one - Introduction

Summary

Over the past few decades many of our urban areas have suffered neglect and decline with an exodus from inner cities, driven by a lack of confidence in schools, fear of crime, an unhealthy environment, and poor housing…. One of the key political challenges of the new Century is to make Britain's towns and cities not just fit to live in, but thriving centres of human activity. (John Prescott, Foreword, in Urban Task Force, 1999)

For many commentators concerned with the future of British cities, the period since New Labour's victory in the 1997 General Election has been a dynamic one (Amin, Massey, & Thrift, 2000; Imrie & Raco, 2003). The new administration set about addressing the continuing problems of urban Britain: pockets of high unemployment, poor and obsolete housing, low educational achievement, and the ongoing task of urban regeneration, under the banner of urban renewal, or, in its visionary form, an urban renaissance (Urban Task Force, 1999). Throughout this agenda there has been a particular focus on Britain's older and de-industrialised city-regions, with significant energy devoted to commitments to social justice and achieving greater social inclusion (Levitas, 1998; SEU, 2000a). Nevertheless, social policy commentators (eg, Fooks & Pantazis, 1999) have identified what they see as the ‘criminalisation’ of social policy initiatives, in the sense that policies devoted to social problems have come to operate in punitive ways that criminalise targeted recipients, such as the street homeless, beggars, and the unemployed.

One of our core contentions in this volume is that criminal justice and policing systems have extended their remit and relevance to urban policy and regeneration initiatives through what Coleman, Tombs, and Whyte (2005) and Simon (1997) have called a process of ‘governing through crime’. In other words, urban regeneration programmes operating in British cities have come to resemble a broader criminalisation running through social and other policy interventions. By this we mean that the agenda of urban renewal has come not only to be expressed through the physical and social revitalisation of our towns and cities but also via strongly linked attempts to reduce disorder and combat crime.