Public safety regimes: Negotiated orders and political analysis in criminology

Abstract

Implicit in the concept of negotiated orders is an understanding of the social productivity of political power; the power to accomplish governing programmes for citizens as much as the power over citizens for the purposes of social control. This distinction is especially pertinent for the role of political analysis in critical criminological thought, where criticism of the authoritarian state has vied with studies of governmentality and governance to explain the exercise of political power beyond the State and with the distinction between politics and administration found in liberal criminology. Outside of criminology, political economists interested in the 'power to' govern suggest its analysis in terms of 'regimes' of advocacy coalitions that struggle for the capacity to govern complex problems and populations in specific social contexts. Regime formation or failure can differ in character, and in outcomes, as much within nation states as between them and in relation to different kinds of governing problems. The article considers the applicability of regime theory to the negotiation of 'public safety', a governing problem which is a particular focus for political analysis within criminology.

European national police systems and metropolitan realities

“…in Brussels or Rome). In this framework we can observe a multitude of 'Public Safety Regimes' (Edwards & Hughes, 2012).…”

Community-Driven Youth Justice and the Organizational Consequences of Coercive Governance

“…The near total lack of theoretical and critical criminological considerations in the United States is really quite surprising given that scholarship about the 'turn to' non-state agencies and communities is lively in British-based criminology journals and in criminology circles in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa (e.g. Crawford 1999;Edwards and Hughes 2005;Garland 2000;Gilling 2007;Goddard 2012;Goddard and Myers 2011;Gray 2009;Hallsworth and Lea 2011;Hughes 2007;Lea and Stenson 2007;Levi 2008;Muncie 2011;Rose 2000;Steinberg 2011). While existing work recognizes the decentralized and localized nature of youth justice initiatives (Goldson and Hughes 2010), including the subtle attempts by national governments to shape local practice and policy (Crawford 2006), what is less clear is how broader economic, social and regulatory forces condition the actual operation of local community partners.…”

“…Studies into 'what works' do have value in our view, but they often lack theoretical significance and leave aside moral considerations, and thus miss the mark in not considering how political, social and economic forces factor in to whether these programmes actually 'work' or not (Edwards and Hughes 2012). One potential counter to the constricted vision of the 'what works' literature is critical scholarship on the way intervention is done in neo-liberal times, including critiques of evidence-based polices that have been proven to 'work'.…”

Exploring Micro-Sociality through the Lens of ‘Established-Outsider’ Figurational Dynamics in a South Wales Community

“…Much of the impetus to study the contemporary role of communities in the local governance of problems of social order in sociological criminology has focused on the rise of a governing strategy of 'responsibilization' in these 'neo-liberal' and austere times (see Edwards and Hughes, 2012). In particular, the focus of such governance studies, including much of the previous work of one of the present authors (Hughes, 1996(Hughes, , 1998(Hughes, , 2007, has been a critique of the dominant ideological construction of community as an unquestionably 'good thing' in political and policy discourses.…”