivilities) and effects
(crimes). This causality means that the non-reduction of incivilities in neighbour-
hoods, such as broken windows, will bring more disorderly behaviour and cir-
cumstances. Because of this, feelings of insecurity will emerge in local residents,
who will develop a more defensive attitude, and make less use of public spaces.
The neighbourhood will then take on a grim and inhospitable character. Those
who can afford it will leave the neighbourhood, whereas the others, who lack the
resources, will remain. The consequence of this would be, according to Wilson
and Kelling, a reduction of ‘natural supervision’ and ‘informal social control’. Ulti-
mately the former neighbourhood would cease to exist and, as it were, an ‘inva-
sion’ would take place of people with criminal intentions, who are attracted by
and survive well in such an anonymous and uncontrolled biotope. Finally, small
crime will grow from bad to worse, and result in serious forms of crime. This is –
in a nutshell – the broken windows thesis, which apparently is frequently sup-
ported in the British policy documents.
Innes and Jones conclude that this thesis suggests that such an escalating cycle
can be prevented quasi-exclusively through ‘disorder policing’. The maintenance
of public order and safety will, as it were, create a spiral that reinforces itself,
which leads to a type of urban renaissance. Disorder policing could stop incivili-
ties and – as a result – also prevent crime. Innes and Jones point out that this way
of thinking has found its way into policy in the UK in a subtle (and sometimes
pronounced) way, but was eventually transformed into the dominant policy the-
ory. More crime and feelings of insecurity supposedly result from incivilities,
antisocial behaviour and vandalism. Innes and Jones call it the uncontested
orthodoxy of the governmental approach.
Empirical grounds which support the broken windows thesis are mainly of
American origin. On the one hand there was the research of Wesley Skogan
(1990), who combined data on 40 residential neighbourhoods from five different
studies in six American cities. Skogan reported that poverty, instability and the
ethnic composition of neighbourhoods strongly correlate with neighbourhood-
bound crime and incivilities. He suggested that his findings are consistent with
the arguments of Wilson and Kelling and that direct action against incivilities is
an appropriate way to fight crime and neighbourhood disintegration. In the
meantime, Skogan’s conclusions have been contested. Innes and Jones point out
that Harcourt retested the data used by Skogan in 2001 (Harcourt, 2001). He
found in four of the five data sets no statistically significant link between incivili-
ties and crime existed. Skogan only reported on the one statistically significant
link he found, and even that does not seem to hold up convincingly under scru-
tiny.

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance within a Flemish Context 33
On the other hand there was of course the substantial drop in the official crime
figures in New York during the nineties. Some academics and practitioners
attributed this result to a police strategy which was based on the broken windows
thesis. They based their conclusion on the fact that the order maintenance polic-
ing strategy appeared to be effective in the underground. Incivilities were elimi-
nated and a sharp decline in crime resulted. For them, this was proof that the bro-
ken windows thesis works and that a disorder policy produces positive results.
Innes and Jones refer to Ben Bowling’s criticism of the New York success story
(Bowling, 1999). Bowling argues convincingly that the aggressive police style is
only one contributing factor in the decline of the homicide rates in New York. For
Bowling the rise, but especially the decline of the crack (cocaine) market provides
a far more empirically soilid explanation. Innes and Jones quote even more
empirical material which shows aggressive police interventions increase feelings
of fear rather than reduce them.
In short: Innes and Jones argue that the simple one-to-one relationship between
incivilities-fear-crime and disorder policing cannot be demonstrated scientifically
and that various other processes in a community play a role. Moreover they argue
that the majority of research that supports the broken windows thesis are of
American origin, which cannot simply be transposed to the UK, where the cir-
cumstances, after all, are very different.
3.1.2 Innes and Jones: a plea for ‘tailor-made’ policing on a micro level
Innes and Jones refer to the, again American, research by Weisburd et al. (2004)
on the spreading of crime in so-called micro-locations in Seattle. They observed
that crime generally remains quite stable over time in such places: 84% of the
street segments they examined revealed a stable pattern. However, they also
observed that a small proportion of these places showed explicit rises and falls.
Weisburd et al. argued that it is this small proportion that is ultimately responsi-
ble for urban crime trends. With this they suggest that crime falls and rises can-
not be seen as a city-wide process. Instead they are concentrated in a small group
of micro-locations. Based on this research Innes and Jones argue in favour of a
policy that focuses on social processes in a limited number of ‘key neighbour-
hoods’ and takes into account local circumstances in micro-locations.
Another study that probingly examines neighbourhoods is that of Sampson and
Raudenbush, carried out in Chicago, again in the US (Sampson et al., 1997;
Sampson and Raudenbusch, 1999). They studied, among other things, the rela-
tion between neighbourhood incivilities and crime. The researchers reached the
conclusion that structural characteristics, mainly concentrated poverty, were
strongly related to physical and social incivilities. An increase in collective ‘effi-
cacy’10 (hereafter referred to as ‘social resistance’), however, predicted lower
10. ‘Efficacy’ can be translated as social resistance. Also called: powerfulness, forcefulness, effective-
ness or firmness. ‘Efficacy’ is defined by the authors as ‘the connection between on the one hand
social cohesion and mutual trust and on the other side shared expectations with regard to interven-
tion and support with regard to social control in the neighbourhood’.

34 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
observed and perceived incivilities, and crime figures when these structural char-
acteristics were kept under control. It is possible to infer from these results that
both incivilities and crime result from a combination of concentrated inequality
on the one hand and the level of social resistance on the other. It is therefore logi-
cal that the authors decide that an incivilities policy by means of disorder policing
can offer no barrier against criminality. After all, both phenomena (incivilities
and crime) have communal causes, i.e. the lack of social resistance.
Innes and Jones also refer to the work of Taylor (2005), again a piece of American
research. Taylor discovered that differences in feelings of fear were greater
between individuals than between neighbourhoods. Taylor points to individual
differences, e.g. gender, that modulate the concern regarding security and the
involvement of the neighbourhood. In most of the cases fear proved to be gener-
ated as a result of differences between inhabitants who reacted to similar ecologi-
cal circumstances. Innes and Jones infer from this that feelings of fear are barely
influenced by a disorder strategy within the framework of a broken windows
approach. If crime control is an important factor in urban development, it makes
no sense to use an underlying incivilities-fear-crime theory.
Innes and Jones thus conclude that much urban security policy is oriented on the
broken windows thesis whereas there is an insufficient empirical basis to justify
this. Not much high quality research on this topic is available in the UK, and the
research in the US – that partly offers support for the thesis – cannot simply be
transposed to the UK, where circumstances are very different. There is need for
more thorough research at the micro-level, research that takes fundamental
methodological progress into account, and studies the relation between crime,
incivilities and feelings of fear on the one hand, and a broader range of other
social and situational factors on the other.
3.1.3 Risk signals and antisocial behaviour
Martin Innes strongly emphasises the idea of ‘risk signals’ in the conceptualisa-
tion of what people have started to call RP (Innes, 2005a). His analysis here is
based on the subjective problems regarding feelings of insecurity. His starting
point is the observation that fear of crime should often be understood as ‘fear of
disorder’. He bases his approach on the results which originate from the British
Crime Survey (Wood, 2004) which showed that three-quarters of the respond-
ents felt that antisocial behaviour was ‘a very big’ problem in their personal sur-
roundings. Many also expressed the opinion that this type of behaviour was
increasing considerably. Young people were usually pointed out as the cause of
the problems, and vandalism was often named as the most important problem.
This conclusion is however in strong contrast with the observation that the ofi-
cially recorded crime in the UK decreased significantly or at least stabilised.11
11. One can of course ask the question whether the recorded crime is a suitable parameter for this.

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance within a Flemish Context 35
Innes therefore wonders why, in a period in which it is commonly accepted that
there is a real decline in victimisation, more people are worried about physical
and social ‘disorder’.12
In order to formulate an answer to this question he carried out large-scale
research in the UK within the framework of the National Reassurance Policing
Programme.13 This research showed that people gear their behaviour mainly on
perceptions of possible risks. People apparently perceive various types of risks which
are linked to various types of problems. To one person risks are linked with them-
selves or significant third parties, others perceive risks to property, whereas still
others talk about a more general risk for the social and/or moral order. It also
became clear that this risk assessment is not related to the material circum-
stances of specific incidents, but rather to the ‘threat references’ those people
experience in their surroundings. Or the only democratic form in which policy is
conducted: this would upset the balance much.
From the research it first became clear that these ‘threat references’ differed radi-
cally from location to location and were therefore strongly geographically deter-
mined. Innes concluded that a nationally organised survey, such as the British
Crime Survey, insufficiently manages to grasp the local diversity of feelings of
insecurity (in this context it would be better to speak of fear of incivilities).
Secondly it transpired that – for public opinion – physical and social ‘threat refer-
ences’ often represented stronger and more coherent indicators for the public
than the crime types on which the criminal law body focuses, whereas the police
and judicial authorities usually experience these indicators as too trivial. Thus, for
example, respondents proved to be far more worried about the physical and social
incivilities that drug use brought along, than the drug use in itself. From these
research findings Innes infers that people ‘read’ the observed, visible incivilities
as an indicator of social order and control, and the effectiveness with which the
authorities handles this. If there are visible indicators of certain problems, public
opinion tends to interpret (to read) them as an indication of more general local
problems of insecurity.
Innes also makes a third, important, observation. When asked for a general clas-
sification of the incivilities phenomena, the strongest incivilities indicator turned
out to be ‘noisy youths hanging around’, especially because they ‘would destroy
property’. When the young people themselves were asked they identified ‘other
groups of young people’ as causes of incivilities, this time especially because of
‘threats and violence’. More in-depth (semiotic) analysis made clear that the
strong signal value of ‘young people’ was especially related to the lack of homoge-
12. Here again: translated as ‘incivilities’ in the continuation of the text.
13. 300 in-depth interviews were carried out with persons in 16 different regions in the UK. During the
interviews they were asked their experiences of crime, incivilities, police and social control in the
personal neighbourhood and outside.

36 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
neity in the activities of the young people and therefore the large diversity in their
behaviour. In short: young people are ‘read’ as too unpredictable.
Innes explicitly distinguishes his approach from the broken windows thesis. To
him incivilities are not important because they generate more serious forms of
crime, as Wilson and Kelling suggest, but because incivilities generate ‘indicators’
of risks and threats, especially when various forms of incivilities become visible at
the same time.
Central in the concept of RP is the ‘signal crimes-theory’. Martin Innes derives
the meaning of a signal from semiotics and applies it by means of insights from
social sciences to the relation between media, crime and feelings of insecurity. He
notices that ‘What is becoming apparent is that through a combination of co-
present and mediated experiences, individuals and groups interpret and define
some forms of criminal and disorderly conduct in a way that shapes their beliefs
and behaviour about risky people, places and events’ (Innes, 2004a).
The starting point of the signal crimes theory is that some forms of crime and
incivilities have a disproportionate effect on the public perception of risk and
insecurity in the neighbourhood. A ‘signal crime’ is defined as any criminal inci-
dent that has an impact on the behaviour and the perception of the population
regarding insecurity. A ‘signal disorder’ is defined as any action which disturbs
agreements/habits regarding social order and suggests to the presence of other
risks. The latter can also be of a social or physical nature.
In practice this means that on a neighbourhood level a distinction is made
between three types of priorities, namely police priorities, acute and chronic
neighbourhood priorities. Police priorities are related to the traditional tasks of
the police, namely law and public order policing. Acute neighbourhood priorities
refer to problems which are a priority for a limited section of the local residents,
such as family problems, intoxication and abuse. Chronic neighbourhood priori-
ties are identified by a large section of the local residents as problems with a dis-
proportional negative impact on their perception of risk and insecurity. Problems
mentioned include graffiti, antisocial behaviour, illegal dumping and vandalism.
Community intelligence is required to be able to make this distinction: the police
need information from the local residents in order to be able to detect signal
crime and disorder.
3.1.4 Implementation of a strategy and pitfalls
Innes refers to reassurance policing as a strategy with three central pillars. The
first pillar is a high visibility of policemen who are known in the neighbourhood.
The second pillar is that the police focus on ‘signal crimes’ and ‘signal disorders’,
identified by the community as the most important forms of crime and incivili-
ties. The third pillar is that informal social control is stimulated by the communi-

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance within a Flemish Context 37
ties themselves. This is regarded as an impulse to stimulate the responsibility of
citizens regarding safety (Innes, 2004b). In this strategy the following elements
are central (Irving, 2005):
• involve local residents;
• discover which incidents and situations have a ‘signal quality’ (a dispropor-
tional negative impact on feelings of insecurity and well-being);
• use problem-solving methods in association with key figures and interested
parties to find a cost-effective solution;
• implement the solutions in a clear visible way and encourage inhabitants
where possible to participate, or make them feel they are involved in improv-
ing a number of matters;
• communicate the results in such a manner that social resistance among the
local people increases (either individually or as a group).
However, this theory is not without risks (Irving, 2005). Policy documents, con-
cerned with evaluation14 of the national programme, dwell on the pitfalls and
indicate that they cannot be avoided in the implementation of the programme.
The most important pitfalls are:
• the difficulty is consensus regarding priorities which have an indicator func-
tion;
• it is difficult achieving for the police to collect data about public attitudes (this
requires training);
• removing problems with an indicator function does not have the desired
effect on feelings of insecurity;
• the impact of the media exceeds all others;
• the elimination of problems with an indicator function is unrealistic;15
• the population is not always interested in participating (the result being over-
and underrepresentation of certain groups);
• it is not always possible to free up the necessary resources (proportion
between local and federal governments).
To avoid these pitfalls as much as possible, an appeal was made to Martin Innes.
‘Innes provides a systematic methodology for obtaining Community Intelligence
on Signal Crimes and Disorders that are the focus of Reassurance Policing’ (Irv-
ing, 2005). So he also provided methodological support. We note that among
other things the problem-solving SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assess-
ment) method (Braga et al., 1999) is used to identify ‘signal issues’. Table 1 illus-
trates this method as it is used in the policy documents.
Williamson points out that it is important to distinguish between aspects that the
neighbourhood finds important and aspects which are important from a strategic
point of view, from a meso level. He agrees that signal crimes must be tackled but
he indicates that they must be placed in a wider context (Williamson et al., 2006).
14. The Home Office and more specific the Research, Development and Statistics Directorate are
responsible for the evaluation of the programme.
15. To what extent do the problems shift?

38 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
3.2 Reassurance policing: relation to police models
To determine whether RP can be considered as a police model, we start from the
essence of what we can consider as a police model. A police model implies basic
assumptions about the role and the place of the police in society, and in this way
generates clear answers to key questions with regard to (1) police discretion, (2)
the role of the law, (3) responsibility, (4) the relationship with the population, (5)
professionalization, (6) legitimacy, (7) prevention and (8) proactive/reactive
police force policy (Ponsaers, 2001). On the basis of these eight core themes four
police models can be distinguished: the military-bureaucratic model, lawful polic-
ing, community policing and the public-private police model.
It is essential that these police models are not viewed as consecutive in time: one
model does not follow from the other. The described models are logical deduc-
tions, not chronological episodes. This means that the choice for a model during
a police reform is not a necessary consequence of the time in which we live, but
rather a programmed choice. Thus community (oriented) policing, for example,
is not a post-modern phenomenon, but a voluntary and conscious choice from
various possibilities. From this point of view a police model always has – to a cer-
tain extent – some prescriptive aspects concerning ‘the kind of police/policing we
want’. From this it immediately follows that any police reform process is not a
unilateral process without alternative possibilities. A ‘point of return’ is never
reached; there is a constant risk of returning to more conservative models. It is
therefore possible to see reform as an ongoing process which is never completed.
During this process police models are constantly evaluated with respect to their
social effectiveness and in particular with respect to the degree to which they
Table 1 Summary of the Reassurance Policing Strategy
SCAN ANALYSIS / RESPONSE ASSESS
Preparation Engage the
public to
identify signal
events
Engage partners,
build networks,
Agree public
priorities
Neighbourhood
action
Strategic
plan and
action
Review
progress
What do we
know
already?
What do we
need to
know?
Can the police
engage with
local people
directly?
Do we need to
work through
intermediaries?
What are the
signals that are
driving local
insecurity?
Which signals
matter most for
the local
people? What
are the root
causes?
Who are the
stakeholders
who can
contribute to
solutions?
What can we
realistically
achieve and
how?
Which issues
can we target
immediately?
Which issues
need strategic
intervention
and resources?
What
strategic
resources
can we
allocate to
neighbour
hood
policing?
What
difference
have we
made?
Have
people
noticed?
Do people
feel safer?
(Source: Brochure ‘In Control’)

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance within a Flemish Context 39
make a contribution to reducing crime. From this point of view a police model
also bears an empirical cognition, in other words ‘the results of the experience’.
Moreover the way in which a certain police model is dominant in an overall police
structure is related to the type of society in which the police operates. Further-
more each concrete police organisation can be considered a combination of police
models. After all a police organisation is not synonymous with a police model.
In order to be able to position RP, we briefly define four police models on the
basis of the eight core themes (mentioned above), or strong ‘archetypes’. With
this description, the attentive reader will immediately see how many elements
from the RP concept, as defined above, appear (indicated in italics). We will come
back to this a little later.
• The military-bureaucratic model scores as follows on the eight topics: (1)
police discretion: mostly internal rules and hierarchy, (2) the role of the law:
especially law and order, (3) responsibility: a lot of internal and no external
responsibility, (4) relationship with the population: a large gap between popu-
lation and police force, (5) professionalization: the strict obeying of rules, (6)
legitimacy: absence of disorder and monopoly on physical violence, (7) preven-
tion: emphasis on repression and (8) pro/reactive policing: focus on control
and reactive actions.
• The lawful policing model scores as follows: (1) police discretion: compliance
with the rule of law, (2) the role of the law: what can police do without the
law?, (3) responsibility: a large autonomy, (4) relationship with the population:
public as informants, (5) professionalization: high degree of specialisation, (6)
legitimacy: the law legitimises, (7) prevention: nonexistent, more focus on
repression and (8) pro/reactive policing: reactive interventions.
• Community (oriented) policing is characterised by: (1) police discretion: the
need for ‘smart policing’, (2) the role of the law: the law is a means, (3) respon-
sibility: strong emphasis on external responsibility, accountability, (4) relation-
ship with the population: partnership, co-production, (5) professionalization:
tendency to despecialisation, (6) legitimacy: focus on democratic values, in
relation to democracy, (7) prevention: strengthening of informal social control, (8)
pro/reactive policing: emphasis on proactivity.
• Finally, the public-private police model can be characterised as follows: (1)
police discretion: outside the limitations of the law everything is permitted, (2)
the role of the law: not the law, but the will of the customer is the guiding principle,
(3) responsibility: external responsibility with respect to customers and contrac-
tor, (4) relationship with the population: the population are viewed as possible
customers and contractors, (5) professionalization: minimum costs and maxi-
mum result, (6) legitimacy: private interests, (7) prevention: risk calculation
and (8) pro/reactive policing: proactive rather than reactive.
Based on this description, other concepts are regarded as a response to a model
(broad scope policing), a variant of a model (problem oriented policing), as a the-
ory (broken windows policing), as a political instrument (zero tolerance policing)
or as a result of an evolution (technological/intelligence-led policing).

40 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
Summarised, and visualised in the following figure, we can state that RP in itself
is no new police model but rather a strange mix of different aspects, borrowed
from the four basic archetypes of police models. It bears elements of each of
them (see elements, indicated in italics). Nevertheless, it can be argued that dom-
inant elements in a RP-approach stem from a Problem (Oriented) Policing
model, which in turn can be considered a variant of Community (Oriented) Polic-
ing. Elements from existing models such as proactive working, partnership,
responsibility, strengthening informal social control, the public as an informant,
and risk calculation are ‘recycled’ and used in the fight against those forms of
crime and disorder that have a signal function in the neighbourhood. The signal
crimes theory is used to be able to make a selection in the priorities, a selection
which up to now was a weak point in the problem-solving methodology. Further-
more, RP is defined more as a strategy than as a real police model.
Moreover RP can be considered as a political instrument in the sense that it is
aimed at a more positive evaluation of the police. After all it is the intention that
the population is more satisfied with the performance of the police or at least per-
ceives the police as more effective. Each policy maker, and certainly at a local
level, likes to show off a well-functioning police force. And in that context being
able to present decreasing crime statistics together with figures that indicate that
local residents feel safer and perceive their police as effective, is a great bonus.
Whereas these considered police models have a internal logic and a negative ref-
erence to preceding models, we cannot recognise such a build-up when it comes
to RP. In one of the brochures of the ‘National Reassurance Policing Programme’
the term ‘Total Policing’16 is used, which refers to the shuttle movement between
‘hard’ and ‘soft’ policing. It recognises that safety is multiform information which
is both objective and subjective, and integrates both hard and soft methods. This
immediately brings to the fore the very eclectic character of the concept reassur-
ance policing, where all kinds of elements are brought together from various
Figure 1 Articulation of RP to different police models
16. Brochure ‘In Control: From Reassurance to Neighbourhood Policing’. www.reassurancepolicing.co.uk.
Technological/
Intelligence
Led Policing
Military Bureaucratic
Model
Community
(Oriented)
Policing
Model
Variation:
Problem
(Oriented)
Policing
Zero
Tolerance
Policing
1
Lawful Policing
Model
2
Traditional Models Modern Models Postmodern Models
3
Broad Scope
Policing
Variation:
Reassurance
Policing
Theory:
Signal
Crimes
Theory:
Broken
Windows
4
Public/Private
Divide
Policing Model

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance within a Flemish Context 41
police models. This reasoning confirms the argument that RP is a variant of the
existing police models.
3.3 Added value for Flanders?
3.3.1 Opportunity structures in centre neighbourhoods of nucleated towns
In the past we have repeatedly criticised the broken windows thesis. In one of our
articles regarding this we called it ‘the parable of the broken windows-theory’
(Ponsaers, 2003; Ponsaers, 2004). It is our conviction that the broken windows
parable supports a number of ideas that in our opinion do not correspond with
the reality of what we find in the neighbourhoods of our Flemish cities. The per-
spective implies a number of presuppositions which do not square with the Flem-
ish reality, but for reasons different than those quoted by Innes and Jones.
It is true that Innes and Jones indeed offer a probing criticism of the broken win-
dows thesis, yet they do not discuss the presuppositions which, in our opinion,
are essential, particularly the assumption that the crime level is determined by
local residents, and the crime is therefore also committed by them. In other
words, their starting point is that this is an intra-class phenomenon. For Innes
and Jones inhabitants and perpetrators live together in those problematic micro-
locations, and in these neighbourhoods there are structural characteristics in a
concentrated manner, particularly poverty. The starting point of the authors is
expressly that offenders commit offences in their own neighbourhood and do not
choose on the basis of opportunity structures which certain areas – not necessar-
ily neighbourhoods – offer (Sampson and Groves, 1989).
To examine this presupposition in the Flemish context we carried out an exhaus-
tive analysis of the empirical data which we have at our disposal with regard to
registered crime in Flemish cities and municipalities (Pauwels, 2002; Ponsaers
et al., 2003; Stoop and Pauwels, 2001; Stoop, 2001). From the analysis it became
clear that almost 75% of the registered crime occurred in the nucleated cities and
in strongly urbanised municipalities, where virtually half of the registered thefts
was found in the 13 nucleated cities of the 308 Flemish municipalities. At the
same time we carried out an additional analysis, this time on a neighbourhood
level, the preferred micro-location of Innes and Jones. It was striking that espe-
cially urban centre neighbourhoods and neighbourhoods around proved to attract
the highest percentages of registered crime (Goeminne et al., 2003; Ponsaers et
al., 2005). In short: urban centre neighbourhoods in the city centres turned out to
be the pre-eminent places of perpetration. In addition to that poverty, as a struc-
tural neighbourhood characteristic, was not found to be determinative (in a gen-
eral sense) to increases in the crime figures. In other words, it was not so much
the demographic composition of neighbourhoods of perpetrators, but the oppor-
tunities that perpetrating neighbourhoods offered to those who came from else-
where, a fact which had also been emphasised by other authors in other contexts

42 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
(Stark, 1987). From our analysis it became clear that in many cases the opportu-
nity structures (that the neighbourhoods offer) were, to a large degree, determin-
ing the crime level. In other words, the opportunity characteristics of neighbour-
hoods are giving shape to the unequal spread of crime in Flanders. The main
effect that we found was that urban centre neighbourhoods in nucleated cities in
particular, ran a greater risk of a high degree of crime. Citycentres are pre-emi-
nent perpetration points.
This observation undoubtedly coincides with the historical town flight with which
urban centres in Flanders were faced, and as a result of which urban centre
neighbourhoods usually no longer function as residential centres. It concerns
rather neighbourhoods where we find people who move themselves (users of the
city, much less local residents, both victims and offenders) in high concentrations
of visitors and as a result create high concentrations of certain types of crime.
These neighbourhoods are pre-eminently places where, given the high degree of
anonymity and transience, pickpocketing (where physical density is massive, like
in the underground or train stations), shoplifting (where the shops are), theft
from cars (where many cars are parked during the day), and more, occurs. They
can generally be seen as so-called ‘hotspots’.
Moreover we estimate that urban centre neighbourhoods to a large extent are vic-
timised by theft, and that theft characterises itself precisely by low clear up rates,
usually about 15%. That implies that registered crime figures provide very little
information about offenders and their living environment based on registered
crime figures. In a recent doctoral thesis Pauwels (2006) developed some insight
into these problems by means of self-report study in a Flemish metropolitan con-
text. The thesis shows in a convincing way that socio-structural neighbourhood
characteristics, such as poverty, have no separate impact on delinquent behaviour
of young inhabitants. With this conclusion he aligns himself with the few
researchers who are no longer prepared to transpose the flow of North American
studies to the European continent without any criticism and, more specifically to
Flanders. After all, there transpires to be no ghetto effect, an independent ‘drive’
which takes deprivation characteristics in Flemish neighbourhoods as a starting
point.
3.3.2 The urban grid: diversity of neighbourhoods
The research of Pauwels opens new, particularly interesting perspectives and
contibutes significantly to Belgian police skills. In contrast to the situation in the
UK, where the Broken Windows thesis is dominant according to Innes and
Jones, the official police policy theory in Belgium is still orientated on the original
Community (Oriented) Policing philosophy. The Belgian alternative was grafted
onto a number of essential COP pillars, of which the first is its ‘external orienta-
tion’ (Van Branteghem et al., 2007), which nevertheless involves something
other than the Dutch ‘territorial-bound policing’ theory. The principle of the Bel-

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance within a Flemish Context 43
gian COP model is not so much aimed at being territorial, as a result of which a
possible amalgam between perpetrator and living areas threatens the living areas
again, but it is explicitly aimed at a problem solving approach. The ‘community’
in Belgium is not particularly a geographical description, limited to consultation
with the scarce occupants of urban centre neighbourhoods of nucleated cities, but
is also aimed to intensively involve the urban and neighbourhood users. External
orientation thus implies explicitly the users of the urban centres. It therefore
comes down to not narrowing the term ‘community’ merely to the living area.
‘Wasn’t it a lot cosier in the city in the old days? Wasn’t everything better back
then?’, is what we often hear people say. It then seems as if we have lost some-
thing over the course of time in our Flemish cities. We want to dispute this dis-
course of ‘the loss’. The public space in our cities has never been homogeneous.
For a long time there have been town centres in Flanders which differ greatly
from the public spaces in other residential areas. And it is precisely that diversity
that makes the Flemish town centres attractive. Essentially the city is a melting
pot, a meeting place of opposites, of tonalities of various continua, with both har-
monious and sharp, rancid sides, with both structural living density and pulsat-
ing mobility.
This emphasis implies the recognition of a type of urbanisation. A city is not just
the sum of its neighbourhoods. A city is also a network, a ‘grid’ (Boudry, 2003).
Flemish cities have layered scales or ‘overlays’. Depending on the variety of the
urban function, the geographical scale of the urban reality creates a distinct pro-
file for itself changes: the neighbourhood in the city, the city in the zone, the zone
in the agglomeration, the agglomeration in the province, the province in the
region and ultimately the region in the country. It is clear for example, that the
urban economic and employment policy needs another scale than the living,
security, culture or health policy. Between all these different urban layers exist all
kinds of neighbourhood-transcendent networks, connections, ‘communities’. A
city is a patchwork, but each bit of the patchwork also forms a picture at a higher
level. Those configurations then string themselves together at an even higher
level. This picture of the grid allows us to grasp the city as a moving whole, a mor-
phology in permanent transformation, a multipurpose fact, no longer as a static
fact. Nowadays, some geographers even feel that, from a demographic point of
view, Flanders has developed into one large urban district. The town-dweller is no
longer a barely moving atom in a living area; he has become a nomad in the met-
ropolitan environment. Displacement and delocalisation have become the rule. It
is therefore only logical that crime and insecurity – victim and perpetrator – no
longer allow themselves to be confined to the living area. The spatial control of
daily living has become a fiction.
Not only space, but time has also undergone fundamental modifications in terms
of regulation. The division between labour and free time, introduced at the time
of the Industrial Revolution, has become fluid. Today new forms of technology
and communication drastically restructure the classification of labour time and

44 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
free time. Flexibility and permanent availability have become standards in work-
ing life and in the evaluation of it (Ponsaers, 2000). This evolution inevitably also
has an impact on the Flemish urban temporality. The town dwellers and the users
of the city each have a much more diverse and more fluid time classification than
in former days. Different types of time regimes melt together and move accord-
ing to multiple rhythms. The city no longer closes the city doors when the shop
area closes the entrance door, but takes on a complex time pattern. The same
places in the city have a different climate, another function, another view and
therefore also different forms of crime, depending on the clock.
The deregulation of place and space creates new communities. These communi-
ties cut through geographical and time borders. People are not only part of their
living communities, but also form new (also virtual) communities. In this sense a
mixed society is created, in which a social and cultural mix soon becomes the rule
rather than the exception. Renewed community-specific police will have to let go
of the exclusive idea of the need of recovery of social neighbourhood cohesion.
Fighting poverty, providing social housing, ensuring a sound educational level,
and more must obviously take place, because we advocate for a socially fair soci-
ety. The argument of social justice cannot, however, become an alibi to carry out
more crime control. A socially fair policy must be pursued, but does not replace
the distress regarding multiform safety in the diversity of urban communities.
That is, in our opinion, the real, contemporary meaning of the external orienta-
tion of renewed problem solving and community-oriented police in Flanders,
who no longer believe in the over-simplistic parable of the broken windows (Pon-
saers et al., 2002).
3.3.3 Incivilities and public order
Innes and Jones emphasise that the government in the UK has started to pursue
a disorder policy from the broken windows thesis, and therefore sees this
approach as a strategy to prevent escalation of neighbourhood problems which
could possibly end in a higher crime level. We must conclude that, also in Flan-
ders, disorder policy has developed over the last decade. This tendency in Flan-
ders, in our opinion has been inspired not so much by the broken windows the-
sis, but through very different impulses.
Firstly, we can observe that the handling of some types of minor and frequently
recurring crimes was often more symbolic than real. The overtaxed offices of the
public prosecutor could no longer process the increasing flow of warrants,
became oversaturated, and – ultimately – all kinds of processes started which
have drastically limited this inflow to the criminal justice system.17 On the other
hand the results of the Belgian Security Monitor-survey (Ponsaers, 2006; Pon-
17. For example the system of administrative local sanctions, simplefied warrants or autonomous
police treatment (in these arrangments, the position of the prosecutor’s office becomes less
important).

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance within a Flemish Context 45
saers, 2005; Ponsaers et al., 2001) show that it was especially these disturbing
and unpleasant types of small, frequently occurring crimes and incivilities that
worry the citizens and are the reason for growing feelings of insecurity and wan-
ing confidence in the government (De Kimpe et al., 2006). The conviction grew
therefore that these frequent crime and disorder phenomena could no longer nor
should remain without any government response (De Wree et al., 2006).
Secondly, in our opinion, another important aspect emerged which remained
rather implicit in the discussion on this matter, and is related to the Belgian fed-
eral state structure. In our country the reform of the police continued rather ener-
getically as from 2001. This was much less the case with judicial reform, of which
it is said that it is much more encompassing, more profound, and therefore more
difficult. Nonetheless the conviction predominates that the lack of a criminal law
response to the aforementioned minor recurring crime results from the fact that
the judicial reform is a federal matter, and the conceptions of this question in the
two parts of the country are, very different and are, growing further apart. The
introduction of the Municipal Administrative Sanctions (MAS) therefore allowed
a community problem to be sidestepped. Although here it also concerns a federal
regulation; the introduction of the system allows for the introduction of manage-
rial, administrative fines (imposed by the municipality and town governing
boards) which emphasize different priorities in the different parts of the country .
The MAS-regulation therefore made it possible to resolve a potential community
conflict. Nevertheless it has created a field of tension. Whereas a criminal
approach is explicitly based on the principle of law enforcement, and the law
must be applied in an equal way in the entire country, the managerial MAS-
approach is based on the principle of public order. Such an approach leaves a lot
of space for local diversity and is barely oriented anymore on the principle of
equality. This approach therefore meets with increasing reservations.
Thirdly it must be concluded that a tendency towards the privatisation of the pub-
lic space in Flanders has taken place (Devroe et al., 2005). It includes large limou-
sines in closed car parks which claim the public street, illegal dumping, double
parking, advertising posters in the street, blocking public passages. These matters
provoke – entirely justifiably – a great deal of irritation. These problems are often
called ‘incivility’ problems. The most disturbing form of incivilities is the so-
called ‘annexation of the public space’.18 Here it is about a form of ‘group privati-
sation’ or, to link back to our earlier developed conceptual framework ‘privatisa-
tion by communities’: some even talk about ‘parochialisation’. Public markets and
squares are annexed by certain communities for a specific use and thereby
exclude those that are ‘strange’ (to their own community) ranging from the play
corners for the children, the benches of the third age, the stairs of the skaters, the
corner the dealers, to the hang-out spot of immigrant youngsters … However, the
openness and the public character of the annoyance or damage remains an
18. Like in the research of Innes, also in our research regarding (drugs) incivilities in Belgium ‘young
people’ were indicated as the most frequent category of ‘causers’ of incivilities (Decorte et al.,
2004).

46 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
important criterion for the definition of incivility. The term ‘disorder’ always
refers to a threat of the public order not of the private order. Which is disturbing
for some citizens and causes incivilities, although it is not always a problem for
the public order, and therefore not a problem that must be solved by the authori-
ties. The consequence of this has been an increasing occurrence of semi-public
and semi-private, in which the public order and public police have to make room
for private order and private police. Good community-oriented public police must
acquire and maintain their position in this situation. It can in absolutely no way
allow itself to become unnecessary and to be instrumentalised for the benefit of
certain communities at the expense of others, also: no go areas must be avoided
at all times. Here it concerns the implementation of a balanced policy, for the
recovery of public order which means: guaranteeing the free use of the public
space to everyone. Obviously this is a totally different interpretation of disorder
policing than the one resulting from the broken window thesis which Innes and
Jones justifiably criticise.
Conclusion
Innes argues that reassurance policing is necessary, not because of the stepping-
stone logic that results from the broken windows thesis, but because of the sym-
bolic signals that public opinion reads in visible physical and social incivilities or
risks and threats. Possibly his view is to a large extent motivated by the typical
British context, in which insecurity problems are still much higher on the policy
agenda than in Flanders, as a result of the dramatic terror attacks that the UK has
experienced (Innes, 2004a).
Fortunately Flanders has been spared this to a large degree. The safety problems
in Flanders therefore remain a much more rational policy fact, which is not char-
acterised by a type of public moral panic. This difference in context should not be
underestimated. It is not without reason that the idea of neighbourhood policing
is emphasised again in the UK and the focus is strongly on the area-bound char-
acter of it and also on the hard character of the local police work (Innes, 2005b).
The inspiration for this does not so much find its roots in well-understood Com-
munity (Oriented) Policing, but rather in the idea that the prevention of serious
forms of crime, pre-eminently the terrorism threat, starts with being known on a
daily basis in the field. That then means a police force close to the people.
In this British logic the population is an important supporter in the fight against
terrorism and they are more important to the police than the police are to the
population (Ponsaers, 2002). Such an attitude therefore threatens to end up in a
rather instrumental police conception regarding the population and to corrode
the service attitude of the police with respect to the communities (Innes, 2006a).
In this context it must be taken into account that the UK has a common law sys-
tem and a history of democratic policing, with specific emphasis on policing by

3 Community (Oriented) Policing Reassured: Significance within a Flemish Context 47
consent, visible uniformed police, minimum use of violence, … (Bowling and
Newburn, 2006).
It is thus logical that in such a context growing concern is noticeable for the nega-
tive influence which can arise from terrorist violence on the democratic order and
the routines of our society. Some people are of the opinion that Innes has encour-
aged a tendency in the UK to what is called sardonically ‘pepsodent’ police, with
the image of the wolf in sheepskin in the back of the mind. Yet we feel that this
view does not do justice to Innes’ theory. He emphasises the subjective and
micro-social-psychological processes of the feelings of insecurity among the Brit-
ish people. After all the UK has been heavily hit in the recent past and the popula-
tion has dealt with those terror attacks in a particularly dignified manner. It
seems fitting to explicitly take this into account in such circumstances. Metropol-
itan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair (2005) summarises the current challenge
as follows: ‘How do we balance the demands of serious criminal investigation
with the need for presence and reassurance in public spaces?’
The Flemish context is different, which should not mean that we do not have to
take terrorism threats into account. Nevertheless, in our opinion such an eventu-
ality will not lead to the erosion of the current Belgian COP-conception (Pon-
saers, 2001) by having to anticipate more expressly on possibility of such a risk.
The Belgian COP-variant is explicitly problem-oriented, which means that one
aims at the problems which are concretely under discussion. It concerns a no-
nonsense attitude, with the, in our opinion, correct, sensible emphasis. A proac-
tive attitude, which a COP vision also always implies, can therefore not allow pos-
sible threats with which our country could be faced to dominate.
In that sense one can wonder whether it is advisable to so dominantly orientate
the Belgian National Security plan on the so-called ‘threat image’ that is set by the
federal police. Because of this there is the risk that the objective and subjective
insecurity problems – which people concretely experience – disappear into the
background in favour of threats they do not experience as problematic. Of course
prioritising policy is always a balancing exercise between locally experienced
needs on the one hand and national security concerns on the other (Vandevoorde
et al., 2003). Local consultation and management cannot be absolute. But in our
opinion the risk of instability in our country lies elsewhere, particularly where
organisational interests of one component of the ‘Integrated Police forces, struc-
tured at two levels’ drives the federal level to give the ‘supra local, serious, organ-
ised and complex crime types’, with the terror threat at the top of the list, a more
prominent place than is necessary in a Problem (Oriented) Policing concept.
For us RP is a very useful supplement to the Belgian variant of Community (Ori-
ented) Policing.
• We have become more aware than before that we must leave the overly-sim-
plistic broken windows thesis, and that European reality is really different
from this one which is being forced on us from the American continent. This

48 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
consequently implies that COP policing must not limit itself to a mere disor-
der policing strategy.
• It also teaches us that local must not be reduced to a small is beautiful doc-
trine, but that the Belgian COP-police, more than ever before, must take the
layers of society, the great diversity of scales and communities, into account,
and that for this reason the structuring of a new police force on various levels
is a necessary, subsidiary fact.
• Essential also is the message of Martin Innes to continue to dovetail as closely
as possible with the concrete experience and perception frameworks of the
participants in our society, even when these seem disproportional or trivial to
police and judicial authorities. COP must take people seriously, RP teaches us.
This is possibly the most important lesson which we must learn from the rich
body of thought that our British colleagues have developed over the past years.
We must be careful not to consider RP as a new, replacement police model for
Community (Oriented) Policing (Innes, 2006b). The large merit of Innes and his
colleagues is to keep the COP-dynamic lively, and to not freeze the COP-vision in
a rigid straightjacket. After all a good police vision is one that lives and trans-
forms according to societal changes. Nevertheless there is a risk that introducing
a new concept like RP draws the attention away from the actual core discussion in
the police landscape.
The trend that Bowling and Newborn (2006) indicate is more fundamental in
nature and in our opinion it deserves explicit attention. The security agenda is
becoming more and more hybrid in nature, and contains internal, external, mili-
tary, criminal and civil threats. In the future the legitimacy of the police will hinge
on their positioning as a player in the global sphere of security. This challenge is
such that in the future it will influence the task implementation of the police, at
least such as we know it at present, and will raise important governance ques-
tions with regard to democratic control and accountability.
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4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs.
‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory
Bas van Stokkom
Introduction
Dutch police surveys show that citizens find issues such as ‘drunkards on the
streets’ and ‘drug-related troubles’ more threatening than issues like ‘violent
offences’. When asked which situations result in feelings of insecurity, the item
‘places where juveniles hang around’ is mentioned most often. In British Crime
Surveys the item ‘young people hanging around’ also takes the lead (Wood,
2004). Apparently citizens – in certain circumstances and under particular condi-
tions – are more sensitive to incivilities and disorderly behaviour than to crime
(Innes, 2004). Dutch citizens also take the view that the police should fight disor-
der problems more effectively. The police should be more visible in neighbour-
hoods (Elffers and De Jong, 2004).
How to interpret these patterns? Theorists like Skogan (1990) and Roché (2002)
point out that accumulated disorder problems such as public drinking, group loi-
tering and school disruption give the impression that the local community lacks
moral consensus and neighbours cannot be trusted. Incidental disorderly situa-
tions are not annoying, nor are they found to be morally objectionable. But the
high frequency of these situations makes them disturbing. A mass of incivilities
may unsettle everyday life and makes them unacceptable. They might even sug-
gest that society itself has been eroded.
If insecurity feelings are correlated so strongly with neighbourhood disorder, the
police and local security policies must be affected. Whereas Dutch figures con-
cerning burglary and theft have been dropping for several years, vandalism fig-
ures are still rising (Wittebrood and Nieuwbeerta, 2006). Some disorder prob-
lems, such as persistent antisocial behaviour, are at the centre of public concern.
For these and other reasons Dutch urban policies try to improve the security and
quality of life, especially in poor and vulnerable neighbourhoods (Van Stokkom,
2007).
In this respect reassessing the broken windows theory may be promising. The
authors of that theory, Wilson and Kelling, stressed that order maintenance is
actually the core of police-work. In the criminological world the theory was
severely criticised, notably because the ‘root causes of crime’ were neglected;

54 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
moreover the theory came to be identified with New York City zero tolerance
policing. Without doubt the broken windows theory accelerated theorizing on
policing. But as a result of over-politicised discussions several convincing ideas
had no real bearing on theoretical innovations concerning police strategies. Some
potentially fruitful aspects of the theory were neglected. To find out its real value I
will pass over the mystified case of New York and make an inventory of various
research evaluations on controlling and fighting disorder.19
‘Disorder policing’ may serve as an umbrella for various approaches to enhance
security and quality of life in problematic urban areas, from aggressive
approaches like zero tolerance in New York to approaches that stress consultation
and cooperation with citizens and professionals. However I will claim that the
principles of disorder policing are only met when police programmes correspond
with some core ideas which were formulated by the theorists of broken windows:
police strategies should be attuned to the ‘collective needs’ of the residents, whilst
the neighbourhood defines what the ‘appropriate level of public order’ should be.
An example of this kind of disorder policing is the alternative police programme
in Chicago where citizens are invited to participate in a collective process of indi-
cating and prioritising crime and disorder problems. Another example is the
recently implemented reassurance policing programme in England in which
local ‘signal events’ are collectively discussed and dealt with. Can these pro-
grammes give an impetus to bring peace and order in vulnerable and problematic
urban areas?
So this chapter outlines broader developments; reassurance policing is viewed as
‘only’ one of the variants of disorder policing. I will first deal with the theory of
broken windows policing. After sketching the core principles, the main criticisms
are explicated. It is argued that the participative role of residents in defining order
is a fruitful idea, and that advocates and critics of the theory share the view that
‘disorder’ is a theoretically relevant concept, and that disorder can have many det-
rimental effects, such as lowering neighbourhood status. After this reinterpreta-
tion of broken windows theory, the Chicago alternative police strategy and the
English reassurance-programme are described briefly. As mentioned, these pro-
grammes make considerable efforts to consult residents when it comes to assess-
ing and prioritising disorder problems. In the last sections I will discuss in which
respects disorder policing could renew the theory and practice of Dutch commu-
nity policing. I will deal with some complicating factors but I will claim that a
‘politics of order’ offers a more fruitful perspective for policing than ‘classic’ crim-
19. The New York success story relies mainly on political symbolism. Many big cities in the United
States had similar crime drops as New York. Some of these cities, for example San Diego, did not
use aggressive strategies of order maintenance like New York did. While in San Diego the man-
power of the police force increased by 6 percent between 1990 and 1995, the number of New York
police officers rose in that period by nearly 40 percent. And while in New York – still in the same
period – the number of arrests rose sharply (for instance twice as many drugs-related arrests), the
number of arrests in San Diego fell by 15 percent (Greene, 1999). This suggests that New York was
far more successful in selling the radical decline of crime (Punch 2006; Manning 2001).

4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory 55
inological and law enforcement perspectives, especially in marginalised neigh-
bourhoods.
4.1 What is wrong with broken windows theory?
4.1.1 The theory
In their now classic article in the Atlantic Monthly (1982) Wilson and Kelling for-
mulated their thesis as to how disorderly behaviour attracts crime and causes
neighbourhood decay. Residents tend to withdraw when they notice that antiso-
cial behaviour gets the upper hand and the surroundings are dirty and depraved.
They are not prepared to exercise informal control. ‘Vandalism can occur any-
where once communal barriers – the sense of mutual regard and the obligations
of civility – are lowered by actions that seem to signal that “no one cares”.’ Defiant
youth groups claim the streets and get more opportunities to commit crime. Con-
sequently, neighbourhoods run into a negative spiral: predatory troublemakers
from outside the neighbourhood are invited to join unruly insiders. Thus, signs
of social and physical decay would trigger a ‘criminal invasion’: ‘serious street
crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behaviour goes unchecked.’ Con-
versely, restored social networks and clean streets would re-establish informal
social control and keep crime at a distance.
When commenting on the broken windows theory this supposed causal relation-
ship between disorder and serious crime (like assaults and robbery) gets the most
attention. But the theory comprises aspects that are regularly underexposed. One
of these core aspects is the idea that the prime task of policing – its raison d’être –
is regulating public behaviour and maintaining social order. Wilson and Kelling
stress that detecting and apprehending criminals is only a means to an end, not
an end in itself. The objective is order, an ambivalent concept to be sure, but a
concept that residents often recognise and interpret in common ways. Unlike dis-
cussions about legal rules there are no general standards to settle arguments
about order and disorder. A judge would be powerless, but the police officer is
forced to interpret disorder problems and to make a choice.
The authors point out that earlier police generations concentrated their work on
order maintenance. Only in the sixties did attention shift to law enforcement and
crime fighting. The relation between order maintenance and crime prevention
faded into the background. To protect individual rights and prevent stigmatisa-
tion the police were not to focus on the behaviour of, for instance, beggars,
vagrants, drunks and unruly youth. Rather, disreputable behaviour that ‘harms
no one’ like public drinking and prostitution should be decriminalized to end the
‘overreach’ of criminal law.

56 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
Wilson and Kelling criticise the idea that the police should stick to law enforce-
ment. The police should strengthen the informal social-control mechanisms of
‘natural communities’ in order to minimise fear in public places. ‘Law enforce-
ment, per se, is no answer. A gang can weaken or destroy a community by stand-
ing about in a menacing fashion and speaking rudely to passers-by without break-
ing the law.’ Arresting some mobsters wouldn’t help because the remaining
youngsters keep on claiming street. According to Wilson and Kelling: ‘If an arrest
is the only recourse for the police, the residents’ fears will go unassuaged.’ For
that reason the authors suggest that chasing away gangs would be more effective.
Doing nothing would demoralise the neighbourhood: ‘Failing to do anything
about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community.’
Policing disorder, Wilson and Kelling stress, should be congruent with ‘commu-
nity needs’. The police should protect the community, not only individuals. Crime
statistics and victim surveys only determine individual harm, but do not measure
community losses.
The problem is that harm is interpreted solely in individual terms. What’s good
for the individual, is also supposed to be good for the community. But some indi-
viduals tolerate behaviour that is intolerable for many others, and the reactions of
these others – fear, withdrawal, flight – may ultimately make matters worse for
everybody.
These views return in Kelling and Coles’ study Fixing Broken Windows (1996).
Citizens are chiefly concerned about daily threatening behaviour and ‘in your
face’ indignities. These experiences may be more detrimental to a neighbourhood
than incidental crimes, especially when the social fabric is affected. Shopkeepers
can manage some robberies, but not persistent intimidations. For that reason,
contextual problems that affect the local community rather than incidents should
direct police action. The police should take care that community life, conceived as
‘preventive capital’, remains intact.
Kelling and Coles argue in favour of a neighbourhood oriented crime prevention,
a kind of community policing that comprises the following aspects (1996: 158/9):
• a broad policing function: keeping the peace and restoring public order;
• reliance of police on citizens to get information about neighbourhood prob-
lems;
• eschewing general tactics, like preventive patrol and rapid response to calls for
service, in favour of specific tactics, targeted on particular problems, in coop-
eration with citizens.
Crime prevention is the prime task, which calls for visible and authoritative police
action. The authors stress that order maintenance is risky because there is often
no legal backup. Residents may object to police decisions. At the same time order
maintenance often relies on an aggressive style, because timely intervention in
disorder problems requires ‘hands-on’ approaches.

