From a geographical perspective, this article explores positive images of safety in the context of nightlife areas. It also considers the ways by which nightlife visitors’ experienced safety might be nurtured, as an alternative to how experienced lack of safety might be ‘prevented’. From our interviews, we find safety to emerge from interactions between many (im)material elements, and the nightlife consumers themselves. We argue that positive safety can be understood as something that envelopes and at the same time is reworked by individuals, but that does not necessarily require a conscious understanding. From this finding, we offer a different logic and rhetoric regarding safety in nightlife spaces.

This paper presents the results of a study on Street Pastors in Cardiff, capital city of Wales. Street Pastors are Christian volunteers who look after (intoxicated) people in the nightlife district. In so doing, they provide security through empathy and care. The motives of Street Pastors to engage with partygoers are multi-layered, but their personal faith appears as a key explanation. A certain kind of orthodox ‘certitude’ of being safe (and saved) in a Higher Power gives the pastors their strength to go out on the street, face the unknown and feel compassion for their fellow citizens.

Positive security is a very promising development in criminology. The ‘movement’ reconnects the current debate on crime with the origins of ancient Greek thinking on the positive nature of politeia, policy and policing. Securitas - providing safety and security for the common good - has a long and rich tradition. Good governance is about many things, but foremost about providing security in society. Polizeiwissenschaft in 18th and 19th century Prussia made a distinction between Wohlfahrt- and Sicherheitspolizei.
The latter is outright dangerous because security becomes equated with negative connotations: the other, the enemies of the state, the drug war and more recently the war in terror. In times like these the positive qualities of securitas become inflated. Human rights, privacy and the rule of law are no longer viewed in positive terms. Therefore I advocate the positive security movement. But the author is worried about two things. Firstly, the current Zeitgeist which is charged with xenophobia and war like languages. And, secondly the fact that the ‘movement’ is limited to a few rebels with a cause. The mainstream of criminology is not really interested in reconnecting with the philosophical positive roots of securitas. Mainstream criminology fosters the status quo and is financially too depended on the state to actually follow the new heroes of positivity. The only way out is to develop a following but this requires academics to actually take a stand.

In contrast with the critical, innovative ideas developed between the 1960s and the 1980s regarding the way we deal with illegal drugs in our societies, the current dominant approaches frame the issue of drugs as a matter of crime, public order, and control. Pleasurable substances have always existed and always will, and so the efforts to cope with them. However, we witness today remarkable developments at local, national and international levels in the fields of drug policies (on cannabis for example), drug trafficking (new routes, new actors) and drug use (new substances, new drug cultures), all of which deserve our attention and push us to think beyond the repressive paradigm. This contribution, which also serves as an introduction for this special issue of ToCC on drugs, aims to present an overview of the main developments taking place, and challenges ahead, within the three above-mentioned fields. There are new markets and trends in the use of legal and illegal pleasurable substances, particularly regarding synthetic drugs (amphetamines, methamphetamines and new psychoactive substances or NPS), tobacco and alcohol. Illegal drugs are supplied from changing countries and through new routes, while retailing increasingly takes place through the so-called cryptomarkets (online). Effective policies are rendered impossible by the fundamental repression paradox: the more intensive and effective the repression, the larger the profits of drug traffickers and the balloon effects (displacement). Despite the harms and negative effects of repressive policies have extensively been documented, a societal debate towards the regulation of illegal drugs is hindered by the use of false dichotomies or presuppositions, by the use of ethical or moral appeals, or by lack of political will. Also the debate in the media is static, superficial and full of clichés. Scientific research on drugs also follows specific agendas and it is focussed on particular aspects of the problem. Changes to end the ‘war on drugs’, certainly regarding cannabis, are however underway in many places at local and national level (Uruguay, Canada, US, Spain, etc.), this despite UN bureaucracies and international conventions that fiercely resist those changes.

The article examines mechanisms of othering the refugees illustrated on one refugee camp in Germany. Based on the theoretical strand of the foreigner dispositif, I analyze spatial and architectural compositions of the camp to outline the differentiation of ‘we’ (nation state) and ‘others’ (refugees). In the process of othering space excludes, controls and identifies refugees as ‘others’. However, being identified as the other, space can also be conceived as a specific space of hope. The findings shed some light on the link between othering, space and identity.