The article is an ethnographical study of Rotterdam’s experience with a program called ‘Community Governs’ (Buurt Bestuurt). Community Governs, a Dutch version of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), is a community-based program which goal is to solve neighbourhood crime and disorder problems. Community commitment and involvement are a main component of this program. The article emphasizes the effects that this program had on three levels of trust (performances, intentions and skills) of the residents in police officers and municipal service agencies as partners in the fight against crime and disorder. The results indicate that a ‘positive exercise’ of liberty through political participation of civilians is difficult to realise in poor, inner city, neighbourhoods.

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.

While in the sixties hackers were the heroes of cyberspace, they are nowadays often perceived as the archetype cybercriminal. From the perspective of labelling theory, this empirical study examines how hackers feel perceived by society at large, how they perceive themselves as ‘others’ and how they view themselves in relation to ‘others’. Our research shows that hackers – despite of an experienced negative labelling – view themselves as positive ‘others’. We conclude that the features of the hacking phenomenon itself (skillset, mindset, own morality) in combination with the digital context in which they operate, enable hackers to avoid a ‘spoiled identity’.