Author: Adam Crawford
ISBN No: 1-903240-48-4
Review date: 06/06/2026
No of pages: 0
Publisher: Willan Publishing
Year of publication:
Brief:
Crime and Insecurity: the governance of safety in Europe, edited by Adam Crawford, e-mail <a href = "mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>
People trafficking, money laundering and organised crime and cyber-crime do not recognise borders. They are problems in need of international answers – especially as western Europe is a single market, and the EU is proposing to welcome in much of eastern Europe. Yes, the European Union has come a long way since it called itself a mere ‘common market’ – but can it address members’ common crime issue? If the EU has free movement of goods and people from here to Poland and Slovakia, are the law enforcers as ready as to protect those goods and people as the organised criminals are to create illicit markets’ Crime and Insecurity: The governance of safety in Europe, edited by University of Leeds criminology Prof Adam Crawford, paints a depressing picture of the EU beset by rival bodies duplicated their confused efforts. A couple of chapters consider organised crime Europe-wide. In the more useful one, G Wyn Rees and Mark Webber point to ‘indications that Europol [the European Police Office, in The Hague], along with its attendant national contact points, will grow into the hub of an intelligence system for the EU covering crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration’.
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Other chapters are UK-based. They include ‘the policing of cyberspace’ by David Wall, and ‘commercial risk, political violence and policing the City of London’ by Clive Walker and Martina McGuinness. Wall makes the point that can apply to crime and public safety in general – while we agree that crimes exist, how widespread and complex are they? Yet ‘media-shaped public anxiety’, to quote Wall – perceptions, fears, rather than reality of crime – do drive the public debate. Wall argues that ‘cybersapce is remarkably ordered considering the large numbers of individuals who inhabit it and also the breadth of their involvement with it’ – though maybe he should talk to security consultants seeking to crack intellectual property and trade secret theft. The book is based on a gathering in 2000 so is unable to judge the National Crime Squad’s National High Tech Crime Unit, operational since April 2001. Events – not only 9-11 but the IRA bombing of the BBC in London – have rather overtaken Walker and McGuinness’ chapter, which looks at the challenge of terrorist targeting of the City of London and other commercial centres. Terror has since become even more random and even no-holds-barred. However as a case study the effort to disrupt commerce rather than politics and the security apparatus, Walker and McGuinness cover Pool Re, the reinsurance company with Government backing – that is, an insurer of last resort. As with insurance in general, there is a school of thought that insurance discounts should go to companies that demonstrate more security precautions. Though Pool Re and the Department of Trade and Industry produced security guidelines, the authors report little evidence that companies do get discounts for target-hardening. That said, the IRA’s pre-ceasefire1990s bombing campaign did prompt the City’s ‘ring of steel’ and CCTV of exit routes. Such heightened security, the authors point out, means the City is no longer a ‘soft target’ for terrorists. But what of Docklands and Heathrow, or Ealing High Street?
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In other chapters, Tim Newburn reprises his study of CCTV in police cells in Kilburn, London, covered in his book Policing, Surveilllance and Social Control (reviewed in December 2001). Lastly, Sandra Walklate, discussing local communtiy safety, looks at how in one part of rural Cheshire the last village-based police officer was not replaced, leading to a ‘Blue Lamp Campaign’ and suggestions that residents ought to ‘buy a bobby’. That rural folk have to wait 45 minutes for a 999 response makes them feel excluded – is there a place here for private security? I ask.