4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory 57
4.1.2 The theory criticised
Without doubt the broken windows theory is innovative, simply because attention
is guided away from the ‘garden variety crime’ that generally occupies the mind
of criminologists. The theory stresses contextual factors, and may be viewed as a
theory of urban demoralisation or urban decay. The chief innovation, or one
could say, provocation, is that the root causes of crime (poverty, racism, bad hous-
ing etc) do not play a role. The solution for urban disorder problems lies in the
hands of the police and the residents themselves.
These suppositions of the theory have met with considerable criticism. Particu-
larly the presumed causal relationship between social and physical disorder and
serious crime seems to be erroneous. The claim that decay and dereliction must
lead to crime seems to be untenable. In his impressive longitudinal study of Bal-
timore city areas Ralph Taylor (2001) found that neighbourhood status and pov-
erty are far more relevant to explain crime than disorderly behaviour and incivili-
ties. And after meticulously studying Chicago neighbourhoods Sampson and
Raudenbusch (1999) concluded that social disorder and crime are both symp-
toms of deeper social and economic lags in development. Thus the sociological
root factors remain forcefully in place.
Besides, there is too much variation in the range of incivilities. In this respect the
findings of Maxfield (1987) are highly important: incivilities do not influence
crime directly, but nonetheless influence what residents believe about crime
(overestimating crime and victimisation risks). He specified that some incivilities
do not influence fear of crime, others do influence some groups in certain condi-
tions. Drunkards and beggars on the street are highly related, street litter and
graffiti (obvious signs that ‘no one cares’) are not related (1987: 33).
The repressive tone in which broken windows is articulated, evoked much resist-
ance. The authors suggest that ‘chasing away’ the homeless and youth-gangs
would offer a solution. They do not seem to reckon with displacement (and thus
postponing finding solutions) and seem to neglect respectful treatment of citi-
zens. The proposal to identify neighbourhoods at the tipping point, ‘where public
order is deteriorating but not unreclaimable’, gives the impression that some
neighbourhoods are so crime ridden that they are actually given up.
The views of George Kelling, who presented himself as the main protagonist of
broken windows, contain many ambiguities. On the one hand he moved away
from the rhetoric of zero tolerance and ‘street sweepings’. In an interview he
expressed that zero tolerance is an ‘illegitimate child’ of fixing broken windows.
The phrase is a ‘political sound bite’ and antithetical to the highly discretionary
activities that broken windows implies (2002: 129). On the other hand he advo-
cates intrusive and aggressive police action. Moreover, in Do Police Matter? (2001)
Kelling and his colleague Sousa jr, applaud New York police strategies and the
tens of thousands of arrests for ‘quality of life’-offences that are involved. Mat-

58 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
thews could be called a proponent of ‘continually recycling the same marginalised
population through the criminal justice system’ (Matthews, 1992: 47). It is hard
to understand why Kelling identifies so strongly with New York policing. Depart-
ing from some basic ideas in the original broken window article – ‘law enforce-
ment, per se, is no answer’; reinforcing informal social control – this strategy
would be no option. So Kelling’s line of thought is ambiguous: arresting huge
number of minor offenders, and giving priority to order maintenance above law
enforcement.
4.1.3 Convincing aspects of the theory
Nevertheless the views of the proponents and critics do converge more than one
might expect. Like Taylor, Sampson and Raudenbusch (1999: 637) recognise the
theoretical relevance of disorder. First, perceived disorder correlates strongly with
fear of victimisation (Taylor, 2001). Perceived disorder also correlates with higher
levels of distrust of police officers and other local professionals. Residents take
the view that their problems are not taken seriously and they feel abandoned by
public organisations (Skogan, 1990; Roché, 2002).
Secondly, when disorder gains momentum, residents lose confidence in their
neighbourhood; they withdraw or move to other parts of town. Dissatisfaction
and feelings of insecurity are the driving forces behind patterns of neighbour-
hood decay. They determine school choice, investments in properties, and trans-
actions on the housing market; ultimately they determine neighbourhood status
and patterns of migration. None of the main critics of broken windows theory,
not even Harcourt (2001), deny the relevance of disorder for neighbourhood
dynamics like moving decisions. In terms of Sampson and Raudenbusch: physi-
cal and social disorder comprise highly visible cues to which residents respond:
disorder problems ‘turn out to be important for understanding migration pat-
terns, investment by business and overall neighborhood viability’. For these rea-
sons disorder could indirectly have an effect on crime (Sampson and Rauden-
busch, 1999: 637).
Thirdly, the broken windows thesis simply suggests that disorder gives more
opportunities for crime. Harcourt (2001) confirms that some groups of offenders
are sensitive to signs of weakend citizenship. As stated, the argument that graf-
fiti, street litter, vandalism or rowdy behaviour would elicit serious crime is not
convincing. However, there seems to be a strong correlation between persistent
antisocial behaviour and crime (Burney, 2005; Koffman, 2006). Thus one could
agree with Kelling and Coles (1996: 243) that policing persistent antisocial behav-
iour gives information about the hard-core ’6 percent’ of youthful offenders. The
high visibility of police in areas characterised by high levels of disorder could also
send a message to ‘wannabes’ and those committing marginal crimes that their
actions will no longer be tolerated.

4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory 59
But regardless of these potentially preventive effects, there are good reasons to
stimulate disorder policing. The ‘classic’ viewpoint that security should be pro-
moted primarily through fighting ‘structural factors’ like poverty, illiteracy, addic-
tion etc. – the ‘root causes of crime’ – remains conclusive in the long run, but
does not offer clear answers. Of course improving education and social policies
does strengthen social competences, but disorder policing – aiming at the imme-
diate goal of neighbourhood stability – remains relevant psychologically in terms
of restoring trust. It safeguards everyday social contacts, regular school attend-
ance, keeping shops open, repairing properties, etc. In other words, residents
need order maintenance to prevent exit-options like avoiding streets or moving
away.
Why not build upon the concept of ‘collective efficacy’ that Sampson and Rauden-
busch have developed? The concept points to ‘the linkage of cohesion and mutual
trust with shared expectations for intervening in support of neighbourhood social
control’ (1999: 612). The concept incorporates both a static ‘mutual trust among
neighbours’ and a more action-oriented ‘willingness to intervene for the common
good’ dimension. This concept is clearly empirically stronger than the broken
windows theory in explaining the connection between disorder, crime and neigh-
bourhood problems (Hancock, 2001). But the question is whether it can provide
guidance in everyday situations. The theory is coupled with deep-seated urban
variables such as ‘concentrated disadvantage’. The reduction of social-economic
disadvantages seems to be a distant prospect and presupposes radical social-eco-
nomic policies (Bottoms, 2006: 268). The question as to which ‘here and now’
interventions could disempower disorder and crime seems to be more urgent. In
short, in vulnerable neighbourhoods where collective efficacy is most needed, it is
less available, and also very difficult to realise. This demanding type of social cap-
ital is hard to develop.
Fighting neighbourhood disorder requires active and sometimes intrusive polic-
ing strategies. These strategies contain a risk that is often mentioned: they are
concentrated on marginal groups as street kids, beggars and prostitutes. How can
negative implications for these groups be prevented? Is there a type of disorder
policing which may protect these groups? Perhaps radical forms of consulting the
neighbourhood population offer a way out.
4.2 Varieties of disorder policing
Disorder policing can be viewed as an umbrella for various policing strategies to
counteract disorder and ‘quality of life’-problems, ranging from aggressive strate-
gies like zero tolerance policing in New York City to more responsive strategies
which focus on cooperation with other local professionals and citizens. It seems
however more logical to limit disorder policing to programmes that take the
‘community needs’ of residents as their starting point, exactly because order is so
difficult to define. According to Wilson and Kelling the neighbourhood indicates

60 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
what the ‘appropriate level of public order’ should be. So disorder policing aims
to make use of the ‘preventive capital’ of citizens, not arresting massive numbers
of citizens for ‘quality of life’ offences as is the case in New York.
What is the ‘appropriate level of public order’? Wilson and Kelling stress that
‘order’ is an ambiguous term and difficult to assess. In Disorder and Decline
(1990) Wesley Skogan reflected further on the problematic nature of determining
order. In former times when the police exuded more authority and communities
were more homogeneous, citizens did not specify order in contested ways. But
nowadays every social or ethnic group within a neighbourhood seems to have its
own view. It is difficult to reach agreement on questions such as what are threat-
ening or depraved situations, and when should one intervene in street conflicts.
What one citizen experiences as ‘nuisance’, is ‘freedom’ to another. In heteroge-
neous neighbourhoods neither the police nor citizen-organisations can claim that
their vision on order is authoritative and is readily complied with. In these condi-
tions, Skogan says, it is a challenge to involve citizens and other relevant parties
explicitly in determining local public order. Order is negotiated, rather than
imposed. In that way policing becomes an open political process.
So it is important to include citizens in determining and selecting disorder prob-
lems, in particular in vulnerable neighbourhoods that struggle with many differ-
ent problems such as drug trafficking, prostitution and intimidating youths.
Actually this view is the starting point of some of the most radical police innova-
tion programmes of the last fifteen years, notably the alternative police strategy in
Chicago (CAPS) and reassurance policing in England. These programmes ‘rein-
vent’ some of the core features of earlier community policing approaches (preven-
tion, cooperation, problem-solving, etc), but also add some ‘new’ aspects: stimu-
lating residents and other stakeholders to find solutions for (contested) local secu-
rity problems, giving high priority to combating disorder (which is also a
consequence of involving the public), and implementing this participation in
structured and systematic ways.
4.2.1 The alternative police strategy in Chicago
Since 1993 Chicago has developed one of the most ambitious and intensive com-
munity policing programmes in the United States. The strategy is implemented
in all 279 police beats of the city. In addition the Chicago Alliance for Neighbor-
hood Safety (CANS) was formed, a body in which police officers educate resi-
dents how to deal with insecurity problems. They try to offer citizens realistic
expectations as to which problems they could solve themselves and which prob-
lems they should not tackle (drug gangs etc.). All 279 beats have monthly meet-
ings in which residents, police officers and other professionals meet. The aim is
to identify and prioritise local problems together, and to develop plans to deal
with them. In smaller civilian advisory committees professionals and citizens
concentrate on the most disturbing problems.

4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory 61
Another chief aim of the programme is to reduce distrust between police and cit-
izenry. The police explicitly embraced the broken windows philosophy, and con-
sequently also the expansion of the police mandate (Skogan, 2006: 179). Never-
theless, CAPS was launched by the city administration. Getting the police behind
this agenda, Skogan states (2006: 317), was the most difficult task of all. Maybe
the innovative aspects of the Chicago strategy are not so much related to its meth-
ods of participation, than with the rigorous long-term organisation and the politi-
cal will to establish and maintain partnerships in every neighbourhood. Besides,
most local administrations wouldn’t dare to initiate such an ambitious long-term
programme (Carr, 2005: 149).
Evaluation studies (Skogan and Hartnett, 1997; Skogan, 2006) show that on aver-
age the monthly beat meetings attract twenty residents. These participants are far
more conscious of disorder and crime problems than non-participants. The latter
perceive less crime and neighbourhood decay, but at the same time have less pos-
itive views about the police. CAPS attracted citizens who did not participate prior
to the programme. Participation of women, blacks and economically poor per-
sons increased. A remarkable finding is that participation in black neighbour-
hoods is just as high as in white neighbourhoods, even in high-crime districts
where the police were unpopular. Participation in Latino neighbourhoods is not
as high, in particular when Latino subgroups do not speak English.
Over the period 1994-2003 crime went down, which is – according to Skogan – in
part attributable to CAPS. In the same period confidence in the police improved
considerably. Popular views of police effectiveness, responsiveness and demean-
our within the ‘three Chicago’s’ (white, black and Latino) increased substantially.
Since 1997 African-Americans reported lower levels of social disorder and decay,
but among Latinos things grew worse (Skogan, 2006: 319). Not much changed
for the city’s white neighbourhoods. Skogan comments that they did not need
community policing in the first place. They already had neighbourhood organisa-
tions and political channels at their disposal to solve local problems (2006: 326).
After studying Chicago beat meetings Archon Fung (2004) points out several
problems. Some beats fail to address priority problems. Often police resources
are allocated in an inequitable way. The ‘natural’ course of participation leads to
‘conflictual paralysis’ in one beat and domination by wealthy and well-educated
residents in another. Often energetic beat facilitators succeed in breaking through
this laissez faire, first come, first served style, manage to put problems of under-
represented subgroups on the agenda, and call in intervention teams to take
action against, for example, drug houses. Thus beat meetings need powerful
facilitators. Fung argues that even in neighbourhoods that lack resources or are
weighted down with internal conflicts, citizens gain more from the new delibera-
tive arrangements than they did from former bureaucratic organisational forms.
In a case study of a neighbourhood watch group in Beltway, a quiet suburban dis-
trict in Chicago, Carr (2005) specifies that only after the initiation of a CAPS-

62 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
structure did citizens receive support from the police and other local public serv-
ices. Consequently, a small group of active Beltway citizens was able to mobilise
resources and initiate partnerships. Carr challenges the supposition that neigh-
bourhoods need strong social networks in order to effectuate crime and disorder
prevention. For instance, campaigns against graffiti are successful thanks to a
small group of activists, and are not dependent on social cohesion.
Without CAPS, Carr stresses, the Beltway activism would have been impossible.
In his view a semi-formal consultation structure between citizens, police officers
and other professionals functions as a blueprint for future prevention pro-
grammes and community policing.
The main factor that stimulates citizens to participate is trust in public profes-
sionals. Even in poor ethnic neighbourhoods consultation and partnerships could
be successful; but they have to overcome ‘legal cynicism’ and the tendency of resi-
dents to tolerate antisocial behaviour (Carr, 2005: 150).
4.2.2 Reassurance policing in England
The Reassurance Policing Programme was recently implemented within the
framework of national neighbourhood policing. The programme aims to reduce
levels of neighbourhood insecurity whilst increasing public trust and confidence.
The programme is built upon three ingredients (Innes, 2007):
• ensure that officers on patrol are visible, accessible, familiar and effective;
• identify specific problems that function as ‘drivers’ of insecurity in neighbour-
hoods through developing community intelligence (particularly through rec-
ognising ‘signal crimes’ and ‘signal disorders’);
• co-produce solutions with community members and partner agencies wher-
ever possible.
The theory of reassurance policing has been influenced by CAPS policing in Chi-
cago and Skogan’s work on neighbourhood disorder and decline (Herrington and
Millie, 2006; Innes, 2005; Innes, 2007). But the reassurance approach adds
important psychological insights. According to Martin Innes who developed the
theoretical framework of ‘reassurance’, a police which operates in publicly visible
ways, communicates a sense of ‘guardianship’ towards residents. Citizens feel
comfortable and safe when they have the impression that the neighbourhood is
under control, and crime and disorder will be dealt with. But high visibility on the
streets is not enough. Police officers should be locally known and knowledgeable,
and be familiar with the history of a neighbourhood and its people; they should
also take residents’ concerns seriously.
Reassurance policing aims to identify local incidents and problems that residents
experience as disproportionally troublesome, and find solutions in co-productive
ways. According to Innes certain visible and sometimes spectacular events or

4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory 63
incidents occupy the ‘collective memory’ of residents; they function as warning
signs for future threats. But also a range of seemingly trivial disorderly behav-
iours, like hanging around on the streets or recurring fighting after closing time
in entertainment districts, may develop into ‘signal events’ that tend to dominate
the psychological concern of residents (Innes, 2004; Innes and Fielding, 2002).
The police have the task of consulting citizens and collecting information about
these ‘signals crimes’ and ‘signal disorders’ that may threaten security feelings.
Before intervening it must be checked whether residents agree about the pres-
ence of these risks or harms.
Subsequently the police (and other parties involved) can develop ‘control signals’.
Innes defines control signals as actions of social control that communicate a
sense of regained peace and order (Innes, 2004). He distinguishes negative from
positive control signals. An example of a negative control signal is not reacting
adequately upon citizen requests to intervene, or failing to give protection against
intimidation. These signals are communicated rigorously to other residents, and
may initiate powerlessness, distrust and ‘exit’-behaviour. Conversely, positive con-
trol signals convince citizens that police officers view order as a serious public
good that they are concerned about.
The first evaluation results one year after the start of the national programme are
promising. There is a positive change in key outcome indicators in the sites that
were matched to control sites: compared with control sites 12 percent of the resi-
dents report more confidence in police, 11 percent perceive less crime, and 5 per-
cent report lower levels of victimisation. Sites that carried out targeted problem-
solving activity and where partners and the community were involved, showed a
significant positive change in public perceptions of juvenile nuisance (Tuffin et
al., 2006: 91).
It is interesting that the programme did not have any effect on ‘collective efficacy’
(measured as the extent to which respondents agreed that residents would inter-
vene if young people were causing trouble and that neighbours would help each
other). Neither did the programme show any effect on public involvement in
community organisations, including neighbourhood watch (Tuffin et al., 2006:
57). This is no surprise: only a small minority of residents are involved in partner-
ships which combat insecurity problems; far more social investments would be
needed to improve social capacity and social cohesion.
4.3 Repositioning Dutch community policing
The Chicago alternative police strategy and the national reassurance policing pro-
gramme in England offer structural and systematic ways to deal with neighbour-
hood problems. Innes (2007) does not hesitate to call the reassurance pro-
gramme ‘a scientific approach to police street craft’.

64 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
What do these rigorous police programmes have to offer Dutch local security pol-
icies? In which respects could Dutch community policing be more attuned to the
theory and practice of disorder policing? And could this help to overcome the
present vulnerable position of community policing?
Since the seventies Dutch police strategies in neighbourhoods have complied
with many suppositions of community policing (building partnerships; operating
in visible and accessible ways; etc.). Pragmatic attitudes within Dutch police
forces promoted consultation and cooperation; problem-solving found broad
acceptance. As a consequence, trust in the police is still high, also compared with
other countries (Van der Vijver, 2006).
Nevertheless Dutch community policing struggles with many problems. In every
police district neighbourhood work is practiced in different ways. How neigh-
bourhood officers are embedded also varies in every district. More importantly:
internal communication within the force often fails and there seems to be a lack
of management-steering. Neighbourhood officers develop their own methods,
optimise their discretional power and often operate in isolation, without much
support from other officers. Many districts have no explicit rules or accountability
structures for neighbourhood-officers. Many officers do not adequately record
structural problems. There seems to be a natural tendency to restrict work to
short-term interventions and run from one problem to another (‘quick fixes’)
(Zoomer et al., 2002).
Moreover, recent national security policies are not really supportive for commu-
nity policing. Since 2002 law enforcement, crime fighting objectives (combating
persistent offenders) and increasing clear-up rates dominate the Dutch policies.
Consequently, promoting co-production work in neighbourhoods got into hot
water and participation in neighbourhood-partnerships stagnated (Terpstra and
Kouwenhoven, 2004). At the same time neighbourhood officers were ‘harassed’
by performance indicators that are alien to preventative work. Nevertheless, the
regime changes in large cities as Rotterdam (Tops, 2006; Engbersen et al. 2005)
did stimulate ‘aggressive’ intervention strategies like removing prostitutes and
addicted junkies from the streets (and forcing many to enter care programmes).
In many respects these strategies correspond with disorder policing objectives: to
bring back peace to the streets. But another objective of disorder policing, that
‘community needs’ should drive these security strategies, seems to be neglected.
Moreover, the ‘preventative capital’ of residents is underutilised.
For these reasons I believe that Dutch community policing would benefit a lot
from attuning strategies to structural programmes of disorder policing. In that
way the eclecticism and opportunism in local community policing practices could
be overcome. Moreover, the theory and practice of disorder policing contain some
approaches that could revise some of the ‘out-dated’ suppositions of Dutch com-
munity policing. The trick is to secure a stronger connection between neighbour-

4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory 65
hood police strategies and the requirements of current local security policies and
to get rid of the label of ‘being soft’. Three suppositions are examined.
4.3.1 Legitimate repressive interventions
Community policing is often associated with communication and cooperation.
But disorder policing shows that neighbourhood officers cannot always present
themselves as ‘social’; they must be able to work in repressive ways when neces-
sary. Often residents in problem areas are not satisfied with communication,
partnerships, and strengthening self-help networks. They welcome police inter-
ventions to control urgent local problems, like open air drug markets.
Order maintenance, as Kelling and Coles state, is in many respects a ‘hard’ police
strategy. It is linked with the ‘natural’ habitus of the police to protect the public
interest in authoritative ways. Moreover, many disorder problems have a collec-
tive nature, their supposed risk or harm is often contested, so intrusive interven-
tions elicit much opposition.
The legitimacy of these repressive strategies, such as removing junkies from the
streets and sending them to rehabilitation centres, could be strengthened
through citizen consultation. This is also true of other rigorous methods like cur-
fews and orders prohibiting contact. These coercive interventions often bring
forth tensions within neighbourhoods and threaten social contacts and coopera-
tion. In these situations ‘community needs’ also could determine local security
policies.
4.3.2 Symbolic order maintenance actions
Reassuring the public cannot be achieved merely through higher police visibility
in the neighbourhood. It is the symbolic communication that counts: police offic-
ers should communicate the meaning of ‘guarding’ and ‘something is being
done’. They should be responsive and committed, and show interest in residents’
narratives to build up trust. Feelings of citizens need to be responded to in such a
way that a sense of urgency is conveyed and residents are stimulated to take their
own responsibility (van Stokkom, 2008).
Community policing can benefit from highly visible actions and interventions to
reduce disorder, even when executed by agencies from outside the immediate
locality. Designing these demonstrative ‘control signals’ is not easy. ‘Shock and
awe’ policing tactics, such as high profile raids, can raise community fears and
concerns, in particular when residents are not informed (Innes, 2007). Municipal
workers, brought in to restore and clean the streets, often do not show responsive
attitudes. Again a necessary condition is that ‘control signals’ reflect community
needs; they should be based on the concerns and perceptions of residents (Innes,

66 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
2004). For instance, preventive search and frisk actions can offer strong signals
of reassurance. They undermine the status of addicts and other intimidating
groups, balance power relationships on the street, and communicate to vulnera-
ble groups that justice counts. But prior to any action, the local population should
be consulted; if those actions meet considerable opposition the police should not
carry them out.
4.3.3 Limited value of social cohesion
Often community policing embraces the high aims of ‘bringing back’ citizenship
and strengthening social cohesion and social networks. As Chicago policing
shows: participation will not get off the ground without the support of police
officers, social professionals and other public servants. Citizens do not fight dis-
order and insecurity spontaneously. As stated before, developing social capital in
vulnerable urban areas demands many long term investments. It is doubtful
whether active citizenship has any fruitful future at all in urban contexts: many
inhabitants are flexible, ready to move elsewhere, and do not want close relation-
ships.
However ‘restoring networks’ and ‘restoring neighbourhood cohesion’ are not
necessary conditions for local order maintenance policies. A successful clean-up
action only needs a small group of dedicated civilians. Members of local partner-
ships constitute a small group of energetic residents. The trick is to identify those
people, and to give them proper professional support (Carr, 2005).
The different suppositions are put together in the scheme below. To distinguish
the two approaches further we should remember that disorder policing is based
on an open political process, in which different interests are recognised. So ‘com-
munity needs’ are always contested.
There are many arguments for adapting Dutch community policing in the out-
lined ways and to introduce systematic participation structures characteristic of
disorder policing. The chance that police interventions fail diminishes when
Table 1 Community Policing and Disorder Policing compared
Community policing Disorder policing
Public order
Strategy
Communication
Social cohesion
Complications
Communitarian
Responsive
Being reachable and accessible
Stimulate
Political
Responsive and repressive
Enlarge security feelings through
co-production of control-signals
Not directly relevant

4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory 67
police objectives are congruent with community needs and expectations. Espe-
cially in vulnerable neighbourhoods in which residents have less trust in police
and police interventions automatically raise critiques, consultation and co-man-
agement may generate positive developments.
Still, a refashioned community policing would raise many practical questions.
First of all cooperation with residents is exacting and extremely demanding. A
spirited beginning may soon be followed by consultation-fatigue. Many partici-
pants in CAPS’ beat meetings feel dissatisfied (Skogan and Steiner, 2004). When
interventions are used continuously or too often, they do not contribute to the
belief in effective police action. Many police officers are reticent about this. They
get involved in what they view as ‘non-traditional’ police tasks such as orchestrat-
ing neighbourhood cleanups or preventing people from giving money to panhan-
dlers.
Secondly heterogeneous neighbourhoods have difficulties defining order. In
inner city areas the expectations of residents, shopkeepers and café owners may
vary considerably. In these politicised contexts police officers and other profes-
sionals are continuously forced to negotiate. When many disorder and crime
problems occur simultaneously the police can do nothing more than control
these (often unsolvable) (cf. Zoomer, 2002: 108/9).
In fragmented and ethnically divided neighbourhoods the police are regularly
tempted to contact only groups who share their vision (‘preference citizens’). In
that case other groups, such as minorities or youth groups, risk becoming the tar-
get of policing; they subsequently become defiant, whilst the police are accused of
being biased. The trick – as practised in Chicago – is to include ‘activists’ from
under-represented subgroups, and if necessary to track these persons through
door-to-door visits.
Public demands for order are often laced with emotions and motivated by ‘paro-
chial desires for injustice, xenophobic antipathy towards others, or unattainable
fantasies of absolute security’ (Loader, 2006: 207). The police must oppose these
claims, often expressed by angered and discontented majorities within neigh-
bourhoods (Crawford, 2007; Bottoms, 2006). The police also should oppose the
idea that prompt responses to incidents are always necessary or that ‘consumer
wishes’ must be satisfied at once. In these cases sworn officers should take up
impartial and authoritative positions that are in line with their task of protecting
the public interest.
Lastly, the police often perceive problems that do not correspond with actual con-
cerns of the neighbourhood population. One might call this the trap of ‘police
centrism’ (Fielding and Innes, 2006: 136): security problems are re-interpreted as
police problems for which only police solutions are available. It is a well-known
fact that performance indicators push officers to approach problems only in law
enforcement terms. But the police are only one of the stakeholders, and disorder

68 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
problems, ranging from truancy to prostitution, are related to social factors which
the police have very little control over.
Discussion
Disorder policing finds its legitimate place mainly in poor neighbourhoods that
lack organisations and political networks. These areas wrestle with high levels of
disorder and crime, whilst residents feel powerless. They are not able to initiate
order in their own territory. The police and other public organisations should
therefore take the lead and set up partnerships, as it is happening in Chicago and
in English reassurance programmes. This seems to be the best way to involve eth-
nic and poor communities in local security policies.
These strategies have far reaching implications and risk pervading the whole
social fabric of neighbourhoods. For that reason Loader (2006) brings reassuring
policing under the heading of ambient policing: raising overall numbers of policing
operatives, coupled with expansive, proactive and visible conceptions of policing.
But I would reply that especially in marginalised neighbourhoods maximalist
strategies are needed, both in terms of co-production and problem-solving. Those
neighbourhoods not only lack organisations, they also struggle with decay, degra-
dation and persistent disorders, often directed at ethnic minorities, where gangs
of youth take the opportunity to ‘annex’ the streets. Against this troublesome
background the idea that only ‘minimal policing’ is ‘good policing’ (Crawford,
2007; Loader, 2006) lacks realism. However, as stated before, maximalist pro-
grammes should be implemented selectively: only in high crime and disorder
neighbourhoods.
A precondition for success is support from the police management, city council
and other municipal organisations. Only when housing corporations and welfare
organisations cooperate and when support facilities are improved, can the social
issues that often lurk behind ‘disorders’ be dealt with. Taking the side of margin-
alised neighbourhoods requires other municipal policies than have been prac-
ticed the last decades: investing in education, care and relief is expensive; the
former bureaucrats who were discharged due to spending cuts in the healthcare
and care sectors have to come back, this time as frontline workers (Van den
Brink, 2007).
Maximalist co-production strategies offer opportunities to empower citizens and
to distance oneself from police routines that automatically target Muslim or Antil-
lean street kids. Disproportional police actions and ‘invasions’ in problem areas
only increase feelings of insecurity. Also Dutch zero tolerance initiatives (massive
fines for minor offences) drift away from co-production and problem-solving.
These ‘lash out’ strategies would generate many counterproductive effects in
marginalised neighbourhoods, interrupting social relationships with ethnic
minorities.

4 Disorder Policing and Community Needs. ‘Revising’ Broken Windows Theory 69
Disorder policing as sketched in this chapter, seems to be at odds with current
trends of crime fighting in the Netherlands. Within the police-management there
is a tendency to retreat to the so-called ‘core tasks’ and it is believed that combat-
ing dereliction and nuisance are not part of the police mandate. But, ironically,
security policies increasingly move away from classic law enforcement. In spite of
some ambitious strategies to fine citizens for minor offences, like Streetwise
policing in Amsterdam (Van Stokkom, 2008), local security organisations do not
fall back on exclusive law enforcement methods, but have shifted their policies to
anticipation, prevention and control of disorder problems. In many respects this
current pursuit of security has left traditional law enforcement behind. Classic
criminal justice and criminological discourses do not really contribute to the aim
of restoring order. The vocabularies of contract, mediation, partnerships and
security networks are alien to those discourses. The modern security pursuit has
the function of preventing and regulating harmful and threatening develop-
ments. Not punishment, but contract is the core (Crawford, 2003; Boutellier,
2005). Within this new context of regulating a prospective peaceful order, police
strategies that concentrate merely upon crime fighting, are rather outmoded and
ineffective.
Of course order maintenance and law enforcement are not mutually exclusive,
and many residents – also in poor neighbourhoods – appreciate crime fighting.
When vandalism brings with it clear harm, sanctions may follow. Nevertheless, I
believe the police should primarily be the authoritative ‘boss of the street’, and act
as a supplier to the criminal justice system second. The quality of life in neigh-
bourhoods is of the utmost importance, also for the police. As Anthony Bottoms
(2006) states after studying disorder in British cities: security policies in residen-
tial areas should always be constructed within a broader understanding of local
social order. Any policy which ignores or trivialises incivilities, for example on the
grounds that scarce public resources should be devoted to ‘real crimes’, will fail to
engage with the significant concerns of residents.
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72 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
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5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the
Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force
Luuk Wondergem and Lodewijk Gunther Moor
Introduction
The symptoms that led to reassurance policing in England and Wales are also
present in the Netherlands. The focus of previous Dutch governments was on
crime fighting and not without results. Crime figures have been dropping signifi-
cantly for several years, yet the decrease in fear of crime lags behind somewhat.
In many disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods confidence in the police is low
and satisfaction is even lower. Crime-fighting alone does not seem to be suffi-
cient as a local strategy. The riots of 2005 in the French banlieus are a painful
illustration of what can happen when no confidence-building community-ori-
ented policing units are present. Cooperation with local inhabitants is a conditio
sine qua non.
Would it be feasible to implement reassurance policing in the Rotterdam-Rijn-
mond Police Force? Rotterdam is a metropolis which has a long tradition of crime
and security problems. Some years ago the town administration introduced a
‘tough-on-crime’ policy that in many respects resembles zero tolerance policing
(Tops, 2007). Neighbourhood policing has been intensified, but paradoxically
cooperation with citizens has been neglected (Terpstra, 2008). Although insecu-
rity levels have dropped, insecurity problems continue to plague residents. Given
this background, introducing reassurance policing could perhaps strengthen
some classic tasks of community policing, notably co-production with citizens.
The central question in this chapter is whether it would be useful and potentially
feasible to implement reassurance policing in the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police
Force. The discussion is based on research regarding the position of reassurance
policing in the current Dutch police landscape, group discussions with civilians
and retailers, and interviews with local authorities and police officers (Won-
dergem, 2007a; Wondergem, 2007b; Wondergem and Gunther Moor, 2007; Van
Calster and Gunther Moor, 2007).

74 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
5.1 Civilians on reassurance policing
What does the local community think about the potential of reassurance polic-
ing? To answer this question, group discussions were held with civilians (includ-
ing retailers). These group discussions took place in neighbourhoods with below
average scores on the Rotterdam safety index. This index constitutes both a sub-
jective and an objective component.20
A total of 54 people attended the group discussions, of which 28 were female and
26 were male. Of these 54 people only nine were of non-Dutch origin. Four were
Moroccan, two from the Cape Verde Islands, one was Turkish, one from Surinam
and one Indian. The estimated ages ranged from 30 to 90, the majority being
between 45 and 70 years old.
The topics for the interviews and the group discussions correspond with essential
elements of reassurance policing:
• integration of the respondents in their own neighbourhood, i.e. the social
quality;
• feeling of responsibility for safety in their own neighbourhood;
• feelings of insecurity and fear of crime;
• disorder and incivilities;
• visibility, accessibility and familiarity of community police;
• public involvement;
• feelings towards the reassurance policing concept.
5.1.1 Social quality
The interviewed civilians know their neighbourhood well. Most people greet each
other on the street. The interviewees themselves remark that this is important,
because this makes it easier to address someone who is behaving inappropriately.
Females appear to be more reluctant, especially with strangers. When it concerns
children, corrective actions become easier once you know who the parents are.
20. There were thirteen group discussions, five of which were with representatives of local retail associ-
ations. The others are:
Van Harte Resto; a social restaurant for local residents, that helps the financially less fortunate to
maintain social life;
Buurtcentrum de Brug (visited twice); a community centre of the local Protestant church. It is basi-
cally a sort of easily accessible open house;
Monitorgroup Delfshaven; a group of local representatives, who liaise with the local authorities
about their neighbourhood on a regular basis;
Marokkaanse Vadergroup; a group of Moroccan fathers who come together, providing a platform for
the local authorities to discuss specific ethnic problems of Moroccans and their children;
Buurttennisbaan Oude Westen; a single tennis court, completely hidden between the yards in the
Oude Westen, maintained and used by local residents;
Aktiegroep Oude Westen, an action group which was originally set up to achieve political representa-
tion to counter the deterioration of the Oude Westen neighbourhood. It is now comprised of involved
local residents who advise the local authorities on neighbourhood issues.

5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force 75
This is less obvious when it concerns strangers or unfamiliar persons in the
neighbourhood. One is more careful, as “…nobody wants to get molested,
because you address someone for throwing rubbish on the street”.
The elderly who were interviewed do not restrict themselves to sitting at home.
They have good contacts with the other residents of their street, greet each other
but are very reluctant to question others on antisocial behaviour, except for two
spry old men who say they wouldn’t refrain from saying anything.
5.1.2 Responsibility for safety
The general response to the question of who is responsible for safety in the
neighbourhood is that it is a shared responsibility, i.e. it is the responsibility of
the police as well as the local authorities, social institutions, housing corporations
and the residents themselves. Moroccan interviewees concur with this point of
view. They actually see it as a necessity to take responsibility for what happens on
the street as the police cannot patrol the neighbourhood all day long”.
Especially elderly people tend to see many problems as the responsibility of the
police. During the interviews a very senior citizen asked when the police were
going to fix the irregular pavement as she had tripped there several times. In
response to the question how often she had seen police officers repairing the
pavement, she admitted that the police might not be the right organisation for
this problem.
Furthermore, the elderly feel very vulnerable and are afraid to address antisocial
behaviour for fear of repercussions. They are also afraid to report crime, because
their personal information and address will be available to the perpetrator. Some
residents remarked that they do not feel backed up by the police when they take
responsibility and address wrongdoers. This is very discouraging. Another group
made a similar remark, stating that calls to the police should be taken seriously
even if they only concern incivilities or antisocial behaviour. If these calls get such
a low priority that police only show up after a day or so, this will lead to a decline
in calls and reports which is counterproductive for the motivation of feeling
responsible for the neighbourhood.
5.1.3 Feelings of insecurity/fear of crime
Respondents give diverse answers to questions about feelings of insecurity and
fear of crime. In general there is relatively little evidence of people feeling unsafe
or afraid. Some respond that they sometimes feel unsafe in their neighbourhood,
generally because of persons they do not know. These could be youths hanging
around or potential drug users that are attracted by drug dealers. Interviewees
that have lived in the neighbourhood for a considerable time (ten years or more)

76 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
do not feel afraid. Their stay in the neighbourhood gives them a good local knowl-
edge and the ability to discern between normal and abnormal situations. Surpris-
ingly, roughly three quarters of the elderly do not feel unsafe in their own neigh-
bourhood. Most of them have lived in the same neighbourhood for decades. One
of the older ladies is not afraid of the youths hanging around, saying: “If they are
standing in the way, I just walk through the group, and most of the time, they just
let me pass and say ‘hi, granny’!”.
The elderly that do experience fear refer to nighttime, young people hanging
around or to fear which is only manifest outside their own neighbourhood. In
one group two men had been victim of violence and robbery and both said that
they do not feel unsafe outside. Only exceptionally when too many “fear factors”
coincided, i.e. groups of rowdy youth hanging around during night time make
them feel uncomfortable sometimes. The Moroccan group do not feel unsafe.
Yet, when asked more specifically, they do feel “uncomfortable” outside. This is
because they identify potential risks which obviously exist for them (mainly this
was fear for their physical wellbeing). However the reason why they are not really
afraid is because they say that it is easy to overcome the risks by not going outside
after dark. Those who go out at night take responsibility and if something hap-
pens, it is one’s own fault as it was avoidable.
In our efforts to establish whether local residents are afraid of crime or feel
unsafe we discovered a certain fallacy among the research population. A common
factor of the sample population is that they all are socially active in some way. The
group discussions revealed that very few respondents have a fear of crime. In
general neither the elderly nor the ethnic minorities will admit to being afraid of
the dark or the antisocial behaviour they see in their neighbourhood. This is obvi-
ously quite contrary to the expected result, as the locations for the group discus-
sions were chosen on the basis of a low safety index. This confirms the impres-
sion that social engagement is indeed a very strong factor in explaining feelings
of insecurity.
5.1.4 Disorder and incivilities
All respondents were asked to name a top three of most obvious criminal, disor-
der or incivility problems in their neighbourhood. The results of all the groups
were added up and aggregated to a somewhat more abstract level. The list looks
like this:
• incivilities, named twelve times (scooter, youth hanging around, vandalism,
urinating);
• drugs related, named seven times;
• environmental issues, named five times (litter, garbage and dog excrement);
• crime related,named four times (burglaries and car burglaries);
• traffic related, named twice.

5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force 77
Some respondents wonder whether the police are really aware of the extent of
these problems in their neighbourhood and even if the police were aware of these
issues, the question would be whether the police had the time, resources and pri-
ority to tackle them. This is especially painful when it concerns long-term prob-
lems that seem to persist, even though the police say they are working on them. If
you live in a drug-ridden neighbourhood, it is hard to believe that the police are in
control when “...drugs are being sold here like French fries of Bram Ladage [a
well-known snack bar in Rotterdam]”.
Most other groups think that the police are aware of the local problems. The idea
existed, however, that the persistence of problems proved too much for the police.
An example was given on drugs related nuisance and youths hanging around.
Every time the police showed up, the youngsters kept quiet, and the drug-related
individuals kept a low profile. However, every time the police left the scene, every-
thing returned to the previous nuisance state. The Moroccan interviewees con-
cluded that this reflected the impotence of the police to do anything about it.
Another complaint mentioned by many groups was the lack of feedback. Resi-
dents who passed on information on local problems got little or no feedback on
actions taken by the police, except for an occasional automated response. It is
then very hard to discern whether something is being done or not: “You never
know whether the police are doing anything, or whether they are doing some-
thing but without results”.
5.1.5 Visibility, familiarity and accessibility of the police
Visibility of the (neighbourhood) police was a hotly debated item at many group
discussions. Many interviewees are past the stage of simply demanding (more)
police. Although some do think that there should be more visible police in the
streets, this is not the general opinion. Rather the majority demand more police
at the “right time at the right place”. People reason that there are more than
enough police visible on the streets during the day. After office hours there seems
to be a lot less police on the streets. This leads to irritation because the majority of
the interviewees have experienced that most antisocial behaviour and crime take
place at times when no police are seen. Many interviewees think that more visible
police on the street would have a positive impact on feelings of insecurity. A few
interviewees think that an overkill of patrolling police officers could prove coun-
terproductive as it might reinforce the idea that something is wrong in the neigh-
bourhood.
In general, interviewees are familiar with the concept of the neighbourhood
officer. Of the sample group, about two thirds are familiar with their local neigh-
bourhood officer either by name or by sight. In one group absolutely nobody
knew who their neighbourhood officer was. In most other groups, at least some
people knew him either by face or by name. Groups felt it would be useful if the
police put more effort into communicating who their local neighbourhood officer

78 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
is. The more he/she is known, the more accessible he/she becomes. A group sug-
gested that the better a neighbourhood officer is known, the more spontaneous
information he/she will get from local residents. All groups were of the opinion
that the police could do better in promoting the identity of the local neighbour-
hood officer. However, the method is subject to debate.
Accessibility is believed not to be up to the standard that it should be. This is iden-
tified in several fields. First, it is suggested that there should be more police sta-
tions closer by. In the early 1990s small police stations in the wards were replaced
by bigger centralised police stations which were obviously further away for many
people. Another disadvantage is that many police stations are not open 24/7.
Police stations are regarded as a kind of “safe house”. One interviewee added to
the discussion that opening local small-scale police stations is pointless if they are
only open for a couple of hours a day. Another aspect of the perceived lack of
accessibility is the means of transport. Very often police officers are seen in the
neighbourhood driving by in a van or car. This makes a police officer less accessi-
ble to someone on the street. This is reported by many interviewees. The (phone)
number 0900-8844 (for non-urgent calls) is the source of lot of dissatisfaction.
What the public thinks of as middle priority issues seem to be interpreted by the
police dispatcher as low priority. As someone expressed it: “I am NOT being
taken seriously in this way!”
5.1.6 Public involvement
Another item in the discussions with the groups was how they feel involved with
the police in their own neighbourhood. This item was again one that respondents
agreed on, and in some instances expressed a certain cynicism towards. These
were summed up by someone as following; “We are never asked anything, we are
given little, if any feedback and we do not know what the police are doing about
our problems if something is being done at all”.
As discussed earlier, a good part of the groups thought that police are aware of the
local issues. What was actually being done by the police remained unclear to local
residents. Some groups live in a ward where the local police try to involve the
local citizens. An example is the Meineszbuurt (a neighbourhood) in Rotterdam.
After local inhabitants voiced their dissatisfaction with the results of the local
police, the police decided to “give” several hundred man-hours to the local inhab-
itants to let them decide how these would be spent within certain boundaries.
This gave them a feeling of finally being taken seriously!
In the Oude Westen (a neighbourhood in Rotterdam) the Aktiegroep Oude
Westen (an action committee), developed a very interesting reassurance policing-
like approach on drugs-related problems in a co-production with police and local
authorities. In their approach, a methodology of a visual neighbourhood audit
was developed, which was used to identify problems in an objective way. This tool

5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force 79
was then used to give feedback and input on what the problems in the neighbour-
hood exactly were to the local authorities. In regular meetings the problems, suc-
cesses and drawbacks of the work in progress were discussed with police and
authorities.
5.1.7 Reassurance concept
The reassurance policing concept was explained, and the interviewees were asked
what they thought of the concept. A great feeling of unanimity existed on the gen-
eral idea. Most interviewees had the impression that they were not being asked
about what they felt were important issues in their neighbourhoods. Apparently
the attitude of the police gives the impression that many activities are carried out
to satisfy performance requirements, imposed by higher authorities, and have lit-
tle to do with what needs to be done in the local neighbourhood. Becoming
involved in establishing local priorities is highly valued by almost everyone. Regu-
lar feedback on activities would create an understanding, because “…no one
expects the police to solve continuous ongoing nuisance like the drug problem
here. But if we knew what they were doing, we would at least feel that something
is being done, even if it is not directly visible to us!”.
A few people have become cynical and defeatist, saying that no matter what was
being done, whether surveys, group meetings or participation in defining priori-
ties, it would lead nowhere. These people have no faith in authorities and the
police, saying that they had been disappointed too many times. Someone won-
dered how the concept could ever work, as feelings of insecurity are individual
and what someone considers a priority in his neighbourhood might not coincide
with the priorities of someone else.
Another person wondered how this would work out in neighbourhoods with
many different nationalities and little social cohesion. The Moroccan group iden-
tified the same problem. They are sure the concept is a good one, but see difficul-
ties in involving ethnic minorities. Language and cultural difference are hard to
overcome according to them.
5.2 Rotterdam-Rijnmond police officers and reassurance
policing
Within the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force interviews were carried out to
gauge the attitude of police officers towards the current way of policing and the
reassurance policing concept.21 The interviews were conducted on the basis of a
list of topics that comprised:
21. Interviews were held with five constables, five sergeants, five inspectors, two chief inspectors and
one commissioner.

80 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
• objective of community policing;
• responsibility for safety;
• external influences on objectives;
• feelings of insecurity of inhabitants;
• perception of disorder and incivilities by inhabitants;
• visibility, familiarity and accessibility of the police as perceived by inhabitants;
• opinion on reassurance policing as a concept.
5.2.1 Objective of community policing
Responses regarding the objective of community policing were very diverse.
Obviously, everybody had some idea of what the objective of community policing
is, but no one could provide a real definition. Some descriptions given by consta-
bles and sergeants are:
• being a point of contact for residents;
• providing a feeling of safety by being present;
• knowing and being known;
•building a network;
• being an “early warning system” for trouble and problems in the neighbour-
hood.
The higher officers were also asked about the strategies to be followed by the
community policing unit. Again, no uniform answers were given. Someone
refers to the concept of problem oriented policing as the underlying strategy for
community policing. This is one reason for the separation between the main
business processes of emergency response and community policing: to enable
the community police to work in a problem-oriented manner instead of being
diverted by the issues of the day. Another one mentioned that strategy depends
on the time scope. Short-term activities are dominated by the “issues of the day”.
Mid-term activities are typically based on projects, while the long-term goals
depend on the objectives formulated by the local authorities and the internal per-
formance indicators. A chief inspector mentioned the neighbourhood scan
(buurtscan) as the tool and basic concept of the strategy to be followed.
5.2.2 Responsibility for safety
Everyone was asked how they felt about the responsibility for local safety. The
most common answer was that this is a matter for the police in cooperation with
partner agencies and the public. In the eyes of the police the public shows little
commitment to their own safety. Only when an issue directly affects a local resi-
dent will it result in an active attitude, even then this is not always the case. Many
officers named the local authorities as the director of safety, but also regularly
mentioned that the local authorities are not actively committed to safety matters

5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force 81
in a directing way. Involving residents in their own local safety is something that
cannot be achieved by the police; that is for the local authorities.
A chief inspector said that whatever you do, an active attitude is required of the
residents if a neighbourhood is to become safer. Without citizen involvement the
police or the local authorities can do very little.
5.2.3 External influences on objectives
The sergeants and higher ranking officers were asked who in their opinion influ-
enced or determined the objectives and priorities of the community police.
Although almost everyone answered that the community police works for the res-
idents, this is not reflected in the influence these inhabitants can exert on the pri-
orities and objectives. Another question concerned the degree of influence the
local residents had according to the police. This was thought to be minimal at
most, although some higher officers thought that indirectly, e.g. by means of
national surveys, the voice of the people would be taken into account when objec-
tives and priorities are established. Two of the sergeants said that to a certain
extent they themselves determine the practical objectives and priorities for their
neighbourhood team. All others refered to the requirements imposed by the per-
formance contracts as a primary source of targets and priorities and to a lesser
extent to objectives imposed by safety programmes of the local authorities.
5.2.4 Feelings of insecurity of inhabitants
Everybody thought that residents feel unsafe at least sometimes, for several rea-
sons. Some suggested that the many negative stories on crime in the media cre-
ate a feeling of fear. Several people suggested it is because of the increased
number of foreigners and the effects of individualisation and decline of norms
and values. This causes people to be afraid to address each other on incivilities,
which gives room for further deterioration of the neighbourhood, thereby
increasing the feelings of insecurity. Someone elaborated on this by saying that
not only are people reluctant to talk to others about their antisocial behaviour, but
these others also no longer accept being called to account. Because many people
fear repercussions if they report matters to the police, they prefer to ignore behav-
iour. This will not help them feel safer. Some interviewees mentioned the
absence of any form of social cohesion in certain neighbourhoods as the source
of feelings of insecurity. Someone suggested that it can partially be explained by
the lack of manpower. Apparently there is not enough capacity to really deal with
persistent forms of disorder and issues like youth and drug-related problems.
When the people then make a fuss, e.g. by involving the media, the police will
start a project that gets a lot of attention, after which it is silently scaled down
back to “normal”.

