Samenvatting

In policy development and academic research on urban problems such as poverty, disorder and crime, the United States has served as a model country for the Netherlands for years. This article analyses two Dutch policies in the field of neighbourhood safety that are strongly influenced by American policy. It specifically focuses on the efficacy and applicability of social interventions, i.e. approaches that appeal to residents’ active involvement in the improvement of public safety and quality of life: resident representation comities (I) and neighbourhood watch schemes (II). Available research into the two policy cases illustrates that the ‘hard’ science from the United States can often be complemented with more qualitative information from the Netherlands. American research can thus be used to support Dutch policy designs, provided that knowledge is fine-tuned and contextualised.