This contribution reports about a research in a medium-sized municipality on the possibilities of giving municipalities an instrument to determine at the earliest possible stage which neighborhoods are at (increased) risk of exposure to organized crime and its consequences. We are searching for indicators to measure that exposure to give direction to preventive measures. Our focus is on the erosion of structures and foundations of society as a result of activities of organized crime, eventually resulting in the infringement of the rule of law. It is therefore not about the phenomenon of organized crime itself, but about its effects on society. This requires clarification and measurability of the concept. In this first exploration, we focus on the following five manifestations of the effect of organized crime: The emergence of a subculture: not recognizing government authority; the emergence of takeover of power in the neighborhood; the emergence of vulnerable groups of citizens; the creation of the image: crime pays off; and the emergence of unfair competition.

The theme of governing anti-social behaviour and incivilities in the public space became more important on the policy and research agenda over the last twenty years. This article describes the law on incivilities in Belgium, namely the ‘administrative communal sanctions’ (GAS). This law is studied in a broader context of contemporary crime control and its organizing patterns. The development of the politics of behaviour can be explained by different characteristics of the period referred to as the late modernity. In the dissertation ‘A culture of control?’ (Devroe 2012) we studied the application and the concrete strategies behind the governance of incivilities on a national and on a city level. The incivility law broadened the competences of the Mayor and the city council especially in the completion of anti social behaviour and public disorder problems in his/her municipality. Instead of being dealt with on a traditional judicial way by the police magistrate, the Mayor can, by this law; himself lay on fines until maximum 250 euro. We mention ‘city republics’ as this punitive sanction became a locally assigned matter, which means that one municipality differs from another in their ‘incivility policy’. Due to the split up of competences of the Belgian state arrangements of 1988, each municipality finds itself framed in different political and organisational executive realities. In this view, Mayors can be called ‘presidents’ of their own municipality, keeping and controlling the process of tackling incivilities as their main responsibility and determining what behaviour had to be controlled and punished and what behaviour can be considered as normal decent behaviour in the public space. Problems of creating a ‘culture of control’, creating inequality for the poor, the beggars and the socially ‘unwanted’ can arise, especially in big cities.

Changing public safety problems as well as an increasing societal demand for public safety made way for new policy approaches. During the 1990s, the so called ‘integral safety approach’ was introduced in the Netherlands. This approach manifested itself mainly on the municipal level where the mayor is being held responsible for managing public safety and order. The central question raised in this article is: what are the consequences of an integral approach to public safety problems for the mayor when managing local order and public safety? We will demonstrate that ‘integrality’ is no clear cut concept. Careful inspection of the concept learns that it has multiple meanings. Of these various meanings, especially the ambition to address public safety problems by means of ‘new alliances’ characterized the actual implementation of integral policies. However, working together within these new alliances uniting various more or less independent actors from both the public and private sector, seemed to be hampered by a lack of coordination and control. In that sense, the introduction of the integral approach had consequences for steering and control of public safety policies. These consequences have to be addressed, especially by the mayor who is accountable for local order and safety. The mayor had attributed to him – first in practice, soon by law as well – the role of director of public safety policy on the municipal level. However, as we will demonstrate in this article, the mayor lacks an important trait needed for effective directorship: decisive powers. Therefore the mayor is not able to realize effective cooperation between partners within the new alliances of the integral approach to public safety problems. As a potential solution, we will describe the characteristics of a ‘model of anticipation’ granting the mayor a certain level of decisive powers to be used as an ultimum remedium.