In the traditional understanding of police culture as well as in the criticism against the use of the concept of ‘police culture’, not much attention has been paid towards the influence of the representation of police work and crime in the media. Although since the pioneering studies in the sixties and seventies of the last century it has been made clear that police work is not limited to dealing with crime and criminal justice, the mass media for decades have presented a completely different image: one of thrill seeking and hardcore action. Police officers themselves tend to ‘sensationalize’ their work. Police culture is no longer understood as a deterministic coping mechanism, but is rooted in active and constructive participation of police officers. As a consequence we must pay attention to representation of ‘the police’ by the media and ask ourselves how identity work by police officers is influenced by the representation of crime and the police in the (new) media.

Protected living in some sort of gated community is popular. However Dutch protected living differs from, for instance, the living in American gated communities, the development tends to social discussions whether it is undesirable or not. Safety seems in the Netherlands not the first reason for protected living. Here, domestic and aesthetic reasons are much more important.

The concept of security is mainly used in a negative way as it is related to the prevention and repression of matters which are perceived as not secure or not safe. This article provides a definition of positive security in order to provide a starting point for research and for working on positive security in the field. The influence of the belief in the idea of social engineering on the negative view of security is discussed and the way in which this is a hindrance to security. The meaning of the concept of security is outlined by focusing on the origin of this concept, the difference between objective and subjective security and by distinguishing it from the absence of crime. Research on public familiarity is covered which is argued to be an important concept in relation to positive security as it shows the importance of trust and predictability. The statement that trust is crucial to security is further supported by examining this relationship from a psychological perspective. In addition agency is introduced as the second factor, next to trust, as conditions for creating positive security. Finally, the focus is on the practical utility of the operationalisation of positive security for further research on the way positive security is shaped in practice.

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.

Contemporary scholarly literature is full of references to the crisis of the criminal justice system. The general public seems to increasingly lose confidence in the criminal justice system and its actors. In this article we look into the potential manners in which restorative justice practices can enhance the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Our analysis is based on the observation that by actively engaging victims and defendants in the resolution of their conflict, restorative practices seem to accommodate a necessary condition of procedural fairness. Since research on procedural justice and legitimacy in turn suggests that the legitimacy of the criminal justice system is based largely upon its perceived procedural fairness, we investigate whether participation in restorative practices improves perceptions of the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. To that end we describe the results of a qualitative study on the experiences of victims and defendants who participated in victim-offender mediation in Belgium. Relating their experiences to the antecedents of procedural justice as described in the literature, we find that restorative practices in different ways enhance perceptions of procedural fairness. Yet these perceptions do not necessarily reflect on the criminal justice system. Our analysis suggests that the degree to which the perceptions of procedural fairness resulting from participation in a restorative practice influence an individual’s perceptions of the legitimacy of the criminal justice system depends on whether the restorative practice is seen as an integral part of the criminal proceedings. We found, for example, that this is more likely to be the case if the judge at trial formally acknowledges the parties’ participation in mediation. We conclude that more research on the degree to which people perceive the restorative practice to be a part of the criminal proceedings is needed in order to further flesh out this issue.

This contribution focuses on ‘fear of crime’ research. Departing from the classic distinction between crime and victimization as objective threats, on the one hand, and fear of crime as a subjective and emotional interpretation of that threat, on the other hand, the research tradition is confronted with the so-called fear victimization paradox. This paradox emerges from the observation that fear of crime is greater among women and elderly people, while these groups actually are less at risk of becoming a crime victim. It has immersed the research tradition in a dominant debate on the rationality of the fear of crime, with two opposing paradigms: rationalist and symbolic.Whilst both the paradox and the different paradigms in the debate offer a view at the core of fear of crime research, and illustrate how similar empirical observations can lead to differing explanations, and policy implications for that matter, we argue that the fear victimization paradox and the rationality debate surrounding this paradox, has occupied the bulk of research on fear of crime with what is essentially a nonsensical and redundant debate.

This paper deals with the question of how a partly privatized security sector could be regulated. A central aim of this regulation should be the control of security as a public good. Three models of regulation are analyzed. The current practice of this regulation in the Netherlands shows a serious lack of effectiveness. One of our main conclusions is that neither the state nor the private sector is able to enforce this regulation on their own. However, it is assumed that the state should have a central and integrated regulatory role in this field, with more attention paid to the practical implementation of it, with the power and will to sanction private agencies if necessary. In addition managers of private security companies should adopt a role as public managers with a public moral duty. Regulation of security is faced with a double problematic, not only the horizontal fragmentation of the field, but also the vertical fragmentation, often resulting in a serious gap between managers and those in the field, both in the public and the private sector. This implies that the regulation should not only rest on the state and on self-regulation by the sector at management level, but also on the promotion of a practical ethic for security workers to steer and regulate their daily work.