82 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
5.2.5 Perception of disorder and incivilities by residents
The respondents were asked what they thought residents would say were the
main sources of nuisance and disorder in their neighbourhood. When counted
and aggregated, the top three of scores looked like this:
• incivilities, named nine times (youth, graffiti, vandalism, antisocial behav-
iour);
• traffic related, named seven times (speeding and parking);
• environmental issues, named six times (e.g. litter, noise nuisance);
• crime related, named twice;
• drug-related, once.
Recalling what the local population thought:
• incivilities, named twelve times (scooter, youth hanging, vandalism, urinat-
ing);
• drugs related, named seven times;
• environmental issues, named five times (litter, garbage and dog excrements);
• crime related, named four times (burglaries and car burglaries);
• traffic related, named twice.
As we can see the ideas of the residents and those of the police are very similar.
5.2.6 Visibility, familiarity and accessibility of the police as perceived by residents
This item led to several discussions, as the police think that the citizens do not
appreciate their efforts to be visible and accessible in the neighbourhood. Also,
most of the interviewees think that there is room for improvement in the famili-
arity with the neighbourhood police. To achieve this, neighbourhood officers
should “sell themselves” more proactively, e.g. by being in the neighbourhood,
using local media, etc. Remarkably many neighbourhood officers (sergeants)
think that they are well known in their areas. The higher ranking officers have the
same impression. They feel that either the neighbourhood officers are well-
known or that work is being done to increase their familiarity in the neighbour-
hood.
One respondent wondered whether it was necessary to “push” the neighbourhood
police officer towards the public. If someone really needs the neighbourhood
police he can call the police, and someone will come eventually. Why should
someone know his community officer when there is no immediate need?
Besides, neighbourhood officers frequently change and residents also move to
other places. This view was supported by an inspector, who added that although it
might not be very efficient to spend a lot of time on being well-known, your pres-
ence is important to those who need you. Yet there are some optimists, who think
that residents have no reason to complain. One of the interviewees suggested that
no matter how many police officers walk the beat, it will never be enough.

5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force 83
According to most respondents a lot of dissatisfaction is caused by unfamiliarity
with the working methods of the police. People who see an emergency response
car driving through the neighbourhood wonder why the officers do not get out of
their car for a chat. Obviously this is not part of the unit’s assignment.
On the subject of accessibility, there is again great unanimity. It is thought that
people are dissatisfied with the telephone number operated by the police in case
of non-urgent reports (the 0900-8844 number). People have unrealistic expecta-
tions of the way that certain reports are prioritised (where the caller expects a
higher priority than is actually given, resulting in disappointing waiting times).
The officers do feel that the public has a point there. The internal routing of
reports is not very transparent, and many officers are also dissatisfied with it.
5.2.7 Opinion on reassurance policing as a concept
The principles of reassurance policing were explained to the interviewees and
they were asked for their opinions. Response is varied. Roughly half of the inter-
viewees saw the concept as useful and potentially implementable. Several reasons
were given why this might be a good idea. One frequently mentioned reason was
that it would compensate for the imposed focus on performance indicators that
do not necessarily reflect the real work that needs to be done in neighbourhoods.
It was also thought that the concept might help build a more positive public
image of the police. The performance contracts were named several times as very
counterproductive for the work in the neighbourhood, as many activities are very
difficult to express in indicators or figures. A reassurance policing-based
approach would give more reality to these hard to quantify local problems.
The respondents did see some drawbacks and potential implementation difficul-
ties. Some interviewees of constable or sergeant rank expect that many residents
will not want to invest time to make their neighbourhood safer. Also mentioned
was that really motivated employees are needed if this type of neighbourhood
policing is to be introduced. Unfortunately there are many employees within the
community police unit who are not motivated for several reasons, according to
this interviewee. Firstly the work is considered boring by many, with little action.
The working hours are more regular compared to the work of the emergency
response units, which could produce a negative difference in income of several
hundreds of Euros a month. Many people therefore choose to work in the emer-
gency response units whenever possible. Also the system of continuously circu-
lating employees from neighbourhood policing to emergency response units and
vice versa makes for unstable teams, which will have a negative impact on a
method like reassurance policing. According to inspectors and chief inspectors,
some of the objectives of the reassurance policing team are considered to be the
responsibility of the local authorities and therefore not correct for the police to
take action on. Also, many of priorities valued most highly by the public already
correspond with police priorities. Finally, the democratic quality of neighbour-

84 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
hood representations is questioned. How will the persistent nagger be prevented
from pushing through his personal issues, and how can one establish that the
priorities of local representatives are the ones of the whole neighbourhood?
5.3 Reassurance policing and the local authorities
In the Netherlands, law considers public order to be the primary responsibility of
local authorities. This is unlike England and Wales where public order falls under
the authority of the police. Therefore two representatives of the Schiedam and
Rotterdam municipal departments of safety policy were interviewed about their
influence on police policies, their views on community policing, and they were
asked to comment on the concept of reassurance policing.
5.3.1 Influence on police policies
Both municipalities stated that they are responsible for safety. In the city of Schie-
dam a lack of cooperation between the local authorities and the police is identi-
fied. The city of Rotterdam, under the leadership of the mayor and with the previ-
ous local city council as a catalyst, has formulated a strong and coherent safety
policy, which served as an example for many other municipalities. Rotterdam has
a strong influence on police policy, at least on the community police department.
A problem in formulating a coherent integral policy is that the policy cycles of the
police, the Home Office, the Justice Department and the local authorities are all
based on separate time frames which do not necessarily match. Every borough in
Rotterdam has a local safety action programme, derived from the five-year munic-
ipal action programme. Priorities which are set here will be reflected in the police
year plans. In Schiedam there is a less integrated approach in which police have a
district plan and the municipality has its own long-term policy plan. Of course,
there has been some consultation but the current state of affairs regarding policy-
making is considered insufficient.
5.3.2 Views on community policing
Both representatives value the work of the community police. A very strong com-
partmentalization is identified within the police organisation, for example
between the emergency response units and the community police. Another idea
that was expressed is that if the community police do their job well, the emer-
gency response units will have it easier, because responding to the needs of local
residents would prevent disorder. Also, because they are closer to the public, the
community police could act as an “early warning system” for crime and disorder,
enabling a swifter response. However, this does not imply a soft attitude for the
community police. On the contrary, according to the Rotterdam representative
“…the social worker-like approach of the police should be something of the past!”

5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force 85
5.3.3 The concept of reassurance policing
The respondent from Schiedam was not unfavourably disposed towards the reas-
surance policing concept, but mentioned some potential pitfalls. First of all is it
important to keep in mind that the local community is in charge of safety. Also,
the necessity of democratic neighbourhood groups as required in the reassurance
approach is questioned. This interviewee expected many difficulties if it is to be
implemented in a neighbourhood with plenty of foreigners, because of the lack of
social cohesion and a lack of interest. Finally, he feared that the police would end
up with an incident-driven approach, if they tried to satisfy the ever changing
needs of the public.
The Rotterdam representative openly opposed the concept. Certainly it contained
useful elements, but he is fundamentally opposed to letting residents decide pri-
orities of the police. An approach like reassurance policing should originate pri-
marily from the local authorities. Many of the priorities identified in the reassur-
ance policing concept seem not to be related to police work. He illustrated this
with the RISC model for the quality of life in neighbourhoods, which was being
deployed in Rotterdam, where the letters of the acronym stand for:
R – ‘Ruimtelijke factoren’ (factors of spatial/environmental factors)
I – Institutional factors’ (e.g. inter-organisational cooperation)
S – Social factors
C – Crime-promoting factors
The police should only be occupied with the latter factor. In this perspective the
objective of reassurance policing to increase social capital is not relevant to the
police. Now that they have finally found a way back to the core business, it would
not be a good trend for the police to take up non-core duties. This does not mean
that elements of the concept aren’t useful. Some are applied in Rotterdam any-
way. For example, in the Meineszbuurt (a neighbourhood) project where the
police offered a certain percentage of its man-hours to be prioritised by the local
inhabitants. A demand-driven approach as a consequence of the reassurance
policing concept is something else that seems useful to the Rotterdam inter-
viewee.
Discussion
Local residents are generally more than happy to become involved in a reassur-
ance-like approach even though this seems difficult to achieve in some cases. Fol-
lowing this line reassurance policing seems useful for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond
Police Force, although many of the interviewed police officers experience some
scepticism. And even the Rotterdam representative of the municipal authority
openly rejects the concept of reassurance policing. He is opposed to letting resi-
dents decide on the priorities of the police.

86 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
Nevertheless, is implementation of reassurance policing in the Rotterdam-Rijn-
mond Police Force feasible? Of course there are certain differences between the
English and the Dutch situation that result in preconditions which make a direct
copy of reassurance policing impossible. Also, certain shortcomings were identi-
fied in the original concept that might need some careful consideration.
To begin with the latter, a minimum basis of social cohesion in the neighbour-
hood is necessary if reassurance policing is to succeed. This means that it cannot
and should not be implemented in the same way in every neighbourhood. Adjust-
ments need to be made depending on the neighbourhood. A good way of deter-
mining the state of a neighbourhood is by means of the “ladder tool” of the
“Mensen maken de stad” [People make the city] – project in Rotterdam. If the
indicator is subzero, repression is needed to clear the neighbourhood of
unwanted elements and disorder. At the same time this project can be used to
help build basic forms of social cohesion, which can subsequently function as the
basis for reassurance policing.
In general the scale of the neighbourhoods in reassurance policing in England
and Wales is in a lot smaller than the regular ward size of a community police
officer in Rotterdam-Rijnmond. This needs to be taken into account in the imple-
mentation of reassurance policing. If reassurance policing is adopted, it is advisa-
ble to utilize the current trend of local authorities to work in a neighbourhood-
directed manner. This means that the “social infrastructure” is already present
and can easily be shared.
From a political point of view, there are also certain differences between the Eng-
lish and Dutch situation. First the political situation and the way reassurance
policing was highlighted is totally different. In England and Wales, it was set up
ACPO.22 Within ACPO, support was gained from several senior chief officers.
With this internal support ACPO could propose a pilot programme which gained
the support of the Home Office. When the confidence and satisfaction with the
police are low, little help is to be expected from local residents. Yet they are the
main sources of local information. The government suddenly saw the potential of
reassurance policing as a method of maintaining a good information position in
neighbourhoods. As the results were very positive and a major police reform was
being discussed anyway, politicians adopted the concept, thereby giving it such
momentum that nationwide implementation of this “total policing” concept is
expected in 2008. This would not have been possible without enormous invest-
ments, especially by creating the PCSO23 position, and employing many thou-
sands of them.
In the Netherlands the situation is different in other ways too. Several factors
need to be considered to explain this. The main factor is that the local authorities
22. ACPO – Association of Chief Police Officers.
23. PCSO – Police Community Support Officer; a position created with the police force, comparable to
the Surveillant in the Netherlands.

5 Reassurance Policing: Prospects for the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Police Force 87
rather than the police are responsible for safety, which is effectively determined
by law. For many years, however, the police frequently acted as if they were the
boddy responsible for safety, a position which was gladly accepted by local author-
ities. In recent years and under pressure from performance contracts, the police
have disposed of many undesired tasks which are formally the responsibility of
the local authorities anyway. This was not without difficulty and many municipal
authorities still seem not to be up for the job (Stichting Maatschappij, Veiligheid
en Politie, 2007).
On a national level the Dutch police seem to be on the brink of a police reform
which aims for a more centralised police, although the newly elected government
of 2007 may slow this process down. The most recent government policy plans
express in concrete terms the revaluation of the neighbourhood as a convenient
scale for intervention.
From an organisational point of view, the long term strategic vision of the Board
of Commissioners (Raad van Hoofdcommissarissen, 2005) presents five main
and concurrent concepts like nodal orientation, demand-driven policing, prob-
lem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing. The question then arises as to
many more concepts can be integrated in this vision. It seems clear that reassur-
ance policing fits in with all of these policies conceptually. Moreover, certain good
practices in the Netherlands are already very similar to reassurance policing.
Reassurance policing can affect issues that matter: confidence in the police, satis-
faction with the police, fear of crime and perception of disorder and antisocial
behaviour. By using the reassurance concept, local residents are being involved in
their local safety approach, making the work of the police at least partly accounta-
ble to those for which the police work. It is therefore in the best interest of the
police to go ahead with the reassurance policing concept. This means further pro-
fessionalism of community policing.
Even though local authorities can point out that certain outcomes do not belong
to the core business of the police (e.g. increasing social cohesion), they can be
viewed as welcome side effects that may also benefit local authorities. The task of
the police includes being an advisor on safety, and indeed the community police
officer is a frontline worker, close to residents. This gives the police its firm infor-
mation position and intelligence. It would therefore be in the best interest of local
authorities to stimulate the implementation of reassurance policing.
Reassurance policing can be implemented within the police, but not as “yet
another concept”. Less resistance within the police organisation will be perceived
if it is implemented as a form of further professionalization of the community
police. This will still require facilitation by the local authorities, but ultimately it
will not be much different from the already common policy of integral safety
approach. If the local authorities oppose the reassurance policing concept, it can
be the task of police leaders to make a stand for their own profession. Although
the local authority is responsible for safety in the Netherlands, and is able to

88 Part II Reassurance Policing in Different Contexts
determine goals and targets for the police, it seems not be wise to interfere with
the internal concepts or programmes that are operated within the police.
Bibliography
Innes, M. (2005). Why Disorder Matters? Antisocial Behaviour and Incivility as Signals of
Risk. Canterbury: Scarr Conference.
Consult: http://www.kent.ac.uk/scarr/events/finalpapers/Innes.pdf
Raad van Hoofdcommissarissen (2005). Politie in ontwikkeling – Visie op de politiefunctie
[Police in development – Vision on the police-function]. Den Haag: Raad van Hoofd-
commissarissen.
Stichting Maatschappij, Veiligheid en Politie (2007). Veiligheid als een bestuurlijke opgave
[Security as an administrative task]. Dordrecht: SMVP.
Terpsta, J. (2008). Wijkagenten en hun dagelijkse werk. Een onderzoek naar de uitvoering van
het gebiedsgebonden werk [Beat officers and their daily job. A research to the execution of
territorial bound work]. Den Haag/Apeldoorn: Elsevier.
Tops, P. (2006). Regime-verandering in Rotterdam. Hoe een stadsbestuur zichzelf opnieuw uit-
vond [Change in regime in Rotterdam. How a city-government invented itself].
Amsterdam: Atlas.
Van Ca lst er, P . an d L. Gunther Moor (2007). Reassurance policing: een alliantie tussen burgers
en politie? [Reassurance policing: an alliance between citizens and police?]. Dordrecht:
SMVP/Gent: Centrum voor Politiestudies.
Wondergem, L. (2007a). To reassure or not to reassure; That’s the question. Dordrecht: SMVP.
Wondergem, L. (2007b). Reassurance policing: oude wijn in nieuwe zakken? [Reassurance
policing: old wine in new barrels?]. Tijdschrift voor de Politie, 69 (3).
Wondergem, L. and L. Gunther Moor (2007). Reassurance policing: een mogelijkheid tot
revitalisering van de wijkgerichte aanpak. In: P. Ponsaers and L. Gunther Moor (eds.)
Reassurance policing: concepten en receptie [Reassurance policing: concepts and
reception]. Brussel: Politeia.

Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?

6 Why Reassurance Policing ‘Works’
Kees van der Vijver
Introduction
The vast majority of research projects into the effectiveness of policing over the
past decades came to conclusions that proved frustrating. Most studies did not
manage to demonstrate that different ways of policing brought about different
results. When the police are judged in terms of instrumentally achieving the goal
of bringing down the level of crime, and the results are measured in a scientific
way, they are obviously doing a poor job: their effectiveness is difficult to measure
and, as far as it has been measured, the results are often counterintuitive.
Research has repeatedly demonstrated that that the effectiveness of the police in
reducing crime is modest. The same holds true for other objectives, like reducing
the feelings of insecurity or improving the confidence in the police (Kelling et al.,
1974; Fijnaut et al., 1985; Broer et al., 1987; Van der Vijver, 1993; Sherman et al.,
1997.).
The Home Office studies on reassurance policing seem to be an exception. Sev-
eral projects did have a positive impact on citizens; on the level of crime they
experience, on their feelings of insecurity and on their attitudes towards the
police. The typical aspects of reassurance policing (the signal crimes approach,
the neighbourhood approach, the problem-oriented approach and the involve-
ment of citizens) seem to meet expectations citizens have regarding the function-
ing of the police. What makes this strategy more positive than so many others? In
this chapter I will discuss some possible explanations. I will concentrate on the
subjective aspects: the opinions, emotions and attitudes of citizens. The answers
will be preliminary. Without a more precise knowledge of the different projects it
is impossible to present any conclusive comments.
6.1 Evaluative police research
Most research projects into the effectiveness of policing aimed at evaluating spe-
cific police strategies that were implemented. Over the past decades many studies
were carried out in fields such as reactive patrol, proactive patrol, community
policing, problem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing. Those strate-
gies were usually implemented because the policy makers or police leaders fig-
ured they would improve the functioning of the police in one way or another.
Why are the results often disappointing?

92 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
One of the most important reasons is the fact that the problems the police are
dealing with are complex and hard to influence. There are many and often very
strong drives and justifications for criminal behaviour. The junkie who needs
money to buy drugs, the drunken man who reacts aggressively because he feels
humiliated, the gang member who wants to impress his fellow-members, there
are many examples that illustrate that the norms and values of the ‘decent world’
are of limited importance in many circumstances and in many subcultures. The
threat of punishment has a limited impact on the decision of the offender. The
influence of the police and the judiciary will always be modest. These facts, as
obvious as they may be, often seem to be forgotten by politicians and policy mak-
ers who portray the police as a goal-oriented system, suggesting that when the
police are paying attention to a problem, the problem will diminish. Even if the
police were working like a goal-oriented system, this will never be the case. But
the police are working as an organisation that is trying to bring down the level of
crime in a rational, ‘businesslike’ way only to a limited extent. Often criminal
offences are related to a whole range of interpersonal or social conflicts that for-
mally might be defined as criminal behaviour, but that police officers routinely
respond to with a spectrum of interventions, such as advising, mediation, et
cetera. Besides, participant-observation studies have shown that the police spend
only a limited amount of time on crime-related problems (Punch et al., 1998).
Nevertheless, there is strong pressure to improve the effectiveness of the police.
That is why the police in many (mostly western) countries regularly develop new
strategies. These are the strategies that often have been evaluated, with few posi-
tive results. Apart from the fact that the problems are hard to diminish, there are
other reasons that explain a lack of effectiveness. One should not forget that a
long causal chain of requirements must be fulfilled before the effects of new
strategies can be measured.
• The implementation of the new strategy must really have taken place.
• The way of policing must really have changed.
• The change in policing must have affected the specific target groups causing
the problems.
• The change in the illegal or problem-causing behaviour of these target groups
must have had an effect on the problems.
• The public must have noticed the difference in policing and/or the effects of
the strategy.
One of the reasons why it is difficult to discover differences in the effectiveness of
police strategies is that many of the processes that were aimed at implementing
the new strategies fail. Policemen go on doing ‘things as usual’, although they are
expected to do things differently. In those cases, researchers do not measure the
effects of different policing strategies, but the inability of the organisation to
implement these strategies. But even if the police do things differently, there is a
substantial chance that the public does not even notice. It often seems to be for-
gotten that citizens usually have few contacts with the police and observe police
activities to a limited extent, so that the changes in policing must be really sub-

6 Why Reassurance Policing ‘Works’ 93
stantial before they are noticed. Besides, strategies may have unintended conse-
quences. A well-known example, for instance, are aggressive patrol strategies,
aimed at bringing down the level of crime and the feelings of insecurity. Aggres-
sive patrol, however, often leads to a growth of feelings of insecurity (‘it must be
very unsafe if there are so much police’).
Although many research projects did not show positive results, there are some
exceptions. Positive results are usually only measured when the police opt for a
small-scale approach, visible and approachable for citizens, using problem-ori-
ented approaches in close cooperation with the population (Skolnick and Bayley,
1986; Broer et al., 1987; Zoomer et al., 2002).24 Reassurance policing seems to
be an example of this approach (Dalgleish and Myhill, 2004; Singer, 2004). In
order to answer the question why this is the case, I will first discuss some theoret-
ical aspects of the police role. In the second place I will explore the question as to
how people experience insecurity and how they deal with it.
6.2 The role of the police
6.2.1 Citizens’ perceptions of the police role
People regard the police role primarily as ‘fighting crime.’ The police should be
repressive and tough combaters of crime. But when asked what people expect
from the police themselves, in their own neighbourhood, fighting crime turns
out to be relatively unimportant (Van der Vijver, 1993). This is one of the most
central paradoxes with regard to how the public views the police. At the local
level, there are two sets of priorities in citizens’ opinion. The first priority has to
do with responding to emergencies and problems: the police should respond rap-
idly and adequately. A quick response ‘when you really need them’ and a prob-
lem-oriented response concerning the problems that are prevalent in the neigh-
bourhood are important, according to the residents. The second priority has to do
with (social and physical) distance: it is important that the police are available,
accessible, visible and approachable. In most neighbourhoods (more specifically
neighbourhoods that experience problems in the field of security) citizens want a
police station in the area, they prefer to have ‘their own officer’ in the neighbour-
hood, they like to know his name and his or her mobile phone number. Moreo-
ver, they like to see police officers patrolling regularly. If they see the police driv-
ing around in their cars, they would rather see them on foot patrol. And if they
see them on foot patrol, they ask them to make contact with the residents. Just
with a quick look or a friendly remark. The same kinds of observations were
made by McConville and Sheppard (1992: 223):
24. This does not imply of course that all small scale police work has positive results, nor that other
types of police work are not effective.

94 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
‘The overwhelming desire of the residents is for officers who are friendly and accessible,
known to the community, and living in the immediate locality.’
‘Whilst residents expect the police to have a fast response capability in answering emer-
gency calls, their other demands are essentially symbolic. The sight of an officer walking
the locality provides reassurance, confirming the essential stability of a social order...’
‘Constables on the beat are valued, therefore, not for possible instrumental benefits they
may bring in terms of crime prevention but because they represent a desirable social
order: stable, regular, constant, predictable, personal and human.’
Within people’s living environment the police are first and foremost the symbol
of peace and security. Outside, the police are given the role of the repressive
crime fighter. Sometimes these two worlds meet, for instance in neighbourhoods
which people perceive as run down (full of graffiti, strewn with rubbish, large
numbers of immigrants) and/or neighbourhoods faced with forms of crime
(muggings, burglaries) which, considering their seriousness and frequency, are
experienced by residents as particularly threatening.
The citizens’ preferences as regards police response to the social problems with
which they are confronted show the same picture. Citizens feel that the police
should give higher priority to fighting problems outside their own neighbour-
hood than within it. Furthermore, police action ‘elsewhere’ should be tougher and
more repressive. In their own environment they are particularly keen on support-
ive, quick and timely action. Problems should not be allowed to proliferate, for
that would require large-scale action and major overkill. Actions should take place
in such a way that the danger of escalation is prevented. If persistent problems
exist, these should be resolved. And it is not particularly relevant whether this end
is achieved through the criminal justice system or not, just as long as the prob-
lems are solved.
6.2.2 Encounters with the police
If contacts take place within the realm of criminal justice (for instance citizens
reporting crimes), it would seem logical to suppose that citizens judge the police
first and foremost on the basis of criteria that are relevant to that domain. For
instance whether the case is solved and/or whether any stolen property is
retrieved. But this assumption is only partially correct. For instance, it is correct
in so far as citizens usually state that they report crimes for reasons like finding
the offender, retrieving stolen property, doing their civic duty, and for motives
pertaining to civil law, such as the need to obtain a statement for insurance pur-
poses. But if one examines how victims judge the police, the fact that the police
have little success tracking down criminals is found to be of comparatively lim-
ited importance. Criticism directed against the police can be described in terms
such as too lax, did not go out of their way, insufficient interest shown and no

6 Why Reassurance Policing ‘Works’ 95
feedback of results. Usually, the fact that no culprit is found is not considered
particularly important, possibly because expectations in that respect are low any-
way. Whenever citizens do state clear needs in the field of criminal justice, these
are not so much related to prosecution and punishment, but rather to the use of
means of coercion with a view to solving concrete problems and the (emotional)
support of the victim. So the judgement is not oriented on results but on decent,
correct behaviour (Van der Vijver, 1993; Tyler and Huo, 2002).
6.3 Aspects of insecurity
6.3.1 The construction of insecurity
Insecurity is not the straightforward kind of problem that is usually presented to
us in the media and in general public debate. It is loaded with paradoxes and
inconsistencies. One of the most interesting problems in the perception of crime
is the discrepancy between the ‘real’ problem (insecurity as it is ‘objectively meas-
ured’ by the number of crimes) and the ‘perception’ of the problem (insecurity as
it is perceived by citizens). Feelings of insecurity are not logically linked to risk,
danger and victimisation (Walklate, 2000; Zedner, 2002). This paradox is mani-
fested in many different ways. For example, a lot of research has shown that vic-
tims of crime do not feel more insecure than non-victims.25 Moreover, elderly
people report relatively high feelings of insecurity and but are relatively seldom
victims of crime. So there is a considerable discrepancy between the chances and
the fear of becoming a victim. The kind of crimes people fear are those they know
carry little chance of becoming a victim – and vice versa. The literature usually
focuses on crime victimisation, but this paradox is also relevant in a wider con-
text: in traffic, for instance. Although traffic is considerably more dangerous than
crime (in the Netherlands about five times as many people are killed each year on
the roads than by crime), the fear of crime is greater than the fear of traffic, so it is
obviously not the seriousness of the consequences that are the most important
contributor to the feelings of insecurity.
In the second place there is a differential perception of crime. This phenomenon
was discovered a long time ago in research: when people are asked about rising
crime, they tend to consider this a (relatively) small problem in their own neigh-
bourhood, a bigger problem in the city where they live and a great problem in the
country at large.26 Crime thus seems to be considered a problem primarily for
society, and not so much a problem for the individual citizen. Apart from that, the
25. The results are, however, not very consistent, since there is also research that shows that victims
do have more feelings of insecurity (RMO, 2004). Victims of serious crimes, like burglary, robbery
or other violent acts, do report greater feelings of insecurity (or to be more precise: fear of crime).
26. One of the first interesting examples in this field is to be found in Stephan (1976) who reported
that, of the citizens that were interviewed, 20% considered rising crime a problem at the neigh-
bourhood level, compared to 63% at the local level and 84% at the national level. So crime was
defined as a social problem ‘there’ and not ‘here’.

96 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
image of the crime problem is not the same. When talking about crime at the
level of society, it is defined in terms of murder, rape, armed robberies, etc. When
talking about crime within the neighbourhood, or about the kind of problems
people are having themselves, they paint a different picture. Typical problems
mentioned in their own neighbourhood are: vandalism, pollution, wanton
destruction and parking offences, the filthy state of the neighbourhood, dog
excrement, graffiti, parking problems, the presence of (foreign) youngsters on
the street and malicious behaviour. Neighbourhoods where prostitutes solicit on
the street, where there is overt drug dealing and where homeless drifters live are
judged relatively negatively. Most adverse judgements concern neighbourhoods
that can be characterised by a state of devastation, demolition – in short, clear
signs of neighbourhood decay. Of course, some ‘real’ crime problems are men-
tioned: burglary and – in some neighbourhoods – robbery being the most impor-
tant examples. But generally speaking, ‘the’ problem of crime is not ‘their’ prob-
lem but a problem ‘elsewhere’, for society as a whole.
This crime problem in society as a whole is considered to be very serious. It is
usually presented as a problem that is constantly growing. In the Netherlands, for
instance, in the last dozen or so years, the crime figures presented in the press
and discussed in parliament were the crimes recorded by the police. And it is cer-
tainly true that the crime level recorded by the police has risen in this period.
When the crime level is measured by victim surveys, however, the picture is quite
different. According to these surveys, the level of victimisation was at its highest
in the mid-1980s, after which it slowly declined until the early 1990s. During the
last decade it rose and fell with no distinct trend. For many years crime has been
presented as a rising problem although in reality the situation had improved.
Closely related to this, fear of crime has also been presented as an ever increasing
problem. And here, too, research does not support this representation. When, for
instance, we look at the results of public surveys from 1980 until now, fear of
crime in people’s own neighbourhood has remained more or less the same.27
This result sharply contradicts the suggestion in the media that both crime and
feelings of insecurity have risen substantially in recent decades. It is undoubtedly
true that crime is considered the most important social problem in the Nether-
lands at the beginning of this century. Some 80-85% of the population consider
crime a serious problem. This percentage is not so much the result of an increase
in feelings of insecurity over the past years, since the same percentage considered
crime a serious problem in the 1980s, too. The most important difference is that
other social problems that were still current in public surveys conducted in the
1980s, such as environmental problems, economic problems and unemploy-
ment, have faded away.
27. Since the beginning of the 1980s, feelings of insecurity have been measured by asking questions
that try to measure personal insecurity in people’s own environment:
Do you open the front door after ten o’clock at night when someone rings?
Do you know of insecure places in your neighbourhood?
Are you afraid at home alone at night?

6 Why Reassurance Policing ‘Works’ 97
6.3.2 Theoretical aspects
Where do these inconsistencies stem from? How can they be explained and how
are they related to expectations people have regarding the police? To answer these
questions I shall present an overview of some relevant literature of social psychol-
ogy.
Human beings live in a world that is to a great extent unpredictable, uncontrolla-
ble, uncertain and potentially dangerous. There is always a risk of becoming a vic-
tim of an occurrence beyond one’s control and people are relatively powerless to
change threatening situations. Psychological research has taught us that human
beings have ‘developed’ several strategies to deal with this kind of threat. In the
first place they avoid threatening information, or redefine information about
threats. In the second place there are the so-called defence mechanisms (denial,
projection, reinterpretation) that help them find stability in their world. People
subconsciously construe an orderly, predictable world in which their uncontrolla-
ble risks are minimized. Dissonant values and facts are either reduced or elimi-
nated. Whenever an expectation about themselves or their environment is discon-
firmed, people are upset and motivated to change that undesirable state of affairs.
One of these possible uncontrollable threats is crime. The possibility of criminal
victimisation is lurking everywhere and when it happens, the victim is left to the
mercies of the offender. The latter aspect in particular contributes to the fear of
crime. Fear of crime is primarily and most importantly related to vulnerability.
People feel vulnerable, for instance, when they fear that they may fall victim to a
crime and there is nothing they can do to ‘control’ the situation when that hap-
pens. People are sensitive to signs indicating that ‘something might happen’. An
important determinant is the quality of a neighbourhood. Living in a neighbour-
hood that people define as ‘bad’ has more impact on fear of crime than multiple
victimisation (Stuurgroep Politie 2000, 1991). If a neighbourhood shows signs of
decay (litter, graffiti, ‘broken windows’) or youngsters are hanging around who
are not known to the residents, the fear of crime is usually at a high level. If, by
contrast, people feel their environment is neat, orderly, predictable and controlla-
ble, their fear of crime is low. One of the reasons why victimisation in traffic
causes less fear than victimisation by crime is that we have learned that in traffic
we are ‘in control’. Apart from vulnerability, normative aspects also seem to be
involved. Behaviour that violates norms and leads to victimisation (such as crimi-
nal behaviour) causes more fear than behaviour that is within the bounds of
norms and causes victimisation (such as traffic). Victimisation in traffic is the
result of an accident; in criminal matters it is the result of maliciousness, evil
intent (Van der Vijver, 1993). Theories that seek to explain how people react to
this kind of threat must reckon with two different aspects: the role of the victim
and the role of the offender. I shall discuss both aspects.

98 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
The role of the victim
To understand how people deal with potentially threatening situations and feel-
ings of insecurity, Lerner’s theory of the ‘Belief in the Just World’ may be of help.
This consistency theory is concerned with the question of how human beings
keep stable and psychologically healthy in a threatening, unpredictable world.
The Theory of the Just World asserts that every human feels the need to live in a
world that is essentially just and that – in the end – each individual gets what he
or she deserves. People need to feel they are ‘a good citizen in a Just World’. A
Just World is a world in which right and wrong are divided as they should be.
‘Good’ citizens will be rewarded and ‘bad’ citizens deserve to suffer.
Along with assumptions concerning order, predictability and control, most ‘ordi-
nary’ people develop a sense of appropriateness: people get what they are entitled
to: good citizens are rewarded and ‘bad’ citizens do suffer. Human beings con-
strue events so that they fit this belief and become emotionally involved in scenar-
ios where they see the good prevail and the bad suffer. And by doing so, they fail
to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Human beings want to and have to
believe that they live in a Just World so that they can go about their daily lives with
a sense of trust, hope and confidence in their future.
In this theory, the image of the victim plays an important role. The victim is at the
very core of Lerner’s theory. There is no place for innocent victims, although eve-
ryone is aware that there may very well be innocent victims. So how do people
make this knowledge fit in with the notion of the Just World? Lerner states that
people tend not to consider victims as innocent. They perceive events in such a
way that the victims themselves are responsible for the situation in which they
find themselves. It is their own fault (‘blaming the victim’), victims got what they
deserved (‘just desserts’). People attribute negative characteristics to the victim,
regard him or her as inferior, stupid, careless. If re-establishing justice by com-
pensating the innocent victim is possible, then it happens. But if people are una-
ble to compensate they re-establish justice by finding the victim blameworthy. It
explains the attitudes towards (innocent) victims. In empirical studies, Lerner
and others have demonstrated that these theoretical assumptions are in fact cor-
rect. Victims are blamed even if, quite objectively, they cannot help their situa-
tion. The less the deserve their suffering, the more they are regarded as inferior.
The fact that over the past twenty odd years the position of the victim in the field
of criminal justice has improved is of major importance, but it does not negate
the analysis of Lerner.
The role of the offender
The offender is ‘the other side’ of the problem. He is the person causing the trou-
ble. A criminal act implies overpowering, humiliation, disparagement and the
illegitimate exercise of power. That in turn implies uncontrollability. This leads to
a need for vengeance. Dealing with feelings of vengeance is known to be one of
the reasons for establishing penal law in the first place. In penal law vengeance is
even more specifically considered as inhuman, a ‘lower instinct’ of human

6 Why Reassurance Policing ‘Works’ 99
beings, for which reason the government must take over the responsibilities of
controlling crime and criminal offenders. One of the functions of penal law is ret-
ribution for evil. For a long period, psychological theory paid hardly any attention
to this emotion (Frijda, 1986: 1993). But the potential threat is often diffuse,
abstract. People construe images of threat; sources of evil are seen as coming
from a small, deviant but threatening group. The Real Criminal (the Mad Axe-
man) is a real danger to all of us, a danger that should be conquered before it can
do harm. Vengeance has several functional elements, like (self-)protection
against threat, balancing gain and loss, balancing between inequalities of power,
and regaining self-esteem (Frijda, 1986). Vengeance does not only mean retribu-
tion, it also means self-protection: the enemy should be destroyed, or at least
severely hurt so that he can do no more harm (Christie, 1986).
Putting the two aspects together, we may conclude that we interpret reality in
order to keep our Just World intact. If criminals are put in jail and victims are
responsible for their victimisation, then we are safeguarded against risks. By
blaming the victim we do not need to feel frustrated. We keep our morale up with
the idea that we are rational people and act as ‘good citizens’. That’s why we get
what we deserve and that’s why they (the victims and the offenders) get what they
deserve.
We live in a society that is ambiguous towards suffering. On the one hand society
has invested a lot of money and energy into improving the position of victims.
More specifically over the past ten years, the victim culture has risen substan-
tially. On the other hand, however, society tolerates widespread suffering and dep-
rivation of innocent victims. For the sake of our own security, we either avoid
those injustices or we add to them by finding reasons to condemn victims. We
want to avoid the feeling that ‘we could be walking in their shoes’. People main-
tain their belief in a Just World for the sake of their own security. The good citizen
myth is a fallacy, says Lerner: we are always trying to make the best deal for our-
selves – for instance by eliminating the feeling of guilt without having to inter-
vene and risk the consequences of intervention.
Apart from the victim-oriented aspects in the theory of the Just World, it is impor-
tant that evil be punished or, to be more precise, that the idea be maintained that
evil is punished. The point is not how many criminals are actually tracked down,
prosecuted and punished; what is at stake is that people must be able to continue
to believe that this is what is being done – that a massive apparatus is actively
combating crime.
This means people are ready to push the way they interpret reality a long way, just
in order to maintain the idea of a Just World. This idea of a Just World signifi-
cantly influences people’s perception of their own security. If criminals are
cracked down upon and victims themselves are guilty, then you as an individual
are safeguarded against the unpredictable and uncontrollable dangers crime may

100 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
bring. The ‘belief in a Just World’ is a way to adapt to a chaotic environment in
which people are relatively helpless:
‘…those more or less articulated assumptions which underlie the way people orient them-
selves to their environment. These assumptions have a functional component which is
tied to the image of a manageable and predictable world. These are central to the ability
to engage in long-term goal-directed activity. In order to ... avoid those [things] which are
frightening or painful, people must assume that there are manageable procedures which
are effective in producing the desired ends and states’ (Lerner, 1980: 9).
Obviously, both aspects discussed above will have a considerable impact on what
citizens expect from the police. Studies into the expectations of citizens support
the view that both aspects of policing, symbolic and real, should be taken into
account when talking about the effectiveness of policing. The police play an
important role in upholding this image, in both real and symbolic ways. How this
role is carried out will be discussed in the next paragraph.
6.4 Connecting reassurance policing
The criminal justice system has both an instrumental and a symbolic meaning in
society and these two meanings are interdependent. By including the symbolical
aspects in the model of explanation, more insight is gained into the way in which
criminal justice works. The perception of crime may in many instances be more
important than the real level of crime. When crime is perceived to be a serious
threat, it upsets the picture of a just and safe world and, consequently, citizens
want somebody to take a stand. Whether or not this objectively helps to reduce
crime is comparatively irrelevant. It makes clear that the police are concentrating
on the problems that are most important to them. It is important that people
know that the police are taking action. This provides a feeling of safety and secu-
rity. In the approach of reassurance policing, the concept of the signal crimes (or
signal disorders) may be a sensible answer to the perception of insecurity by citi-
zens.
The police are playing a symbolic role in several respects. The police must, on the
one hand, symbolise28 the tranquillity and the orderliness of the place where peo-
ple live. And for that reason they need an available, approachable, supportive,
alert but at the same time calmly operating police force in their surroundings. A
police force operating in this way demonstrates that these surroundings are safe,
with little injustice, offering citizens security and safety. The police must support
victims, help them to restore their image of the Just World. The police should
make it clear that they view crime (more specifically the signal crimes) as a seri-
ous problem and are doing their utmost to tackle that problem. The role of the
28. ‘Symbolic’ does not mean ‘unimportant’ as the term is often used. It has nothing to do with win-
dow-dressing. On the contrary, it means that all essential values are gathered in some ‘one and
only’ symbol.

6 Why Reassurance Policing ‘Works’ 101
police is, as stated above, not (only) crime fighting but also keeping images intact
by reinforcing the image of justice and safety. This is exactly what reassurance
policing aims at.
People want the problems that cause them immediate trouble or nuisance to be
tackled. And if these are persistent problems, they require them to be solved as
well. However, they generally do not really care if this is achieved through the
criminal justice system, just as long as it is done in a decent and preferably unno-
ticeable fashion, without the risk of escalation. Police enforcement signifies that
society takes the task of combating crime seriously. This indicates that people are
living in a ‘just’ society – or at least in a society that strives to achieve justice – a
society where law is maintained and where evil is punished. This picture is of
enormous importance in giving people the feeling that society is safe. The value
of the police is related partly to the deterrent effect with regard to potential
offenders, but lies partly, and to a far more important extent, in supporting the
well-intentioned citizens. People stick to rules in principle because they feel that
that is the way it should be and far less because they run the risk of being pun-
ished otherwise. To maintain that position it is crucial that society (to a certain
extent through the functioning of the police) transmits the message that injustice
is being tackled.
The importance, the meaning of the criminal justice system is not in large meas-
ure determined by instrumental, repressive enforcement. Retribution, which is
inherent in the criminal law, and associated mechanisms of exclusion, tends only
to intensify criminal behaviour in terms of individual offenders. The large pro-
portion of convicted offenders who relapse into criminality has proved this over
and over again. Feelings of retribution are real and you cannot shunt them aside
as if they are not there. If you do that, people will lose the feeling that they are liv-
ing in a Just World. They will feel insecure and blame the government for not per-
forming its most important task. Another consequence may also be that people
feel they are no longer bound to observe the rules themselves – most people
observe rules because they feel that is the way one should behave in a Just World
rather than by the threat of punishment. Criminal law undoubtedly plays an
important role in feelings of justice and in law-abiding behaviour.
The police are not just there to achieve explicit goals, but also to do what is con-
sidered to be right and important in a democratic state under the rule of law. Even
if the police do not achieve a concrete result, people still desire that the police will
endeavour to take action. That is how things should go in a Just World.
Concluding remarks
Many aspects of reassurance policing fill neatly into what citizens consider
important as an answer to insecurity, and see as the role of the police. In the first
place they are involved, which means that they feel taken seriously. The priorities

102 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
of the police are their priorities. This means that the police are doing the right
thing in taking care of a safe environment. The fact that the police pay attention
to the problems they consider important, supports the idea that they are ‘good cit-
izens’, asking the right things. The concept of ‘signal crimes’ seems to play an
important role in the positive results of reassurance policing.
Reassurance policing also has the element of the problem-oriented approach. If
this is done well then citizens will feel that the police are doing a good job in tack-
ling the problems of crime and insecurity. I cannot judge (without a more exact
knowledge of the projects) whether the problem-oriented approach works well.
Usually, one of the biggest problems is that the police do not keep their promises;
their promise to pay attention to some problem does not automatically mean that
they will. But if citizens see that the police act in order to solve problems, then
this will be an important contribution to a positive judgment of the functioning of
the policing; it supports the symbolic role of the police.
Communication between police and citizens is the last important aspect. People
want the police in their vicinity. They want to communicate with the police when
there are problems. They want to be taken seriously by the police and they want to
know what the police are planning to do and why. They want the police to act and
they want to be informed about the results. If these aspects are present, they see
the police as an organisation that contributes to the fight against insecurity and as
an organisation that helps to create safe neighbourhoods. And again, that is how
things should work in a Just World.
In conclusion, the concept of reassurance policing seems to support many
aspects which are important to citizens. This brings the positive results in line
with the research carried out over the past decades, but it adds several extra fea-
tures. More specifically: it will be the combination of the neighbourhood orienta-
tion, the involvement of citizens, the signal crimes and the problem-oriented
approach that will be the most important explanation of the results. But, as stated
before, it is only the beginning of understanding how reassurance policing
works. For not all the projects were successful. It is important to understand why
some of them were, and others were not. Besides, there may be alternative expla-
nations for the positive results, that do not fit in the theoretical construct pre-
sented in this chapter (could it for instance be that some kind of Hawthorne-
effect explains the results?) These are interesting challenges for future research.
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7 New Security Patrols in Public Places:
Reassurance, Fragmentation, and
Marketisation
Jan Terpstra
Introduction
For the last fifteen to twenty years in the Netherlands, as in so many other west-
ern countries, the regular, public police have lost much of their traditional
monopoly on patrol and surveillance. Besides the regular police, a growing
number of both public and private security officers are conducting surveillance
activities and in some cases even rule enforcement, in both public and in quasi-
public places. According to Crawford et al. (2005) this process may be described
as a pluralisation of policing. The presence of all these new security patrols, dif-
ferent as they are, such as city wardens, police assistants, private security work-
ers, neighbourhood guards, parking police, swimming pool attendants, park
guards, traffic surveillance officers, public transport control guards or whatever
they may be called, is to a large degree motivated by the call of many citizens for
more visible surveillance in the public space. The visible presence of uniformed
patrols is supposed to contribute to the control and prevention of disorder and
crime, to reassure citizens and make them feel less fearful and insecure.
The assumption that the visible presence of uniformed surveillance may reassure
citizens, counter feelings of insecurity and promote trust in (local) government
and the police, is a central element in a new model of policing which has received
a lot of attention in the last few years, especially in the United Kingdom. This new
model is known as ‘reassurance policing’. Several circumstances contributed to
the recent popularity of this model among the British police. First, it was seen as
a possible answer to the situation that had arisen, not only in the UK but also in
the Netherlands, that since the mid 1990s crime risks have generally been on the
decline, but nevertheless, large numbers of citizens perceived crime as a serious
and growing problem. Concepts like the ‘reassurance gap’ (Tuffin, Morris and
Poole, 2006; Herrington and Millie, 2006) or ‘reassurance paradox’ (Crawford et
al., 2005) have been introduced to describe this discrepancy. After years in which
the dominant discourse on police reform in the UK centered around such con-
cepts as ‘intelligence-led policing’ and ‘zero tolerance’ and the associated ‘tough’
methods of policing, more recently there has been a revival of interest in more
‘soft’ police practices, previously associated with ‘community policing’ (Innes,
2006).

106 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
Moreover, the model of ‘reassurance policing’ may also be seen as a correction to
the dominance of the new managerial discourse within the police (Terpstra and
Trommel, 2007). After years of demands for cost-effectiveness leading to an
increase in the distance between police and citizens, more recently there has been
a growing recognition of the importance of a police force that is visible and close
to the citizens. According to this model the police should focus (especially) on
those problems that contribute to feelings of insecurity. This may imply that the
police should also care about nuisance, disorder or problems of wellbeing in the
neighbourhood. These are particular examples of issues which, influenced by the
new managerial emphasis on ‘core business’, were seen as improper tasks for the
police.
The model of ‘reassurance policing’ focuses on the (supposed) reassuring and
trust generating functions of the regular police. The introduction and the growth
of the new security patrols are based on the assumption that they have a compara-
ble function. I therefore concentrate here on the question of the extent to which
the new security patrols, operating in public places, correspond to the reassur-
ance policing model.
In this chapter I first deal briefly with the concept of ‘reassurance policing.’ I then
describe some of the circumstances that contribute to the rise and increasing
importance of the new security patrols. A typology of the new security patrols in
the Netherlands is then presented, after which I discuss the meaning of the new
security patrols for citizens. The final question of this chapter concerns the conse-
quences of a marketisation of surveillance for the ‘reassurance’ function.
7.1 Reassurance policing
In common with so many other police concepts and models, the concept of ‘reas-
surance policing’ is open to several interpretations. A distinction may be made
between a limited and a more broad interpretation of the concept. The limited
interpretation refers to a definition given by Charles Bahn in 1974 of one of the
functions of a police patrol: ‘… the feeling of security and safety that a citizen
experiences when he sees a police officer or patrol car nearby …’. This limited
interpretation concentrates on the improvement of confidence in, and satisfac-
tion with the police and the promotion of feelings of safety (Tuffin, Morris and
Poole, 2006). This reassurance function of the police and its ability to generate
trust in the police are seen as depending mainly on the extent to which the police
are visible, accessible and familiar to members of the community (Herrington
and Millie, 2006).
In the debate on ‘reassurance policing’ in the UK, critical remarks were made
about this interpretation of the concept. FitzGerald et al. (2002: 132) wonder what
differentiates the concept from other forms of ‘effective police work’, if it
embraces both the control of crime and disorder, and the reassurance of citizens.

