Neighborhood Crime

This book provides an analytic overview and assessment of the changing nature of crime prevention, disorder and community safety in contemporary society. Bringing together nine original articles from leading national and international authorities on these issues, the book examines recent developments in relation to a number of specific groups - the disadvantaged, the socially excluded, youth, women and ethnic minorities. Topics covered include: * the increase in local authority responsibility for crime control and community safety * the development of inter-agency alliances * the changing nature of policing * the passing of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

"Williams's past experience as a community organizer for havenots' is clearly apparent in this carefully researched book, as his conviction that neighborhood organizations can play a key role in revitalizing urban life. After examining the setting for neighborhood organizations and discussing how neighborhoods change, he delves into the internal dynamics of those organizations. Chapters are devoted to various problems that neighborhood organizations have defined, such as crime and education; a final section analyzes neighborhood groups as conflict managers and mediators. The book offers a good survey of literature on neighborhood organizations, both theoretical and applied, and provides readers a unique bibliography of selected materials, with brief comments about each major topic; each chapter also has extensive notes and bibliography. Both grass-roots organizers and professionals in social work and city management will find this book useful." Choice

Ralph B. Taylor is professor of criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Community policing seems always in vogue, yet its essential qualities remain elusive. There has been a rush to evaluate community policing before commentators have got to grips with what community police officers do which is distinctive. This important new book by a leading expert on community policing in Britain offers a detailed analysis of the activities, functions, and operations of community police officers, and shows how community police officers gather information about crime from the communities in which they serve, and also how they apply informal social control to public disorder situations. This original and scholarly work offers a conceptual framework within which the activities of community police officers may be understood, and as such will be of great interest to all those with an interest in contemporary British policing.

Police departments across the country are busily "reinventing" themselves, adopting a new style known as "community policing". This approach to policing involves organizational decentralization, new channels of communication with the public, a commitment to responding to what the community thinks their priorities ought to be, and the adoption of a broad problem-solving approach to neighborhood issues. Police departments that succeed in adopting this new stance have an entirely different relationship to the public that they serve. Chicago made the transition, embarking on what is now the nation's largest and most impressive community policing program. This book, the first to examine such a project, looks in depth at all aspects of the program--why it was adopted, how it was adopted, and how well it has worked.

COMPLETING ELMER H. JOHNSON'S impressive three-volume examination of corrections in Japan, Linking Community and Corrections in Japan (written with the assistance of Carol H. Johnson) focuses on the Rehabilitation Bureau's responsibilities regarding probation, parole, and aftercare as well as the Correction Bureau's role in Japan's version of community-oriented corrections.

In Linking Community and Corrections in Japan, Johnson first outlines the tasks of the Rehabilitation Bureau, then turns to historic and contemporary views of community and corrections. In discussions of the probation and parole system for both adults and juveniles, he describes in detail the Japanese version of supervision and the return of prisoners to the community.

One strength of this study is Johnson's impartiality. As an investigator, he functions as a "friend of the court", an adviser who is free to conduct an objective pursuit of the fundamental strengths and shortcomings of the Japanese prison system. He also follows the Foucauldian dictum: "With the prisons there would be no sense of limiting oneself to discourses about prisons; just as important are the discourses which arise within the prison, the decisions and regulations which are among its constituent elements, its means of functioning, along with its strategies".

Johnson provides sixty tables, two charts, and nineteen black-and-white illustrations.

Documents and Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Class Struggle, Crisis, and the Changing Role of the State Capitalism and Crisis The Role of the Capitalist State Hegemony, Social Reproduction, and the Role of the State The Legal Crisis of the State Emerging Forms of the State Part II: Neighborhood Dispute Resolution and the State The Structure of Neighborhood Dispute Resolution The Informal State and Neighborhood Justice Conclusion Bibliography Index