The author provides a discussion of the articles in this issue of the Tijdschrift voor Veiligheid (Journal on Security) on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. He notes that there is an increasing hybridising, subjectification and fragmentation in the security area. The increasing interweaving of security politics seems to apply least to a common approach in ‘social security and physical safety issues’ (crime control and disaster and crisis management), while exactly this was aimed for in so-called integral security politics. According to the author that is the case because of ‘the moral pin’, which plays a dominant role in crime, but not in safety issues. The entanglement of forms of security identified by the author has a normative basis – it comes from the social order of an increasingly complex society. For the future an ever greater responsibilisation can be expected, in which the perception of security becomes even more important than it is now already. Not a big orchestrated security policy, but jazzy structures will then determine the prospects.

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.

This article explores the links between the concepts of security and community, questioning the conventional use and meaning of both. To begin with, it addresses the taken-for-grantedness of the thought that communities foster feelings of security, and that contemporary processes of migration, intensified worldwide communication, and ‘heterogeneization’ of habitats stimulate feelings of insecurity and nostalgia for ‘old-fashioned’ tight kinship. Subsequently, it criticizes the too lop-sided focus on insecurity in current debates, and asks attention for – community-based – positive feelings of security. In the next paragraphs, however, the problematic aspects of the idea of ‘community’ are discussed: its inadequacy in capturing current individualized ways-of-life, its exclusionary tendencies, its potentially exaggerated focus on social control, and its rejection of, and fear for, the outside world. Therefore, we assess the possibility to construe (‘strong’) community qualities in a situation of multiple, overlapping and porous populations of varied identity-relevance within overarching institutional arrangements of rule of law and of shared codes of conduct (as ‘weak’ ties). Finally, the argument is translated in suggestions for empirical research to be able to determine the fecundity of the ideas presented.

Since the mid-90s, people can obtain ‘burglary prevention advice’ in Belgium, which means that a burglary prevention adviser will carry out a free assessment of the dwelling regarding the protection against a burglary and will recommend security measures as needed. In 2008, a large-scale survey by postal mail, commissioned and financed by the Belgian Ministry of Internal Affairs, was conducted to examine three main questions concerning burglary prevention advice in Belgium. Firstly, who receives a burglary prevention visit, or in other words what are the demographic characteristics of the citizens who obtain advice? Secondly, what is the extent to which these persons are satisfied with the visit and which elements, related to the advice, are associated with this (dis)satisfaction? Finally, do these citizens implement the proposed prevention measures and what is the role of the financial incentives (e.g. a tax deduction and an investment subsidy) concerning this implementation? Using a stratified random sample, 2,123 citizens were selected of whom ultimately 1,193 persons answered and returned the questionnaire. This paper presents the main findings of this study. We will also draw attention to the risk of an increased societal dualization and exclusion in the field of community safety when burglary prevention becomes predominantly the responsibility of the individual. The results of our survey for instance suggest that certain groups in society, namely the lower educated, tenants and apartment dwellers, are insufficiently sensitized to call upon these advisers. Furthermore, mainly the higher educated and those with higher incomes plan to make use of the possibility of tax deduction.

Public Private Partnerships (PPS) are becoming one of the most popular answers to problems of crime and disorder. In this contribution, the authors research the Collective Shop Ban, maybe the most successful form of Public Private Partnerships currently operating in the Netherlands. A Collective Shop Ban is a civil measure bestowed upon a person by the shop owner, when s/he displays ‘unwanted behaviour’. As a consequence entry can be denied for every shop assembled in the association of entrepreneurs. In 2007 almost 900 people have been denied access to over 450 shops in the city centre of The Hague. This new form of collaboration between police, public prosecution service and entrepreneurs has already been rewarded with the Regional Crime Control Platform ‘safety award’. However, the authors question the effects of this collaboration. They argue that the Collective Shop Ban creates its own public of ‘unwanted shoppers’, that can be banned from a shopping area by devising new terms of exclusion. This ‘public’ is subjected to new means of power, to be applied by private security guards and shop owners. While entrepreneurs celebrate the possibilities of this civil measure, the authors warn for the juridical and ethical consequences of this measure.

Public Private Partnerships (PPS) are becoming one of the most popular answers to problems of crime and disorder. In this contribution, the authors research the Collective Shop Ban, maybe the most successful form of Public Private Partnerships currently operating in the Netherlands. A Collective Shop Ban is a civil measure bestowed upon a person by the shop owner, when s/he displays ‘unwanted behaviour’. As a consequence entry can be denied for every shop assembled in the association of entrepreneurs. In 2007 almost 900 people have been denied access to over 450 shops in the city centre of The Hague. This new form of collaboration between police, public prosecution service and entrepreneurs has already been rewarded with the Regional Crime Control Platform ‘safety award’. However, the authors question the effects of this collaboration. They argue that the Collective Shop Ban creates its own public of ‘unwanted shoppers’, that can be banned from a shopping area by devising new terms of exclusion. This ‘public’ is subjected to new means of power, to be applied by private security guards and shop owners. While entrepreneurs celebrate the possibilities of this civil measure, the authors warn for the juridical and ethical consequences of this measure.