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 107
If that is the case, Fitzgerald et al. state, the concept is probably superfluous. If,
however, reassurance policing is only about creating the impression of safety,
then in their view it is doubtful whether scarce police resources should be used
for this purpose. If the aim is to reduce anxiety in ways that are intended also to
have an impact on crime and disorder, then the concept of ‘reassurance policing
may provide the wrong words for the right solution.’
Following the same line of reasoning, it has also been argued that visibility, acces-
sibility and familiarity of the police are necessary but not sufficient conditions to
create feelings of security and to restore citizens’ confidence in the police (Innes,
2005). An evaluation of a British programme of reassurance policing shows that
visibility and familiarity cannot on their own produce shifts in public perception.
This study shows that a local police approach should incorporate police engage-
ment with the public, problem-solving and visibility through patrolling. The
police should also stimulate the social capacity of the community (Tuffin, Morris
and Poole, 2006: 94).
These and other critical remarks opened up a broader definition of ‘reassurance
policing.’ Here reassurance policing refers not only to the promotion of feelings
of security or citizens’ trust in the police, but also to the reduction of disorder and
the strengthening of collective efficacy (Tuffin, Morris and Poole, 2006; Singer,
2004). In this view ‘reassurance policing’ consists of three main elements:
• targeting those problems of crime and disorder that matter most to the public
and have a negative impact on perceptions of risk and security in a neighbour-
hood;
• involvement of the community and a multi-agency approach;
• visible presence of accessible, locally familiar authorities (Tuffin, Morris and
Poole, 2006: 17-19; Innes, 2005).
This extension of the concept countered many of the critical remarks on the lim-
ited concept of ‘reassurance policing’. The much broader concept is rather equiv-
ocal, though. Interpreted in this way, ‘reassurance policing’ contains elements of
several police models and strategies, such as ‘community policing’, ‘multi-agency
policing’, ‘focused policing’, and ‘problem-oriented policing.’ This does not imply
that the concept is without meaning. On the contrary, its most important function
seems to be that it puts certain issues that were at risk of receiving too little atten-
tion on the police agenda once again. Moreover, the concept of ‘reassurance polic-
ing’ gives more focus and direction to police work, thanks to the central place of
concepts like ‘signal crime’ and ‘control signals’ (Innes, 2005).
However, the broad, heterogeneous nature of this concept means it is rather diffi-
cult to answer the question as to what extent the rise of the new security patrol
officers corresponds with it. For this reason the limited definition of ‘reassurance
policing’ is used here, since this is also the core element of the broadly defined
concept. This chapter therefore focuses on the question of the meaning of the
new security patrols in terms of citizens’ feelings of security and their confidence

108 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
in authorities on the street. The new security patrols also raise other important
questions seen from the citizens’ perspective. These questions are dealt with in
the final sections of the chapter.
7.2 The rise of the new security patrols
Several factors contributed to the rise of the new security patrol officers in
(semi)public places in the Netherlands. Although these factors may operate in
different directions, they contributed, directly or indirectly, to a dispersal of sur-
veillance and enforcement tasks, once defined as belonging to the domain of the
regular police, across a multitude of officers and organisations, both public and
private in nature. These factors are often interdependent. Here I concentrate on
six categories of circumstances and developments which seem to be the most
important (Bayley and Shearing, 2001; Crawford, 2003; Crawford, 2006a; Craw-
ford and Lister, 2006; Jones and Newburn, 1999; Newburn, 2001; Van Steden,
2007; Terpstra, 2004a; Terpstra and Kouwenhoven, 2004).
• First, the rise of the new security patrol officers is a result of a growing con-
cern many citizens have about public safety. In the Netherlands many citizens
complain about what is called an enforcement deficit. During the 1990s and
in the early 2000s a growing number of citizens in this country started to
demand distinct, tangible actions against risks to public safety, in particular
involving the visible presence of ‘uniformed persons in blue’ on the streets.
• The growing demand for policing increasingly limits the capacities of the
police force to meet all the demands, despite the rising numbers of police
officers in the Netherlands over the last 25 years. At the same time, new views
on police work are starting to gain favour, which is also revealed in the debate
on core tasks of the Netherlands’ police (Van der Vijver, Meershoek and
Slobbe, 2001). Both developments are detrimental to the visible presence of
the police on the streets. Moreover, as a result of the new managerial dis-
course and the creeping centralisation of the Netherlands’ police, the distance
between the police and citizens (especially in non-urban areas) is increasing
(Terpstra, 2004b).
• The introduction and growing numbers of new security patrol officers have
been promoted by several government policies in the Netherlands. During the
1990s there was a growing recognition of the importance of feelings of secu-
rity and citizens’ views on police activities (even though this may seem contra-
dictory to the described trend of a growing remoteness from the public). This
development gave rise to a pressing need to find answers to feelings of insecu-
rity and citizens’ complaints about a lack of surveillance and enforcement.
Based on this argument, an important aim of government policy is to
strengthen surveillance and enforcement in public places. In 2004 the gov-
ernment widened the scope permitting the use of private security officers
(under certain formal conditions) for enforcement tasks in public places
(‘Naar een Veiliger Samenleving’, 2002; Ministerie van Justitie, 2004).29

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 109
Parallel to the strengthening of surveillance and enforcement with regard to
public safety, several enforcement activities based on administrative law were
introduced in the Netherlands, in addition to existing forms of enforcement
based on criminal law. After many years of public debate and preparations, the
Netherlands’ parliament adopted a bill that gives local government the formal
powers to impose administrative fines for disorder in public places (Terpstra
and Havinga, 2005).
Moreover, government policy places great emphasis on the need for coopera-
tion between different agencies in the management of crime and disorder. To
a certain extent these multi-agency networks focus on preventative strategies,
but this development also contributed to the growing numbers of new secu-
rity patrol officers. As partners in local public safety policy and in local secu-
rity networks, both local government and businesses are asked to accept their
own responsibility and contribute to surveillance and control.
• Growing numbers of citizens are dissatisfied with the levels of concern shown
by government and the police for their safety problems. This means that citi-
zens, especially owners of businesses, are increasingly deciding to organise
their own security, for example by deploying private security officers. In many
cases they do not restrict themselves to privately owned grounds. Increasingly
private security officers are also deployed for surveillance and control in areas
of a public or quasi-public nature. Of course, this strategy is only available for
citizens and companies which have ample amounts of social and economic
capital at their disposal.
Finally, the rise of the new security patrols is also related to changes in the
urban economy and the use of urban space. Nowadays security is of high eco-
nomic value at certain urban locations, for example as an important condition
for attracting tourists or other people seeking entertainment. Surveillance and
control are not only important conditions for making an amusement park like
Disney World an attractive place to visit (Shearing and Stenning, 1985); they
are also increasingly important in traditional city centres, shopping areas and
entertainment areas with bars, discos and theatres. These areas are very
dependent on tourists, day trippers and other consumers who decide where to
go and where to spend their money by considering the security image of such
locations. This is where public and private interests become intertwined.
Moreover, one is increasingly seeing hybrid forms of public and private space.
For example, large shopping malls may be private property, but to visitors they
may appear open to the public. On the other hand there are also public
grounds which are dominated by surrounding private areas and interests, so
they appear to be private properties (such as industrial estates). In such loca-
tions of ‘mass hybrid property’ (Jones and Newburn, 1999), as well as in
public urban locations which need to attract large numbers of visitors and tou-
29. In the Netherlands there has been no formal governmental policy aimed at privatisation of surveil-
lance in public places (in contrast to some other domains, in which a policy of privatisation of for-
merly public activities and organisations was adopted). Here government policy only contributed
indirectly to a limited privatisation (cf. Jones and Newburn (1999: 228) for the situation in the UK).

110 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
rists, security and surveillance tasks are increasingly carried out by the new
security patrol officers, often employed by private security companies.
A third element of modern urban society in the Netherlands is also relevant
here. In the 1980s and 1990s in particular, for reasons of cost reduction and
financial cutbacks, many jobs which had primarily a service function but
which in practice also had an important (informal, secondary) task of control
and surveillance, were eliminated or cut back. Workers like caretakers, con-
ductors, platform guards, and wardens in blocks of flats almost disappeared in
those years (Newburn, 2001). Later on, as the adverse consequences of the
loss of such jobs for social control became clear, attempts were made to com-
pensate by restoring social control in more formal ways, employing security
patrol officers or hiring private guards.
7.3 New security patrols in the Netherlands
The first new security patrol officers were introduced in the Netherlands in the
late 1980s. Two developments are relevant here. First, as an element of the policy
at that time of ‘administrative prevention of petty crime’, measures were taken to
restore surveillance and control in public places by introducing new security
patrols. In the mid-1980s this argument was used to introduce Officials for
Safety, Information and Control (as they were called) on public transport. In 1989
so-called city wardens were introduced. The policy regarding city wardens was
based on arguments related both to strengthening surveillance in public places
and to supporting the long-term unemployed by providing them with a job or
what was called a work experience position (Hauber et al., 1994). Secondly, from
the late 1980s on, private initiatives were adopted in which private security
guards conducted surveillance and control in (quasi) public places. At first this
was mainly confined to industrial estates, often taking the form of public-private
partnerships. Later on, this form of surveillance and control was also introduced
in other locations in the Netherlands, like shopping areas, railway stations, and
areas of entertainment.
Today there are all kinds of new security patrol officers, both public and private,
who operate in (quasi) public places in the Netherlands. They are assigned by a
wide variety of (public and private) agencies and organisations, they are financed
in different ways and they operate in a diversity of formal arrangements. There is
no comprehensive survey of all these new security officers and security arrange-
ments in the Netherlands. In 1999 an estimated 26,000 persons were employed
in the private security sector in the Netherlands (Van Dijk and De Waard, 2000),
representing a growth of about 250 per cent in twenty years. Information on the
contemporary number of employees in this sector is unavailable, nor do we know
how many of them are employed in the public space as patrol officers. Because
the new security patrols are highly decentralised and dependent on a variety of
financial arrangements and budgets there is no information available about the
current numbers of public security officers (for example city wardens) in the

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 111
Netherlands. The diversity of the new security patrol function may be illustrated
by a local study conducted in Amsterdam, which revealed that in some parts of
this city as many as thirteen or even fifteen different types of patrol officers oper-
ate in the public space, in addition to the regular police (Bicknese and Slot, 2003).
The main task of the new patrol officers is to promote objective and subjective
public safety. In the Netherlands most of them have only the same powers as any
other citizen and they have no formal power to investigate. The introduction of
the new bill that gives local government the formal power to impose administra-
tive fines for disorder in public places will probably in the near future increase
the number of special investigative officers.30 These are security patrol officers
with some limited powers to investigate. Their main task will be to observe, pre-
vent and control forms of social disorder, such as men urinating in public places,
nuisance, dog dirt, people parking their cars in the wrong places and petty traffic
offences such as cycling in a pedestrian area.
Increasingly, such dichotomies as public/private fail to provide an adequate
description of the growing heterogeneity of security patrols in the public space.
Terms such as ‘hybridity’, ‘pluriformity’ or ‘multilateralisation’ (Bayley and Shear-
ing, 2001) are used to draw attention to this diversity, but they do not represent an
analysis of the many types and combinations of types that may be found in the
new forms of security and surveillance.
Here I present a typology of the new security patrols in the Netherlands, based on
a distinction made by Bayley and Shearing (2001) in a comparable context (see
also Crawford, 2006a). Traditionally, in case of the regular police both the ‘aus-
pices’ (or ‘principal), and the ‘provider’ were in public hands. According to Bayley
and Shearing (2001: 3), a defining characteristic of the new policing and patrol is
that auspices and providers may not coincide. These functions are increasingly
separated, operating independently of each other. Auspices may be either public
or private; so, too, may providers. The different combinations of a public and pri-
vate nature of both functions represent different types of markets or quasi-mar-
kets (Le Grand and Bartlett, 1993), each with its own structure and specific effects
(both intended and unintended).
This means that five different types of new security patrols may be distinguished
(see Figure 1). They differ to the degree that there is a separation between ‘aus-
pices’ and ‘providers’ and (insofar as there is a separation) according to the public
or private nature of both functions. This implies that the types of new security
patrols also differ in terms of the degree of commodification or marketisation.
30. In Dutch: Buitengewone Opsporingsambtenaren.

112 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
7.3.1 Type I. Completely public new security patrols (no quasi-market)
Here the state is responsible both for the introduction and implementation of the
new security patrols in the public space. There is no separation between principle
and agency, nor any other type of quasi-market.
The first security patrols of this type were introduced in the Netherlands in the
late 1980s. Different names are used for these officers, of which the city wardens
(‘stadswacht’) and BOAs (a Dutch abbreviation for special investigative officers,
in case they have formal investigative powers) are the most well-known to the
public. Their main task is to promote ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ public safety.
With the exception of BOAs, these new security patrol officers have no special
powers and have to confine themselves to just talking to citizens about their con-
duct. If problems should arise, the regular police still have to be called in. Moreo-
ver, city wardens should also be the ‘eyes and ears’ of other public agencies (like
the police) or act as a ‘host’ or a ‘source of information’ in urban areas, for
instance for tourists. City wardens are employed especially in the centres of the
Netherlands’ cities. In other cases they are used for the surveillance of other loca-
tions (shopping centres, parks, trains and railway stations or beaches), in traffic
control, at large-scale public events, or cycle guards or on certain projects.
Figure 1 Five types of new security patrols in the (quasi-)public space
No separation
Auspices-Provider
Auspices
Provider
Public
23
54
1
Public
Private
Private
Separation
Auspices-Provider

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 113
7.3.2 Type II. Governments purchase public surveillance
Here both principle and provider are public. The main difference with type I is
that there is a purchase relation: one government body purchases services from
another public agency. The clearest example here is when a local authority
decides to purchase extra police from the regular police force to strengthen secu-
rity in the local community.
For example, in the region of Utrecht local governments, especially in rural areas,
noticed that since the introduction of the Police Act 1993 the police forces had to
some extent withdrawn from the small villages. First the local police became
employed by the new, large regional organisations, then the number of local
police officers was reduced, and finally the local police station was often closed.
Citizens now have to travel to a nearby town if they wish to make a formal report
to the police. Police patrols also have to come from elsewhere, often from a
nearby town where other, more urgent priorities may prevail. This situation
resulted in complaints, both from citizens and local governments, about the
invisibility of the police in their village (Terpstra, 2002).
Several local governments with small villages in their areas (among them the
municipalities of Heuvelrug and Maarssen) therefore decided to purchase so-
called ‘police surveillants’. These police surveillants are employed by the regional
police force but are funded by the local government. The police surveillants have
less formal powers than regular police officers. For instance, they do not carry a
weapon, but are allowed to make a formal report on certain offences. They are
employed for (additional) surveillance on the streets, the market, near large night-
life areas, and they monitor compliance with all kinds of local regulations, such
as the way people exercise their dogs.
For a number of years the local government of Baarn also purchased a local com-
munity police officer, in addition to police surveillants. However, in 2005 this
local government decided to terminate the purchase relation, the main argument
being that community policing should be viewed as a regular task of the police.
This illustrates that such purchase relations may give rise to some local discus-
sion. Local politicians may complain that the purchased police activities should
actually be seen as regular police tasks, which should not be additionally funded
by local government. Time and again, some doubts have arisen locally about
whether the police force is actually using the additional police capacity solely for
the benefit of the funding local government (Terpstra, 2002). For a local govern-
ment this is very hard to observe, which is a typical side effect of a quasi-market
cast in the form of a ‘principal-agency’ relation (Le Grand and Barlett, 1993). A
comparable situation was found in England by Crawford and Lister (2006):
police management experiences a serious tension between the obligations result-
ing from a purchase relation and the need to deal flexibly with the available
resources.

114 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
7.3.3 Type III. Governments purchase private security
In some cases governments decide to contract private security officers for surveil-
lance, or even enforcement activities, in the public space. The main argument for
this policy is that both local governments and citizens want more surveillance
and enforcement in the public space, which the police are either unable to pro-
vide or do not regard as their proper task.
The use of these private security officers may be temporary or on a more or less
permanent basis. In some cases the private security operation is restricted to cer-
tain locations or functions. Only in some cases do private security officers have
special powers. A few examples may suffice to illustrate the ways that local gov-
ernments have used private security officers for the surveillance of public places
in the last few years (see Box 1). 31 32 33
Box 1 Private security officers in public space in the Netherlands, purchased
by local governments, some examples
On a temporary or occasional basis:
• private security officers at certain public events (such as the annual fair, summer
festival, etc.);
• private security officers are hired by local government to patrol a residential area at
night, after this area was hit by several fires, causing great fear and unrest among
residents; the regular police force did not have the capacity for additional patrols;
local government funded the private security activities (municipality of Venray, May/
June 2006);
• additional patrol by employees of a private security company in the municipalities of
Lemmer and Langweer in the summer of 2000 due to the summer vacation planning
of the regular police force and the large number of tourists in the area.31
On a permanent basis at certain locations:
• By order of some urban district governments in Rotterdam, private security officers
maintain surveillance in certain streets with serious disorder problems.32
• In the centre of the city of Venray employees of the private company Q-Park have
enforcement tasks with regard to certain petty offences, such as cycling in a
pedestrian area. These private security officers are allowed to make up reports for
certain offences.
On a permanent basis for the whole community:
• For the last few years the municipality of Enkhuizen has employed private security
officers as surveillants in the public space. Even more far-reaching were proposals
made in the municipality of Bloemendaal in 2003 (which were not accepted, but only
after much discussion): round the clock private security officers should be used for
surveillance in the small (and affluent) villages of Bloemendaal, Overveen and
Aerdenhout. The immediate cause underlying these proposals was a serious attack
on the house of locally well-known persons in one of the villages.33
31. http://www.nieuwsbank.nl/inp/2000/08/0825E051.htm.
32. Ibid.
33. www.platformbeveiliging.nl/site/actueel/?nodeid=1179&rasterid=907.

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 115
7.3.4 Type IV. Police charge for their activities
In this situation the costs of public patrol (by regular police officers) in the
(semi)public space may be charged to private agencies or actors. In the Nether-
lands this form of new security patrol is a recurrent issue in public and political
debate. The discussion concentrates on charging for public policing at profes-
sional football matches and large scale events (like music festivals). In 2004 the
Dutch government proposed that police activities at large-scale commercial
events like football matches should be paid for by the private organisation, up to a
maximum of fifty percent of the total costs of police deployment. At the time of
writing, a majority of Dutch politicians seems to be reluctant to implement these
plans, because of the adverse effects they may have. However, there is at least one
example of a situation (at Hoog Catharijne, the largest shopping mall in the Neth-
erlands, in the city of Utrecht) where the costs of regular police activities are
charged indirectly to the private companies located on this estate (Van Steden,
2007).
7.3.5 Type V. Private security patrol under private auspices
Here both ‘principal’ and ‘provider’ are private. This is the most far-reaching
form of marketisation and commodification of surveillance in the public space
now available in the Netherlands. Three subtypes may be distinguished here:
The first may be found in situations where private agencies may be compelled by
the local government (often under conditions laid down in a license) to imple-
ment a type of surveillance according to certain rules and funded from their own
resources. This surveillance may be restricted to the territory owned by a private
organisation, but may also apply to its immediate (and public) surroundings.
This form of private security may be found at large-scale public events and at foot-
ball stadiums. In some cases, private security patrol is limited to the stadium
itself. For example, as arranged with the police and the local government, FC
Utrecht is responsible for security inside the football stadium, where the security
patrol is conducted by so-called ‘club stewards’. Surveillance and patrol outside
the stadium are the task of the regular police force. The arrangements made with
NEC, another club in the Netherlands’ premier league, are even more far-reach-
ing. Here stewards of the football club, together with private security workers
under the orders of and funded by the football club, are also responsible for the
surveillance of supporters and traffic in the wide area surrounding the stadium
(including residential neighbourhoods) before, during and after matches.
The second subtype concerns surveillance and patrol by private security workers
under the orders of private actors or organisations. Here a private security patrol
may also patrol public places. In the Netherlands this subtype of new security
patrols may be found on industrial estates or business parks (Terpstra and Kou-
wenhoven, 2004: 81-85), shopping centres and large, nighttime entertainment

116 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
areas. In these cases both public and private interests are at stake, and these are
often hard to disentangle. Normally, such security is organised in the form of
public-private partnership. The patrol is usually implemented by a private secu-
rity organisation, under the orders of and funded by a private organisation (such
as an association of business owners). The police and the local government often
also participate in these local security networks. Especially here, and in such situ-
ations, the police may play three different, barely compatible roles: partner of the
private security organisation, (in many cases) issuing practical work orders to pri-
vate security guards, and controlling the implementation of the surveillance by
the private security organisation (Terpstra and Kouwenhoven, 2004). Compara-
ble conflicts of interests were found in the UK (Crawford, 2006a: 117).
The third subtype is the most far-reaching form of security patrol privatisation.
Here private actors decide independently to contract private security guards for
surveillance in the public space. Police or local government are not involved (or
only indirectly) in this form of security patrol. However, they accept this private
initiative, the argument being that it harms no-one or that after all, the private
security guards have no special powers. This subtype of new security patrols may
be found especially in homogeneous and (very) wealthy neighbourhoods. In the
Netherlands over the last few years residents in exclusive residential areas in at
least five different municipalities have contracted private security companies to
conduct security patrols.34 This preventive, so-called residential patrol is con-
ducted by car, in some cases 24 hours a day, while in other cases it lasts from the
early afternoon until late at night. In the Duivestijn area (in Northern Rotterdam),
people entering the neighbourhood have to pass a small office manned by the pri-
vate security company, so the private security guards are able to watch all incom-
ing and outgoing traffic. For those residents who participate in the funding of this
collective residential patrol, the security guards also operate as burglar alarm
agents. When individual residents are absent for a long period of time (as when
they are on vacation), their houses are checked frequently by the private security
patrol officers.
Both the second and third subtype may encounter a problem of ‘free riders’: resi-
dents who decide neither to participate nor to contribute financially to the collec-
tive patrol, while they may still benefit from the efforts of others.
There is a great diversity of new security patrols in the Netherlands. There are all
kinds of combinations of public and private, both in the ‘auspices’ and in the ‘pro-
viders’. So far, however, in many respects the developments in this field have not
gone as far in the Netherlands as in some other countries. Although there are
some wealthy neighbourhoods in the Netherlands where residents have decided
to organise local surveillance and control by contracting a private security com-
pany, there is as yet no sign of the next logical step, ‘gated communities’, with
34. These municipalities are: Vught (the area ‘Noord’), Zeist (the village Bosch en Duin), Wassenaar,
Bloemendaal and Rotterdam (the neighbourhood Duivesteijn) (Securicor Senso, December 2003, 3/
3, p. 7; and http://www.securitas.nl/index.asp?id=238&nws=64 (December 2006).

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 117
their characteristic security structure and mentality. In contrast to the UK, for
example (Crawford and Lister, 2006), with regard to the policing and surveillance
of the public space the regular and the private police in the Netherlands are not in
competition with each other in a security market. But even in the Netherlands,
the increase of the new security patrols in the public space gives rise to several
important questions.
7.4 New security patrols and citizens
One of the questions concerns what the new security patrols mean to the public.
Do they reassure citizens and do they promote the public confidence in the
authorities? To what extent do these new security patrols correspond with the
model of ‘reassurance policing’? These questions are not easy to answer and one
of the reasons is that there is very little empirical research on these issues in the
Netherlands.
The fact that in some situations wealthy residents and business owners are will-
ing to spend large amounts of money on collective security in their neighbour-
hood or business precinct might be interpreted as an indication that they expect
this to contribute to their safety and feelings of security. In many cases they con-
tinue to do so for many years, probably because they are satisfied with the positive
effects of the private security guards. Nevertheless, there are reasons to suppose
that the effects of the new security patrols are more ambiguous, even with regard
to their reassurance potential. For instance, living in a ‘gated community’ could
be supposed to result in feelings of security and safety, but it may also cause a fix-
ation on risks and potential dangers. As a result, fear of crime may become
almost chronic amidst an abundance of security measures (Low, 2003).
The model of ‘reassurance policing’ supposes that visibility, accessibility and
familiarity of surveillance and control are important conditions to reassure people
and to promote their confidence in the authorities. An important element in the
realisation of this aim is that security patrols should be highly visible. Empirical
studies in Amsterdam and some other smaller cities in the Netherlands show
that city wardens and other comparable public security officers are on the streets,
conducting their foot patrol for about 6 to 7 hours a day (Hauber et al., 1994: 29-
30; Oldersma, Snippe and Bieleman, 2002). Information on this issue is only
available for public security officers, but it seems quite likely that the hours may
be even longer for private security officers. In comparison, regular police officers
spend significantly less time on the streets, and as a result are less visible to the
public.
Several local studies have also shown that a large majority (about 90 per cent) of
the people know about the existence of the city wardens (for example Gemeente
Haaksbergen, 2005; Visser, 2005). According to a study conducted in the rural
municipality of Haaksbergen (2005), about one-third of the citizens there held

118 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
the view that the presence of city wardens contributed to public safety. However,
the doubt among citizens about the effects that city wardens have is more preva-
lent: about two-thirds of the people stated that they perceived no effect or that
they didn’t know. A study by Hauber et al. dating from the early 1990s (1994: 43-
45) drew a comparable conclusion: about one-third of the people stated that they
felt more secure because of the presence of the city wardens. However, once
again, this did not hold true for the large majority of the citizens.
These studies give no information about the reasons why many citizens are scep-
tical about the security patrol officers, despite their awareness of their presence.
Moreover, it remains unclear what the citizens believe the new security patrol
officers contribute to their reassurance, in comparison to the regular police.
Crawford et al. (2005: 64-65) found that citizens perceived the reassuring effects
of the regular police as much greater than those of private security guards or
neighbourhood guards. This study also showed that people who stated that they
perceived the presence of ‘community support officers’ (more or less comparable
to the police surveillants in the Netherlands) as reassuring, often did not have a
clear image about such officers. They overestimated their formal powers and edu-
cational level and often were not able to distinguish between the different types of
patrol officers. Another English study showed that citizens are rather hesitant
about patrol and surveillance provided by private police organisations. In the view
of many citizens, visible protection should be provided by the public police alone
(Girling, Loader and Sparks, 2000: 154-159).
A local study in the city of Amersfoort produced some relevant findings. Again, a
large majority of citizens were found to have a positive view of the presence of city
wardens in the city centre. About two-thirds of them stated that they felt safer
thanks to the city wardens in the inner city. However, citizens also had critical
remarks. According to this study people visiting the inner city and shop owners
thought that the city wardens lacked authority because they did not posses rele-
vant, formal powers. People who were interviewed in this study complained that
not everybody treated the city wardens with enough respect. In their view city
wardens were relatively powerless. Many citizens demanded more formal powers
for the city wardens (Visser, 2006: 24).
In the study conducted by Hauber et al. (1994: 44), the citizens were asked hypo-
thetically whether (given equal financial costs) they would prefer 15 city wardens
or 5 police officers. The way this question was formulated shows that in the case
of patrol, sheer numbers are not always seen as the decisive factor. Nevertheless,
about forty per cent of the interviewees preferred 15 city wardens to 5 police offic-
ers. Leaving aside the fact that the majority chose differently, it is quite striking
that, the more often people visit locations patrolled by city wardens patrol, the less
confidence they have in these security workers. The authors tentatively offer the
explanation that people who have more experience with city wardens have less
confidence in what the wardens are able to accomplish.

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 119
7.5 New security patrol: accepted, but only conditionally?
There is no doubt that in the Netherlands today many citizens want more surveil-
lance and security patrols in public places. However, many citizens also realise
that the police probably will not meet their wishes in this respect. This seems to
be the perspective most citizens use to evaluate the new security patrols. Most cit-
izens are highly pragmatic about this issue: they prefer city wardens or, if neces-
sary, private security guards in the public space, because they expect this to be
better than the most likely alternative, i.e. having to depend on the regular police
alone. In the latter situation they expect there will be a serious shortage of patrols.
However, any analysis that is more than superficial shows that, despite their posi-
tive answers to survey questionnaires, there is a lot of scepticism among citizens
about the new security patrol officers: do they have the authority and formal pow-
ers to achieve an effective level of surveillance and security? Many citizens
demand more powers for the city wardens. In other words, citizens ask for city
wardens that are more like the regular police.
If this interpretation is valid then some serious questions must be asked about
the new security patrols in relation to ‘reassurance policing’. One such question
is whether the introduction of city wardens was based on a serious underestima-
tion of the complexity of surveillance and order maintenance in the modern
urban public space. This question also applies to the new bill in the Netherlands
to grant new security officers powers to fine citizens for incivilities, based on
administrative law. The daily tasks of control and surveillance are very complex,
given a social context in which the authority and power of formal rules and public
officials are no longer automatically accepted and where police and other security
officers are confronted with highly divergent, often conflicting interests and
views. Increasingly the social power of authorities is not seen as self-evident, but
rather as depending on their practical performance on the streets.
In the Netherlands today, if security patrol officers speak to urban, generally
assertive citizens about their behaviour, let alone try to control them, there is a
fair chance that this will have an impact on the status, self-esteem, autonomy and
sensibilities of these citizens. An overreaction, resulting in abusive language and
aggression, may follow surprisingly quickly. These situations can be very difficult
to handle, even for experienced police officers (Van Stokkom, 2005a). It may be
even more difficult for most of the new security patrol officers: as they do not
have the same formal powers as regular police officers, they have to rely on their
verbal and social skills, on their credibility and social status.
Especially in this regard the new security officers seem to be at a disadvantage
(Van Stokkom, 2005b: 51-53). Good police work demands the competence to
make decisions in complex situations, on the street. In a split-second they must
choose between using power or a strategy of persuading and convincing people;
they must be clear, but they must also avoid escalation. Good police work is a mat-

120 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
ter of creating the right combination of de-escalation, mediation, finding ways to
prevent or solve problems and taking into account the dramatic circumstances of
some individuals, for whom they should show understanding and compassion.
Police work may also demand the focused use of power, if necessary. The large
numbers of critically-minded citizens in our contemporary society demand that
police officers explain their conduct and decisions. Nevertheless, they should also
‘know’ when there is no more room for explanations and negotiations.
For many police officers (probably for anybody) these are severe demands to
meet. One may wonder how well the new security patrol officers like city wardens
are able to achieve such complex ‘street-level leadership’ (Vinzant and Crothers,
1998). Many of the new security patrol officers have little professional training.
Their social status is rather low, because the general public is well aware that
most of them were (and still are) recruited for the security officer or city warden
job because they were for a long time unemployed, living on social benefits. It is
likely that this has negative consequences for their professional status and
authority on the streets. These problems may be even more pressing for private
security guards than for public security officers. Whereas city wardens, just like
regular police officers, are expected to serve the public interest, private security
officers run the risk of being suspected to act on the basis of commercial consid-
erations or representing their principal’s private interests. These suspicions may
mean that it is difficult for them to convince and control independent, assertive
citizens (who in the Netherlands often think that they know ‘better’ than just
someone in a uniform). The new security officers do not have the symbolic capi-
tal (Loader and Mulcahy, 2003) that police officers still have in the eyes of many
citizens despite the erosion of their authority over the last few decades.
There is yet another problem that the new security patrol officers may be con-
fronted with. This may arise from the new bill, mentioned above, which provides
them with the formal power to fine citizens on the basis of administrative law for
‘incivilities’. It is more than likely that local governments underestimate how dif-
ficult this task will be in practice. Fining citizens for such incivilities like cycling
in a pedestrian area, urinating in public or putting the rubbish bag out too early,
may easily escalate or have other negative side-effects. Experienced police officers
are aware that in these situations it is important to choose the correct strategy,
like convincing people or encouraging them to change their behaviour (Van Stok-
kom, 2005b). The problem here is not only that many of the new security officers
do not have the professional competence to weigh such considerations. Given the
fact that local governments expect that the use of these new administrative pow-
ers will mean that the city wardens will earn their own income, it seems more
than likely that the city wardens will not make any such considerations at all. A
choice to refrain from fining a citizen because of a perceived risk of escalation,
may decrease the number of fines (and as a result the financial outcome). It
seems likely that such a system may easily result in distrust among citizens
rather than having the intended effect of reassuring them.

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 121
7.6 Marketisation of security and reassurance
A separation between the ‘auspices’ and ‘provider’ implies that security in the
public space is subject to the forces of a (quasi) market. The basic pattern of this
(quasi) market is that there is a purchase relation between a principal and a pro-
vider, often including competition between several (potential) providers of secu-
rity. The introduction of a (quasi) market in security may have serious conse-
quences for the public nature of security and the question of accountability. From
the moment that the provision of security becomes dependent on a purchase rela-
tion, rights are defined related to surveillance and security. Legally or mentally
there will be some form of ‘ownership’ of security (Crawford, 2006a). As the
market wisdom has it, ‘those who pay the piper call the tune’, regardless of the
public or private nature of the purchaser(s). This also implies a process of rising
expectations regarding the reassuring effect of surveillance and patrol. On the
other hand, it also implies that certain groups or individuals will be defined as not
having rights, meaning that they will be excluded.
An example is a local government that decides to purchase extra police surveil-
lance and patrol from the regular police force. Local government and residents
now expect or even demand that ‘their police surveillants’ only execute the con-
tracted activities and will not be used for other, more urgent matters in neigh-
bouring municipalities. Moreover, the regional police force has to account for the
numbers of hours the police surveillants work in the municipality in accordance
with the contract.
An example of a more radical form of marketisation of security may be found in
‘gated communities.’ In the style in which they are encountered in the US these
cannot be found in the Netherlands, where the most far-reaching form of security
and patrol in public places is where residents of wealthy neighbourhoods contract
private security companies to provide a patrol by security guards. In this situation
all the side-effects mentioned above can be seen clearly. Security here is no longer
a ‘public good’, but a ‘club good’, only available to the members of the ‘club’.
Those who are excluded, people who are considered to be outsiders, as having a
marginal position, unlucky persons, or those who are viewed as undeserving or
representing a danger, are left to their own devices (Terpstra, 2006). There is also
a remarkable difference between the underlying institutional logics of public and
private security. Public security aims at values like equality and justice; private
forms of security especially use mechanisms of exclusion to manage problems of
safety. According to Bayley and Shearing (2001: 17-19), the gate is the dominant
metaphor for private security. In this situation ‘reassurance’ is redefined as a con-
sumption good to which ‘consumers’ have a right. However, these rising expecta-
tions may result in a fixation on risks to safety and security, which in turn may
result in even higher demands and expectations with regard to surveillance, secu-
rity and the exclusion of ‘undesirable persons.’

122 Part III Do Citizens Need Reassurance?
The marketisation of security and patrol may have several negative side-effects on
the realisation of the ‘reassurance function’, which was after all the main argu-
ment for introducing all these new security patrols. There is a risk that public
security is confronted with the external effects of exclusion and marketisation. In
that case the regular police will have to manage the residual problems. In its most
radical form this may imply that the regular police get the surveillance and con-
trol task in the poor urban areas, where those who were excluded elsewhere
reside. Here the public cannot fund its own private security.
However, even within the group of potential beneficiaries, marketisation may
lack stability. Because in private security collective solidarity depends to a large
degree on economic motives, individual cost-benefit considerations continually
run the risk of resulting in ‘free-rider behaviour’. This may put the continuity and
financial/social basis of the ‘club security’ under pressure.
At the same time the marketisation of security and surveillance may, unintention-
ally and unnoticed at first, result in a new view on security. This may also result in
another view of the (regular) police as a commodity that can be substituted by
ordinary business activities, which can be purchased by those who can afford it.
This consumerist view of the police may result in a far-reaching demythologisa-
tion of the police, a development which may threaten the ‘reassurance function’
as described by Bahn (1974). In that case the process of marketisation will under-
mine the symbolic power of the police (Loader and Mulcahy, 2003) and the poten-
tial reassuring effect that citizens feel protected by the awareness of a visible
police. Actually, the regular police as a commodity will not differ fundamentally
from any (other) private security agency.
Concluding remarks
The introduction and increasing numbers of new security patrol officers since
the late 1980s were to a large degree motivated by the need and wishes of many
citizens for public safety, protection, security and reassurance. Two major devel-
opments dominated these new forms of surveillance and patrol: fragmentation
and marketisation. Fragmentation refers not only to an increasing diversity of
security patrols, but also to the circumstance that the new security patrol officers,
including the city wardens, are only a semi-police, both in the view of many citi-
zens and with respect to their powers, professional expertise, social status and
authority.35 An important question therefore is whether the public security patrol
officers (both the city wardens and those with administrative powers to fine for
incivilities) should not be employed in the (regular) police forces (Van Stokkom,
2005b). This conclusion differs from what Crawford (2006b) proposed in Eng-
land. In his view the community engagement and reassurance function of neigh-
35. Rigakos (2002) uses the term ‘parapolice’ in a comparable way. However, this term may have a very
negative connotation, at least in the Netherlands.

7 New Security Patrols in Public Places 123
bourhood wardens may be in danger if these officers are too closely involved in
activities of law enforcement. Therefore he recommends that the wardens should
not be drawn towards a police focus because then they may be perceived as ‘quasi
police’ officers. This is in contrast to what is actually happening now in the Neth-
erlands, where the formal powers of city wardens are increasing.
The second development, marketisation, is changing the nature of security as a
public good more or less into a ‘club good’ (Terpstra, 2006). This may result in
the social exclusion of certain groups and individuals. Both developments – frag-
mentation (including the establishment of a ‘semi-police’) and marketisation and
commodification of security – may have unintended side effects that are difficult
to combine with the aim of reassurance.
There is yet a third element that is important in this context. We must look once
again at Bahn’s analysis of the reassurance function. He was quite right when he
concluded that the call of many citizens for reassurance seems to be motivated, at
least partially, by nostalgia, emotions and a desire for a bygone age: “the public (-)
continues to cry for the return of the beat policeman, that rotund, middle-aged,
nonmechanized, noncomputerized figure who knew every storekeeper and kid
on the Block and always seemed to be painted into every Norman Rockwell city
street scene” (1974: 341). However, Bahn wondered how we should respond to
this wish of the citizens, given the obvious fact that the neighbourhood shops
have almost disappeared and residents often do not know each other anymore, a
situation which is all too familiar, also in many of the lower-class urban neigh-
bourhoods in the Netherlands.
Of course, there are many reasons why the citizens’ demands for visible surveil-
lance and patrol should be taken seriously. On the other hand, one should also
realise that underlying this desire for visible patrolling there is a great deal of
uneasiness about general social changes, an ontological insecurity and all kinds
of needs that are hard to fulfil. With the growth of new security patrols and a
stronger movement towards marketisation it will be even more difficult to find an
answer to these questions. This means that the new forms of security patrol run
the risk of disappointing the citizens’ high expectations, especially with regard to
their reassurance function.
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Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way
Why the Dutch should be inspired by the English concept of reassurance
policing, but should not copy it blindly
Marnix W.B. Eysink Smeets
We have barely gotten over the shock of the new concepts introduced by the recent report
‘Police in Evolution’ (i.e., nodal orientation, policing of communities, etc.) and before we
know it the next concept is already being introduced. Reassurance policing is the new
magic phrase. From the Dutch beaches we anxiously wait for what those crazy Brits
across the pond have come up with this time. Signal crimes? Signal disorders? Reassu-
rance policing? Resulting in increased confidence in the police? Less feelings of insecurity?
And better relations with the public? That’s the ticket alright! We immediately drop
everything we are doing and adopt this new concept, as if our lives depended upon it. Wit-
hout realising that everything we were working on had the exactly same promises atta-
ched to them. And even more promise, in fact. For it was based directly on our own
specific domestic situation, and things were just starting to get moving.
Is the above scenario exaggerated? Possibly. But not much. For the Dutch police
are turning out to be regular hype-hoppers. ‘We are very good at embracing new
concepts, but far less so at implementing them. Before we can adequately imple-
ment something, we’re already embracing the next concept. We could make some
real progress by breaking this habit.’ This was an observation one would have
heard at the meeting of strategic leaders of the Dutch police, in the autumn of
2006. The Dutch police seem to be playing that old national game of leaping over
sheets of ice. Just barely touching them before moving on. This is precisely what I
fear the most regarding the importation of the ‘Reassurance Policing’ concept.
But isn’t it important to work on increasing public confidence in the police? On
reducing the sense of insecurity? On improving their relationship with the pub-
lic? Of course it is. Moreover, considering current sentiments amongst the Dutch
public, it is more necessary than ever.
In this chapter, I would like to propose that we do not simply import some con-
cept from another country to achieve this. Instead, I propose we continue on the
same course we have been following for the past few years. And, inspired by the
British concept, finally begin translating the (very similar!) insights already found
in Dutch studies into practice. I suggest we stop staring at the various English
studies, and start implementing the insights that have been under our very noses
all this time. Concepts from distant places may initially appear to be better, but
concepts developed at home often feel more familiar and can usually be more
easily and satisfactorily applied. Moreover, the funny thing is, the end result will

130 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
probably be almost the same. With a few adjustments that better fit the Dutch sit-
uation.
I will further argue for the use of the term ‘public reassurance’, rather than ‘reas-
surance policing’. In other words, to speak of an outcome and not the means uti-
lised. But above all, we should try to avoid passing the responsibility for reassur-
ance solely to the police as we have done in the past. Wasn’t ‘integrated safety pol-
icy’ the motto for Dutch public safety and security care? And wasn’t this concept
applied to the perception of safety as well as the actual safety itself quite some time
ago? After all, wasn’t public safety, in keeping with the title of a recent Society,
Security and Police Foundation (Stichting Maatschappij, Veiligheid en Politie)
report, first and foremost an administrative challenge? This is, therefore, equally
true for the perception of safety (as well as for the confidence in various authori-
ties). Thus, an integrated public reassurance policy is the way to go.
8.1 The ongoing search for the Holy Grail
For a number of years now there have been concerns in the Netherlands about
the Dutch public’s attitude and sentiments regarding public safety and the police.
It all started with the ‘authority’ of the Dutch police, which was supposedly under
pressure. The growing concerns led to a number of much discussed publications
around the turn of the century, such as the SMVP publication ‘The authority of
the police’ (Gunther Moor and Van der Vijver, 2000). In the wake of this, the
debate concerning the legitimacy of the police again became an issue. In the years
that followed, developments occurred in rapid succession. One theme after
another was dug up, thrown in the air, studied, and then…? Yes, and then what?
Public satisfaction emerged as an issue, mostly because the Police Public Survey’s
‘satisfaction with last police contact’ indicator was a designated target for police
performance covenants in 2002. The figures for this particular indicator had
been steadily on the decline for several years. This trend had to be reversed. The
focus on public satisfaction led to the concept of active reciprocity. The term stems
from the report of the same title, which suggested, based on analyses of the Police
Public Survey, that much could be gained by the police adopting a different atti-
tude in its dealings with the public. The public wanted the police to treat them
more as an equal ‘partner in safety’, and wanted to see the police take a more
noticeably active role in reacting to public calls (Van Dijk et al., 2005).
In 2003, the Council of Police Commissioners, apparently worried, selected the
reputation of the police as the theme for its annual convention. The conclusion of
this convention was that more attention had to be paid to reputation manage-
ment, in order to safeguard the reputation of the police in the long run. In the
wake of these conclusions, a number of studies appeared involving the image of
the police. The picture painted by these studies wasn’t always a very pleasant one
(Soffer et al., 2005).

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 131
In the second half of this decade, attention again shifted slightly, this time to con-
fidence in the police. Various studies were performed to assess the situation regard-
ing public confidence in the police, and figure out how confidence in the police
might be improved. The studies showed, among other things, that, on average,
basic public trust and confidence in the police was not that problematic. How-
ever, the public did have some serious criticisms regarding the way the police car-
ried out their tasks (Altuition, 2005; Flight et al., 2006; Van Dijk, 2007).
So ... it’s busy on the concept front
Legitimacy, authority, confidence, reputation, image, satisfaction… All of these
are closely related, partly connected and overlapping concepts, that all express
slightly different aspects. But all of them have enjoyed the attention of the police
for varying periods of time in the past few years. The Dutch police apparently
now realise they have a problem somewhere within this ‘family of concepts’.
Furthermore, it is quite remarkable how many of the applied concepts have
extremely short life spans, as it were. For instance, after the publication of the
report ‘Active Reciprocity’ many police officials declared their enthusiasm for
bringing this concept to life. ‘We should do this actively and reciprocally,’ was a
sentiment frequently heard in police forces around the country. But if one looked
closely at what was actually being done, it usually had little to do with active reci-
procity. To outsiders it often appeared like a veneer with the appropriate label
stuck to it, which of course did not lead to any substantive change in behaviour.
Increased attention for feelings of insecurity
Not only were attitudes, perceptions and emotions regarding the police receiving
more attention, but questions concerning the perception of security also enjoyed
increasing popularity. Crime was declining, so why was there still so much
unrest concerning public safety and security? That became the central question.
And no matter how hard police chiefs tried to get the message across that crime
was on the decline, they saw that it fell on deaf ears. An expansive study in this
area was also carried out to find starting points for improvement (Oppelaar and
Wittebrood, 2006).
The ‘emotional society’
In recent years, the police (and the Dutch Home Office) have been paying
increased attention to the subjective side of public safety. You could say that in
this respect the police were following the spirit of the times because many institu-
tions and organisations have been focussing more on ‘perception factors’. Other
governmental bodies are also concerned about the issue of public confidence.
The Dutch Central Bank, for instance, and the Dutch Jurisdiction Council (Prast
et al., 2005; Van der Meer, 2004)) as well as the corporate world. Confidence,
reputation and image have become increasingly significant issues in society. It
was no coincidence that Susanne Piët’s De Emotiemarkt (The Emotion Market)
became the Dutch management book of the year 2004.

132 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
But an appropriate answer has yet to be found
At the same time, the practice in the Dutch police forces shows that there appar-
ently is, as yet, no well-founded and, more importantly, widely supported policy
concept36 that can lead to improvement. This can be illustrated by the confusion
that ensued upon publication of the results for the ‘satisfaction with last police
contact’ indicator in the Police Public Survey of 2006. Some police forces that
had been working hard on improving their scores, based on the existing insights,
were, against all expectations, confronted with lower scores on this indicator.
Meanwhile, other police forces that had done little or nothing to address this
issue, showed dramatically improved scores. In other words, although the ‘satis-
faction with last police contact’ is one of the concepts that have received the most
attention, the available insights failed to explain the sometimes dramatic differ-
ences in the results.
In this light, it should be no surprise that when a neighbouring country seems to
have found something that works (as proven via evaluations) to address various
problems we are also struggling with, it becomes very tempting to just quickly
copy their recipe for success. But the question remains whether another recipe
translates to the Dutch situation. I will discuss this notion further in a later sec-
tion. But first, I will briefly describe the main ingredients of the recipe.
8.2 Reassurance policing in the UK
Not unlike the Dutch, the English have noticed that the public’s perception of
crime was out of sync with the actual facts. In other words, while crime was
declining, the public’s perception was almost the reverse. The result was an ever-
widening reassurance gap.
The police in Surrey decided to do something about this and joined forces with
the university of Surrey. They developed a concept based on the ‘signal crimes’
perspective, as formulated by Martin Innes. He proposed that the public perceive
some forms of crime as more serious than others, and that these crimes consti-
tute an indicator, as it were, of the extent to which a neighbourhood is ‘under con-
trol’. In order for the police to successfully tackle crime in the eyes of the public,
they should concentrate on these types of crimes, the types Innes calls the signal
crimes (and their little brothers, the signal disorders). Since only the public can
actually indicate what are signal crimes in their specific situation, the police
should be closely consulting the public. In other words, the public’s perception of
the most serious crimes should be considered an important factor when the
police prioritise their goals. The last element is that the resulting approach of
these crimes is clear to the public, so that they can also see control signals.
36. Not to mention a policy theory.

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 133
This initial concept is extremely elegant in its simplicity and logic. The concept
was eventually developed further by broadening its goals. Improved livability and
a decline in the amount of nuisance, the improvement of the perception of public
safety, an increase in the public’s satisfaction with, and confidence in, the police,
and finally increased community self-reliance were all added as achievable goals
(Tuffin, 2006). Prior to implementation, some other principles were formulated
(such as visibility, familiarity) and new operational methods were also developed,
such as a method to periodically survey public opinion and methods to improve
police contact with the public.
The concept has been tested in a number of pilot programmes, which have been
evaluated. These evaluations show that reassurance policing can have a positive
effect on the level of crime (or certain forms of crime), on the perception of crime
and crime development, on nuisance, on the public perception of safety (albeit to
a limited degree), and on public confidence in the police. However, public self-
reliance seemed unaffected by the measures (Tuffin, 2006; Morris, 2006; Innes,
2007).
8.3 An applicable concept for the Netherlands? Some pros and
cons
Considering the search for solutions in the Netherlands I described earlier, the
promise of Reassurance Policing is, of course, very tempting. Therefore, it should
come as no surprise that within the Dutch police forces and the Dutch Home
Office, voices were quickly raised in support of introducing this concept in the
Netherlands as well. And without any amendments, so it seemed. But would this
be a wise move? An analysis of the ‘fit’ between the reassurance policing concept
and the contemporary Dutch situation reveals a number of positive aspects, but
some negative aspects as well.
Therefore, I will provide an overview of what I see as the chief pros and cons.
After that I will draw some conclusions by utilising some variations upon Van de
Vall’s insights. At the end of the 1980s, Van de Vall proposed that policy studies
should be judged on three forms of validity: their epistemological, their strategic
and their implementary validity (Van de Vall, 1987). What could stop us from
viewing a policy concept or policy theory – which reassurance policing in fact is –
in the same way? This will show that the concept is valid at a strategic level, but
that its epistemological and implementary validity for the Dutch situation is not
without shortcomings.
8.3.1 Five arguments in favour
There are a number of reasons why it would be wise to adopt reassurance polic-
ing in the Netherlands. These reasons vary in nature. On the one hand they are

134 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
about content: the problem that could be solved by reassurance policing exists in
our country too (or is perceived here too, at least). On the other hand they are
more about processes: in practice, for instance, there is a great need for some-
thing to hold on to and for clarity about ‘what works’. More specifically, there are
five reasons why we could consider adopting reassurance policing:
1. a reassurance gap also exists in the Netherlands;
2. the signal crime perspective appears to be valid in the Dutch situation;
3. there is a great need for a clear policy concept;
4. the concept of reassurance policing can offer meaning and expedite the proc-
ess;
5. the concept arrives ‘just in time’.
I will discuss each of these points in the following sections.
The Netherlands also seems to have a reassurance gap
Reassurance policing was developed as a response to the perceived reassurance
gap. When considering whether reassurance policing is applicable to the Dutch
situation, it is important to check whether there actually is a reassurance gap. I
will answer this question in two ways. Firstly, by looking at the extent to which
police and administration perceive the existence of such a gap. Secondly, by look-
ing at what the relevant data say.
When you consider the great amount of studies, publications and policy initia-
tives, you can only conclude that the police and Dutch government certainly feel
that a reassurance gap exists. This is also illustrated by a recent lament from a a
regional police force official, who, upon reading a report on the public image of
the police observed that ‘We try so very hard and have improved so much. Can’t
they see that?’ This lament is not an exception. In short, the reassurance gap is
certainly perceived as existing and has even led to a certain amount of frustration
in some areas.
Obviously, this perception did not come out of the blue. It was, at least partly,
stimulated by the available data, which have not always painted a particularly
bright picture. As mentioned above, the scores on the ‘satisfaction with last police
contact’ indicator, for instance have been on the decline for years. Confidence in
the police, as measured by the Eurobarometer, began a free fall somewhere
around 2003. And circa 80% of the population think that ‘crime in the Nether-
lands has been increasing recently’, even though it has been proven that this has
been untrue for some time now (Oppelaar and Wittebrood, 2007).
However, this last figure has shown considerable improvements over the past few
years (from 93% in 1994 to 79% in 2004). And there are other indications which
suggest that the situation regarding the reassurance gap is improving and that
the reassurance gap in the Netherlands may be less pronounced than in the UK.
It is a known fact, for instance, that crime is on the decline in the Netherlands (as
it is in most other European Union member states as well!), and, despite a certain

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 135
time-lapse, the fear of crime (as monitored by the Police Public Survey) has also
started to diminish. A comparative European study reveals a considerably lower
fear of crime figure in the Netherlands than in the UK (Van Dijk et al., 2006).37
This same study also reveals that compared to most other European countries the
Netherlands have made a quantum leap forward when it comes to the public’s
perception of the way the police try to fight crime. This progress is considerably
more impressive than in the UK, for instance. Finally, the Eurobarometer also
shows that the general confidence of the Dutch public in their police has begun to
recover again (in 2005, 75% tended to have confidence in their police, after the
low point during the 2002-2003 period, when the figure was sometimes as low as
58-59%).
In short, the figures do indicate that there is a reassurance gap, but various indi-
cators suggest that this gap continues to narrow. Are ‘they’ – to paraphrase the
police official quoted above – finally beginning to understand, albeit with a slight
time lapse? Furthermore, based on the above, we may conclude that the reassur-
ance gap in the Netherlands might well be smaller than in the cradle of Reassur-
ance Policing, the UK.
The ‘signal crime perspective’ also seems relevant in the Netherlands
A couple of years ago, Van Eeuwijk38 wondered why Dutch Police Public Survey
meta-analyses only showed a limited relationship between crime development
and the public perception of safety. He started searching for places where the per-
ception of safety had improved remarkably. Here he found a clear connection
between police actions aimed at events or crimes the public considered shocking
and the improvement of the public perception of safety. In short, avant la lettre,
Van Eeuwijk discovered a relationship between signal crimes or signal disorders,
control signals and safety perception (Van Eeuwijk, 2002).
In the same period, a similar discovery was made in the city of Rotterdam. The
municipality of Rotterdam was recording annually, per neighbourhood, how resi-
dents judged the safety of their neighbourhood. This figure was invariably around
6 (on a 10-point scale). Rotterdam was aiming for an average score of 7. But how
could that be achieved? A study was done to see if such a leap had ever been made
before. It turned out this had only ever happened in one neighbourhood. Here
the police had carried out a pilot programme involving a very small police station,
with officers going door to door to ask residents what they thought should be
done about safety in their neighbourhood. The public’s suggestions were then
actually implemented. In a very short period of time, the safety perception figure
skyrocketed (Eysink Smeets, 2001).
Recent Dutch studies concerning the public image of, satisfaction with, or confi-
dence in the police, also emphasise the importance of an adequate and alert
37. For what a comparison like this is worth, considering that the perception of safety was operational-
ised very narrowly within this study.
38. Presently, the deputy superintendent of one of the Dutch regional police forces.

136 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
police response when tackling those forms of crime perceived by the public as the
most important. Based on their large-scale qualitative survey amongst the Dutch
public, Soffer et al. concluded that the extent to which such an approach is or is
not perceived, has a large influence on the image of the police (Soffer et al.,
2005). In their study of satisfaction with the last police contact, Van Dijk et al.
showed that this depends to a large degree on the extent to which the police take
concrete, specific action on reports made by the public. And, in his most recent
study of confidence in the police, Van Dijk concluded that precisely those ele-
ments that constitute the core of reassurance policing, should be considered the
most influential ones in the Netherlands as well: an adequate approach to ‘inci-
dents’ that really matter to the public, combined with an attitude that shows that
the police really take these incidents and the public seriously (Van Dijk, 2007).
Overall, there seems to be enough evidence to conclude that the relevance of con-
cepts like signal crimes, signal disorders and control signals is not limited to the
British situation, but is also applicable to the Netherlands. Moreover, we already
knew this, but simply failed to translate that into clear Dutch police policy. In this
respect the English concept and experiences should be considered our ‘wake-up
call’.
There is a great need for a clear policy concept
Surveying the field in the Netherlands, we can see many very different initiatives
involving the improvement of confidence in, or the image of, the police and/or
the improvement of the public’s perception of safety. More or less subcon-
sciously, the Dutch police appear to be following a strategy of ‘let a thousand flow-
ers blossom’, while they keep a close watch on each other to see what works and
what doesn’t. There is also a great need for something concrete to hold on to,
especially since – as indicated above – apparently obvious activities sometimes do
not yield results, while other regions may show considerable improvement,
which, at first glance, cannot be adequately explained.
It seems to be difficult in practice to actually translate the insights gained from
the many studies of concrete and effective (policy) initiatives. In other words,
there is still no clear, fully developed policy concept that has proven effective in
practice, despite the great need. It is precisely the reassurance policing concept
that might be able to meet this need.
Reassurance could offer meaning and expedite the process
The importance of working on specific aspects like confidence, image, satisfac-
tion and the perception of safety has become more obvious to many police offi-
cials, while for others this is still definitely not the case. The fact that the govern-
ment has continued to critizise the police on the level of public confidence in the
police, or continues to judge them on the performance ‘satisfaction’ indicator, is
not the most powerful of motivating forces. Public reassurance as a desired out-
come might be a stronger motivating force because it fits in much better with
what police officers themselves consider their most important task. Public reas-

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 137
surance could serve as the general motivational force and could encompass the
underlying concepts of confidence, image, satisfaction, among others.
In this respect, it is important to emphasise that working on these perception
aspects serves both internal and external goals. The external goal is public reas-
surance. The internal goal is to make the work of the police force as well as that of
individual police officers easier and more satisfying. A police force that enjoys the
public’s confidence and respect, and that people are fairly satisfied with, will
probably find it easier to carry out its tasks than a police force that does not have
the public behind it. A police force that has the public’s confidence will encounter
less friction and, important in these days of intelligence-led policing, will receive
more relevant information, in an easier manner.
A recent report from researchers at the Dutch Police Academy emphasised once
again the importance of the relation with the public for the task most police offic-
ers deep down still consider the essence of police work: ‘catching crooks’. The
researchers concluded that only 15% of the total number of arrests could be attrib-
uted to ‘detective work’ by the police themselves. 85% of the suspects arrested by
the police were caught red-handed, in the vast majority of cases as a result of
direct initiatives of the public. The researchers, however, also discovered that only
35% of all witnesses to a crime are convinced the police will act immediately upon
their information. And an almost equally small group of people (38%) believe the
police will come immediately upon being informed. The researchers conclude
that there is a large potential amongst the public (62-65%) that, with a little more
confidence in the police’s willingness to act on tips and show more initiative, can
lead to higher arrest rates (Van Os et al., 2007).
The concept arrives just in time
Timing is everything; this is also true of the introduction of new ideas or con-
cepts. In this respect, one can say that Reassurance Policing arrives just in time.
There is a perceived problem; Reassurance Policing appears to address the prob-
lem; there is no alternative policy concept, while there is a great need for it, for
several reasons. If that isn’t a sound basis for the serious consideration of the
concept I don’t know what is. However…
8.3.2 Five arguments against
We have thus far presented five good reasons for the adoption of Reassurance
Policing in the Netherlands. There is one snag, however, because there are at
least as many reasons not to do so. Or at least to be very careful about it. Some of
the arguments against involve content, while others address processes. Some
concern the concept itself, some the quality of the ‘landing strip’: the contempo-
rary situation within the Dutch police force. Briefly, the arguments against are:
1. There is already an abundance of new concepts…

138 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
2. The concept suggests too large a degree of manipulability on the part of the
police.
3. Where the police can play a part, the concept is too narrow.
4. It doesn’t do justice to the tradition of our safety care.
5. It may lead some to pull the wrong strings.
Again, I will briefly clarify each of these arguments below.
There is already an abundance of new concepts…
I have already touched briefly upon this subject earlier in this chapter. In recent
years the ‘collective Dutch police brain’ has tended to think faster than its feet can
keep up with. In other words, the number of new proposals and ideas (‘intellec-
tual innovation’) is inversely proportional to the numbers that are actually suc-
cessfully and thoroughly implemented (‘factual innovation’). In his contribution
in this book criminologist Hoogenboom alerts us to the dangerous ‘tumble of
concepts’ in modern police forces. Moreover, Klerks pointed out that the police
may be a little too scared to ‘miss the train of progress’ these days (Klerks, 2006).
This could eventually lead to a situation where the organisation’s willingness and
ability to absorb new concepts slowly begins to decrease. This reduces the
chances of success for these proposals – no matter how promising they may
seem. The result may eventually be the opposite of what is desired: a police force
that is innovative in a timely manner and adequate to the circumstances. As this
concern is shared by an increasing number of people, great care should be taken
with the introduction of yet another proposal like Reassurance Policing.
The concept suggests too large a degree of manipulability on the part of the police
In practice, the thinking regarding police confidence and satisfaction is generally
very linear. And the relation between crime and the public perception of safety is
also often perceived as rather linear, among both the public and policy experts. In
short, confidence and satisfaction, in this view, are solely a reflection of actual
police performance, while the level of the public’s perception of safety is a direct
reflection of levels of crime. But studies have made it abundantly clear that this is
a far too simplistic scenario. Have we totally forgotten that old criminological
classic of the fear/victimisation paradox, for instance?
A study by the Dutch Social and Cultural Planning Board recently showed once
again that the levels of crime can only explain the levels of fear about crime to a
limited degree. This only confirmed the results of many earlier studies. Other sit-
uational factors, such as the composition of the population and the degree of
social cohesion, turn out to be at least equally influential. Factors in the (macro)
cultural context, such the speed with which society is changing are also important
(Oppelaar and Wittebrood, 2006).
Similar patterns can be seen regarding public confidence in the police. As men-
tioned earlier, the public’s confidence in the police seemed to plummet in the

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 139
period 2002-2003. Meanwhile, confidence in virtually all social institutions was
declining during that same period, just like the confidence in these same institu-
tions later recovered to approximately their previous levels (Eurobarometer,
2007). Apparently, confidence in the police is (at least partly) determined by the
degree of confidence that people have in institutions in general. What should also
give us cause to think is the fact that the development of the ‘satisfaction with last
police contact’ indicator shows remarkable similarities with the development of
the ‘economic consumer confidence’ indicator (as measured by Statistics Nether-
lands). Could it be that both of these are influenced by the underlying variable
‘general social confidence’? (Eysink Smeets, work in progress).
A study of the public’s confidence in Dutch jurisdiction showed a remarkable
relationship with a more ‘diffused confidence in Dutch institutions’ in general.
The latter confidence, in turn, appeared to be related to the so-called ‘horizontal
trust and confidence’, the trust and confidence citizens have amongst themselves.
At the same time, it turned out that confidence in the police was the best prog-
nosticator for the degree of confidence people had in the jurisdiction (Van der
Meer, 2004).
Finally, Soffer et al. noted in their study involving the image of the police:
“Because the police are one of the few public bodies operating in plain sight in
the streets, the police … increasingly function as a kind of gauge of social dissatis-
faction’ (Soffer et al., 2005).
In short, there is a variety of intertwined factors that operate in the area of confi-
dence in the police as well. But we’re only just beginning to see the tip of the ice-
berg of those factors and their relationships. The danger in adopting the concept
of reassurance policing is that attention is again – unintentionally! – focused on
the linear views described above, thus passing along all responsibility to the
police and ignoring all of the other at least equally relevant influences and possi-
bilities.
Where the police can play a part, the concept is too narrow
Regarding the increase of confidence in the police, Reassurance Policing focuses
attention mainly on adequately tackling signal crimes and signal disorders, as
noted earlier, in close collaboration with the public. It has already been suggested
in paragraph 8.3.1 that this turns out to be useful in the Dutch situation as well.
But Dutch studies also reveal that more factors within reach of the police influence
both confidence and satisfaction. Soffer et al. found that the public currently seem
to be experiencing an imbalance between ‘what the police do for you and what the
police do against you’. Their findings can be summarised in three points of discon-
tent, which boil down to: the public currently feels (a) that they are being fined for
minor infractions too easily (‘fines policy’),39 (b) that when they report a crime, for
39. In recent years, the Dutch police, driven by performance targets, have become considerably less
lenient when it comes to minor infractions.

140 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
instance, the police generally do not react in an adequate, helpful manner (‘report-
ing’) and (c) that the police do not respond adequately to the crimes or nuisances
they consider the most disturbing in their own neighbourhoods (‘tackling signal
crimes’). Furthermore (d), it is generally felt that they are not taken as seriously by
the police as they would like (‘respect and reciprocity’).
These findings, of course, emphasise first and foremost the need to tackle signal
crimes and signal disorders: this is exactly what is meant by point (c). But the
findings also focus attention on other facets, specifically on the fact that the pub-
lic – as though it were Justice herself – is holding scales of justice that are cur-
rently tipping the wrong way. Increasing confidence in the police thus requires
more than visibly focusing on signal crimes: it is just as much about finding the
right balance.
No justice to the tradition of our safety care
Introducing Reassurance Policing as a separate, new police concept doesn’t do
justice to the developments that have been going on in the fields of both police
and safety care.
I have already mentioned that many concepts and initiatives have been launched
by the Dutch police over the past few years to improve the public’s confidence and
satisfaction. In the paragraph above, I also argued that public reassurance could
very well be used as a motivating umbrella concept to give all these different con-
Reassurance policing?
In a small town in the Dutch Randstad, a stone’s throw from a big city, remarkable
warning signs can be seen on various locations. ‘Use it, loose It’, they say, with a picture
of a mobile phone being taken. The signs have been put up by the police, who intend to
communicate, with the best intentions: ‘dear citizen, if you use your mobile phone here,
chances are it will be stolen from you right away.’ Not a bad idea in itself, as the number of
street robberies in this town is – at times – relatively high. But those signs have been there
for a long time now. By now, some have even fallen prey to vandalism and graffiti.
Therefore, they now carry a different message, in the eyes of the public: ‘dear citizen, it’s
not safe here, but we can’t or won’t do anything about it.’ The signs communicate
powerlessness over a crime problem that’s important in the eyes of the public. From time
to time some police officers (or rather: students) are checking bicycle lights in the
evening, on a spot not far from the signs. They issue fine after fine. ‘Right, so that they can
do,’ is the public’s indignant reaction.
‘fines policy’ ‘reporting’
Respect and reciprocity
‘combatting signal crime’

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 141
cepts a place, connect them, give them meaning. At the present time, that con-
nection is seldom made, if at all, which must be considered a missed opportunity.
Looking at the grown tradition in our safety care however, the introduction of
Reassurance Policing would not only be a missed opportunity, but would even
involve the risk of a step backwards. After years of diplomacy, stimulation, diffi-
cult dialogues and at times unpleasant reports, it has now been widely accepted
that safety and security are responsibilities that should be shared by many parties.
This applies not only to objective safety, but equally, if not more so, to subjective
safety. A multi-agency, so called Integrated safety policy is the ticket. The police are
only one of many parties, along with (local) governments who are proudly leading
the way. If Reassurance Policing is introduced without immediately placing it in
the light of our integrated safety policy, the police will risk stepping into the old
trap of accepting responsibility for the public’s perception of safety and confi-
dence all by themselves. Innes et al. have already explicitly warned us against the
danger of police-centrism and have therefore also stressed the importance of a
multi-agency approach (Fielding and Innes, 2006).
This pitfall can be avoided by taking public reassurance as the starting point
rather than Reassurance Policing. Begin with the end in mind, not with (one of)
the means to achieve that end. Make public reassurance the common responsibil-
ity of all of the involved partners first. This also means that tackling signal crimes
and other signal events, as well as giving off the correct control signals, is not just
the responsibility of the police, but of all parties involved in the integrated public
safety policies. So I plead here for public reassurance policy as the starting point
instead of Reassurance Policing, which can then remain the policing component
of the policy, the species of the genus. In theory, this is just a tiny detail. In prac-
tice, however, the difference will be dramatic.
It may lead some to pull the wrong strings
In recent discussions about the merits of Reassurance Policing in the Nether-
lands, I have noticed a strong emphasis on the methods involved such as the sys-
tematic way of measuring what the public considers important. The main danger
here is that Reassurance Policing will end up being translated into technicalities,
into structure and instruments, while I think more can be gained in the culture
and perspective area. This is of course a shortcoming not so much of Reassur-
ance Policing itself, but in how new concepts are often copied with an emphasis
on the ‘hardware’, and too little attention on the ‘soft side’. Recently, Rovers once
again addressed this important issue in contemporary Dutch public safety main-
tenance (Rovers, 2007). But the fear is also fed by recent experiences in the Neth-
erlands where attempts are made to improve the figures in the ‘satisfaction last
police contact’ indicator. As has already been indicated earlier, much confusion
has arisen in the Netherlands recently because a relationship between the sup-
posedly effective efforts and the figures was nowhere to be found, not at the level
of the police forces, not within those forces, and not at the police district or police
stations levels.

142 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
In one police force a study was carried out into the considerable differences
between the highest and lowest scoring police stations. Numerous obvious expla-
nations, such as differences in policing efforts, in district demographics or in the
development of safety measures were soon excluded. One factor explained the
discrepancies best: the existing police station culture. In places where it could be
characterised as ‘new-style police culture’ (vigorous, problem and performance-
oriented, clear internal guidance, aimed at cooperation, and with both vertical
and horizontal feedback) the ‘satisfaction with last police contact’ scores – since
this culture has emerged – have shown a considerable rise. In places where the
culture could be characterised as ‘old-style police culture’, the scores showed a
distinct downward trend. Furthermore, a clear relationship was also found
between the existing station culture and the style of the station’s leadership
(Eysink Smeets, 2007).
These findings made the researchers curious, so they decided to see if a similar
relationship could also be found on the level of the various police forces. The
hypothesis was that in places where a Superintendent was assigned to an office
characterised as having a ‘new style police culture’, the ‘satisfaction last police
contact’ figures should improve significantly over time. This improvement would
probably be even greater if the Superintendent worked for a smaller police force,
because the smaller the force, the more directly the Superintendent’s style could
have an effect on it.
When the Superintendent appointments for the period 2000-2006 were
matched with developments in ‘satisfaction with last police contact’ figures, it
soon became evident that the second part of the hypothesis was confirmed (the
smaller the force, the greater the effect), but that the first part could be relegated
to the land of fiction. Because, although a fixed pattern in the figures was
observed (decreasing at the time of the new appointment, but rising again consid-
erably in the following year) with three quarters of the (24) new Superintendent
appointments, there was no relationship between the figures and leadership
style. A media-effect – with most new appointments for Superintendents receiv-
ing ample attention in the media – can almost certainly also be excluded. The pat-
tern was not consistent with this. Could it be that the atmosphere in a police force
becomes slightly more hesitant around the appointment of a new Superintend-
ent, followed by a new zest – which is noticeable in the streets – when the new
lines have become clear? Is this the effect of the ‘flickering light’, as former chief-
superintendent Tieleman suggested, referring to the dynamics that occur with
any major change, regardless of what this change may entail? Further studies will
have to shed more light on this (Eysink Smeets, work in progress).
Recently a study group of strategic Dutch police officials once again emphasised
that it is at least equally important that attention be paid to the ‘softer’ aspects
such as leadership and organisational culture as to the more concrete, ‘technical’
interventions, in order to improve the public’s perception of police work. The
study group concluded that the public’s perception of the quality of policing can

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 143
best be improved by influencing the corporate culture and that can best be done
by focussing more on altering corporate values (Eysink Smeets and Van Eck,
2006).
Organisational culture and leadership, however, remain terribly underexposed
aspects in the Reassurance Policing discussion in the Netherlands. So the danger
that the introduction of Reassurance Policing will simply lead to people pulling
the wrong strings even harder and to even more survey findings that cannot be
substantiated is far from imaginary. For those who remain unconvinced of this
we have the fact that, in Surrey, after the Superintendent, the chief initiator of
Reassurance Policing, left, the general strategies remained unaltered but the pos-
itive results seem to have declined considerably. Was the success due to the
Superintendent’s influence after all?
8.4 All in all: a usable concept?
What is the current prevailing scenario, after having considered all the pros and
cons we discussed above? In my opinion, it should be a situation where the con-
cept of Reassurance Policing is considered a valuable inspiration for the Dutch
situation. However, copying it blindly does not appear to be a wise move.
Reassurance Policing is a concept that ‘sounds good’, that seems to address a
problem currently being experienced by various levels of government and by poli-
cymakers. Furthermore, it carries with it the clear promise of a solution, with its
relatively simple, elegant and credible logic. And that concept arrives at exactly
the moment when there seems to be a great demand for it. As Van de Vall would
express it, this means that the concept carries a high degree of strategic validity.
Things are slightly more nuanced when – again following Van de Vall – we only
look at the concept’s epistemological validity. In that case, the answer depends on
the question of what is expected of the concept. Is it considered a contribution to
the improvement of the public perception of safety and confidence, or as the solu-
tion to it? In the first respect, the concept may have a certain amount of epistemo-
logical validity. But in the discussion concerning Reassurance Policing in the
Netherlands, I often get the impression that the concept is considered to be the
one and only answer to the problems involving confidence and safety perception.
However, this concept is simply too narrow to adequately address these issues,
and thus its validity is limited as well.
Moreover, still following Van de Vall, we have the final test, implementary validity.
In other words can this concept be successfully implemented? Considering all
the pros and cons, the chances of this happening do not seem very great. This is
first of all due to the current ferocious ‘concepts rivalry’. But I foresee a danger
that is at least equally as large in the possibility that it will end up as mainly a

144 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
technical and instrumental implementation, an implementation that will yield
the least results.
Have these three arguments relegated the usefulness of Reassurance Policing to
the junk yard? Not at all. For, although it remains risky to adopt the concept in an
unaltered state, there is no reason why we couldn’t benefit from its strongest
points. In short, we can draw inspiration from the concept and, based on the
insights and experiences we have already gained ourselves, we can perhaps incor-
porate it as ‘public reassurance, the Dutch way’. I will conclude with some
thoughts about what all of this might mean.
8.5 From reassurance policing to public reassurance, the Dutch
way
The concept sounds good and has a high degree of strategic validity. So why
wouldn’t we use it to further stir up the debate about the way we are currently
dealing with the subjective part of public safety? For it goes without saying that
we still have to learn a lot in that department.
I have already noted that it would be desirable to begin using the term public reas-
surance for several reasons. But what exactly would it entail? Very briefly, I think
public reassurance involves the challenge to find a satisfactory balance between
four concepts in the maintenance of safety: safety, the perception of safety, confi-
dence and the perception of freedom. This last notion may appear to come out of
the blue but when we look at the amendments in legislation and the increasing
powers of law enforcement and investigative bodies, or when we look at the
increased technological developments in safety, it quickly becomes apparent that
this issue is already far more current than many would like it to be. We should
eventually avoid going from bad to worse with a (supposedly!) more effective
safety policy, which may have detrimental effects on our perception of civil liber-
ties.
Furthermore, there is a second point where the British concept can also be used
to stir up the debate and sharpen our thoughts. This basically concerns the rele-
vance of signal events, signal crimes, signal disorders and control signals. I men-
tioned earlier that the relevance of these concepts was already revealed by earlier
Dutch studies, but that the message had not yet sufficiently taken root in practice.
If we have to use an English concept to drive the message home, so what? As long
as the message comes across and is translated into practice in a way that is more
adequate than is presently the case. And especially when it is translated not only
into the everyday practices of the police forces, but of all the parties involved.
I am convinced that once the aforementioned idea takes hold in a sufficiently
concrete manner at the executive level of the organisations involved,, the transi-
tion to concrete methods will eventually follow automatically. But if we begin with

8 Public Reassurance, the Dutch Way 145
the methods, reassurance runs the risk of becoming a ritualistic dance, and we
will quickly lose sight of its essence. In short, use the philosophy, but do not use
the accompanying instruments immediately.
In conclusion, we should from the very beginning make working on public reas-
surance an affair not just for the police, but the focus of a broader strategy that
includes all of the involved partners together in pursuit of a safety policy. This is a
matter of principle, but it is also very pragmatic: it is the combination of activiti-
ties of all the relevant organistions that will bring the desired effect. And if the
police, as part of that broader strategy, also wish to contribute in the form of Reas-
surance Policing ‘sec’, that would seem very useful to me as well, but especially
when it ultimately blossoms in an organic manner, rather than by simply copying
the methods. I suggest finding a couple of police chiefs and other high-ranking
officials who wholeheartedly embrace the basic concepts and are willing to put
their energy into its development. Let them start a couple of pilot programmes
that fit their specific situations. Then evaluate those programmes thoroughly.
And then we can see where we stand. In the present situation, small steps that
really take hold can inspire more confidence than big steps that are soon forgot-
ten. And wasn’t confidence what it was all about?
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9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or
Reassuring the Police?
Tom Van den Broeck40
Introduction
If “all the world’s a stage”, the Oscar for best actor should go to the police…
Peter Manning (1997; 1998) coined the phrase ‘policing as drama’. Drama which
communicates various messages to the public in an effort to enforce moral
boundaries. The acting capacities of the police play a key role in that respect. If
that is true, then which play enhances the police to enforce more effectively? Like-
wise, previously released policing innovations such as community policing (CP),
problem-orientated policing (POP), broken windows policing (BW), zero toler-
ance policing (ZTP), intelligence-led policing (ILP), plural policing (PLP), reas-
surance policing (RP) etc. received considerable policy and research attention.
Most of the abovementioned police innovations can be understood and examined
on three levels. On a conceptual level, there is much debate about whether they
constitute new models of policing. On the organisational level, incorporation
studies focus on the implementation difficulties and pitfalls during implementa-
tion efforts. On an operational level, effectiveness is examined in relation to vari-
ous aspects such as crime control, citizen satisfaction with delivery of service, fear
of and concern about crime, deterrent effect etc. Reassurance policing also
received its share of research efforts. This resulted in a growing number of publi-
cations on its organisational and operational effectiveness. According to this
research, results look somewhat promising. On a conceptual level, however, reas-
surance policing does not seem to constitute a new model. Instead it can be
understood as a new methodology or a reiteration of certain key elements in pre-
vious police innovations or concepts such as community policing and problem-
orientated policing. Does this mean more effective innovations on an organisa-
tional and operational level no longer require new conceptual models of policing?
Does a mere re-modelling of existing approaches suffice?41 Berki (1986) inspired
(us) to question what the link might be between research findings on the concep-
tual, organisational and operational levels (Parekh, 1991).
40. Commissioner-auditor, Investigation Department, Belgian Standing Police Monitoring Committee.
In this chapter the author expresses a personal opinion which does not engage in any way the Bel-
gian Standing Police Monitoring Committee.
41. Or on the contrary, do findings on an organisational and operational level tell us something about
the pertinence of the conceptual goals on the above level?

150 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
Like all social institutions, police and policing, including ‘reassurance’ policing,
are both made and imagined. They are made through a number of social prac-
tices and technologies on an organisational and operational level. Yet, the police
also take on a cultural and symbolic form which, according to Loader (2002;
2005), generates and communicates social meanings on a conceptual level about
order and authority. Berki (1986) argued that for a good understanding of the
social practices ‘on the ground’, we have to take into account the social meanings
it generates about order/disorder, protection/vulnerability, hope/fear etc.
Whether (reassurance) policing works or not cannot be answered by only collect-
ing data on an organisational and operational level; attention must also be paid to
the consequences of the social practices on the social meanings they generate in
society. Similarly, whether (reassurance) policing is successful or not, cannot only
be determined on an organisational or operational level. Changes on the concep-
tual level have to be taken into account. On the other hand, difficulties on a con-
ceptual level may well explain and even determine whether a concept works in
practice. Consequently, even if a concept seems to work on an organisational and
operational level, if there is no conceptual clarity the sustainability of the results
on the other two levels may be very problematic in the long run. In terms of the
police-as-drama metaphor a good cast and a good director might not be sufficient
to achieve a good film. The script also matters. Does RP rewrite or rearrange the
existing script?
Definite answers to these questions are far beyond the scope of this contribution,
which merely underlines the necessity to discuss police innovations also on a
conceptual level and not to limit research to tactical and operational matters. In
this respect, a few questions that need to be considered are outlined below.
Innovations of the reform model of policing started with the promotion of ‘com-
munity policing’. Most policing concepts after CP, including RP, can be under-
stood as varieties or at least interpretations of the latter. If RP can be considered a
novel element in the chain of consecutive innovative concepts of policing, the
question might be: what does RP contribute to this chain? And perhaps of greater
importance: why the need for another innovation? Why the need to reiterate the
concept of CP?
While CP underlined the importance of the community in police work, RP
emphasizes the importance of reassurance (the community). Although reassur-
ance can be achieved or enhanced in many ways, it certainly requires communi-
cative not to say acting skills. Within the context of the metaphor of policing-as-
drama, RP therefore reiterates the importance of effective acting skills on the part
of the police. This is not very new. Muir (1977) described the police as street-cor-
ner politicians who need to negotiate with the public to have their performances
or decisions accepted. A comprehensive understanding of their own social role
and the required effective acting skills are very important. Besides that, the bobby
on the beat has to have a profound and instant understanding of the social roles
the public is playing. Over the past forty years the complexity of social life has

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 151
increased. It has, therefore, rendered police work more complex. Subsequently,
the demands on the role of the police have increased, in particular in relation to
the acting skills of the police officer, as well as to his role as an efficient social
actor. This constitutes a major change.
9.1 The birth of the blues
Post-war policing in the 1950s and 1960s experienced a rare period of acceptance
and consensus among the public. All in all, the expectations among the public
concerning the delivery of service was fairly modest. Effectiveness was not at
stake. Policing as (part of) a bureaucratic public service did not have to consider
attitudes or skills such as friendliness, involvement, empathy. Respect for public
officials was simply not questioned.
As all good things come to an end, by the end of the 1960s the political climate
changed profoundly and the rock solid foundations of policing, trust and respect
for the police crumbled. What Reiner (1995) explained as the ‘birth of the blues’
was in most Western countries a result of dissatisfaction and public outcry about
the politics of aggressive policing styles. In the US, problems occurred in relation
to large-scale order maintenance when the anti-Vietnam war movement and the
civil rights movement had to be policed. In the UK, although later in time,
aggressive ‘stop and search’ tactics, provoked similar indignation. In the Low
Countries, and especially in the Netherlands, a much more critical approach
towards policing occurred when traditional religious and socio-political barriers
crumbled in the 1960s (cf. massive disorder at the occasion of the coronation
Queen Beatrix in 1966). Although recorded crime was already on the rise at that
moment, it is important to bear in mind that the loss of respect for and trust in
the police was not triggered by rising crime figures but rather by a deterioration
in the police-public relations and by the liberal Zeitgeist that did not or no longer
accepted such police behaviour (Punch, 2006). The police ‘fell from their throne’
and these events heralded the transition of the police as an iconic, almost sacred
organisation to a more mundane organisation with a profane status. Ever since
the police have had to gain trust and confidence case by case, event by event.
In most countries, the political elite responded to the loss of police legitimacy
with increased budgets for manpower and material. In the margins of this policy,
however, a modest part of the budget was earmarked for scientific research.
While the majority of these studies were devoted to the search for improving
police effectiveness, a very small part of the budget was devoted to some of the
more fundamental research questions. Hardly anything was known about what
the police did exactly and why. In this context, the importance of the Kansas City
Preventive patrol experiment investigating the effects of random police patrol
work as ‘the heart and soul of policing’ can hardly be overestimated. Although
this was a single experiment in a specific setting within a specific time and space
(which merits retesting), it nevertheless proved to be a unique experiment in the

152 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
history of social sciences. Its results showed that normal patrolling (increased or
decreased patrolling) had no significant impact either on crime figures and the
clearing up rates, or on the fear of crime or on public satisfaction with the police
(Kelling et al., 1998: 30-50). The police world has never been the same since.
Even today, when explaining the experiment and its findings in the classroom,
vivid or even hostile reactions have to be expected from police officers whether
they be ‘novice’ apprentices in the police academy or senior officers. It goes
straight to their hearts, i.e. the heart and soul of policing, as if their mission has
suddenly become futile and meaningless. It addressed a very profound policing
taboo.
And they have good reasons to see it that way. The experiment underlined one of
the fundamental problems of modern contemporary police work. Police have but
a limited impact on crime, and more officers or more patrol cars or whatever,
does little to change that. The police seem incapable of fulfilling one of their most
important core functions, i.e. controlling crime. At least as important were simi-
lar findings regarding the limited impact of traditional policing on the amount of
fear of crime. Subsequent research in the field of uniformed and plain clothes
police work undermined other police certainties and confirmed hereby the deep
crisis in policing first revealed by the Kansas City preventive patrol experiments.
The reduction in emergency response time in most cases did not have a signifi-
cant impact on the apprehension rate nor the satisfaction of the citizen (Pate,
Bowers and Parks, 1976; Percy, 1980; Spelman and Brown, 1984). Burglaries,
robberies, hold-ups or rape are rarely detected in flagrant délit. Only Dirty Harry
had his lunch disturbed by a bank robbery in progress. Research in the UK
revealed that a bobby on the beat in London would only be once within 100 yards
of a crime in progress in 8 years (Norris, 1995; Skogan and Antunes, 1979; Eck
and Spelman, 1987). Unlike what we see in CSI, crimes are mostly solved
because the authors are known or identified by the public. Single man patrols are
not less effective than two man patrols.
Crime fighting proved to be an impossible mandate, ironically a mandate adopted
by the police. It is in this context that Manning concluded policing was all about
drama, the drama of control. And the less control the police have, the more polic-
ing becomes dramatised. The consequences for the police corporate culture
proved to be a drama, too. Crime fighting ‘professionalism’ and professional cul-
ture resulted in dysfunctions, such as the Dirty Harry problem, the Fort Apache
syndrome, Street justice, Edge behaviour etc. It once made Bayley (1998) con-
clude “ at the heart of law enforcement in the United States there are frustrated,
cynical people dealing with neglected, helpless people – in effect, the strong and
the weak, both alienated, locked in an intimate embrace”. Angell subsequently
identified the role of the police as ‘gatekeeper’ to preserve an unequal and unjust
criminal justice system where the interests and benefits of the haves are defended
at the expense of the have nots (Angell, 1971: 185-206). Enforcing justice was
experienced as enforcing injustice (Germann, 1969: 89-96; Alderson, 1979; Ban-
ton, 1971: 238).

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 153
Linking the ‘little story’ of the operational problems ‘on the ground’, via the evalu-
ation of organisational and subcultural dysfunctions on the intermediate or tacti-
cal level, with the ‘larger picture’ of police work in contemporary society gave rise
to the construction of a social critique of policing. It is in this way that operational
and organisational problems finally resulted in the loss of trust and confidence in
the police and de-legitimised police work. At this stage policing not only lost con-
siderable cultural and social capital but ultimately devaluated its symbolic capital.
‘Blues’ became ‘depression’.
9.2 Community policing …
This blues gave birth to a new discourse on policing called community policing
(CP), which was juxtaposed to the prevailing professional crime fighting model.
The latter promoted a Malthusian and Hobbesian view of society as a bellum
omnium contra omnes permitting police performing as a ‘Leviathan’ to prevent
chaos. Regarding the aetiology of crime the professional crime fighting model
referred to the classical school of thought in criminology and its rational choice
theory. On an operational level, the ‘Leviathan’ was understood as the ‘thin blue
line’ between order and chaos. It was preserved by deterrence and achieved by
‘panoptic’ patrolling and rapid apprehension covering the entire territory. With
the advent of technology territorial control was organised through car patrols,
radio dispatches, computer technologies, etc. On an organisational level a
machine-like centralised bureaucracy guaranteed standardised and uniform pro-
cedures. In this sense, the professional policing model was not only a way of
organising police work but also of controlling it. Incidentally, it was Willam
Parker, a notorious corruption buster of the LAPD (cf. the film L.A. Confidential)
who invented the thin blue line phrase. This policy of external and internal con-
trol also served as a tool to limit police actions to reactive intervention in the
social field, avoiding too much penetration of the latter.
In cases where the social critique proceeded from the little story set-up to the
wider picture scenario, community policing moved the opposite way, starting at
the top level with the formulation of an alternative model of policing ‘to go down’
via organisational change inspired by earlier teampolicing experiments promot-
ing organisational and geographical decentralisation, to finally facilitate another
type of police work on the ground, i.e. police work with a stronger emphasis on
more regular and intimate contact between the police and the public. This
required reinvention of policing tactics, such as foot patrols, to regain public trust
and confidence and resulted in a better information flow towards the police, an
element that is indispensable to performance more effective (Moore, 1992: 137;
Trojanowics et al., 2002: 196-197).
This CP was unique in the sense that it amounted to an attempt to ‘overcome’ or
to find alternatives to the critique of the professional policing model on the con-

154 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
ceptual, the organisational and the operational level, while at the same time link-
ing these three levels into one supposedly coherent model.
On the conceptual strategic level CP rejected the misanthropic vision profes-
sional policing tended to adopt of mankind and human behaviour. Instead of
merely promoting deterrence it emphasised the value of informal social control,
indicating the police were not the only agents of social control. It thereby reiter-
ated the Peelian view that social control can only be effective when it is rooted in
functioning informal social control mechanisms. Trust and confidence from the
public was, according to Peel, not gained by the ‘visible evidence of the police
dealing with crime’. Increasing formal social control bites its tail since it dimin-
ishes the capacity of effective informal social control agents over time. This will
provoke an ever increasing demand for more formal control (Pino, 2001). In this
sense the drama of the crime fighting police as social control agent also became a
melodrama permanently invoking the need for more police. This melodrama
could be coined as a never ending telenovela entitled ‘cul-de-sac’……Although CP
never clearly indicated its own point of view concerning the aetiology of crime,
the revaluing of the informal social control function in society may well confirm
the preference for social control theory over rational choice theory. Where the pro-
fessional crime fighting model emphasised operations and tactics over and above
concept and strategy, CP underlined that policing requires better conceptual and
strategic foundations (comparable to the advent of ideas such as ‘integral quality
management’, ‘management by objectives’, ‘New Public Management’, etc.).
From the perspective of the original CP concept, the enhancement of informal
social control by the police had to lead to a restructuring of the social order and
eventually to more social cohesion. In the Dutch language, social control theory
can be translated as sociale controle theorie or as bindingstheorie. In the latter ‘con-
trol’ can be understood as a ‘bond’ or commitment to society, and perhaps is a
more accurate characterisation of the cornerstones of the CP model. In this con-
text commitment to society would serve as the best prevention to crime. The
main focus of policing should in this respect be on preserving and restoring the
social order as a way to enhance the bonds between individuals and society. The
main threat to social cohesion and social order is not so much crime. Rather,
crime and the fear of crime are a signal or symptom for the real threat, which is
social disorganisation. This is echoed in the etymological meaning of delin-
quency as de-linque or to dissolve or to disband. For John Alderson, the British
protagonist of CP, better relationships between the police and the public could be
achieved by the doctrine of (the use of ) minimum force (Alderson, 1979: 49-50,
60), preserving offenders’ bonds or ties with society. As such CP was deeply
rooted in a human rights approach and the idea of due process.
In this sense the original CP model was also be rooted substantially in a (neo-)
Durkheimian view of society in which crime, fear of crime and disorder can be
regarded as anomy and social disorganisation as a major element for undermin-
ing society (Jackson and Sunshine, 2007). In conformity with the Zeitgeist of the
1960s and 1970s, two CP protagonists, Germann and Angell, wrote their alterna-

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 155
tive outline of policing in 1969 (with the prophetic title ‘community policing’)
and 1971 respectively. They expanded the idea of social disorganisation under-
mining society to a more leftist idea of social exclusion. Police served as the gate-
keepers of an unjust justice system contributing to that exclusion. It was the neo-
Durkheimian sociology of deviance together with the symbolic interactionism
perspective that provided the dialectic idea of the powerful and rich defining the
powerless poor, the respectable defining the disreputable and vice versa.
And by re-branding the old idea of the police as a formal social control agency
which was to enhance informal social control by the public, CP became the tool
par excellence to re-legitimise police work. In accordance with the Zeitgeist, CP
emphasised a more democratic decision-making process with more community
impact when defining operational police goals. This democratic consultation was
to encompass the entire population, not only the law-abiding citizen. If demo-
cratic consultation was to select police actions that would have more impact on
the fear of crime instead of crime itself, this would become a legitimate goal for
policing. In this respect, law-orientated policing should be transformed into peo-
ple orientated policing.
The extence of discretionary power, neglected by the reform model, was recog-
nised by the CP model as a reality. It was a reality, however, that had to be directed
in a more positive fashion, amongst other things as a means permitting the officer
to take appropriate actions in accordance with public concerns to achieve more
trust and confidence among the public. Discretionary power could, therefore, also
be used not to intervene or to apply the doctrine of the minimum force. Where
discretionary power was used as a form of ‘street-justice’ under the reform model,
it could preferably also be applied to street-dismissal.
On the other hand, the growing importance of increasing informal social control,
police-public cooperation and people-orientated policing would inevitably lead to
a larger police penetration into society. Where the reform model promoted dis-
tance vis-à-vis the citizen to avoid corruption and partisan policing, the other side
of this coin resulted in a subculture nurturing alienation from the public and
cynism among the rank and file. In contrast, community policing promoted more
intimate and long-term contacts between the police and the public, and in partic-
ular a greater say for the public in policing strategies. More permanent and inti-
mate contact, however, inevitably resulted in more intrusion on the privacy of the
public and the social fabric in general. Subsequently, it gave rise to more moral,
even moralising policing. With this moralising stance the (neo-) Durkheimian
vocation of CP is again highlighted. Trust and confidence in the police are based
not so much on their effectiveness in control crime, but rather by their capacity to
typify, to represent and to defend the moral value structure of the community. In
the same perspective socio-psychological research by Lerner (1975; 1980) was
welcomed since it indicated that citizens seek confirmation for the idea they live
in a society which aspires to social justice, coined as the ‘just world theory’, and to
punish evil. The evolving impact of the public on police priorities can thus be

156 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
considered proof of the moral representation capacity of the police. Crime, fear of
crime and disorder were considered as problematic to the extent that they threat-
ened the moral structure of society. At this stage CP had much in common with
the idea of the morally good cop who must understand the nature of human suf-
fering (Muir, 1977). Morally, he has to resolve the contradiction of achieving just
ends with coercive means. Reiner (1992) continued from this perspective by say-
ing that moral understanding may be integrated, that is, able to accommodate the
exercise of coercion within an overall code. Here again, the human rights
approach and the idea of due process are reiterated.
The question which follows is, to which extent can this ‘Durkheimian’ approach
respond to the challenges outlined by the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experi-
ment and other similar findings? In other words, if police cannot find proper
answers to the problem of crime control, what to do about crime? What can
become a more appropriate goal of policing from this neo-Durkheimian perspec-
tive? To our knowledge the CP model gave only an indirect answer to these ques-
tions. On an operational level, it underlined that crime control only represented a
limited part of what the police do. On the contrary, the problem of fear of crime
should obtain a much larger share in policing activities. This was translated on a
conceptual level into the idea that crime control was no longer only a matter for
the police, but a ‘moral’ mission for society in general. In this respect CP dimin-
ished the importance of crime and crime control as an end. 'Keeping the peace'
and preventing fear of crime proved to be the prime expectation amongst the
public rather than crime fighting. Both were considered sources to preserve
moral order by providing trust and confidence in the police. The importance of
measuring the effectiveness of police performance via crime control is propor-
tionately diminished. Therefore ‘crime fighting’ in its pure form could be
regarded (by the community policing movement) as a goal displacement. Deter-
rence through patrol and rapid interventions as a ‘means’ to achieve crime con-
trol became instead an end in itself.
By articulating crime as a responsibility for everyone, the police could no longer
be fully or exclusively held accountable for the rise of crime. By redefining or
reinterpreting police work as ‘keeping the peace’ and as ‘order maintenance’
police performance would become far more difficult to evaluate. How can one
measure accurately the capability to keep the peace? How does one measure
increasing or decreasing disorder? By redefining police work as different from
crime control and by emphasising that the latter was but a marginal aspect of real
police work, policing could no longer be solely or even properly evaluated via
crime figures. On the other hand, however, measuring fear of crime gained more
importance and this would prove to be almost as difficult to address as crime con-
trol.
Behind the story of CP as a vehicle to change the delegitimized autocratic, often
brutal and undemocratic crime fighting model into a more democratic, accounta-
ble and legitimate model of policing by consent, one could notice the transforma-

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 157
tion of policing into a much wider body of moral discourses and practices. And by
emphasising the importance of (the moral) order and the expansion of the police
role and their discretionary power in that respect, CP inevitably undervalued the
importance of the law in policing, despite its rhetoric on the enhancement of
human rights and its discourse on trust and confidence in policing.
9.3 … and beyond
9.3.1 Problem-oriented policing
Problem-oriented policing (POP) was ‘invented’ by Goldstein in the late 1970s
but the concept found its full achievement in his pièce de résistance of 1990 (Gold-
stein, 1990). It was Brodeur who clearly assessed the relationship between POP
and CP (1998). He emphasised the differences between the two concepts of
which we will briefly discuss a few aspects here. First of all, Goldstein (1979;
1990) criticised CP as yet another victim of the means-over-ends syndrome since
a positive impact of the police’s image was considered more important than
police performance, i.e. apprehending criminals. Despite the limited validity of
the empirical foundations for this general statement, it is true that CP stated that
it would, in certain conditions, prefer a better police image over apprehending
criminals (or rather ‘chasing’ criminals) as a way to achieving trust and confi-
dence in the community. Furthermore, Goldstein criticised efforts to engage and
mobilise the community on a more permanent basis as too amorphous and fee-
ble with little tangible impact on crime figures. Such goal displacement, however,
seemed to be all in ‘the eye of the beholder’, since it was Goldstein who clearly
preferred the idea of crime control as the main goal of policing over trust and
confidence. Perhaps this indicated that in reality CP initiatives suffered from an
end-over-means syndrome. It relied all too heavily on strategic ends, i.e. trust and
confidence to achieve policing by consent but developed too little organisational
and operational means. This can be considered as compensation for crime fight-
ing-oriented behaviour which overvalued operations and action but clearly lacked
a wider view on a strategic policy level. It is true, however, that goal displacement
at an organisational level occurred within the team policing experiments that
inspired the CP movement (Sherman, 1973). But inspiring does not mean they
were synonymous with CP initiatives. On the contrary, the failure of team polic-
ing inspired CP to emphasise the necessity of developing an alternative and
coherent model of policing on the strategic, organisational and operational levels.
Nevertheless, both remarks do help us to determine more adequately what stance
Goldstein and POP take regarding the challenges articulated by the Kansas City
preventive patrol experiment. How does POP respond to the problem of crime
control? POP rebrands ‘crime fighting’ as ‘problem fighting’ thereby stressing
that many problems which generate crime cannot be understood, managed or
even measured as long as they are understood and defined as an offence within a
limited criminal justice context. In this respect, POP is not so much against

158 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
crime fighting, but rather attempts to redefine crime phenomena into larger
problems which can consequently be addressed more effectively with (traditional
or non-traditional) problem-solving methods. A problem-solving strategy which
can be developed and executed by the police, other agencies or by a coalition of
both. The main goal of ‘smart’ policing, therefore, becomes problem-solving.
Effective solving methods cannot be limited to the boundaries of the criminal jus-
tice system. For POP it is not the emphasis on crime control which was problem-
atic in the reform model, but rather its narrow definition of crime and subse-
quently of crime control within the limitations of the criminal justice system.
This narrow definition limited police problem-solving possibilities. It was no
coincidence that Goldstein addressed police discretion and the improvement of
police performance early on (Brodeur, 1998: 38). In this sense, POP was also in
favour of expanding police discretion and the police role in general. As far as
crime fighting as a ‘means’ or a method is concerned, POP first and foremost
rejected its ‘one size fits all’ approach which can be considered the opposite of
smart policing. Although POP increased the possibilities for the police to respond
more creatively and fundamentally, this does not necessarily increase the role of
the public proportionately. The latter may have a greater say in which kind of
problems deserve to be tackled in general, but they will not necessarily have more
impact on the type of problem, its priorities and, particularly, how police should
deal with them. Neither will the population have more impact on how the police
should perform. This is in sharp contrast with the ‘classic’ community policing
approach. In this respect, original CP goals concerning democratisation of the
police function and a better integration of the police institution into society as
‘means’ to achieve more police legitimacy are of lesser concern for POP. POP and
its proponent Goldstein clearly corrected to the perhaps unrealistic or naive
thoughts on ‘policing by consent’ and on the possible contributions of the public
as effective (informal) social control agents. On the other hand, POP no longer
applied the same social criticism approach vis-à-vis the police function and the
criminal justice system in general. Consequently, it failed to encourage further
thinking about alternative policing goals on a strategic or conceptual level. Both
CP and POP enlarged the police role but from a different conceptual and tactical
perspective. From a CP point of view POP narrowed the scope of CP to an organ-
isational and operational strategy, or even a methodology (cf. SARA) with limited
impact on the (enlarged) police role in society. From that same perspective, POP
paid less attention to human rights aspects of policing, to due process or the doc-
trine of the minimum force. At the same time, it expanded the police role in a dif-
ferent way, i.e. to go beyond the traditional limitations of the criminal justice sys-
tem. In this sense, POP advocated a form of net widening but not necessarily in a
judicial sense.
To further disqualify the idea of CP, Goldstein (Brodeur, 1998: 50) pontifically
postulated …”community policing has become a meaningless and almost corrupt
term”… Hence, Berki’s link between the little story of crime and disorder and the
social disorganisation in the neighbourhood was cut off from the wider picture of

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 159
CP of social deprivation and social exclusion and the impact of the criminal jus-
tice system.
9.3.2 Broken windows policing – zero-tolerance policing (BW-ZTP)
Much has been said and written about the so-called ‘broken windows’ (BW) the-
sis or theory, both by its proponents and adversaries. The least one can say it is
has been proven to be most controversial. According to many, broken windows or
BW is not a theory, not even a thesis or a methodology. In the Low Countries,
Ponsaers (2003) cleverly explained it as a ‘parable’. More radical authors such as
Wacquant (2004) dismissed it as simply ‘nonsense’. In this context, it is impor-
tant to underline that the described enlargement of the police role propagated by
the POP advocates, was also incorporated in the ‘broken windows’ approach.
The core idea behind BW is that if minor offences and disorderly behaviour
remain unaddressed, they will deteriorate into major problems with crime and
disorder. Moreover, action against minor offenders would lead or at least contrib-
ute to arrests for major crimes. Minor and major offences, disorderly behaviour
and crime, for BW it is all part of one big web of problems (Kelling and Coles,
1996). According to BW problem-orientated policing means early and proactive
action against occurring disorder before it develops into crime. Within the broken
windows approach the cornerstone of policing further shifted from reacting to
individual, lawbreaking behaviour to (pro)active surveillance of and action against
target groups and places (hot spots) (Kappeler and Kraska 1998: 307). This proac-
tive action would be directed towards those groups or places at risk, threatening
the local community in their ‘quality of life’. In this sense, broken windows not
only emphasised order maintenance over crime control, it also redefined order
maintenance as a form of preventive crime control giving the police a much
larger mandate to intervene (before crime has occurred). By incorporating the
idea of ‘quality of life’ offences it enlarged the police role from a territorial author-
ity to a symbolic authority, i.e. the salvation of communities, to paraphrase the
Spanish film director Almodovar, ‘on the edge of a criminal breakdown’… echoing
the neo-Durkheimian inspiration of the original CP concept.
For CP social disorganisation as a ‘quality of life’ problem is a consequence of
social and cultural deprivation and exclusion. It highlights the antagonisms in the
neighbourhood and eventually breaks down the social cohesion with crime and
disorder as a result. For BW, however, disorder and decline degrades social con-
trol and cohesion, and will therefore attract unlawful behaviour, regardless of the
level of social and cultural deprivation of the neighbourhood. Social problems are
to be considered first of all problems of order. The origin of crime and disorder
becomes trivial in this view and, consequently, no longer requires any social
explanation. Nevertheless, focusing on problem groups would potentially result
in a more efficient and even more effective policing. The targeted groups are
defined in highly moral terms. They are considered to be responsible for the

160 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
decline of the neighbourhood and the community. They are viewed as subversive
and their violations are defined as incivilities. In the Low Countries, and espe-
cially in Flanders, the term ‘inciviek’ (‘incivil’) had a guilty connotation since it
was used to describe collaborators during World War II. In this respect, target
groups became ‘wandering broken windows’, which had to be removed from the
neighbourhood. Addressing fear of crime within the CP model was translated
into addressing the presumed originators of the increase of fear of crime. It was
no coincidence that the article of Wilson and Kelling got published in 1982. The
1960s and ’70s and their incorporation of a leftist ‘power-to-the-people’ ideology
into policing principles were by then over and done with. Neither was it a coinci-
dence that co-author of the broken windows article James Q. Wilson was already
renowned, not to say notorious, for his writings on crime theory and on the crim-
inal justice system. As a young criminology student, I was first introduced to the
writings of Wilson (1975) as an exponent of the New Realism, a neo-conservative
movement in criminal law that advocated a most repressive approach in criminal
policy and which inspired the Californian ‘three strikes and you’re out’ legisla-
tion. Coeval Ernest Van den Haag (1975) advocated the reintroduction of the gal-
lows and the deportation of convicts to ‘fatal shores’. This seemed, to say the least,
quite the opposite of a liberal criminal justice policy propagated by the original
CP protagonists. In the wake of the pragmatic POP approach, BW not only dis-
connected (cf. Berki’s) ‘big story’ from the ‘little story’, it also redefined the ‘big
story’ of social insecurity as trivial and structural social problems as of no impor-
tance. Also, the idea of policing contributing to the principles of due process had
by then disappeared.
For the sake of conceptual clarity, the original idea of enlarging the police role was
to advocate action against the problems of deprivation and exclusion behind inci-
dents and to give the public a greater say about what kind of problems had to be
tackled. For POP, the expansion of the police role no longer automatically encom-
passed this social welfare-ism and criticism, but meant the police would do more
by carefully analysing patterns behind incidents and search actively for solutions
within and beyond the criminal justice system. The role of the public was to
report those problems and about the underlying patterns behind. The CP and
POP advocacy of the enlargement of the police role was also welcomed by BW but
further reshaped into a proactive targeting of ‘problem groups’. Crime control
was hereby redefined as order maintenance which again enabled the police to use
more discretionary power and to be less legally accountable.
We can ultimately interpret BW at best as a ‘new realist’ variation on CP and even
POP, reshaping both concepts to fit ideologically in a far more repressive crimi-
nal policy. In this sense, CP scholar Wiatrowski once explained that with BW the
police ‘highjacked’ and remoulded CP principles to fit into the traditional crime
fighting approach and its subcultural values.42 In the same perspective, the neo-
42. Therefore Wiatrowski became an advocate for a ‘democratic’ instead of a ‘community’ policing
model. See Pino & Wiatrowski, 2006.

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 161
Durkheimian input of ‘moral values’ into policing, as advocated by the CP move-
ment, was transformed by BW into ‘moralising policing’. Structural social prob-
lems were reshaped into moral and sub-cultural problems at an individual or
group level. Not so much the broken window became the target, but rather the
‘wandering broken window’, the latter being the new term for groups tradition-
ally described as ‘police property’. And since the origins of crime have become
trivial, BW again embraced the rational choice theory and its idea of the ‘passage à
lacte. At the point where, from Berki’s perspective, POP somehow cut off the
wider social picture of social exclusion from the mundane reality of crime and
disorder, BW went further and inversed the relationship. Was BW referred to by
some as a most dubious metaphor (Manning, 1997) it certainly became a strong
political metaphor. It would soon be pinpointing the new direction in policing
and criminal policy in the US, especially after the NYPD embraced the concept in
the 1990s under the umbrella of zero-tolerance policing.
BW created a furore only after the architects of zero-tolerance policing (ZTP) in
New York, such as William Bratton and Jack Maple, acknowledged it as one of
their principal inspirations. The latter even acknowledged BW was just another
word for what was previously known as the ‘Breaking Balls Theory’ (Maple and
Mitchel, 1999) (sic). In this respect, BW contributed to a Breaking Balls Theory
Plus in which the Plus signified the connection between aggressive order mainte-
nance policing and gathering information on target groups (cf. CompStat) sub-
ject to this order maintenance. Surprisingly enough it decreased the discretionary
power for the rank and file which was no longer allowed to tolerate minor infrac-
tions. Middle and top management kept up the pressure since they were held
accountable for rank and file output performances. As a result, enlarging the
police role towards aggressive order maintenance and intelligence gathering
under ZTP paradoxically resulted in a curtailment of police autonomy. Except for
a number of special forces within the police which became the pinnacle of the
severe policy against target groups, especially young people, black, homeless,
unproductive... This enlarged police role also resulted in net widening. But unlike
in the POP approach this widening was meant to be (pre-) judicial by lowering
the threshold of unlawful conduct to include ‘quality of life’ infractions (later
translated into antisocial behaviour). Combined with a most aggressive policing
approach ZTP, under the impulse of BW, became the ‘praetorian’ version of CP.
It is important to underline that ZTP confirmed and amplified the ideological
turn of CP under BW policing, showing the consequences of this turn in all its
glory. Regarding the original CP principles and, if BW could be interpreted as its
embarrassing nephew, ZTP could be understood as the ‘bastard child’. An unde-
sirable descendant dispossessing or even disembowelling its creator from its
essential qualities, convincing the family he is only executing his fathers’ will. But
even such bastard children are an integral part of the family history. One of its
contributions to the CP family could be formulated as the incorporation of intelli-
gence gathering techniques to better detect, supervise and control groups and
spaces at risk. In this respect BW and ZTP have answered the ‘Kansas city’

162 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
dilemma of ‘what to do about crime and crime control’ via an ‘awe and shock’
strategy, such as a massive increase in police capacity and presence directed not
only towards crime but also towards disorder and decay. This clearly ran against
the grain of key CP maxims, such as social exclusion, policing by consent, the
doctrine of minimum force and the idea of human rights proof policing. But the
unwelcome message may be that such deviation from the original CP principles
was always a possibility because they were never clearly developed into a coherent
model of policing. In retrospect, advocating the enlargement of the police role
and their discretionary powers without sufficiently preserving a comprehensive
system of checks and balances proved to be playing with fire.
9.3.3 Private and plural policing (PLP)
Since their establishment throughout the world, the social and financial costs of
modern police forces have been a constant feature in the debate on public polic-
ing. An elaboration of how private or semiprivate policing grew to full stature is
well beyond the scope of this discussion. First a few words, however, regarding
the impact of this evolution on the development of CP principles. Community
orientation, client-centered service, developing partnerships, accountability are
all applicable to private policing on the condition that the community can be seen
as a (paying) client. Over the years, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, bounda-
ries between private and public have blurred, and in many respects, public polic-
ing has adopted corporate principles and ethos. Especially where public and pri-
vate policing agencies work together, or where a more hybrid form of public-pri-
vate policing developed have the respective limits of the police role have become a
policy issue. On the other hand, new (semi)police functions have been developed
under the umbrella of a more community-oriented criminal policy.
Within the new ‘public/private divide’ paradigm, the problems and challenges of
crime control are answered by the establishment of new policing agencies, by a
shift in tasks and a better coordination between the latter and the ‘old’ public
policing. Plural policing incorporates CP principles such as restoring social con-
trol but in a more diffuse way. Plural policing or the diffusion of policing tasks
among the ‘extended policing family’ as such already constitutes an enlargement
of the police role in time and space. The problems with trust and confidence in
the police are also transferred towards or spread over the other agencies. ‘Quality
of life’ infractions, from then on also known as ‘antisocial behaviour’ (a most neo-
Durkheimian term) have become tasks for the (semi)private or even non-police
agencies.
It is important to note that the establishment of such agencies was boosted in the
Low Countries by the endorsement of extra judicial or administrative sanctioning
bodies. These were created, among other things, to counter the popular (or popu-
list) critique that the Judiciary or the regular criminal justice system was no
longer capable of reacting swiftly and efficiently to increasing antisocial behav-

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 163
iour. In Belgium in particular, this had to do with the problem of uneven develop-
ment in the police and judicial structures, in which the first exerts pressure on
the latter to increase its pace of reform. This is similar to criticism from a POP
perspective has on the limited capacities of the criminal justice system. The estab-
lishment of so-called ‘communal administrative sanctions’ as a new extra judicial
repressive tool for the Belgian local authorities has resulted in a considerable
increase in administrative police competencies among semi-police agencies such
as public traffic wardens, city wardens, auxiliary police constables etc. In some
cases, they have even obtained (limited) coercive powers.
Rule violations concerning disorder, public nuisances and antisocial behaviour
were first de-penalised within the regular criminal justice system but were subse-
quently recriminalized within the administrative sanctioning system. For a
number of rule violations judicial and administrative sanctions exist, the latter
being only applicable in the absence of the first. As a consequence, the number of
rules to be enforced increased considerably. More rules inevitably mean more
rule violations. Furthermore, an enlargement of the police role was observed.
Despite the fact that the police were not very enthusiastic about enforcing such
new sanctions, they eventually realised that it considerably enhanced their imme-
diate coercive impact at the street level because the time between an offence and
its sanction had never before been that short. In the French language this evolu-
tion is defined as the difference between police de proximité and proximité de police.
To overcome the limitations of crime control within the framework of the crimi-
nal justice system the establishment of plural policing has expanded and diffused
police competencies among semiprivate or even private policing agencies, which
are in reality allowed to work in parallel with the regular criminal justice system.
The police are also allowed to impose sanctions administratively and outside the
criminal justice system and hence with less concern for the regular procedural
justice mechanisms and due process principles. Since the appearance of other
semi-, or even private police agencies the model of CP has to be understood in
relation to what Crawford (1997) described as the ‘local governance of crime’.
Needless to say, the coordination and integration of the multitude of agencies,
competences and policies represents a genuine challenge. Plural policing net-
works may also face problems with conflicting values comparable to those in
police-community partnerships.
Although further elaboration is beyond the scope of this chapter, our evaluation
studies in Belgium (Van den Broeck, 2001; Van den Broeck, 2002; Van den
Broeck and Eliaerts, 2002) showed that the policy network for the local govern-
ance of crime often becomes a jumble not to say a confusion of tongues, which
fails to bridge the (communication) gap between the public and the extended
policing family. A mere increase in formal police presence on the street and more
sanctions for offences do not automatically lead to more social control and more
trust and confidence in the police whether they be public or private agencies. The
latter even tend to be regarded by the public more negatively as ‘Erzats’-police.

164 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
On the other hand, the establishment and diffusion of new ‘policing’ competen-
cies outside the police had further consequences for the endorsement of CP prin-
ciples within the police itself. When other agencies within a multi-agency
approach framework endorsed community and problem-oriented policy princi-
ples, the police tended to withdraw to what they call their ‘core functions and
competencies’ i.e. crime control. In other words, plural or multi-agency policing
results in opposite cultural effects inside the public police agencies.
9.4 Reassurance policing (RP)
Scientific research preceding the CP movement indicated policing was actually
much more occupied with order maintenance than with crime fighting. CP
acknowledged this reality and reoriented police work more on managing and pre-
venting disorder. But to achieve a more democratic policing on an operational
level it would be for the public and not only for the police to define which order
had to be maintained and how. This order could be different in time and place
depending on the community’s needs and demands, and therefore required a
more tailor-made approach. Secondly and on an organisational level, CP pre-
ferred keeping and enforcing the peace over mere order maintenance, the latter
being just a means to achieve other ends. Where formal equality towards the law
under the crime fighting model resulted in injustice, CP policies aspired on a
conceptual level to a more peaceful and equitable society as an end of police work.
POP agreed with the ambition for another type of policing on an operational level
but criticised CP for not being focused enough on real problems and therefore
not obtaining tangible results in policing. By pursuing reduction in fear of crime
and better police-public relations in general, CP, despite the rhetoric, would be
far more difficult to evaluate and hold accountable. POP also emphasised tailor-
made solutions had to be found outside the criminal justice system. POP did not
link operational and organisational goals with conceptual, social or even political
goals, like CP did with its emphasis on social disorganisation and social exclu-
sion.
BW continued on the path of order maintenance and the enlargement of the
police role but focused on disorder and no longer on root causes such as social
disorganisation and exclusion. With the introduction of aggressive order mainte-
nance policing, Zero Tolerance Policing reintroduced the labelling of the criminal
as the moral wrongdoer. Community policing relates to ‘broken windows’ and to
‘zero tolerance policing’ as Little Richard did to Elvis Presley and to Colonel
Parker.
Plural policing took a more pragmatic position. It increased the number of
enforcers and offences to be enforced. Softly, it dispersed and diluted the police
social control function over society. On the other hand, it tempted the police to
withdraw to ‘core police functions’ which inevitably means a return to crime con-

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 165
trol-oriented activities and neglect of more community-oriented activities and
styles of policing.
An elaboration of what reassurance policing is and can contribute to criminal pol-
icy in the Low Countries is discussed elsewhere in this book. The question
addressed here is how Reassurance Policing can be understood in the light of
these evolving concepts and strategies. Reassurance policing, as the most recent
offspring of CP, was first conceptualised by academics Martin Innes, Vanessa
Jones, Nigel Fielding and others. (Innes and Fielding, 2002; Fielding and Innes,
2006; Innes and Jones, 2006). This academic origin, at least, guarantees inde-
pendence of dominant police-driven policing strategies. It is no coincidence that
Innes and Jones resumed the debate on policing with a critical review of the Bro-
ken Windows concept and its extraordinary influence on contemporary criminal
policy (in the UK). Both protagonists questioned Broken Windows’ presupposed
causality between nuisances and crime, and between minor offences and major
offences, including the ‘stepping stone’ relationship between minor and major
offences. Revaluation of Skogan’s seminal study ‘Disorder and Decline’ (1990),
falsified presupposed relationships between nuisance and crime. Research find-
ings by Weisburd et al. (2004) and Sampson and Raudenbusch (1997) demon-
strate both disorder and criminality result (on a micro level) from social disorgan-
isation and social exclusion. Neither does (aggressive) order maintenance con-
tribute to a decrease in fear or concern of crime.
Notwithstanding this critical approach towards BW, Innes and Jones recognise
the importance of (addressing) disorder and decline and of a more effective intel-
ligence management in that respect. Hence, RP incorporated BW’s concern with
finding a unifying metaphor that synthesises public and police concerns about
crime, in which the latter is encouraged to take ‘quality of life’ matters seriously.
Signs of decay, disorder and disorderly behaviour are regarded by the public as
signals that social cohesion is at risk. Deteriorating social control and cohesion
will, again in a neo-Durkheimian sense, lead to a collapse of the community’s
moral value structure. A number of so-called ‘signal’ crimes have a disproportion-
ate effect in this respect.43 Policy that neglects these signal crimes explains,
according to Reassurance Policing, why fear of crime has recently risen in the UK
despite the fact that crime figures went down. It indicates police agency failure to
identify and react properly to signal crimes. As a consequence, people will adapt
their (risk-avoiding) behaviour, which in turn will further amplify feelings of inse-
curity and dissatisfaction with criminal policy. In this respect, it is perhaps impor-
tant to research whether ‘signal judgements or convictions’ from the Judiciary
may have similar negative effects on public trust and confidence in the criminal
justice system as a whole. In order to identify signal crimes and signal risks on a
detailed micro level it is, according to RP, necessary to incorporate problem-ori-
43. Not coincidentally ‘signal’ is derived from semiotics. The contemporary media have obtained a dis-
proportionate impact on the perception of crime, not to say more than crime itself.

166 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
ented policing (and intelligence led policing) methodologies and tactics such as
the SARA approach, crime analysis and scan techniques.
Although RP integrated some of the BW approaches, it abandoned the ideological
discourse and polarising policies of BW and ZTP, revalorised the importance of
community input in accordance with the CP model and acknowledged the need
to focus this input on relevant problems (cf. POP) and tangible results. In this
respect, RP cannot be regarded as a new model or concept, nor is it a mere meth-
odology. Rather it should be seen as a valuable attempt to find a new equilibrium
between competing approaches. Since the idea of reassurance through the man-
agement of signal crimes is also applicable to other (semi)public or private polic-
ing agencies, RP can also be identified as an ambition to bring existent divergent
organisational policies within the ‘plural policing’ networks under one conceptual
umbrella. Innes (2004: 164) considered it an attempt to establish ‘total policing’.
On the other hand, this may well prove to be its weakness. Revalorising original
CP concepts may sound attractive but this does not magic away the aforemen-
tioned conceptual difficulties of the CP model. The emphasis on signal crimes
highlights the importance of ‘reducing fear of crime’ as a principal policing goal
in order to achieve or restore public trust and confidence in policing. But this
does not resolve the difficulties of measuring effectiveness of police fear reduc-
tion strategies. This may instead result in the measurement of policing activities
and subsequently overvaluing ‘perception of effectiveness’. Together with the
unresolved problem of defining the notion of ‘fear of crime’, ascribing too much
value to such perceptions may well produce the reverse effect in terms of poten-
tial for real accountability. It is no coincidence that the HMIC Report ‘Open all
Hours’ (Povey, 2001) emphasised that reassurance was to be considered a result
of police work and not a goal itself. Although policing styles, e.g. the ‘bedside
manner approach’, are important to achieve reassurance, it is supposed to be
more than a style. Reassurance in this respect is the outcome of policing activities
and accountability. A positive perception of police could be a side effect of this
reassurance.
If reassurance policing becomes a politically inspired strategy to achieve a more
positive perception of police and policing activities, it could over time be regarded
(and discredited) as ‘keeping up appearances’. Focusing on perception may be an
important police feature; focusing solely on perception, however, results in goal
displacement. Reassurance policing like all other innovative initiatives will have
to deal with police subcultural resistance against reforms that give the public
more say in determining their priorities and, especially, in how they execute these
priorities. Similarly, it is important to ask how RP addresses the aforementioned
problems and dilemmas of plural policing, and the role of the public police
within the ‘extended policing family’ in particular. It remains unclear which role
as social control agent RP identifies for the police and for the other agencies. In
case of a police withdrawal to core functions, reassurance may well become a
relocated task for the non-police or even (semi)private agencies. On the other

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 167
hand and given the fact that private agencies are inherently more client-driven,
this will enhance the development of policies that consider citizens as consumers
of security. This will inevitably result in a very uneven distribution of policing per-
formances primarily in favour of those capable of paying for it. And although RP
re-emphasises the importance of addressing social disorganisation in the neigh-
bourhood, this does not necessary link the ‘little story’ of disorder and crime with
the broader problems of social equity. ‘Signal crimes’ and ‘signal disorder’ can
both be considered ‘signal events’ that determine the outlook of a neighbourhood,
but what about ‘signals of social inequality’ or exclusion? The question remains:
who is defining and selecting the ‘real signal problems’ in the neighbourhood
and what service can the police deliver that has the potential to contribute to the
revitalisation of communities? What will be the impact of the possibly conflicting
interests between the police and (parts of) the community above described?
If perception management remains predominant it is not inconceivable that RP
will simply conform to the police-as-drama metaphor, the latter being based on a
slightly rewritten script. Endorsing RP would hereby become a synonym for a
reform of presentational strategies. In other words, there is a real danger for that
the reassurance strategy is restored in favour of police-public relations and police-
driven politics. This would raise the rather provocative question in the title of this
article: who is going to be reassured, the public or the police?
9.5 The future (study) of community policing?
This brings us to our last point of reflection. What does the appearance of RP
mean for the further development of CP and what are its chances of success? To
what extent is RP able to revive original CP goals and ideals about diminishing
social exclusion and revitalising communities?
The concept of community policing has been developed in the previous two dec-
ades in response to the failing professional policing model. Although the ‘found-
ing fathers’ (Germann, Angell, Alderson) explained their ideas about an alterna-
tive model of policing already in the late 1960s and 1970, community policing
was only beginning to gain actual support in the late 1980s and 1990s. Hannah
Arendt’s (1978) distinction between a phenomenon of ‘Ursprung and Anfang’
must be taken into consideration here. The story of community policing in the
1970s was impregnated with a leftist Zeitgeist. CP aimed to bring the cultural
revolution to the police world in order to democratise the organisation and to
integrate the police more appropriately in society. CP was basically a middle class
model of conflict handling oriented towards and applicable for middle class
neighbourhoods. POP added the problem-oriented approach and indicated the
importance of careful analysis to achieve more tailor-made policing. In the follow-
ing twenty or even thirty years Western society underwent substantial changes.
The globalisation of the economy entailed a deregulation of the labour market
and an increase in flexibility. In the whole Western society the success of neo-lib-

168 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
eralism resulted, unfortunately and perhaps unintentionally, in an increasing
dualisation of society.44 A large unskilled labour force was made redundant. This
did not fail to have an impact on the neighbourhoods where the society’s redun-
dancies were concentrated. In this context BW imposed an ideological shift,
reintegrating CP core ideas like decentralisation, focus on order maintenance,
proactive policing etc. into a more traditional police-dominated policy. ZTP best
embodied the ideological shift towards aggressive disorder policing as a form of
crime management. It also highlighted the importance of problem oriented anal-
ysis but translated this into mostly intelligence gathering on high-risk target
groups and places. In the ‘slipstream’ of BW and ZTP, ILP was developed. With
BW and ZTP genuine ‘social problems’ (of disorganisation and exclusion of citi-
zens) were downsized to ‘private worries’ about order and disorder of the ‘law-
abiding individuals’. The consequences of the shift in the perception from citizen
to individual were best described by Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote: “the individ-
ual is the citizen’s worst enemy”. Plural policing further adapted (community)
policing to the exigencies of the post-modern fragmentised society. Since the
advent of community policing thirty years ago policing the society became a
much more complex issue. As Che Guevarra was recuperated as a commercial
icon, it is not inconceivable that over time CP became a frame of reference with-
out much critical social content. By acknowledging the results of the Kansas City
Patrol Experiment that policing was much more about order (maintenance) than
about crime (fighting), the concept of CP unintentionally opened a Pandora’s box.
Where the original CP model wanted to socialise the police, it is perhaps society
which has become … more police(d). Instead of less formal social control on the
macro level and more informal social control on the micro level, the advent of
plural policing has brought more (formal) social control on the macro and micro
level. In this respect not George Orwell’s ’1984’ but rather Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave
New World’ proved to be an accurate prediction of the future of social control.
In this context the following question must be asked, the idea of reassuring as a
means to re-link police and public concerns sounds good, but how does (or can) it
link increasingly divided communities? Apart from being perhaps a luckless
attempt to revitalise CP, RP can be viewed as a unifying platform to integrate dif-
ferent and diverging police models to respond to dissociating and increasingly
divided and ‘insecure’ communities. The latter two being a consequence of the
globalised and deregulated society described above. In this view, developments of
CP via POP into BW and ZTP and furthermore into PLP and RP can be linked
with the evolution of Foucauldian concepts such as ‘Government’ to ‘Governance’
into ‘Governmentality’ (Foucault, 1991). An evolution in which modernity
evolved into a ‘liquid’ phase (Bauman, 2000) and, consequently, may require a
more ‘liquid’ policing approach. Globalisation fundamentally questioned the rela-
tionship between the State and its territory. CP originally enlarged the police role
of what was at that time still a public policing body and enhanced in a neo-Durk-
44. For more details and in particular its consequences for Belgium see Van den Broeck, 2001, 2002;
Van den Broeck and Eliaerts, 2002).

9 Reassurance Policing: Reassuring the Public or Reassuring the Police? 169
heimian way, the moral and functional territory of the police. BW, ZTP and PLP
scattered and diffused the police role further. What will be left for the public
police within this new configuration of police agents is uncertain. RP attempts to
reposition public police in the centre as a pivot, coordinating and ‘steering the
allocation of police services’ (Innes, 2004: 166). In practice, however, it may well
be Adam Smith’s invisible hand, that will allocate the function of disciplining. To
further understand RP as a response to ‘securing the insecure’ in late modernity
Innes (2004: 154) referred to history, in particular to the first half of the 19th cen-
tury, as the époque of the architects of the ‘modern police’ system that evolved in a
similar ‘era of rapid and profound social change’. In this context, policing could
be regarded initially as ‘experimental theatre’ as it did not exist before Peel created
the stage on which the police performed. However, to understand what may come
next, we tend to refer to previous decades and even centuries. We again refer to
what Foucault already indicated as the return to the Prussian Polizeiwissenschaft
or Cameralism of the first third of the 18th century (Foucault, 1978). Viewed as
the science of the internal order of the community, it also comprised public law,
administrative science, public health urbanism and urban planning etc., and is
therefore related to what Innes understood as ‘total policing’. It is no coincidence
that Foucault wished to study the micromechanics of power, and this on a level
where power became ‘capillary’. This is exactly what is happening now with the
enlargement of the police role and territory and the right to usurp public space
and time. On the other hand, the evolution can be used to show how, when mod-
ern State power runs out, earlier social control functions return (Comaroff and
Comaroff, 2004: 822). Going back in Anglo-Saxon history may give an interest-
ing insight into how the parish constable performed his watchman duties amidst
other protagonists of the parochial order such as the posse, the yeomanry and
others. In this respect, we may perhaps even expect the revival of the Tyburn
ticket as a tool to counter and discipline antisocial behaviour… It is important to
note that these social control systems were to a large extent mixed policing initia-
tives. In this context Zedner (2006) pointed out that private policing in the future
(we would prefer to speak of ‘privatised’) may well be considered the normal situ-
ation, and the monopoly of public policing from halfway through 19th century till
the end of the 20th century is the exception.
Conclusion
The essence of the contemporary debate is whether the role of the (public) police
should be restricted to crime prevention and control or whether it should have a
more ambitious, maybe also more amorphous role of delivering safety (via order
maintenance), reassurance and (re)building communities. By clearly opting for
the second scenario, CP widened the focus of policing towards a more democrati-
cally legitimate social mission. However, over time this idea will further develop
in relation to a changing society with different social and political circumstances.

170 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
RP as the latest offspring attempts to find a new balance in policing by revaluing
a number of original CP operational and tactical goals. Berki, however, explained
that any assessment of whether (reassurance) policing works or not, should have
to take into account the consequences of the social practices for the social mean-
ings it generated in society. The latter tend to indicate policing is going in a quite
different direction than suggested by the original protagonists of CP.
The current debate also highlights fundamental difficulties within the original
CP concept. The heralding of order maintenance as a core police function and as
a tool to revitalise communities seemed quite logical and legitimate at the time,
but it opened a Pandora’s box at the same time. Today the consequences of this
are not always and certainly not as yet fully understood.
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10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of
Reassurance Policing
Bob Hoogenboom45
‘An adequate approach to police reform must be grounded in an understanding of police
culture and practices, not a simplistic view that if only the right authorities were in charge
all would be well. But both police and popular culture embody views of policing and its
purposes which are at odds with the reality of police work. They exaggerate the extent to
which policing is concerned with serious crime, and overestimate the capacity of the
police to deal with criminality by detection and deterrence.’ (Reiner, 1992)
Introduction
Reassurance policing is one of the concepts being introduced in the last decade.
Change seems to be all around. My aim here is trying to make some sense of the
continuing stories of change being told, of which reassurance policing is but one
of the latest. I am fascinated by the cycles of reform which in the last decade seem
to be proliferating. Old fashioned order keeping through the (threat) of non-nego-
tiable force – for many police researchers the quintessential function of policing –
has made way for elegant, well-told and written stories of ‘nodal policing’, ‘com-
munity policing’, ‘intelligence-led policing’, all sorts of policy lingo heavily
imbued with fashionable new public management notions of ‘targets’ and ‘plan-
ning procedures’. Visible characteristics of neighbourhoods in decline, which
have always been the locus of police work all over the world, are now called ‘signal
crimes’ in the reassurance perspective. What explains the almost continuous
emergence and short time sustainability of new policing concepts?
In trying to make sense of this ‘ manic pace of change’ I came across Klockars’
The rhetoric of community policing (1988) which struck me by its originality. Klock-
ars probes underneath many fictional accounts of policing and touches upon fac-
tual realities of policing. Klockars, in the late 1980s, uses Bittners’s concept of cir-
cumlocution to analyse the movement toward ‘community policing’. Circumlocu-
tion is the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea or
evasion in speech.
45. I want to thank Robert Reiner, Cyrille Fijnaut, Piet van Reenen and Marcel Pheijffer for comments
on earlier versions.

174 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
From his perspective ‘community policing’ is best understood as the latest in a
fairly long tradition of circumlocutions whose purpose is to conceal, mystify, and
legitimate police distribution of nonnegotiable coercive force (Klockars, 1988).
In essence, any organisation the police (including) consists of languages, rhetoric
and myth systems. These languages are used to give meaning to the organisation,
the core tasks it performs and its very raison d’etre. It is of no importance at all if
these narratives do not – or partly – represent reality because they have a symbolic
function. In social sciences we find references to ‘ritual organisations’. Ritual
organiszations also use language, signs, symbols and images to conceal factional
realities. Other police researchers like Loader and Reiner have also touched upon
more ritualistic or symbolic dimensions of policing. In his Policing and the Social:
Questions of Symbolic Power Loader (1997) analyses the police in the context of
ideas and concepts from political science on the symbolic function of power.
Loader begins his ‘tale of two police forces’, a symbolic (fictional) and a factual
tale, with this quote:
‘The political system performs a function of symbolic protection far beyond its specific role
as an apparatus of the selective regulation of social risks (…) It is most of all on the sym-
bolic level that the institutions of authority, with all their show, ritual, prescriptions, and
even codes of manners and etiquette, satisfy a latent need for social protection and spread
a gratifying sensation of order and security’.
Loader argues that sociological enquiry needs to devote more attention to under-
standing the social meanings of policing, and outline a framework within which
the role and significance of policing as a cultural category might be investigated.
According to Reiner (1992) policing has fictional and factual dimensions: ‘Most
police work is neither social service nor law enforcement, but order maintenance
– the settlement of conflicts by other means than formal law enforcement’.
What I plan to write on next is not reassurance policing as you can find an abun-
dance of excellent treatises on the subject in other chapters. What I would like to
do instead is place reassurance in a broader context of the seemingly unlimited
supply of new policing concepts. My interest is in stressing the growing divide
between fictional and factual policing. For this reason first I have to go back to
some of the classics in our body of knowledge of policing.
In the first place, the concept of circumlocution, as used by Bittner and Klockars,
is explained in more detail. What is it, why is it important and how is it applied by
them? In the second place I will briefly sketch how Klockars applies the concept
of circumlocution to community policing. In the third place I will discuss some
new concepts introduced in (Dutch) policing during the last decade. The police
seem to be locked in a ‘manic pace of change’. The introduction of community
policing is followed by ever more new concepts and strategies from new public
management techniques to ‘broken window’, intelligence-led policing, and more
recently reassurance policing. I will argue Klockars analysis can also be applied to

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 175
many of these ‘new’ policies, strategies, tactics and operational activities suggest-
ing change, innovation and constant adaptations of policing. Although we wit-
ness in some ways ‘a manic pace of change’ with the introduction of new con-
cepts, policing on the ground does not change that much. Continuities in polic-
ing are neglected. Underneath all the change rhetoric reproducing order has not
fundamentally changed since the introduction of the Bobbies by Sir Robert Peele.
Next, I will argue that the explanations put forward by Bittner and Klockars for
the circumlocutions (or fictional or symbolic dimensions) in policing can be
extended and in some ways refined by incorporating police cultural notions and
concepts, but especially also by a set of techniques used by police leaders to retain
relative autonomy. As much as society has a need for fictional police stories, so
police leadership has a need for different narratives – and even myths – to keep
authorities and the public at bay with the sole purpose of safeguarding its auton-
omy. Reassurance policing from these perspectives has meaning mostly on the
fictional (symbolic) level and relatively less on the factual levels of policing.
Finally, I will make some remarks on the rather ‘narrow’ basis of police research
with its dominant focus on the visible blue coated worker. The almost exclusive
focus on these blue coated workers, ‘working the streets’ in a continuous search
for signs and signals to respond to public needs in community and reassurance-
like strategies, is but one facet of multifaceted policing arrangements and strate-
gies. In many ways factual policing is a ‘neglected’ subject.
10.1 Fictional policing or circumlocutions
Central to the Bittner/Klockars argument is the notion that the police are a mech-
anism for the distribution of non negotiable coercive force. This entails a ‘diffi-
cult moral problem’, because we live in a civilised society and condemn violence.
Yet, even within civilised society the existential function of the police is ‘to make
available a group of persons with a virtually unrestricted right to use violent and,
when necessary, lethal means to bring certain types of situations under control’
(Klockars, 1988). Deep down this is offensive to the core values of western socie-
ties, yet at the same time the situation is unchangeable. Even democracies need
to resort to violence from time to time. Therefore democracies have a need for the
monopoly of violence and thus the police. This is a necessary paradox that needs
comforting and wrapping up in narratives called ‘circumlocutions’ by Bittner and
taken a step further by Klockars.
In order to reconcile itself with an institution whose means are irreconcilably
offensive to it, society must wrap that institution in signs, symbols, and images
that effectively conceal, mystify, and legitimate actions (Klockars, 1988). The
police are an institution that is constantly being ‘wrapped up’ in this way (Bittner,
1970; Klockars, 1988). The ‘irreconcilable offensive’ nature of policing refers to
the monopoly of force the police represent and at times exercise. The core capac-

176 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
ity to use force, according to Reiner underlies the diversity of problems and
means of policing. ‘This does not mean that the police typically (or even often)
use coercion or force to accomplish the resolution of the troubles they deal with.
The craft of effective policing is to use the background possibility of legitimate
coercion so skilfully that it never needs to be foregrounded’ (Reiner, 1992).
Reiner arrives at this conclusion based on observational police studies from the
sixties onwards. His argument is one of the lines of reasoning in a chapter titled
‘Demystifying the police’.
According to Bittner (1970) we must arrive at a favourable or even accepting
judgement about an activity which is, in its very conception, opposed to the ethos
of the polity that authorises it. Is it not well nigh inevitable that this mandate be
concealed in circumlocution?
The definition of policing as ‘to make available a group of persons with a virtually
unrestricted right to use violent and, when necessary, lethal means to bring cer-
tain types of situations under control’ resonates with many theoretical and empir-
ical researches into policing.
According to Ericson real police work is not crime related in the way that policing
is represented and perceived in the media, the popular culture and in many polit-
ical debates. This popular view ‘has remarkable currency, given that the public
police actually spend a tiny fraction of their time dealing with crime or something
that could potentially be made into a crime’ (Ericson, 1982). The essence of public
policing is ‘reproducing order’, according to Ericson. Policing involves a wide
range of non-repressive strategies dealing with a variety of behaviour. Certain
types of situations must be brought under control: making the road safe for traf-
fic after a car crash involving 14 automobiles, the security of Schiphol airport or
Heathrow airport after a terrorist threat, or separating husband and wife after a
call of domestic violence.
Day to day policing is not about crime or services rendered to the public, but
about reproducing order in social interactions. Reproducing order in many
instances is done with the threat of violence and/or the use of violence, from end-
ing a pub brawl, arrests made by specialised SWAT teams or the use of military
style order maintenance units in large scale public events. (For instance the Min-
ers Strike in 1984 in the UK, and, more recently the large-scale deployment of
riot police to police Seattle and Geneva during meetings of the G7.)
Public policing on a local level essentially is dealing24/7 with ‘the asshole – creep,
bigmouth, bastard, animal, mope, rough, jerk off, clown, scumbag, wise guy, pho-
ney, idiot, shithead, bum, fool, or any of a number of anatomical, oral, or incestu-
ous terms – a part of every policeman’s world’ (Van Maanen, 1978). The ‘asshole’
is policed by the threat of violence or removed (with legitimate violence) from the
location.46 Reproducing order has very little to do with the rhetoric of building

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 177
community relations. Policing in this respect is not about talking with ‘the public’
but about intervention.
Conventional wisdom equates police work with crime work which is a myth per-
petually reinforced by the police themselves, moral entrepreneurs, politicians,
some academics and of course the media and popular culture images in movies,
television series and novels (Reiner, 1992).
A sound – comparative and cross cultural – empirical basis exists for the primary
non crime related character of every day policing. Patrol police work is not prima-
rily or essentially about crime prevention or law enforcement (Kelling et al., 1974;
Wilson and Boland, 1978; Chan and Ericson, 1981; Ericson 1982).
Very little of the work of patrol officers has to do with crime. British, US and
Dutch research has consistently shown that not more than 25 per cent of all the
calls to the police are about crime; more often the figure is 15-20 per cent (Bayley,
1994). Moreover what is initially reported by the public as crime often turns out
to be no criminal matter at all. Most of the genuine crime the police are called
upon to handle is minor. And crime the general public associates policing with,
like homicide, aggravated assault, robbery and forcible rape, is a fraction of the
reality of policing. In 1990 violent crimes accounted for around 1 per cent of all
reported crime in Australia, 9 per cent in Canada, 5 per cent in England and
Wales, and 1 per cent in Japan. Policing is not about crime control but about
restoring order and providing general assistance: ‘the function of the police is to
stop something that ought not to be happening and about which someone had
better do something now’ (Bittner, 1970).
Policing is strikingly similar around the world if we compare organisational
assignments. Among the forces studied about 60 per cent of police personnel
patrol and respond to requests for service, 15 per cent investigate crime, 9 per
cent regulate traffic and 9 per cent administer. Because most crime suspects can-
not be identified readily, most crimes go unsolved. Only 22 per cent of the most
serious crimes in the United States are solved; 35 per cent in England and Wales;
in Canada 45 per cent and in Australia 30 per cent (Bayley, 1994).
A more recent illuminating perspective to illustrate the relative impact of policing
on actual levels of crime comes not from police studies or criminology but from
economics. In 2003 Steven Levitt received the John Bates Clark Medal which is
awarded every two years to the best American economist under the age of forty.
Levitt claims he doesn’t have much knowledge of economics and looks at things
not as an academic but as a curious explorer, or perhaps a documentary maker, a
46. Van Maanen quotes a veteran patrolman: ‘I guess what our job boils down to is not letting the assholes
take over the city. Now I’m not talking about your regular crooks.. they’re bound to wind up in the joint
anyway. What I’m talking about are those shitheads out to prove they can push everybody around. Those
are the assholes we gotta deal with and take care of on patrol.. You take the majority of what we do and
its nothing more than asshole control’.

178 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
forensic scientist or a bookkeeper. The New York Times portrayed Levitt in 2003
and received many reactions on the unconventional way he thinks.
Levitt’s underlying rationale is his deep-rooted conviction modern life is quirky,
complicated, in many ways corrupt and therefore almost impregnable. In a way
he is also ‘struggling’ with many fictional (academic) narratives and real life, the
things happening on the ground far away from the Ivory Towers of ‘normal sci-
ence’. If we ask the right questions modern life (and science) is even more
intriguing than we can imagine. He is fascinated by the term ‘conventional wis-
dom’, coined by Kenneth Galbraith, to describe certain ideas or explanations that
are generally accepted as true by the public. However, conventional wisdom is not
necessarily true. Conventional wisdom is also often seen as an obstacle to intro-
ducing new theories, explanations, and therefore as an obstacle that must be
overcome by such revisionism. This is to say, that despite new information to the
contrary, conventional wisdom has a property analogous to inertia, a momentum
that opposes the introduction of contrary belief, sometimes to the point of absurd
denial of the new information set by persons strongly holding an outdated (con-
ventional wisdom) view. This inertia is due to conventional wisdom being made
of ideas that are convenient, appealing and deeply assumed by the public, that
hangs on to them even as they become outdated. The unavoidable outcome is that
these ideas will eventually not match reality at all, so conventional wisdom will be
violently shaken until it no longer conflicts with reality so blatantly.
This is exactly what he does in Freakonomics (Levitt and Dubner, 2005). One ques-
tion raised is ‘why do drug dealers live with their mothers?’ In a fascinating argu-
mentation, using empirical facts and figures from a variety of disciplines, the
authors argue most of the drug dealers have a marginal existence, barely making
enough money to live a decent life and, they therefore have to live with their
mothers. Conventional wisdom equates drug dealers with the high life. Reality
has them doing shopping for their mothers.
Levitt et al., fascinated as they are with crime issues and challenging conventional
wisdom in also this field ask this question: Where have all the criminals gone?
In New York City crime rates began to go down in the early nineties. This hap-
pened so fast it took everyone, including the self-acclaimed specialists (mostly in
criminology) by surprise. From all over the place (new) specialists came to the
intellectual rescue. Levitt et al. give an overview of conventional wisdom explana-
tions: innovative police strategies; more and longer prison sentences, changes on
the crack and other drug markets; tougher weapons laws; more police; stronger
economy and a variety of other explanations (more death penalties, buying back
of weapons by the government etc). All of them are put to the test and rejected on
the basis of solid arguments based on facts and figures.
Conventional wisdom is violently shaken by their analyses of the gradual legisla-
tion of abortion from the late sixties, early seventies in different states like New

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 179
York, California, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. In 1973 the Supreme Court
ruled in Roe v. Wade on legalising abortion. In 1974 750,000 women got an abor-
tion (one abortion to every 4 children born). Legalising abortion mostly benefited
unmarried women, not even twenty years of age and mostly poor. In many cases
all three factors were involved. In 1980 the number of abortions was 1.6 million.
Levitt et al. argue that if these women had not had an abortion 50% of the chil-
dren would probably have lived in poverty and, 60% would probably have grown
up without one parent. Two factors contributing to the criminal careers of young
people living in the inner cities. In the early nineties crime rates started dropping.
The first generation of children born after Roe v. Wade was in their late teens,
early twenties, the age young men usually get involved in crime. Legalised abor-
tions lead to less unwanted births; unwanted births lead to more crime. Ergo:
legalised abortion leads to less crime.
Levitt et al show states with the highest abortion rate in the early seventies had
the strongest decline in crime rates in the early nineties. And, in states with lower
abortion rates, the decline in crime rates was less strong. New York State was one
of the first states to legalise abortion, and had a high abortion rate and a sharp
decline of crime in the nineties.
10.2 Circumlocutions and community policing
Community in community policing implies some form of reciprocity between
the community and the police. Policing in ‘community policing’ carries with it
strong implicit and explicit presumptions that crime control will be enhanced
and more efficient and effective if the community is more involved in policing.
Reciprocity leads to less crime. Some of the same connotations are part of the
vocabulary of reassurance policing.
Klockars deconstructs the reciprocity argument. Community policing and espe-
cially the reciprocal mechanism is to a large extent a mystification. To make his
argument he criticises The New Blue Line (Skolnick and Bayley, 1986) which in
his view is too ‘uniformly cheerful about the (community policing) movement
and wholly without critical reservations’ (Klockars, 1988).
Why does Klockars talk about ‘mystification’? In the first place ‘the community’
does not exist. The notion ‘implies a group of people with a common history,
common beliefs and understandings, a sense of themselves as ‘us’ and ‘outsiders
as ‘them’, and often, but not always, a shared territory’ (Klockars, 1988). This is a
strong argument. I think police research is in dire need of much more differenti-
ation. We talk and write about ‘the police’ and ‘the citizens’.
The inner cities of Birmingham, Amsterdam, Brooklyn North and London are
‘communities’ ‘divided’ along ethnic, religious, cultural, socio-economic power
lines. These inner city communities are fragmented in many ways. Social stratifi-

180 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
cation is very visible and beggars find themselves next to SUVs and, the middles
classes hire Polish working class people for house cleaning and painting while
yuppies fly up and down to Ibiza. In between we find a youth culture hip-hopping
and break dancing its way to maturity. Klockars asks the basic and in some ways
troublesome question: ‘Just what is it that the community policing movement has
chosen to police in their name?’ What part(s) of the community does community
policing relate to? Next he climbs down the hierarchical lines and makes the
argument that police officers who actually do the work in these inner cities ‘see
themselves policing people and incidents’, perhaps ‘corners’, or ‘houses’, a ‘park’
or a ‘street’ (Klockars, 1988). The notion of a ‘community’ is far too abstract to
have any meaning for individual police officers who are dealing with incidents
and reproduce order (Kelling et al., 1974; Wilson and Bolland, 1978; Chan and
Ericson, 1981; Ericson 1982; Reiner, 1992; Reiner, 2002).47
On top of factional policing layers of fictional policing are placed words, signs,
metaphors, symbols and rituals that cloud policing on the ground. Klockars
argues community policing becomes a ‘rhetorical device for high-command-rank
police officers to speak to organisations or groups in areas that are at once, geo-
graphically, too large to be policed and, politically, too large to be ignored’.
Again, why does Klockars talk about ‘mystification’? In the second place, because
policing in ‘community policing’ has strong connotations with crime fighting or
crime control. Community policing – as reassurance policing more recently – is
brought into being with the expectation that it will reduce crime. Again Klockars
deconstructs this argument: ‘Despite the fact that for the past 50 years the police
have been promoting themselves as crime fighters, devoting enormous resources
to the effort, taking credit for drops in the crime rate and criticism for rises in it,
the best evidence to date is that no matter what they do they can only make mar-
ginal differences in it’.48
Fijnaut et al. (1985) make the same argument in examining research on the
effects of policing on crime rates. The community policing movement with these
47. As of 1985 I have been involved in police research, police education at the Dutch Police Academy
and consultancy in law enforcement. Also, I have socialized with police officers of all levels and lis-
tened to their stories. In writing this chapter I started thinking whether or not I have heard many
stories on how individuals have built community relations as compared to stories about incidents,
specific actions and in general events that seem to be pivotal points in the professional histories of
these many hundreds of officers. I can’t come up with one community relation story and dozens of
stories of large scale riots, for instance during the coronation of Queen Beatrix in 1980, moments
in high profile criminal investigations or the period of squatter riots in Amsterdam. As Reiner
(1992) argues police culture is action driven and carries a strong sense of mission. The context in
which factional policing takes place is limited to specific and concrete incident of which policing on
the ground has an unlimited supply.
48. ‘The reason is that all of the major factors influencing how much crime there is or is not are factors
over which police have no control whatsoever. Police can do nothing about the age, sex, racial, or
ethnic distribution of the population. They cannot control economic conditions, poverty, inequality,
occupational opportunity, oral, religious, family, or secular education; or dramatic social, cultural or
political change’ (Klockars, 1998).

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 181
connotations but also references to the preventive aspects of the strategy, and, the
supposedly co production aspect of working with communities is a ‘semantic’
construction, according to Klockars. In terms of Bittner it is an example of cir-
cumlocution. Not only have some police researchers argued for realistic
approaches to policing, this realism can sometimes be found within the police
themselves. In the eighties a number of Dutch Chiefs of Police challenged the
underlying assumptions on the war on drugs and the consequences it had on
manpower, resources and priorities. In the United Kingdom, the former Metro-
politan Police Comissioner Newan is an example: ‘It is important’, Newman
argues, ‘that members of the public should have a realistic appreciation of what
police can or cannot achieve (…) so too it is necessary that police officers’ expecta-
tions (…) are shaped upon the reality of the present and not upon some imprecise
aspiration of perfection based on either past or present fantasies’ (Reiner, 1992).
10.3 Manic pace of change versus continuity
After the introduction of ‘community policing’ from the eighties in the United
States, the United Kingdom and a number of Western European countries, the
police seem to be constantly introducing new strategies and operational tactics.
New Public Management methods, programmes and accountability structures
have been introduced; in the nineties in the Netherlands a quality measurement
tool (INK-model) was introduced and regional forces became subject of evalua-
tion studies by the Home Office; ideas on intelligence-led policing, zero-toler-
ance, financial investigations, the role of police in environmental crime, intelli-
gence-led policing, nodal policing, and more recently reassurance policing.
I will discuss this ‘manic pace of change’ by analysing through what phases these
new concepts ‘mature’. Next, I will look underneath the surface and draw atten-
tion to continuities in policing. Much of factual policing is still the same and has
not changed much in the last 250 years. Neither the nature of day-to-day policing
nor the problems dealt with by rank and file have changed much. The distinction
between fictional and factual policing enables us to tell ‘two tales of policing’: a
narrative tale, using many written words, and a factual tale, in which police offic-
ers in the street are hardly influenced – or at least much less than the change nar-
ratives seem to suggest – by the these written words but still use their oral and
manual capacities to reproduce order.
10.3.1 Change
Each of the ‘new’ concepts follows more or less the same pattern. In the first
phase ‘a buzz’ emerges in which enthusiastic police professionals share their
experiences and impressions from visiting the police in Kent (intelligence-led
policing), or attending ‘breaking ball’ (Compstat) meetings at Police Plaza
number 1 in New York City. Or they become interested in specific themes like

182 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
leadership, counter terrorism, fraud or new management techniques from
attending conferences, listening to lectures or reading books. Many of the new
ideas come from abroad. Punch (2006) calls this ‘policy transfers’: police officials
from different Dutch regional forces, sometimes accompanied by government
officials and/or public prosecutors travel around and constantly pick up numer-
ous new trends and concepts.
In the second phase initial consolidation takes place. The new concept is used in
public speeches, articles are written about it in different police magazines and
some police leaders start experimenting with a new concept.
In both phases there seems to be genuine interest and real attachment to the new
concept or idea. A small number of police officers involved generate a lot of
energy and seem to be convinced this new concept can and must be introduced
and implemented in Dutch policing. There is no real plan or strategy and I would
argue that the real trigger in these two phases is the intrinsic value individual
officers attach to the concept. In some way they are ‘moral’ policy entrepreneurs
who at this point in time strongly believe in the new innovation. As we know a
central feature of police culture is the sense of mission police officers share. In
embracing a new concept or strategy this sense of mission seems to become part
of the drive to take the concept/strategy to the next level.
In the first two phases a relatively small circle of police officers are involved. They
share information and experiences and seem to reinforce each other in the value
and necessity of the new concept. They also use the same words, signs and idi-
oms. This creates a bond among them and is useful to communicate the con-
cept to a wider (police) audience. What is striking, however, is the fact no clear-
cut – and accepted – definitions exist on what community policing, ‘broken
window’, intelligence-led policing, leadership or reassurance policing is exactly,
or means and what its function is or could be. A number of articles in this vol-
ume can be used as an illustration. Also at the Reassurance Conference itself
energy was directed at definitional issues.49
In phase three wider circles of acceptance are to be found and in many cases the
policy entrepreneurs succeed. The new concept or strategy becomes salonfähig
within the police and the government. The possible advantages for the effective-
ness or greater legitimacy of policing of the new concept become part of the nar-
rative. Because there is still a lack of definition the attractiveness and ‘selling
quality’ at this stage seems to lie more in the emotional appeal and/or the infor-
mal leadership qualities of (police) officials involved. For instance if a high rank-
ing police or government official embraces the new concept and starts talking
about it more credibility is attained.
49. The conference, organised by the Stichting Samenleving, Maatschappij en Veiligheid (The Dutch
Society, Security and Police Foundation) and the Centrum voor Politiestudies (Centre for Police
Studies) took place in Hoeve Biestheuvel, Hoogeloon in the Netherlands, on the 22nd and 23rd of
March 2007.

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 183
In this phase ‘alliances’ are created between public officials and the small group
of ‘moral entrepreneurs’. These entrepreneurs can be found in policy circles, on
the police management levels, in consultancy and in academic police research.
Different objectives of different groups of people meet and one searches for – and
negotiates – new projects (conferences, articles, training programmes and [evalu-
ation] research). Different objectives could be political – the new concept fits in
current or planned policy programmes – or the objectives are of a bureaucratic
nature. For instance policy advisors working for the Ministry of the Interior, the
Justice Department or regional forces see opportunities for new projects or policy
programmes. I think the bureaucratic internal dynamics at work in putting new
concepts and strategies on the agenda is grossly overlooked and neglected in
research.
Consultants have financial interests and academic researchers combine intellec-
tual interests with funding interests for new research projects. In some way coop-
tation takes place and the small group of police officials – the moral entrepre-
neurs – become part of a wider network of officials who together, but for different
reasons, have a growing interest in pursuing this new path of introducing per-
formance and quality measurement systems, intelligence-led policing, leadership
programmes, nodal policing and more recently reassurance policing.
In phase four reification takes place on account of the growing budgets which are
used for funding of programmes, seminars, conferences and foreign trips to get
access to specialists and other experienced insiders. Reification refers to the fact
that new concepts and strategies – still somewhat abstract in nature – become
fixed realities. People involved do not really question underlying political, theoret-
ical and/or policy assumptions or the added value to policing itself. Assumptions
and added value seem to be taken for granted so let’s roll out the new concept.
Fascinating in this phase is the fact a number of these concepts go through these
phases at the same time (1995-2007) but independently of each other. Although
community policing and reassurance policing, or intelligence-led policing and
signal crime, or broken window and tegenhouden (stopping crime in its early
stages) basically share the same policing fundamentals (getting the right informa-
tion in time to act in a way so problems are handled), there is not that much inter-
facing between the different change programmes. The different concepts and
strategies seem to have their own dynamics, narratives and interests. Hardly any
communication takes place between the different ‘change silos’.
Phase five is the decisive phase in which the concepts and strategies are imple-
mented in factual policing. The proof of the pudding is in the eating as the popu-
lar saying goes. Not much research has been done on the actual integration into
the police culture and operations. In 2005 I conducted a study for the Dutch
Police Academy on the effects of the management contracts between the govern-
ment and regional police forces specifying targets like arrest rates for certain
crimes. It was the first time in a number of years that I did fieldwork in five

184 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
regional forces (ten districts) and I was impressed with the number of organisa-
tional changes. Compared with the early nineties I observed more direction,
more involvement of leadership, more transparency and more accountability. The
book title refers to these changes: Operational Involvement (Hoogenboom, 2006).
However, at the same time I must conclude that the pace of change – and con-
stant introduction of new ones – is such that questions can be raised with regard
to the actual implementation on any substantial level. Of course, in a number of
forces successful implementation of a number of concepts is taking place. But
between forces and even within forces I found differences. The basic question
thus is: ‘Does factual policing change really’?
10.3.2 Continuity
Ponsaers and Enhus (2005) analyse three crises in Belgian policing. The first one
is triggered by the dramatic events in the Heizel football stadium where in 1985
during the European Cup final 28 people died as a result of riots and the mis-
management by police leadership. The second crisis was triggered by a number
of shootings at shopping malls in the eighties. The perpetrators were never
arrested and Belgian society was rocked by a public outcry on the perceived mis-
management by the judiciary and the police and even discussions on political
cover up. The third crisis involved the investigations related to the murder and
sexual exploitation of a number of young girls.
All three crises led to public outcries, parliamentary enquiries and subsequently
structural reforms of the Belgian police structures, rule of law and educational
system. As Reiner argues for the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the Scar-
man report,50 the police system became the subject of ‘cycles of reform’. But, and
this is a fascinating and bedevilling conclusion of Ponsaers and Enhus, in spite of
50. See: The Brixton Disorders 10-12 April 1981, Report of an Inquiry by the Rt. Hon. the Lord Scarman,
OBE, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London. On the weekend of the 10-12 April 1981 hundreds of
mostly black youths rioted in Brixton, South London. Police were attacked with stones, bricks, iron
bars and petrol bombs. The worst incidences occurred in the evening of Saturday 11 April when 279
policemen and at least 45 members of the public were injured. In 1981 Brixton was in economic and
social decline. It had a housing shortage despite a falling population, many low income house-
holds, one-parent families and high incidences of disability and mental illness. At a time of national
recession, unemployment in Brixton stood at 13% and 25.4% for ethnic minorities. Lord Scarman
was appointed by then Home Secretary William Whitelaw to hold a 'local inquiry' on 14 April ‘to
inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton on 10-12 April 1981 and to report, with the
power to make recommendations’. What did the report say? Lord Scarman said ‘complex political,
social and economic factors’ created a ‘disposition towards violent protest’. He found the disor-
ders were not planned but a spontaneous outburst of built-up resentment sparked by particular
incidents. He found loss of confidence and mistrust in the police and their methods of policing.
Liason arrangements between police, community and local authority had already collapsed before
the disturbances. He recommended concerted efforts to recruit more ethnic minorities into the
police force, and changes in training and law enforcement. His warning was stark: ‘Urgent action’
was needed to prevent racial disadvantage becoming an ‘endemic, ineradicable disease threaten-
ing the very survival of our society’.

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 185
these cycles of reform the factual nature of police work and the police culture did
not change. Reiner also draws attention to the very gradual nature of factual
changes.
The Ponsaers/Enhus and Reiner position resonates with the Bittner/Klockars
position: underneath all the changes, underneath the introduction of new strate-
gies and tactics and underneath all the restructuring and reform, neither police
work nor the police culture actually changes much. And, if change does take place
it is very gradual and will take many years to actually have a large impact.
Continuities in policing can be explained in the context of what some of the clas-
sics in police research have indicated is the quintessential (political) function of
the police: reproducing order. In his monumental history of western policing
from the 17th century onwards Fijnaut (1979) agrees with Bayley on the political
function of modern policing. The origins of modern policing and, subsequently
every major structural reorganisation of the police have its rationale in La Raison
d’Etat. In the transformation from feudalism to the nation state political, social
and economic unrest caused the need for a modern police force to reproduce
order. This has been and still is the factional reality of policing.
Fijnaut argues that ‘reorganisations of the police were never aimed at improving the
fight against crime, or improving the way the police carries out assistance or even service
to the public. Nor has traffic control ever been a trigger for police reforms or internal
organisational issues’.
Van Reenen (1979) analyses the historical dynamics in policing and also stresses
the need to understand (reorganisations) in police structures and police practices
in the context of political and social turmoil.
So, our story of change and continuity is more complex. As Reiner (1992) men-
tions in public policing we find ‘fictional’ and ‘factual’ presentations what policing
is all about. Actually, although public policing goes through ‘cycles of reform’,
according to Reiner there is also, and perhaps more continuity in policing than
we might think. It is precisely this continuity that Bittner and Klockars describe
in terms of the need and functions of signs, symbols, and images that effectively
conceal, mystify, and legitimate actions. The police as an institution are wrapped
up in narratives of crime fighting, crime control, prevention, community rela-
tions, reassurance and the like. These are fictional accounts of policing, not fac-
tual representations of policing. These fictional accounts not so much represent
reality, but rather construct reality. These narratives create the impression of
action, of change, of movement, of innovation. While at the same time factual
policing does not change much, or perhaps not at all. Actually this is not a prob-
lem at all because the core function of policing is reproducing order. And this is
still being done 24/7 on the factual level of policing. In talking to rank and file
during the research for Operational Involvement the well-documented and ana-
lysed cynicism (Reiner, 1992; van de Torre, 1999) of the police culture was still

186 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
prominent. A police officer with 25 years experience: ‘What changed in those
years? Nothing! I do what I have to in the same way”, or two police officers (male
and female) ‘on the beat’ in one of the more problematic neighbourhoods in Den
Haag when I explained what I was researching: “That’s all a lot of crap’.
10.4 Updating Bittner and Klockars
The principal explanation Bittner and Klockars have for the many symbols, signs
and images the police are ‘wrapped up’ in is the function it has in concealing the
fact that policing deep down is about the exercise of force. According to them this
creates a moral dilemma in society, hence the need for fictional policing
accounts.
Like Klockars, who analysed community policing from this perspective, I want to
extend this perspective also to other new policing concepts and strategies. In my
opinion many of the factual realities of policing are constant over time. Or at least
much more constant than all the change narratives seem to imply. Although dif-
ferent ‘mods and fads’ naturally have an effect on policing and the police organi-
sation I think these effects are exaggerated. So, we face ‘a Grand Canyon’ of much
fictional policing on the one hand and factual continuities on the other hand.
The remaining – fascinating – question is: What is the explanation? Although I
think Bittner’s and Klockars’ explanation is valid, it is at the same time very broad
and general (societal uneasiness with the exercise of force).
This societal need I will argue is intertwined with other, although related, phe-
nomen:
• the ‘street wise’ nature of police leaders in dealing with conflicting political,
(inter)organisational and public demands;
• traits of the police culture, especially its conservative nature and;
• the semi-autonomous factual realities of the police as a frontline organisation
with relatively wide discretionary powers.
10.4.1 Keeping up appearances and playing the game
Police leaders too are in dire need of narratives full of rhetoric, symbolism and
images to create the impression of constant action and adaptation to different
needs in order to retain autonomy.
This is one of the conclusions of Progress or Raindance? Evaluation of the Planning
and Control Cycle of Dutch Policing (in ’t Veld et al., 2002). In 1999 the Dutch gov-
ernment created a national policy plan with a set of fixed priorities which the 25
regional forces had to translate to their respective organisations and operations.
Progress or Raindance chronicles this process.

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 187
In ’t Veld et al. describe the implementation as a ritual in which all participants
‘obeyed’ the rules of the bureaucratic process. Government officials, police lead-
ers, public prosecutors and mayors, in short all the actors involved ‘played the
game’. They performed necessary tasks and duties (consultation, drafting of
plans, monitoring progress and evaluation studies). There was hardly any debate
– let alone a heated debate – on the premises and/or consequences of the plan-
ning and control cycle. Moreover, the relationship between regional plans and the
operational consequences on the ground was barely discernible. In terms of
Reiner we can speak of ‘fictional’ rather than factual police narratives.
Underneath the language of change (for the first time in history the introduction
of a national mechanism for defining police priorities on the regional and local
level) in ’t Veld et al. uncovered, what they call ‘a black hole’ in which police lead-
ers attach hardly any meaning to the planning and control cycle at all. Yet, at the
same time they loyally and constructively produce all the necessary documents,
attend necessary meetings and give necessary presentations both internally and
externally.
Three explanations are put forward. In the first place the dominant position of
the police in both national and regional policy networks. This is especially rele-
vant in the context of information on crime. Many actors are dependent on the
police for crime statistics, crime analyses and other operational information on
crime.
In the second place the highly developed sensitivity of police leaders for the
demands, wants and needs of and from different relevant actors. In time each of
these actors are ‘serviced’, but from time to time the police say no to requests with
reference to other priorities from other actors. Because of the relative monopoly
on crime information this is rather easy. Finally, these explanations come
together in what in ’t Veld et al. call the capacity for ‘immunisation’ of the police.
This refers to the choice of words, phrases and idiom the police use which are
carefully chosen to be in alignment with those of the (national) authorities. In
doing so regional police forces create the suggestion that the regional planning
and control cycle is in accordance with the national goals and priorities. In strate-
gically using and applying these three factors the police are able to balance differ-
ent demands and at the same time retain its autonomy.
In ’t Veld et al. conceptualise this process in terms of ‘ritualisation’, because eve-
ryone involved ‘plays the game’ and they do not use the instrument in practice.
Here we have a perfect example of the intermingling of fictional and factual reali-
ties. Although Bitnner and Klockars could argue here this ‘immunisation’ is no
problem at all, because the ritual of planning and control fits their analyses, I
think police leaders primarily want to retain their relative autonomy.
Of course, there are high transaction costs involved in ‘keeping up appearances’.
Investments must be made in manpower, time, budgets for projects and the set-

188 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
ting up of consultation structures, not to mention the hiring of consultants and
academic researchers to develop plans and later on evaluate the planning and
control cycle. The authors open their report with this quote: ‘if the elite in control is
favored by preserving the status quo they will foster inactivism by engaging in all sorts of
ritualistic behaviour like rain dancing’.
10.4.2 Cop culture
To understand continuity in policing we must also incorporate cultural dimen-
sions: ‘Cop culture is crucial to an analysis of what they do’ (Reiner, 1992). One
of the characteristics mentioned – next to sense of mission, pragmatism, action
orientation, cynicism/pessimism, isolation and solidarity, among others – is con-
servatism both politically and morally. But I guess that arises due to the combina-
tion of all the cultural dimensions mentioned, with no fertile ground for real
reforms and large-scale innovations. Cop culture is incident- and action-driven
and directed to reproducing order. Neither this primary function nor the culture
in which it is exercised has changed.
10.4.3 How to incorporate the rank and file?
It is possible to use Loader’s “Tale of two police forces” also for the distinction
between ‘management and street cops’. Much of the narrative of change, differ-
ent authors argue, has meaning in a relatively small circle of police managers and
various ‘moral entrepreneurs’. In the final analysis, following Klockars and t’Veld
et al., factual policing is largely unaffected and part of the explanation in my view
also lies in the fact the police incorporate two realities: ‘The problem which
bedevilled so many previous innovations: how to incorporate the rank and file’
(Reiner, 1992).
Chan (1996), in discussing possibilities to change the police culture makes a dis-
tinction between the formal structural context of policing and police cultural
practice. Changes in the formal context (rules and regulations, but in our case
new concepts and strategies) ‘inevitably alter the way the game is played (...) but
the resulting practice may or may not be substantially or even discernibly
changed’ (Chan, 1996). Chan uses the illustrative metaphor of sports. If the rules
of the game are changed or the physical markings of the field, Johan Cruyff still
plays football like he always did. The game itself, the techniques and tactics do
not fundamentally change. ‘Experienced players’, Chan argues, ‘may be able to
adjust quickly to the new rules and hence show no sign of changing his/her per-
formance’.

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 189
10.5 Manic pace of change and continuities
In a recent study of citation practices in British criminology, Paul Rock (2005),
demonstrated the prevalence of what he calls ‘chronocentrism’ – the doctrine that
what is current must somehow be superior to what went on before, that ideas,
scholars and scholarship inevitably become stale and discredited over time
(Reiner, 2007).
Continuities in policing are neglected by most of the police scholars nor do they
figure prominently in policy circles or with the general public. In Finding Nemo
the adorable little fish Dory offers her guidance help find Nemo. Shortly after this
offer she shakes her head, turns to the father of Nemo and asks: ‘Who are you,
where are we going’? It turns out her short-term memory is affected. I have used
the story to illustrate the lack of institutional memory in law enforcement and
regulation (Hoogenboom, Bakker and Pheiffer, 2006). Politics, the corridors of
bureaucratic power, the academic community, they all lack deep knowledge of the
classics. For more than twenty years I have done research on policing and during
this time every 5 or 6 years ‘new’ questions pop up and new policy makers start
enthusiastically on ‘new’ dossiers. Sometimes I am asked for advice and what
strikes me is the lack of basic knowledge of recent policing history or the
grounded knowledge already available both in the Netherlands and abroad. A
couple of years ago, with a slight touch of irony, I responded favourably to a
request for advice on one condition. Before the interview, I would put the civil
servant to the test on some of the classics, so we would not have to waste much
time and could get straight to ‘business’. I never heard from him again. In a cul-
ture like this fertile ground exists for new concepts and in one way or another the
combination of the above-mentioned four explanations probably explains why fic-
tional narratives are functional in many respects.
The undertow of policing (reproducing order) is clouded and mystified by fic-
tional narratives of which reassurance policing is but the latest example. I agree
with Jones and Newburn (2002) when they write: ‘Much current criminology
tends to exaggerate the degree of change, and underplay the extent of continuity,
in seeking to explain the transformations taking place in contemporary policing
systems’. Reiner, in his book review of Newburn’s Policing. Key Readings (2005),
uses the word neophilia which is defined as a love of novelty and new things. A
neophile is an individual who is unusually accepting of new things and excited by
novelty. Many new concepts are introduced in policing, and I see a lot of love and
excitement for newness, most recently in reassurance policing as this volume
proves, but I prefer some of the classics.

190 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
10.5.1 Community/reassurance policing: part of larger and much more
differentiated policing arrangements
The empirical and theoretical body of knowledge of policing – although rich in
many ways – is at the same limited. In the first place it is dominated by Anglo-
Saxon perspectives and does not reflect policing developments in other parts of
the world. A useful distinction is to differentiate the contexts in which policing
takes place and here we can differentiate between democracies, countries in tran-
sition, failed states and dictatorships. Policing in China and Burma or in Darfur
differs from policing in Stockholm. In contextualising policing in this way we can
become more sensitized also to the core function of policing as discussed earlier.
In the second place our body of knowledge actually concerns a small part of polic-
ing. For the last 25 years much research has been done and much theoretical
progress has been made as the excellent readers edited by Newburn (2003; 2005)
show. However, much of the police research tradition is limited to the most visi-
ble aspects of policing: foot and motorised patrols and all sorts of aspects of ‘com-
munity policing’ (relationship with citizens, street level aspects, styles of policing
etc.). The blue coated worker dominates research but factual levels of policing in
criminal investigation, riot control, specialised observation and arrest teams,
infiltration and the whole gamut of criminal and political intelligence work or
traffic control and the capacity of policing involved in vip-protection to name but
a few, remain underresearched. In some way we are ‘blinded by the light’. The
overall result is to many (researchers, general public): policing equals patrol,
community policing and more recently reassurance policing.
10.5.2 Five levels of policing
Factual policing takes place on five different levels. On the first level policing is all
about ‘blue coated workers’ involved in patrol, surveillance and the different
forms of ‘community policing’. But in writing so much about ‘community polic-
ing’ – and creating and sustaining a narrative fit for the Bittner/Klockars argu-
ment – one tends to forget that the actual manpower active in community polic-
ing is much more limited than suggested. For instance shifts in Dutch police dis-
tricts 24/7 are primarily organised around reactive patrolling by car and on the
streets. The function they have is called noodhulp (emergency response or
addressing calls for help). Community police officers are organised in a separate
unit and basically work day shifts. Underneath the community policing narrative
factual policing even on the first most visible level does not come close to the
images created by the overwhelming amount of literature focused on ‘commu-
nity policing’.51 The argument becomes stronger if we include other organisa-
tional levels of policing:
• traffic control, criminal investigation departments (and criminal intelligence),
crowd control (riot units), environmental crime units, digital crime units etc.
on the regional level;

10 Fictional and Factual Policing: The Case of Reassurance Policing 191
• surveillance and arrest teams on the interregional levels, but also interre-
gional investigative teams and interregional riot-unit structures;
• on the national level: centralised criminal intelligence service, national inter-
vention team (combining police and military specialists in armed combat) and
the national investigation organisation but also the Dutch Military Police
(growth from 2.200 in 1993 to 6.500 in 2007) and;
• finally, the transnational organisation units and processes for cross-border
cooperation, commissions rogatoire, working with liaisons and Interpol,
Europol, Eurojust etc.
Community policing is but one facet of a differentiated multilevel and multifac-
eted policing. In addendum 1 I have listed numerous Dutch organisational units
ranging from the regional police force level to the national level incorporating
such diverse activities and responsibilities as investigation, infiltration and crimi-
nal intelligence, national crisis organisations and specialised units for placing
electronic bugs or the specialised force for diplomatic protection. Three observa-
tions are relevant here.
Firstly, many of the policing tasks mentioned on the different levels involve work
which some of the researchers mentioned as being the core task of policing:
reproducing order if necessary with (the threat of) violence. The monopoly of
force, the very essence of the state, according to many from Max Weber on, is
organised on these levels. Almost none of the underlying assumptions of com-
munity policing or reassurance policing (citizen involvement, reassurance gap
etc.) is applicable here. A specialised arrest team is trained to take someone out of
the public domain as swiftly as possible using the minimum of force, but will kill
the target if he/she uses firearms. Many of the organisational units mentioned in
the addendum and the tasks they perform do not fit the community policing ide-
ology, yet they are an essential and vital part of policing.
Secondly, manpower, budgets, powers, career perspectives, training capacities
etc. of all these levels are gaining in importance and show growth. Police research
is researching a part of policing that is actually in decline. We seem to be missing
these transformations in policing by clinging to the ‘safe’ narratives of commu-
nity policing and the like.
Thirdly, in the context of ongoing ‘militarization’ and ‘securization’ of policing
(Bowling and Newburn, 2007) the relative large attention being given to commu-
51. Even when ‘community policing’ is organised the question remains if the public is actually aware of
it? Does the public perceive community policing in the same way as the relatively small number of
community officers perceive its importance and/or the police researchers? And, can community
policing 24/7 function in its original manner and philosophy without being swept up in the ad hoc,
incident-driven need for law and order and reproducing order? Research in one force in 2003 indi-
cated only 40% of the population was aware of the existence of special community policing officers
in their neighbourhood. One of the explanations put forward was the fact that the visibility of these
officers was affected because for periods of time they joined of an investigative team and were
taken away from their community policing capacities (www.politie.nl/zuid-holland-zuid).

192 Part IV Reassurance: A Mystifying Concept?
nity policing and reassurance policing seems to somehow miss the broader pic-
ture of factual policing.
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rent practices and possible role models. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Bowling, B. and T. Newburn (2006). Policing and National Security. Presented at London-
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Chan, J. (1996). Changing police culture. Britsh Journal of Criminology, 36 (1).
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Jones, T. and T. Newburn (2002). The transformation of policing? Understanding current
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(eds.) Community policing: rhetoric or reality. New York.
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Addendum: Organisation of the Police
1. The police at work
1.1. Primary policing
1.2. Maintenance of public order
1.3. Regional teams
1.3.1. Arrest teams
1.3.2. Police infiltration teams
1.3.3. Observation teams
1.3.4. Special support units
1.3.5. Criminal investigation support teams
1.3.6. Sex crimes
1.3.7. Traffic
1.3.8. The environment
1.4. Criminal investigations
1.5. Intelligence services
1.6. Supraregional cooperation in criminal investigations
1.7. Aliens police
1.8. Information management in the regions
1.9. Other groups
1.10. Crisis control, NCC and the police
2. National Police Services Agency
2.1. Traffic Police
2.2. Railway Police
2.3. Water Police
2.4. Aviation Police
2.5. Mounted Police and Police Dogs Service
2.6. Operational Support and Coordination Service
2.7. Royal and Diplomatic Protection Service
2.8. Logistics Service
2.9. National Criminal Intelligence Service
2.10. International Networks Service
2.11. Specialist Investigation Applications Service
2.12. National Criminal Investigation Service
3. Weapons and equipment
3.1. Standard-issue weapons and equipment
3.2. Use of weapons and force
3.3. Special weapons and equipment

Part V In Conclusion

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities
P. Ponsaers, B. van Stokkom
(In collaboration with M. Easton, L. Gunther-Moor, B. Hoogenboom)
Introduction
Many discussions in police literature presuppose that policing is subject to
change. This is also largely the case in the discussion on reassurance policing.
Whenever there is a new idea to tackle insecurity, high expectations emerge with
regard to that same form of policing. Policing sometimes appears to be the sew-
age drain of society: the water always flows back to the same spot. Police con-
stantly have to adapt to these exaggerated expectations like a chameleon.
Nevertheless, there is quite an impressive series of classic empirical studies
which rightly stress that on the one hand the police can hardly get a grip on the
social realities around them and, on the other hand, the conclusion that society
can exert little or no influence on the police. It often seems as if there are two
completely separate worlds. Let us consider this briefly.
11.1 Nothing works?
The verdict of Greenwood et al., for example, on the police service is absolutely
devastating. These authors are of the opinion that the supervision is faulty and
police officers have been abandoned to their fate. Administrative duties, ‘public
relations’, and so-called crime prevention take up most of their time, according to
Greenwood et al. Professional publications are not being read and officers rely
solely on the daily ‘trial and error’ method. There is a lot of ‘on the job training’.
They do not work hard and there are few special operations. Solutions just hap-
pen, routinely or by coincidence. A lot of the work could be done by others
(Greenwood et al., 1977).
Choongh, too, is particularly scathing with regard to the police service. The social
disciplinary model results in the police operating with a set of attitudes and con-
victions geared to punishing, controlling, and humiliating others. Police officers
can put on their own show and develop their own rhetoric. Furthermore, the
vagueness of the law enables them to develop their own informal and manipula-
tive working rules. They take no account of legal restrictions and often use force

198 Part V In Conclusion
without legal justification. Yet policy makers continue to give the police more
power: they think that the police need it. Nothing could be further from the truth,
according to Choongh: they are solely occupied with maintaining order, so-called
‘targeted policing’ (Choongh, 1997).
Ericson states that police officers have too much autonomy. In fact, he sees few
solutions. If more regulations are imposed, the police will know them so well that
they could once again use (or abuse) them, but ordinary citizens will not be so
well informed. Ericson advocates increased visibility and control. He also advo-
cates more internal control and therefore more professionalism in the form of
better training and stricter selection and recruitment to improve quality. How-
ever, Ericson concedes that this will result once again in corporatism, more
autonomy, and a tendency to look after their own needs. Moreover, it will also give
rise to even more ‘public relations’ efforts on the part of the police to acquire
external legitimacy and at the same time filter information given to the outside
world. Furthermore, this will not lead to greater visibility, but it will increase
autonomy! In fact, the author feels that the only answer is more supervision and
control (Ericson, 1981).
Skolnick likewise is highly sceptical (Skolnick, 1975). He takes the view that
moral consensus is sought in a heterogeneous society by means of punishment.
However, this does not appear to be working and punishment is of little use in
trying to achieve social cohesion. And so the police develop an ‘operational code’
which is at odds with the law. The police have developed such a rigid outlook on
public order that it increases their perception of all sorts of dangers. Furthermore,
the police themselves want sufficient discretionary scope to enable them to
undertake an exploratory investigation. The police regard procedures as some-
thing to be considered rather than obeyed. The police honour the letter of the law,
but not the spirit. Their working philosophy is that the end justifies the means.
Procedural rules are there to be broken in the name of a greater good, namely the
maintenance of public order. The police talk constantly about professional stand-
ards, but it is never clear what they mean by this. In fact, this is all a dilemma: on
the one hand, the police can be called upon increasingly to achieve social stability,
yet on the other hand that social instability reflects weak links in society.
Black searches for some alternatives (Black, 1980). Western societies do every-
thing differently to more primitive societies in which all sorts of arbitration was
provided and there were responsible representatives for groups of equals. Nowa-
days, there is a gap between the police and the people, and the result is indiffer-
ence and discontent among the parties concerned. The police are being called
upon increasingly, but at the same time increasingly varied forms of mediation
and arbitration are also emerging. Will these alternatives replace the police more
and more? Self-help in society means ‘depolicing’ first of all. The more the police
are involved, the more dependent people become. The presence of centripetal
instead of centrifugal forces affects sociability and the level of social contact and

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 199
this carries a lot of influence. According to Black, self-help (resolving conflicts
independently) enables a (different) form of social control.
It can also be deduced from this volume that we are far from convinced that polic-
ing can be changed. Policing is tough work and its most important characteristic
is continuity rather than change. According to Bob Hoogenboom, authors who
write about police reform are dreaming about ‘fictional policing’. In this context,
he refers to ‘neophilia’ with regard to RP. However, Marnix Eysink Smeets also
writes with a great deal of scepticism about the possibilities of RP, especially its
lack of implementary validity. He poses serious questions as to whether the con-
cept can be implemented successfully.
11.2 Back to the roots of COP
We need to be reminded here that Community (Oriented) Policing (COP)
emerged in the 1960s under the influence of changing views on policing. North
American social science research from that period indicated in particular that
policing was not what it had been presented as for years. A sort of ‘policing real-
ism’ sprouted up, which was based on the finding that the police do much more
than merely apply the criminal law, issue a summons, or make arrests. Policing
is mainly about so-called peacemaking. It emerged from the research that the cru-
cial factor was to have a daily presence among the people, which involved speak-
ing to people, informing them, warning them, and, in fact, paying attention to
many things besides committed crime. It is remarkable that, in all these studies,
attention was paid almost exclusively to routine, daily policing and no longer to
the myth of the ‘great’ law and order, large-scale ‘order maintenance’, and to tack-
ling ‘serious and complex crime’ (Banton, 1964; Cain, 1973; Ericson, 1982; Gold-
stein, 1977; Holdaway, 1984; Manning, 1977; Muir, 1977; Rubinstein, 1973; Sher-
man, 1973; Skolnick and Bayley, 1986; Westley, 1970; Whyte, 1943). At best,
some attention is paid to somewhat petty crime where it is noted that the results
of this sort of policing are also rather modest. In short, COP arose as a criticism
of the myths and parables about ‘real’ police work.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that COP arose as a type of organisational
strategy. It was a strategy which served to set in motion a process designed to lead
to all sorts of reforms, from the most limited to the most extensive. Rosenbaum
sees the following common elements within a COP model: a broader definition
of police work; a new order of priorities with more attention given to ‘soft crime
and disorder’; a focus on problem-solving and crime prevention (rather than on
incidents); a recognition that the community plays a crucial part in solving neigh-
bourhood problems; a recognition that policing needs to be organised for this
purpose; decentralisation of local policing; new training programmes and new
evaluation systems (Rosenbaum, 1998). Moore refers to the gradual way in which
COP emerged (Moore, 1992). Friedmann also correctly stresses that COP devel-
oped out of the need to improve relations between the police and the community

200 Part V In Conclusion
(Friedmann, 1992). In his view, the reform mentality may have arisen from
within and not from outside or from the legislator. However, this is strongly dis-
puted by others and there are indeed strong indications to the contrary which
suggest that the new policing model tended to originate outside the police (Ben-
nett, 1998).
It is important to remember the political context in which COP arose in the US In
the 1960s, there were several riots in the big American cities. It was a period of
economic depression, the period of Black Panther, and the militant civil rights
movement. The police often took a heavy-handed approach, resulted in a spiral of
violence and reactionary violence. The remedy proved to be worse than the prob-
lem and certain city districts came to regard the police as the great public enemy.
This gave rise to real ‘no go areas’ where the police could no longer go (Skolnick
and Fyfe, 1993). This attracted a great deal of media attention. Local politicians
lost the political support of certain non-white sections of the population, but
some intellectuals were also outraged by the way the police operated. Local politi-
cians began to look for an alternative solution, especially in certain areas with
increasingly non-white populations (and therefore an important source of voters).
This solution was to be called ‘crime prevention’ by the white middle classes.
They were of the opinion that the police had to take a different approach towards
the ‘problematic’ sections of the population and restore the broken relations or, if
there had never been any relations, to establish them. It was also pointed out that
the police rarely managed, if at all, to obtain any information about these prob-
lematic residential areas. The idea gained ground that if the police were to strive
for greater effectiveness (impact on social problems), efficiency and fairness
would be achieved naturally (Eck and Rosenbaum, 1994).
Certain institutions, such as the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Har-
vard University, helped with the search for alternative forms of policing. Net-
works of management executives, academics, government policy officers, advis-
ers, consultants, professional planners, and police intellectuals developed COP
and disseminated the idea. The National Institute of Justice and the Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 promoted all alternative pro-
grammes with aggressive marketing and enabled the police to recruit 100,000
new community police officers over a period of 6 years. The Community Ori-
ented Police Services federal programme of 1998 provided for the recruitment of
a further 50,000 new police officers (Skogan, 1995). In short, COP arose not only
as a criticism of all traditional forms of policing, but also as a programmed form
of policing with considerable prescriptive references to a new (and essentially
democratic) form of policing which had to be developed.
Firstly, a desire to eradicate an excessively bureaucratic (military) organisation
was noticeable. In the latter style of organisation, the work was managed too cen-
trally, special sections and specialisations were constantly on the increase, there
were countless rules and regulations, and the hierarchy continued to grow,
including ponderous middle management. This produced an internal chain of

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 201
responsibility which formed a buffer against any external political intervention.
Advocates of COP thought that such a mentality was deficient and old-fashioned.
It impeded the execution of the police mission. The decision makers had central-
ised far too much away from the people.
In the 1970s, it was felt both within and outside the police service that the former
bureaucratic organisation principles from the first half of the 20th century were
no longer valid, and that the objectives of the police, especially solving commu-
nity problems, were no longer being achieved. However, this is not to say that
there was a call to return to the strongly politicised, decentralised, informal, and
undifferentiated organisation of the late 19th century. The primary aim was to
eradicate bureaucracy and a number of structural alternatives were proposed: a
new sort of professionalism, but especially a move towards democratisation in
the sense that citizens would play an important part in managing the police serv-
ice and police work itself, and the integration of other services (Mastrofski, 1998).
In light of the above, the discussion about RP has already taken place. The police
service was too autonomous, too obstinate, and too rigid, and so the COP princi-
ples were developed by the outside world. COP was designed to change the way in
which the police operate. Today, a number of authors in this volume remember
that this was a form of ‘fictional policing’ which had little or no impact on real
policing, which is still autonomous, obstinate, and rigid. In other words, COP
advocates have probably underestimated the level of continuity at the heart of the
police force.
11.3 Diversification
In the meantime, the COP principles have developed and diversified. However, it
is actually possible to accommodate all these variations within COP so that it has
probably grown into an excessively broad concept.
11.3.1 Broken windows
There was also the broken window approach, as launched by Wilson and Kelling
in 1982 (Wilson and Kelling, 1982; Kelling and Coles, 1997). This was actually
based on the idea and conclusion that the police cannot solve many problems
alone and that a good deal of public disorder actually lies at the root of a lot of
crime and deviant behaviour; but it also accounts partly for the sense of insecu-
rity. The authors were of the opinion that many problems can be avoided by tak-
ing more preventive measures (Kelling et al., 1974). Robert Trojanowitz (1994)
was also an advocate of the broken window approach. He referred first of all to
the ‘Normative Sponsorship Theory’: problems have to be solved by appealing to
norms and interests supported by the community. At the same time, he also
appealed to the ‘Critical Social Theory’: conscientious and influential citizens and

202 Part V In Conclusion
police officers are needed to achieve emancipation. This might not produce social
cohesion initially, but the catalytic role of the police can eventually tip the balance
in the right direction because they are capable of mobilising citizens to participate
and exert leverage on other services (Buerger, 1994).
According to Wilson and Kelling, there is an interaction between crime and a
sense of insecurity. However, they think that there is a so-called ‘intervening vari-
able’ which is very important, namely broken windows. This means that the
degeneration of a residential area (abandoned and dilapidated homes, small acts
of aggression, somewhat disruptive influences in public places, graffiti etc.)
which is not tackled quickly, soon leads to a breakdown in norms. There is no
longer any form of social control in these neighbourhoods and the conventional
order is lost. Those who are in a position to leave the area do so and it is mainly
shabby people who are left behind. They are even more powerless to turn the tide,
social control disappears entirely, and inter-class criminality accelerate. And so,
the key to the matter is restoring everyday order, which can be guaranteed by
mechanisms of well-maintained buildings and infrastructure, but also by self-dis-
cipline on the part of residents. However, the police have often withdrawn alto-
gether from problematic neighbourhoods. The authors believe in the crime pre-
vention power of peacekeeping and good relations with the people. To maintain
order, it is more important to take account of local norms than the desiderata of
the criminal law and the magistracy. It is important to ensure the well-being of
the context in which people live.
It follows from this theory that it is even more crucial to help the neighbourhood
community to defend itself than to change the living conditions, e.g. by tackling
social problems, underdevelopment, or poverty as a cause of crime. It looks as if it
is considered an impossible task to repair the cracks of society and one has to
help the people there to make do with what they have.
11.3.2 Zero tolerance
The zero tolerance approach, which has been tested most notably in New York, is
associated with the names of the mayor, Guiliani, and Superintendant Bratton.
They, too, appealed to the idea of COP. In the original Transit Police Department
of the New York metro where the broader idea was applied systematically by Brat-
ton in 1990, the main aim was to restore ‘peace’ and take action against all sorts
of ‘incivilities’. For this purpose, rules and regulations had to be applied strictly
and the police had to act firmly, but not necessarily judicially and repressively.
And so, police officers, who were present in greater numbers and split up into
metro zones, intervened mainly in cases of disorder. Bratton was later appointed
head of the entire NYPD and he pointed out that in his view the degeneration of
the city, increased drug use, and rise in violent crime were caused by the exces-
sive ‘permissiveness’ and ‘depolicing’ of the city.

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 203
Zero tolerance includes the following ingredients: (1) strict maintenance of the
law against hooligans and criminals, resulting, if necessary, in arrests (e.g. of
young drunkards on public roads); (2) greater visibility and assertiveness on
account of the professionalised police service within a decentralised zone organi-
sation and operation; (3) taking advantage of greater observance of the law by citi-
zens; and (4) interdisciplinary and interdepartmental approach to the problem. It
is noticeable that Kelling (partly through the lack of discretionary leeway for offic-
ers and the passive role played by citizens) was disappointed with this approach
and rejected the link between broken windows and zero tolerance. He warned
that a metaphor such as broken windows ‘can produce illegitimate children such
as the zero tolerance campaign’ (Simonetti, 2000; Kelling, 2001).
Some police chiefs, especially in Britain, are full of praise for the approach
adopted in New York (Dennis, 1998), despite the fact that some wonder whether
the aggressive zero tolerance is beneficial as a long-term policy, all the more so
because New York is regarded as a unique case. For some, this is a ‘here and now’
strategy which acts as a sort of forerunner to “Problem (Oriented) Policing. They
feel that people should have some understanding of the reasons for, and circum-
stances of, a tougher police strategy: the call from the majority of the population
and the response to increasing crime. For others, this process leads to exagger-
ated definitions of crime, very superficial police responses which can hardly be
controlled democratically, and a decline in relations with groups and areas on the
fringes of society. Eventually, the police fall back into their old repressive habits,
including the stigmatisation of ethnic minorities: business as usual. This repre-
sents a short-term policy with few lasting benefits. Moreover, the zero tolerance
approach takes no account whatsoever of the root causes of crime: poverty, poor
education, discrimination, etc. (Hopkins Burke, 1998; Harcourt, 2001; Pollard,
1998; Greene, 1999; Herbert, 2001).
11.3.3 Problem (Oriented) Policing (POP)
Herman Goldstein is generally acknowledged as the father of POP (1977, 1979,
1987, and 1990). In the first phase, he stressed the difference between COP and
POP. Later, he adopted a more integrative view. POP is about a general approach:
a strategy for the entire police force to encourage long-term engagement (Eck and
Spelman, 1987). It distances itself from incident-driven policing, a so-called fire
brigade police. POP inevitably alludes to management by objectives in the world
of business and is inextricably linked to the search for objective signs, perform-
ances, or results in the 1970s.
One must not hesitate to tackle a wide range of social problems and maintain
close relations with the local population in order to identify problems. Standard
responses have to be avoided and initiative, creativity, responsibility, and constant
feedback and evaluation must be encouraged. Police must be part of a broad sys-
tem of services rather than part of the criminal law administration. The mandate

204 Part V In Conclusion
of the police is seen as much broader than purely tackling crime. Problem-solving
has to be acknowledged as the working method. Eck and Spelman are of the opin-
ion that the police should be assessed by the population. They must not be
assessed purely on the basis of crime statistics, but on the basis of how they tackle
problems. Within this POP style, the main factor to be stressed is the repetitive
nature of certain facts. Crime mapping and hot spot analysis are key concepts. A
problem which can be traced then becomes a cluster of similar, inter-related, or
recurring incidents rather than a single incident. In other words, it is all about
detecting community concerns. The problem is external to the police organisa-
tion and specific (Goldstein, 1990). The focus of POP police activity is on these
types of problems, whereas judicial work concentrates solely on the culprit and
the victim or, in the dispatch, the emphasis is put on that one single incident (Eck
and Rosenbaum, 1994).
POP advocates are of the opinion that with COP too much attention is paid to the
means (i.e. the way in which) by which problems are tackled and there is a danger
of this taking priority over the real objectives. Discretionary intervention is also
given loose rein, even in matters of application of the law. ‘There was too much
concern with administering the hospital and not enough concern with treating
the patients’ (Sherman, 1992), is the conclusion. Exclusive intervention by the
police is not enough. The help of informed citizens, experts, and other services
must be called upon. This makes it clear that COP is not discarded in this
approach. This problem-solving approach to policing is a COP variant (Braga et
al., 1996; Leigh et al., 1996). However, once again the role of the police immedi-
ately becomes more important than that of the community. The aim is not so
much to work together, but to ask for advice so that problems are identified and
useful information is obtained (Bennett, 1994). After all, the police cannot guar-
antee in advance that the choices made by the local people will be the same as
those of the police (Brodeur, 1998).
In addition to Goldstein, Wesley Skogan undoubtedly favours the development of
POP, even though he definitely does not reject the original idea of community
policing and strives for a combination of the two (Wycoff and Skogan, 1994;
Skogan, 1990; Skogan and Hartnett, 1997). He emphasises the successful imple-
mentations of POP which have been recorded in Chicago. At the same time,
Skogan gives his own emphasis: he refers to the tradition of the renowned Chi-
cago School of Parker and Burgess, which had already considered community
organisation back in the 1920s. This all means that there were solid and reliable
partners for the police amongst the population. Skogan et al. therefore conclude
that COP and POP can no longer do without each other. The police must tackle
problems and achieve results, rather than simply provide policing. The part
played by citizens becomes more important. According to Skogan, citizens
should play a more important part when problem-solving policing is applied:
actively helping to identify problems, setting priorities, and helping to find solu-
tions (Skogan et al., 1999), something which Goldstein hardly emphasises at all.

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 205
11.4 Perversion of community policing?
Zero tolerance can hardly be understood as anything but a perverted form of
community policing. After all, how can it be geared to helping the community?
Firstly, we need to highlight the degeneration of the concept: from maintaining
order and peace in a residential area, zero tolerance is now understood to be the
merciless and repressive intervention of the police.
In this way, police officers are able to focus attention back on their so called
essential task and the idea regains ground that only the police can make a differ-
ence. Furthermore, exalting the merits of zero tolerance among the population
creates the pretence that the police can solve the problems if they adopt a heavy-
handed approach and that this is the main tool for promoting safety and a sense
of security in the population, whereas it has been proved consistently that this is
not the case. In the final analysis, zero tolerance relies merely on a symbolism of
crime control for its powers of attraction, a ‘meta-narrative’ with symbolically
powerful terms which do indeed relate to the wishes of some sections of the pop-
ulation, but it is far too one-sided and narrow to make a real contribution to crime
prevention (Newburn and Jones, 2007).
Yet how should we assess the broken windows approach? According to George
Kelling, the father of the broken windows theory, the liberal left criminology
establishment is held prisoner by a ‘radical individualism’ (Kelling, 2001). Drink
and drugs, gambling, prostitution, self-neglect, community or upbringing with
no responsibility, and silly and selfish behaviour: all citizens choose their own
lifestyle. Tolerance of ‘what cannot be tolerated’, says Kelling, has become the lit-
mus test of true involvement in social justice. ‘Every in-your-face indignity is
someone’s constitutional “right” and must be endured’ (Kelling, 2001: 125).
According to Kelling, this view has finally become disastrous for vulnerable sec-
tions of the population. The criminological establishment refuses to recognise
that poor neighbourhoods are being disrupted by disorder and irresponsible acts.
Their ability to defend themselves against crime and serious disruption is thereby
undermined. At the same time, this is why security policy has been put in the
hands of conservatives (Roché, 2002).
Critics of the broken windows vision set forth other views in response. According
to Harcourt (2001) and many others, this is all about a silent revolution within
the field of criminology in which rejection of the idea that crime is the product of
social circumstances is combined with a lack of interest in aetiology. It is precisely
the deeper causes of crime (such as poverty, discrimination, and lack of equal
opportunities in big cities) which prevent the emergence of social order and sta-
bility. Harcourt acknowledges that tackling social disorder can be desirable (2001:
212), but the adverse effects which accompany maintenance of law and order are,
in his view, worse than the effects of disorder. Citizens, especially those from eth-
nic minorities, who are dealt with disproportionally severely for minor offences
harden their attitudes towards the police and lose faith in them (Sherman, 1993).

206 Part V In Conclusion
Moreover, aggressively arresting the homeless, beggars, and prostitutes will not
change the behaviour of those groups. What is more, there are other ways of
strengthening social order (e.g. job opportunity programmes). Stigmatising ‘trou-
blesome’ groups like the homeless certainly does not provide a structural solution
to the problems facing underprivileged groups (Herbert, 2001). In addition, Har-
court considers it pointless and undesirable to tackle relatively minor offences
and indecent behaviour. That runs counter to the spirit of the rule of law. Arrest-
ing people because of antisocial behaviour is a sign of ‘pure intolerance’. The
rhetoric of Wilson and Kelling against decriminalisation suggests that the police
must especially tackle deviant groups such as tramps, beggars, drunkards, and
young troublemakers. The urban decline could be reversed ‘if only we got really
tough’ on these ‘undesirable’ groups. Just like hard core criminals, says Harcourt,
these groups must be arrested and ‘eliminated’ (2001: 243).
Another aspect of the broken windows approach which attracts a lot of criticism
is the idea of a moral community. According to Crawford, Wilson and Kelling
appeal implicitly to a sense of nostalgia for a consensual world from a (so called)
past, which, as it were, was lost through the permissiveness of the 1960s and
crude individualism, and also through legal and judicial support for the protec-
tion of the fundamental rights of individuals at the expense of the general interest
of the community. However, in his view this is a misunderstood, somewhat neo-
conservative reading of a woolly community. A greater sense of community
would mean less crime. This is an unrealistic approach in a time of social and
spatial dislocation (Crawford, 1998; Crawford, 2000). In reality, neighbourhoods
are confronted with further individualisation, social fragmentation, and the blur-
ring of social networks. The broken windows approach fits in with a wider
embrace of neo-liberalism and its associated abandonment of social welfare.
Although the broken windows approach adheres to co-production policies by try-
ing to involve communities, it endorses aggressive policing and taking back the
streets. And so it meshes comfortably with established patterns of thought, such
as taking a tough stance on crime and disorder. As a result, the broken windows
theory tends to supplant progressive versions of community policing as the dom-
inant reform movement (Herbert, 2001).
11.5 Several sources of opposition to COP
11.5.1 Internal opposition …
Let us return to community policing and its opportunities and limits. The enthu-
siasm amongst the official authorities and community activists generates
extreme suspicion amongst police officers. They think it is an unstable ‘whim and
not the right policy’. ‘Are we not being used’? ‘This isn’t really police work at all’!
‘Why are they getting involved’? Police officers are not used to listening and
being accountable to citizens. It has also emerged that too few police officers are

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 207
of the same colour, language group, and origin as the citizens with whom they
are confronted. Research has shown that police officers think that community
beat work is social work, soft policing. It is all about spoiled darlings of the com-
mander. The work is dull, unattractive, and unreal. Restoring law and order is
more important than meeting the needs of communities (Bennett, 1994; Skogan
2007). The initial burst of enthusiasm soon ebbed away. Friedmann states how
antiquated opposition arising from a very traditional working method and an
established culture are now emerging once again (Friedmann, 1992). As long as
police officers continue to argue in terms of them and us and continue to regard
the population as enemies, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to apply COP.
Middle managers are command- and control-oriented and insist that their subor-
dinates follow the book. They are now seeing some of their authority transferred
to people in the ranks. The hierarchy is being reduced and decentralised. Middle
managers are also seeing their promotion prospects diminish. Discussions using
new management terms like empowerment and trust make them nervous. It is
certainly true that they do not know how to assess the so-called problem-solving
work of their subordinates, because they have no experience of that type of work.
Senior staff also fear a loss of authority and, once again, are afraid of corruption
within the ranks. And so they prefer to keep new units under their own supervi-
sion and outside the bureaucratic hierarchy.
Trade unions, likewise, are often opposed to the introduction of a COP approach.
They are not willing to simply set aside existing conventions which regulate
wages, grades, and terms and conditions of employment. The special units, such
as judicial departments, are also bitter opponents. They too have to work differ-
ently and, in particular, exchange information with the community officers and
citizens. Here, too, change generates opposition. In fact, the traditional tension
between the beat police and the detectives continues unabated.
11.5.2 … but there is also external opposition
The public helps to determine the priorities of police work and citizens have to do
things they do not like doing. Yet shouldn’t there be some limits to the powers of
citizens to determine priorities? Other services and organisations must also be
called upon. Do they not think that community policing is a matter for the police
alone? Moreover, those services have their own territorial jurisdiction, their own
agenda and working methods, their own finality, and also their own hierarchy
and political responsibilities. The policymaker has to intervene here and he or she
does not always have a grasp of those services. It also emerges that the project
needs strong, coordinating political support! Criminal law interventions often
also prove impossible or inadvisable for solving certain problems because they
are related to administrative, civil, or property matters which administrative
authorities and civil courts are competent to judge. The police are less familiar

208 Part V In Conclusion
with these matters and therefore other authorities have to intervene. ‘Why make
matters so difficult?’ is a common attitude.
Apart from that, it is conceivable that the public will still be indifferent and not
participate to any great extent in so-called beat meetings, although Chicago did
record favourable results in this respect (Fung, 2004; Carr, 2005). In problem
districts, in particular, many groups and parties are not used to communicating
with each other. The well-to-do have their own way, whilst the rights of powerless
minorities are hardly respected, if at all. In addition, organisations working in the
neighbourhood are often suspicious and are more used to questioning the police
than working together with them. In those districts, there are also special urban,
social, and economic basic needs the police can do little about unless these mat-
ters are constantly pointed out.
Apart from that, it must be acknowledged that the population has to be empow-
ered to recognise and define problems and look for solutions in different terms to
those of traditional police work. And so, there is a need for preliminary “social
education”. It has emerged that there is a relatively higher rate of success where
this exists in some form or other. However, many feel this is not the responsibility
of the police and social educators cannot be too closely associated with the police.
11.6 No unequivocally positive results
Evaluation research into COP has not produced any unequivocally positive
results. Neither the cooperation between police and citizens nor the citizens
themselves can prevent crime. However, the evaluation researchers are of the
opinion that the quality of the service is generally improving. Likewise trust in the
police and relations between police and local people seem to be improving (Ben-
nett, 1994; Skogan and Hartnett, 1997; Weisburd and Eck, 2004; Mastrofski,
2006). However, there are still no convincing results in the fight against crime,
gangs, and drug dealers.
Furthermore, research shows that only a minority of local residents are capable of
trying to solve their own problems and providing representative participation. All
the others need some help. Researchers have further concluded that the lower
police management exerts great influence in this respect (Skogan et al., 1999).
Skogan et al. note that the ‘new players’ are all sorts of services and organisations
which in one way or another contribute to ‘cleaning up’, ‘fixing’, and ‘police eyes
and ears’. ‘New thinking’ is understood to be ‘situational prevention’. In other
words, all things considered there is no hint of improvement in the socio-eco-
nomic situations of problem groups the police are most confronted by in the final
analysis.
Reducing the fear of crime is also one of the aims of COP and this is achieved
somewhat more easily. However, there are questions here, too. After all, feeling

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 209
unsafe and insecure is often associated with ethnic heterogeneity and the police
seem to find it difficult to reduce this fear and provide an answer to this diversity
at the same time. How is it possible to provide an impartial service in such a situ-
ation? (Eck and Rosenbaum, 1994). Even the neighbourhood watch programmes
do not appear to have a direct impact on reducing the fear of crime or reducing
crime itself. The police emerge somewhat better here. Eventually, a certain
amount of success amongst the population should lead to the conclusion that ‘it
seems to make sense’. Or to an awareness that something is changing within the
police force because the police are more involved in social affairs (Fischer, 1998;
Skogan, 1990). Very specific programmes with well-defined interventions do pro-
duce more specific results. For example, one is led to suggest that POP is a better
orientation and that thereby the role of the police once again increases whilst that
of the citizens decreases (Sherman et al., 1997).
11.7 The problematic notion of ‘community’
Friedman (1992) points out that opposition arises from within society itself. That
is where crime originates and there are growing obstacles to social control. Peo-
ple now enjoy more freedom than ever before and the socialisation institutions
are inefficient at teaching roles. People lead fragmented lives and the connection
with the neighbourhood is not so intense. Fragmentation can sometimes be con-
quered via political consensus. Friedman stresses that interaction between citi-
zens and police is much easier where the citizens are already active in the com-
munity and neighbourhood networks already exist. Where the community and
police form each other’s mirror image, violence becomes a habit on both sides.
Private or shadow police organisations arise in areas where the police are consid-
ered to have failed. Like many others, this author also states that COP does not
make much impression in those communities which show the highest crime
rates. That is why measures are needed first of all in the area of social and cul-
tural change. In other words, these are measures which require a serious finan-
cial commitment and cooperation between several services.
Fischer (1998) is of the opinion that the notion of community has not been ana-
lysed sufficiently. What type of social and empirical characteristics should we
expect and how and with whom are the police actually involved in interaction? In
a time of disappearance of basic social structures, erosion of community values,
general mobility, separation of social areas, long-distance communication, and
increasing individualisation of life, one can understand the pressure to restore
community. However, it reminds us of the idyllic images of early functionalist
sociologists. Community is presented as something obvious, something which
has been neglected, and something which is threatened by crime. Something
must be undertaken by the government. This presentation of affairs means that
underlying conflicts are often ignored. Subsequently, the construction of commu-
nity via COP is not a socially neutral point. After all, COP itself can be a cause of
conflicts and division. The notion of community is presented in a normative

210 Part V In Conclusion
manner: it is a whole body of norms and values that bring unity and cement soci-
ety. The immediately subordinate citizen has to be protected against those who
disregard the law. In fact, this is all about a moral mandate to preserve the social
order. This is why there is so much stress on ‘disorder’, ‘decency’, and ‘morality’.
Only a few authors refer to the effects of the accentuation of the dualism between
rich and poor and the reinforcement of this inequality. What choices are made in
complex districts with mixed populations and various interest groups and posi-
tions of power? Which groups and interests do the police work for? Whose order
will be maintained? Should we conclude that most urban districts will be mixed
in terms of lifestyle and will be heterogeneous instead of homogeneous? Further-
more, will the values of the middle classes not dominate these districts where
other groups are less well organised or not organised at all? Are there not also var-
ious points of view on order and crime? The empirical reality of the community is
far from idyllic. The so-called general consensus on certain forms of vigilantism
is, on closer inspection, usually only the expression of the views of one particular
group (Fischer, 1998). Is the community not transformed into certain groups
which are already organised, highly vocal, and only represent themselves? For the
police, this is about policeable raw material.
The hegemony of the police threatens to become manifest and in this respect
COP ends up looking like a concept which is concentrated mainly around the
police and their interests. The end result of this could be a series of social prob-
lems if policing is the essence and the district becomes a policeable space. The
police are involved in a whole series of matters which are not an essential part of
their core responsibilities. All these matters are converted in terms of risk, crime,
and safety, and greater scope (expansion) is being given constantly. It becomes a
new form of local policy which strongly resembles local corporatism. Or, as Van
den Broeck argues, COP seems to have opened Pandora’s box involuntarily: soci-
ety has become more policed. This argument could also be formulated differ-
ently: has community policing, as a democratic concept, been monopolised by the
police? Could it be that the concept has been underestimated in terms of its appli-
cability to the broad area of policing?
11.8 Motions of withdrawal?
According to Luuk Wondergem, Lodewijk Gunther Moor, and Kees van der
Vijver, the first COP initiatives have now reached their climax in the Netherlands.
The local police are making motions of withdrawal, but not withdrawing com-
pletely. Various developments play a part here, in their view. For example, the
Dutch government has been endeavouring for some years to obtain more grip on
the local police network. There is talk of national priorities, performance con-
tracts, and measurable aims. In particular, this national control of measurable
performances could have a big influence on police work in the forces. As a result,
activities in the sphere of prevention may be forced out. The same thing applies

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 211
to the search for cooperation with other parties and participation in local safety
networks.
The police would also be put under increasing pressure in the Netherlands so
that police chiefs would consider it virtually impossible to sustain a serious com-
mitment to local networks. This excess demand would be part of the reason for
the ongoing core task discussions and the increasing reduction in communalisa-
tion of police work. According to these authors, these developments could put the
local police under heavy pressure.
Nevertheless, as is stressed by various authors in this volume, the situation for
residents in these districts and neighbourhoods is often intolerable. Roaming
dealers and junkies, drunkards, and psychotics terrorise the area, all forms of vio-
lence, nuisances, and long-term conflicts are in evidence, and there is also bur-
glary and vandalism, young people hang about the streets, and motorists race
around. All these phenomena cause fear and unrest amongst residents. There-
fore, they make a plea for a more locally based police presence. ‘Going local’ is
what the British police call it. The police have to reassure citizens in their social
environment and avoid appearing unfriendly.
In essence, this is the reason why advocates of this development make a plea for
the introduction of RP in the Dutch context (Ponsaers and Gunther Moor, 2007;
Van Calster and Gunther Moor, 2007). This method of police intervention would
make it possible to select a suitable approach to problems in neighbourhoods and
districts. After all, police work would once again become meaningful with regard
to reinforcement of social cohesion in neighbourhoods and districts, building up
social capital, leading to effective forms of a sense of community, and create new
forms of cooperation. RP would make it possible for the local police to focus on
the social environment of the residents, close the reassurance gap, and restore
confidence in the police. In districts, the police would tackle the very problems
that disturb the residents most of all. These could include all forms of crime, but
also nuisances and all forms of aggression. RP enables the local police to acquire
authority in neighbourhoods and districts by taking residents seriously, applying
a personal approach, not imposing any external norms, entering into discussions
about the actual local situation and so forth. In short, they can adopt approaches
which generate social cohesion, trust, and normalised relations. Actually, RP is
seen as an opportunity to take COP to a new level in the Netherlands.
This approach comes in for severe criticisms formulated by Crawford and Loader
with regard to the RP programme (Crawford, 2007; Loader, 2006). They point
out that neighbourhood residents often formulate needs and requirements which
are emotionally charged, extremely parochial in nature, sometimes unjust,
prompted by antipathy towards ‘others’, or often are unachievable fantasies of a
sort of ‘absolute’ safety. According to them, it is often fearful or bitter groups in
districts and neighbourhoods that call upon the police for this purpose. These
critics actually point out that RP policing involves overkill, an expansive, proac-

212 Part V In Conclusion
tive, and visible form of police presence. The bottom line is that good policing can
be equated with ‘minimal policing’. Some authors in this volume relate to this
outlook. They point out that neighbourhood complaints are often made by middle
class, white, and well-educated groups. Was it not Innes himself who made it
clear throughout his analysis that the activities of young people often have a
stronger indicative value purely because of their large diversity and great uncer-
tainty (Innes, 2004)?
Others, such as Bas van Stokkom, find this position untenable and make a plea
for realism. They make a plea that it is precisely in marginalised districts that
forms of ‘maximal policing’ are needed. They point out that these neighbour-
hoods lack any form of social organisation and are confronted with decay, degra-
dation, and persistent disorders, frequently in relation to ethnic minorities who
annex the public space. It is precisely in these poor neighbourhoods that citizens,
amongst others, are bothered by intimidating youths who hang around, and this
involves more than just annoyance at graffiti or youths racing around in cars.
This is not a middle-class point of view, but it is reality, van Stokkom argues. He
does stress that such maximalist programmes have to be applied selectively,
namely only in those neighbourhoods where public order is threatened repeat-
edly and where there is insufficient social capital available to solve the problems
themselves.
Apart from that, other authors in this volume, such as Ponsaers and Easton,
argue that the situation in Flanders is fundamentally different from that in the
Netherlands, much more so than would appear at first sight. They stress that the
most problematic neighbourhoods in Flanders are central neighbourhoods in
urban settings which include hardly any residents. Flanders does not really have
any ghettos and so there is little or no reason to intervene with maximalist polic-
ing. They stress the need to keep their eyes open for demographic and urban
developments.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the COP approach was introduced in
Belgium much later than in the Netherlands. Perhaps the law of the preventive
advantage played a part here. It must also not be forgotten that COP in Belgium
was accepted by the government (after considerable hesitation) as an official
police strategy and policy so that it is much more difficult than in the Netherlands
to switch from one police hype to the other. It must be stated that, with the refor-
mation of the police establishment structure, a new police policy was issued
which was grounded much more powerfully than had previously been accepted.
Local police chiefs in Belgium have proved to be fairly immune to all too fashion-
able forms of police rhetoric and have continued to work consistently to anchor
the COP approach further into the body of their force.

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 213
11.9 Is there a ‘correct’ level of order?
Whatever conclusions the reader may draw from this present volume, one con-
clusion remains inescapable: whilst COP has already put more focus on the
maintenance of order than ever before, RP does this in an even more pronounced
manner. Safety and security problems are no longer problems related to crime
and its aetiology, but are primarily problems of public order, as Tom Van den
Broeck reminds us. Likewise Jan Terpstra reminds us that this problem of order
is no longer the exclusive domain of the police, but also that of numerous other
supervisors. This, however, does not rule out the fact that the police are being
increasingly equated with ‘those who maintain order in society’. However valua-
ble and interesting such a perspective may appear, Martin Innes and some
authors in this volume appear to embrace this paradigm perhaps too eagerly,
thereby running the risk of overlooking certain adverse consequences. Critical
social scientists, however, cannot avoid giving the matter some reflection.
Wilson and Kelling (1982) suggest in their essay that the residents themselves are
in the best position to define social order on their territory and specify how that
can be achieved. After all, what is the proper, correct, or appropriate level of this
order? Wesley Skogan has given this some reflection in his Disorder and Decline
(1990) and called it a problematic notion.
After all, we first of all cannot avoid the conclusion that there are breaches of the
peace in every community. A certain amount of realism is called for here. Provid-
ing more police or more supervisors cannot prevent breaches of the peace, and
those who believe the contrary believe in a utopia.
Secondly, the question must be asked: whose order is in question here? Some,
such as Hoogenboom, are inclined to suggest that the maintenance of the exist-
ing (power) relations in a community is an essential part of police work and this
is the way to bring hard core policing back to the role of guardian of la raison
détat, the praetorian guard of the political and economic regime. Others are
inclined to suggest that the police can only exist because there is such a thing as a
community. The adage of the old crime fighting model (‘What would the police
do if there were no law’?) is thereby transformed into ‘What would the police do if
there were no community’? In short, the community deploys the police as an
instrument and not vice versa.
Those who are favourable towards such community oriented policing are still
faced, thirdly, with a paradox. After all, the question imposes itself once again:
whose order does it concern? In relatively homogeneous communities, there are
perhaps shared norms and shared expectations with regard to a kind of preferred
order. However, what about the increasingly heterogeneous communities of mod-
ern times which have not been bound territorially to localities for a long time?
The answer given by Skogan (1990) and Kelling and Coles (1897) is: order in het-
erogeneous neighbourhoods is not given, but has to be negotiated. This raises a

214 Part V In Conclusion
lot of questions which are acknowledged by these authors. Who speaks on whose
behalf and who represents who? Who has to vindicate the latter? As diversity in
society increases, does the diversity of desirable orders not also increase? Which
majority’s order is in question here? Don’t minorities have any right to an appro-
priate order? Are we not running the risk that the police concentrate on com-
plaints which are lodged by bitter complainants, whilst silent (more docile, toler-
ant) groups in the community are forgotten?
Fourthly and lastly, there is still one completely different consideration. After all,
the notion of public order is essentially a political concept. Much more so than
the concept of crime, it depends upon the conjectural political context in which it
is given its flexible interpretation. Whether a demonstration is permitted,
whether there is a police injunction preventing ‘youths who hang around’ from
entering certain areas in the city, whether a publicity campaign can go ahead in
the city centre, whether that polluted river needs to be purified, whether drunk-
ards or other groups such as the elderly may take permanent possession of the
park benches, or whether or not caravan dwellers can stay on the strip alongside
the motorway … it is always a question of political decisions (made by the execu-
tive branch) and in each case these matters require an appraisal as to whether or
not they are concerned with a problem of ‘public order’.
In this sense, disorder policing is possibly allotted a very broad discretionary
scope, within which administrative governments are given an endless ocean of
possibilities (and power). As long as public servants act on behalf of the general
interest, this power need not really be a problem. However, the risk of abuse and
arbitrary application lurks just around the corner, if only because the appraisal of
individual freedoms is thereby given less attention. It is to be feared that limiting
and controlling police discretion by means of guidelines (as Kelling and Coles
advocate) is insufficient. Certainly in places where extreme right-wing political
influences attract interest in big cities (and are recognised in elections), this dan-
ger has to be recognised and considered in the public debate.
11.10 Disorder and decline in marginal neighbourhoods
In many respects all these critical notes and comments do convince. Should we
consequently temper the ambition of reassurance policing or abandon the theory
altogether? Let us approach the reassurance theme in another way and ask an
entirely different question: how to deal with severe disorder problems and social
decay in marginal, disadvantaged neighbourhoods? The alternative that the critics
of maximalist policing usually have in mind, that is improving employment, edu-
cation performances, care and social policy, most likely cannot counteract or
solve neighbourhood decay in the short run. The problems have an immediate
urgency and cannot wait upon a policy that might only prove itself in a distant
future. For entirely different reasons repressive tactics and aggressive policing
would also fail.

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 215
These strategies would enlarge the gap between disadvantaged groups and the
police (and other municipal services), further undermine police legitimacy and
generate a hostile climate in which disturbances may repeatedly emerge. Tough
styles of policing like zero tolerance easily contribute to public insecurity through
unfair practices and ‘shock and awe’ tactics. But there are more intelligent meth-
ods in stock than zero tolerance to keep up neighbourhood stability and quality of
life.
But let us first examine in more detail the nature of disorder in marginal neigh-
bourhoods. Not so much explicit collective disturbances are at stake, but persist-
ent incivilities and disorderly situations that generate fear and disorganise social
life. In his study Disorder and Decline (1990) Skogan reflected on the far-reaching
consequences of social and physical disorders. Social networks disintegrate,
shared norms lose influence and distrust rises; residents get frustrated and
demoralised and evade certain public places. Responsibility for one’s own ‘terri-
tory’ diminishes and with it the willingness to exercise informal control. Subse-
quently, the reputation of the neighbourhood deteriorates, anxious and discon-
tented residents move away, shopkeepers sell out and the housing market col-
lapses. Critics of the broken windows approach, such as Taylor (2001) and
Sampson and Raudenbusch (1999) endorse these conclusions.
These viewpoints also return in the studies of the French criminologist Sebastian
Roché (2002), but he accentuates distrust in police and other municipal services.
Residents in dilapidated neighbourhoods have a poor opinion of these organisa-
tions and do not believe they are able to solve problems. Residents believe that
local authorities let them down; public professionals are faced with considerable
resistance.
Disorder points at social disorganisation, the collapse of social cohesion. Some
divided neighbourhoods lack shared understandings, normative codes and recip-
rocal expectations, and there is no impetus to associate with each other. Civil rela-
tions among residents have become problematic and precarious. Without any
order citizens may not be able to look after their own interests. Some neighbour-
hoods find themselves manifestly in a twilight-zone of decay, (semi-)illegal eco-
nomics and order-defiance (Berki, 1986). Van den Broeck pointed out in this vol-
ume that the main threat to social cohesion is not so much crime. ‘Rather crime
and the fear of crime are a signal or symptom for the real threat, which is social
disorganisation.’ These insights reflect a (neo-) Durkheimian view of society
whereby crime and disorder can be regarded as anomy and social disorganisation
as a major element for undermining society (Wrong, 1994).
Social disorganisation is detrimental to the moral order and raises severe ques-
tions how to regain moral sensibilities. After all, many residents have little
responsibility for what is going on around them and many are desensitised when
confronted with public wrongs. Roché found that the larger disorder, the more
residents think that certain illegal behaviours such as robbery, theft of cars and

216 Part V In Conclusion
carrying guns are not morally condemnable (Roché, 2002: 109). Urban neigh-
bourhoods that endure persistent physical and social disorders – different from
disadvantaged conditions (compare rural poverty) – may also foster an opposi-
tional set of norms that repudiate the rule of law, foster antipathy towards police
and privilege the informal settling of conflicts (Carr, 2007).
To break through this negative spiral of urban decay a policy is required that
might restore order promptly, and might promote conditions to revitalise social
life. Disorder policing is highly important to restore trust and stability: keep up
everyday social interaction, regular school attendance, investments in shops, etc.
In other words, to prevent exit-choices like retreat, avoid streets or move away, we
need everyday order maintenance. When social order is more or less restored res-
idents may stand up for themselves, resist unacceptable behaviour, and report
crime to the police.
It is also relevant that representatives of disadvantaged groups and ethnic minori-
ties are invited to cooperate, and involved in local safety policies, exactly because
the police are criticised so often within these groups. But that is not enough. To
enhance the quality of life in deprived neighbourhoods all kinds of frontline work
will be necessary: public professionals that support families and youth, build up
social networks and partnerships, and offer structures that residents themselves
are often unable to achieve.
11.11 Fighting social disorganisation
These objectives are typical of the English reassurance approaches. Reassurance
policing aims to rebuild neighbourhoods and to break through – in terms of
Loader (2006) – the well-known patterns of ‘oversuspicion’ and ‘underprotection’
that have long characterised police relations with disadvantaged groups.
11.11.1 Only in key neighbourhoods …
Many proponents of reassurance policing exemplify that such far-reaching strate-
gies should not be implemented in all areas. Implementation only seems indi-
cated in high crime and disorder neighbourhoods where everyday public interac-
tion is experienced as threatening. Jones and Innes (2005) plead for a policy
which focuses on a limited number of ‘key neighbourhoods’. They argue that pol-
icy must take into account local circumstances in micro-locations. In this volume
Innes points out that evidence from the NRPP suggests that to interact with the
police in the ways envisioned by the architects of community policing would not
be opportune. ‘In effect, many communities do not require and are not seeking
an ongoing and highly inter-dependent relationship with their local police.’ The
concept of ‘situated need’, Innes states, contrasts with the often unrealistic and
unnecessary aspirations of community engagement. For some neighbourhoods

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 217
the severity of chronic crime and disorder problems is so large, that sustained
patterns of institutional support will be required. ‘But for many others, what is
being sought is a more bounded interaction that can be activated as and when
required.’
This view resembles Skogan’s conclusions concerning the ‘three Chicago’s’
(Skogan, 2006): in contrast to the black and Latino communities, the city’s
whites do not need community policing. They succeed in getting things done
when needed, through strong neighbourhood organisations and political chan-
nels.
Still, fighting social disorganisation in key neighbourhoods evokes many ques-
tions. What to do when social capital is lacking and residents do not have organi-
sations at their disposal? Wondergem and Gunther Moor point out in their chap-
ter that a minimum basis of social cohesion in the neighbourhood is necessary if
reassurance policing is to succeed. Easton and Ponsaers bring to attention that
community policing is not successful in high crime neighbourhoods. Maybe we
have to bear in mind, as Van den Broeck argues, that community policing is basi-
cally a middle-class model of conflict handling oriented towards and applicable
for middle-class neighbourhoods. Hoogenboom sceptically concludes that ambi-
tious forms of community policing lack realism. He maintains that ideologies
exemplified in phrases such as ‘residents themselves are best equipped to define
social order in their territory’ and ‘residents should specify which problems to
tackle’ are troubling. Klockars would define these phrases as ‘circumlocutions’:
generally they are appreciated by the middle classes and policy makers, but they
lack sense of reality, for instance within some Amsterdam neighbourhoods where
dozens of nationalities live together.
In other words, the idea of reassurance as a means to re-link police and public
concerns sounds good, but how does (or can) it link divided neighbourhoods?
Moreover, many subgroups (ethnic minorities; juveniles) function as ‘police
property’: they are a persistent target of police action.
In neighbourhoods that suffer from social disorganisation, the police alone can-
not make a difference. An attempt to strengthen neighbourhood partnerships
without a broader, organising and legitimising infrastructure coordinated by the
municipality, would limit them to being nothing more than ‘anemic relationships
with no real commitment either from police or form citizen leaders’ (Taylor,
2006: 110).
11.11.2 … and through integrated safety policies
As mentioned before, to bring back social order, strategies are needed that
strengthen cooperation between all relevant public organisations. Moreover, such
a policy would require strong political coordination and support, so that each

218 Part V In Conclusion
public organisation involved will deliver its own agenda, and would also require
considerable financial injections. This means that the focus is on social issues
that are hidden behind ‘disorder and decline’, mobilising frontline workers, call-
ing in housing corporations and creating facilities for care, support, relief and
community work. Thus reassurance approaches do not suggest – as some might
think – that concern about the ‘deeper causes’ of crime and disorder is superflu-
ous.
Integrated municipal policies might bring back stability and safe interaction in
marginal neighbourhoods. But it will be hard to obtain funding for education,
care and frontline work, and in the last decades many public services have been
cut down. At the same time, many public organisations reluctantly collaborate
and prefer their own line of policy. When policymakers are not able to gather
enough budgets and do not succeed in drawing in all relevant institutions, maybe
police chiefs should call off plans to invest rigorously in reassurance policies.
They should also avoid passing the responsibility for reassurance to the police
alone. For that reason Eysink Smeets advocates for using the term ‘public reas-
surance’, rather than ‘reassurance policing’. Public safety should – as expressed
in the Dutch ‘integrated safety policy’ – first and foremost be an administrative
challenge.
In spite of the mentioned difficulties, at least in the Netherlands more and more
local safety projects are developed within a broad municipal policy. Preventive
and proactive strategies dominate (assigning family-coaches; combating truancy;
offering trainee posts; etc.). Although facing populist rhetoric and zero tolerance
strategies, local safety policies have obtained a strong social integrative function
(Boutellier, 2005; Crawford, 2003).
11.12 A maximalist safety approach. Virtue or vice?
Let us draw up the balance concerning maximalist safety policies in key neigh-
bourhoods and their potential virtues and vices. As mentioned, these policies
have far-reaching implications: the police and other professionals are allocated
broad tasks which could pervade everyday social life.
Whether maximalist policies in key neighbourhoods are judged as helpful or
risky, will probably depend on the normative appraisal of ‘prevention’ (of crime,
disorder, fear, antisocial behaviour, addiction, truancy, etc.). Pragmatists think
that it is a gain when prevention policies discharge or manage problems that oth-
erwise would be relegated to the criminal justice system. Irvin Waller argues in
this vein in his Less Law, More Order (2006): he welcomes (often poorly funded)
programmes such as victim support, mediation, youth inclusion and other ‘pre-
crime policies’ that tackle risk factors in the family, housing, and school situa-
tions. All these programmes have a degree of independence from the standard
courts and corrections system. Sceptics on the other hand think that these pre-

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 219
vention policies introduce new forms of social control, disciplining and stigmatis-
ing, and will generate new social anxieties. Moreover, it may make vulnerable
groups dependent on an omnipotent state. They hold a less beautiful view on pre-
vention and stress its recourse to (racial) profiling, actuarial methods, arbitrari-
ness in the assessment of risk factors, etc. (Harcourt, 2007).
These sceptical critiques were explained in detail before, so let us briefly concen-
trate on the sceptic position itself. Many sceptics believe that (paternalistic forms
of) intrusion in family-life, tenements and schools should be avoided to upkeep
privacy and protect individuals. But if scepticism might lead to reserved policies
and limits the scope for professional interventions, it runs the risk that ‘nothing
changes’, that urgent problems, dissatisfaction and disturbances remain, that
‘aggression’ in the ‘underclass’ is reported exhaustively in the press and that in
the end the criminal justice system must do its work.
In this respect, it might be instructive to listen to social-democrat Sebastian
Roché. He argues that the middle classes are least troubled by incivilities. They
find themselves in a comfortable unencumbered position and may thus easily
plead for more tolerance of deviant behaviour.
The less one is plagued by incivilities, the easier it is to tolerate disorders. Within
these classes generally self-centred reactions to antisocial behaviour, but also theft
or burglary, are dominant; disorder problems are not dealt with in terms of collec-
tive rules and arrangements. In case antisocial behaviours multiply and can no
longer be endured, the problems are passed on to the police and other public pro-
fessionals. Logically this gives rise to a larger and larger demand for professional
patrol and regulatory rules and measures. In one formula: a ‘liberal, self-compla-
cent society’ gets the rules, enforcers and penalties it deserves (Roché, 2002: 132).
Thus, the aims of ‘minimal policing’ and ‘minimal prosecution’ – which sound
good in middle-class milieus – may easily generate maximalist control and patrol
policies when the development of civil society partnerships and networks is
ignored. Only a vital civil society may adequately reproduce moral standards and
informal social control.
What about reassurance policing? It also has to deal with its ‘maximalist’ image,
embedding the police in everyday life as the symbol of security and control, and
claiming to address social anxieties. Moreover, Innes called reassurance policing
a ‘total policing philosophy’, encompassing crime management, public order
strategy, intelligence gathering, etc. This term likewise lends itself to misconcep-
tions and is criticised at length. To prevent misapprehensions the following
replies may have relevance.
First, unlike the term ‘total policing’, Innes points out in this volume that reassur-
ance as a concept recognises that policing cannot provide a total and unassailable
sense of security. Neither does it cling to the rhetorical pretence that the police

220 Part V In Conclusion
can really ‘control’ crime. ‘We live in a complex, rapidly changing world where
exposure to and the negotiation of a panoply of risks is now an ineradicable fea-
ture of everyday life, and profound uncertainty and insecurity are increasingly
prevalent conditions.’ Furthermore, Innes recognises that increasing police visi-
bility is not always and everywhere going to have a positive influence upon public
perceptions of security. ‘Indeed, the engagement of ‘shock and awe’ policing tac-
tics, such as high profile raids conducted by officers in full public order kit, can
raise community fears and concerns, and have a detrimental impact upon neigh-
bourhood security.’
Third, reassurance policing, although ‘maximalist’ in key neighbourhoods, is
fully in line with demands for democratic governance and accountable policing
(respecting human rights and minority interests). Contrary to what Loader
(2006) contends, citizens are recognised as part of the ‘common public culture’
of a democratic polity. Archon Fung has demonstrated at length how Chicago
community policing has facilitated empowered participation by introducing
deliberative bodies such as ‘beat meetings’. These meetings – among other things
– aim to break insider-outsider feelings and discuss preventive strategies. They
can deservedly be seen as a democratic boost, and hardly as bodies which contrib-
ute to pervasive control, as Loader suggests.
Reassurance policing is also criticised because it makes local policing in neigh-
bourhoods dependent upon an ‘open political process’ of ‘negotiating order’. As
mentioned before, populist majorities might hijack the discussion, and push for-
ward intolerant policies. But there is not one proponent of reassurance policing
who states that the police should respond uncritically to publicly voiced ‘needs
and expectations’. On the contrary, theorists like Innes proclaim that the security
of all citizens counts. They regularly point out that public expectations may be
false or unrealistic, and that the police interact with many different publics in
diverse contexts.
Indeed police officers have to underline that not all claims of citizens are legiti-
mate or can be acceded to. A professional police service has to deal with all sorts
of people, and must beware not to forfeit its impartial position, all the more
because the police may execute power and coercion during all kinds of tasks,
whether these relate to emergency relief, advise, correction, control or investiga-
tion. Nevertheless, the problems that are tackled in coproduction, do vary highly
in terms of situational context. The added value of the police may be character-
ised as its capacity to develop ‘living arrangements’ that respond to contextual
problems and citizens needs (Punch, Van der Vijver and Van Dijk, 1998). Thus,
one group of residents with specific interests points to certain problems which
may not be relevant for other groups.
Of course there are many other complexities. Many have been articulated in this
book. Reassurance policing contains many (over)ambitious goals. The concept of
reassurance is susceptible to ‘keeping up appearances’. How to define ‘social

11 Maximalist Policing? Risks and Opportunities 221
order’? How to deal with fragmented communities? Other critical notes concen-
trate on the police organisation: how to deal with police sub-cultural resistance
against reforms that give the public more say in priorities and in how the police
should execute these priorities? How to break through the ‘natural tendency’ to
direct police work to crime fighting? Of course there are many potential imple-
mentation complexities. Will ‘reassurance’ become only an add-on strategy? And
if fully implemented, how do we prevent short-term interventions and quick
fixes?
For the moment, findings of both Chicago policing and English reassurance
policing point in favourable directions. Although the positive results of the Home
Office studies might be somewhat overrated (attention given to the respondents;
feelings of positive change; etc.), reassurance policing seems to be promising.
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Notes on Contributors
Marleen Easton is fulltime Assistant Professor of sociology and management at
the University College Ghent, department of Business and Public Administra-
tion. She started her scientific career as a research assistant at the University of
Brussels (VUB). Since 1999, Marleen has been working at the University College
Ghent where she has been teaching (organisational) sociology and coordinating
research at the department of Social Work and Welfare Studies. She currently she
teaches Introduction to Management, Public Management & Security Policy at
the BAMA Public Administration and Public Management. Her main research
topics are the ‘(De)militarization of the police’, ‘Community policing’ and ‘Secu-
rity policy’ on which she has published several articles and (contributions in)
books in (inter)national journals and series. Marleen is co-director of the associ-
ated research unit Governance of Security (www.gofs.be), and Research Coordina-
tor at the Centrum voor Politiestudies (Centre for Police Studies). Furthermore she
is a member of the editorial staff of different journals.
Marnix Eysink Smeets is Head of the Public Reassurance Centre of IN-HOLLAND
University of professional education in Rotterdam. In this recently founded cen-
tre he conducts and supervises research on public perceptions and emotions
regarding security and security policy. He is also an independent consultant and
researcher on security and security policy and programme developer for the
Dutch School for Police Leadership. Before that, he was the director of a leading
Dutch consultancy and research company, specialised in crime and public secu-
rity, for which he wrote many publications. Marnix Eysink Smeets started his
career as a superintendent in the Dutch police.
Lodewijk Gunther Moor graduated as a political and social scientist at the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam. His career started as scientific assistant at the Press Institute
of the University of Amsterdam. Afterwards he worked at the department of the
prime minister, the Institute of Criminology at the University of Nijmegen, the
Police Study Center and the Institute of Applied Social Sciences of the University
of Nijmegen. Nowadays he is director of the Dutch Foundation for Society, Safety
and Police [Stichting Maatschappij, Veiligheid en Politie (SMVP)], which aims to
provide an independent contribution to the discussions about, and the develop-
ment of security in The Netherlands. It does so by carrying out research, by stim-
ulating the development of viewpoints, by organising congresses, symposiums
and exchange programmes.
Bob Hoogenboom is professor of Forensic Business Studies at Nyenrode Univer-
sity. He studied history and became interested in the history of policing. He wrote
his doctoral thesis on the history of the Rotterdam police force (1880-1940).
While working for the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Police Academy,

226 Notes on Contributor s
the universities of Leiden and Rotterdam and during his 4.5 years in the private
sector (forensic accountancy) he broadenend his interest in the direction of white
collar crime, regulation, private security, the intelligence community and the
increasing interweaving between different forms of policing. He is a parttime lec-
turer at the Dutch School for Police Leadership and the Police Academy and has
been involved in different projects of the Dutch Chiefs of Police. He is a member
of the editorial boards of the European Journal of Intelligence Studies and the Secu-
rity Journal. In 1996 he was awarded the Publication Prize of the Dutch Police
Foundation (SMVP) for his dissertation The Police complex.
Martin Innes Martin Innes is professor of sociology and director of the Universi-
ties’ Police Science Institute at the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences.
He started his career as a research assistant at the London School of Economics,
department of Sociology. Afterwards, he became a lecturer in sociology at the
University of Surrey and became well-known as the Head of Research of the UK
National Reassurance Policing Programme. The central focus of his current
scholarship has been the manufacture and management of social order and social
control, broadly defined. His research involves projects on the Signal Crimes Per-
spective and Signal Events Theory, Reassurance and Neighbourhood Policing,
crime investigation and detection, and the police role in counter-terrorism. Mar-
tin has published a large number of articles and book chapters on these topics.
Furthermore, he is editor of Policing and Society and academic peer reviewer and
rapporteur for many journals.
Paul Ponsaers is fulltime senior professor at the University of Ghent, Law Faculty,
department of Penal Law and Criminology. He graduated as a sociologist and has
a PhD in criminology. He started his scientific career as a scientific assistant at
the University of Leuven (KULeuven). Afterwards, he became departmental man-
ager of the Police Policy Support Unit. Since 1998, Paul has been working at the
University of Ghent where he teaches Police Sciences, Sociology of Law and
Methods and Techniques of Criminological Research. Paul is co-director of the
inter-university Social Analysis of Security research unit, promotor of the associ-
ated Governance of Security research unit and chairman of the Centrum voor
Politiestudies (Centre for Police Studies). Paul is a member of the editorial staff of
different journals. He specialises in the fields of Community (Oriented) Policing,
Financial and Economic Crime, Crime Analysis and Security Policy. On these top-
ics Paul has published several articles and (contributions in) books in national
and international magazines and series.
Jan Terpstra is associate professor at the Institute of Criminology and Criminal
Justice of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His main research topics
are currently the police, criminal justice, public safety and security. In the past
few years he has written books and articles about the governance of the police,
disorder policing, the managerialisation of the Netherlands’ police, justice in the
community and local security networks. In 2008 a new book will be published

Notes on Contributors 227
about the daily work practices of community police officers. He is also editor-in-
chief of the Tijdschrift voor Veiligheid (Journal of Public Safety).
Tom Van den Broeck is a commissioner and auditor for the Investigation Depart-
ment of the Belgian Standing Police Monitoring Committee. Before that he was a
research fellow at Brussels University, Faculty of Law and Criminology; director
of the Vlaams-Brabant Police Academy and an expert for the Administration of
Integrated Security Policy in the City of Antwerp (Belgium). He has published on
(community) policing, police management and reorganisations, police culture,
police training, criminal policy and the local governance of crime, and scientific
research in policing.
Kees van der Vijver attended the Dutch Police Academy, studied penal law and
criminology in Groningen and Nijmegen and wrote a PhD-dissertation on the
meaning of penal law for citizens. He worked as an inspector of police, as a social
scientist at the Ministry of the Interior, as a police commissioner in Amsterdam
and as the director of the Dutch Stichting Maatschappij Veiligheid en Politie
(Foundation for Society, Safety and Police). Since 1997 he has been professor of
Police Studies at the University of Twente and until recently he was the director of
the IPIT – the Institute for Social Safety Studies of the University of Twente. He
published widely in the field of police, crime and safety.
Bas van Stokkom is a research fellow at The Centre for Ethics, Radboud University
Nijmegen. His present-day research concentrates on the fields of security and
policing, mediation and restorative justice, and deliberative democracy. He holds
degrees in sociology and philosophy and in 1990 he finished his PhD-thesis on
the French political philosopher Georges Sorel. Subsequently he was active as a
journalist, researcher with the scientific institute of the Dutch social-democratic
party, and editor-in-chief of the Dutch criminological journal Justitiële verkennin-
gen (Juridical explorations). In the period 2000-2005 he was a researcher at the
faculty of political sciences, University of Amsterdam. He is secretary of the
Dutch-Flemish journal Tijdschrift voor Herstelrecht (Journal of Restorative Justice)
and co-editor of the study Images of Restorative Justice Theory (2008).
Luuk Wondergem will graduate in 2008 as a master of police science at the Police
Academy in The Netherlands. To reassure or not to reassure: that is the question is
the title of his thesis. Luuk Wondergem is a police officer in the Rotterdam-Rijn-
mond Police Force.