The Howard Journal Cbl.35 No 1. Feb 96 ISSN 0265-5527, p p 21-39

Kirkholt Revisited: Some Reflections on the Transferability of Crime

Prevention Initiatives

ADAM CRAWFORD and MATTHEW JONES Adam Crawford is Lecturer in Criminology, Centre for Criminal Justice

Studies, University of Leeds Matthew Jones is Lecturer in Sociology, Department of Sociology,

Goldsmiths’ College

Abstract: Little attention has been paid to the transferability of ‘successful’ crime prevention projects. The Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Project has been hailed by academics (Forrester et al. 1988, 1990; Bottoms 1990) andpolicy-makers (Burns 1990; Home Office 1990) as one of the most successful crime prevention projects undertaken in the U K . In thispaper we report on an ethnographic research case study of a crime prevention project which sought to transfer the mechanisms - both processual and those aimed at desired preventative outcomes - used in the Kirkholt Project to a diyferent location. In doing so we develop a critique of dominant understandings of what constitutes ‘success’, ‘multi-agency co-operation’ and ‘evaluation’ in the field o f crime prevention.

In Britain there has been a paucity of rigorous monitoring and evaluation of crime prevention initiatives.’ No proper research evaluation was built into the Five Towns Initiative by the Home Office, and that which did occur was retrospective (see Liddle and Bottoms 1991). The evaluation of its successor, the Safer Cities Projects, has not focussed upon individual initiatives but has attempted to compress over 3,000 diverse schemes of preventative action, spread over a number of cities, into a uniform evaluation exercise (Tilley 1993a). Not only has this presented the researchers with acute methodological problems (Ekblom 1992; Ekblom et al. 1993) but i t has also necessitated over-simplifying complex social processes. I t was, therefore, of little surprise that the Morgan Working Group concluded their national review of crime prevention through the ‘partnership’ approach, stating that; ‘evaluation and monitoring was the weakest element of most crime prevention programmes’ (Home Office 1991, p. 22, para. 4.50). The uneven social and spatial distribution of crime and the specific relational contexts in which different crimes occur require particular sensitivity to the specificity of generalisations (Crawford et al. 1990). This has particular implications in the field of crime prevention. Social interventions which ‘work’ in one location may

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have an adverse effect in another, a fact of which numerous practitioners are constantly aware (Osborn and Bright 1989). This lack of evaluation leaves us with little knowledge about which forms of intervention ‘work’, under what conditions ‘success’ or ‘failure’ is determined and the possible transferability of initiatives across different social and demographic contexts. I t also means that we fail to learn from others’ experiences. Consequently, we may be continually reinventing the wheel or, more problematically, embarking upon wasteful and misconceived adventures.

Evaluations which have been built into crime prevention initiatives are still very much in their infancy. They tend either to be ad hoc and superficial (Bottoms 1990, p. 17) or where they do involve more rigorous methodologies they tend heavily to prioritisc specific outcomes. Con- sequently, ‘before-and-after’ surveys have become the accepted dominant evaluation method (Hope and Dowds 1987, see for example Allatt 1984; Forrester et al . 1988; Lea et al. 1989). However, by their very nature they are primarily concerned with addressing the extent to which the objectives of an initiative are achieved within a particular time span. There is a tendency to ignore the equally important task of process evaluation. Yet it is a criminological truism that any outcome will in large part be determined by the policy formation and implementation processes. Over a decade ago, Hope and Murphy (1983) concluded their evaluation of a Home Ofice demonstration project, designed to combat vandalism in schools, by emphasising the importance of the ‘quality’ and extent of policy implementation. They found that the ineffectiveness of the measures was as much a consequence of ‘implementation failure’ as failure to influence the activities of offenders. They stated the timely warning that:

it is unwarranted to assume that implementation will necessartly proceed in a logical sequence towards the solutions suggestrd by research findings. (p. 47, italics in original)

Similarly, Bennett ( 1989) concluded that ‘programme failure’ lay behind the failure to reduce crime in the Neighbourhood Watch schemes he evaluated (p. 176). These findings draw to our attention the importance of process evaluation in order to make sense of outcomes. Thus, an understanding of the structure and decision-making processes of an initiative, the nature and extent of inter-agency involvement, the nature of ‘community’ participation, the extent of implementation, etc. may all be important aspects of evaluating the social processes which constitute a crime prevention initiative.

Replication or Transferability? Pawson and Tilley have recently made a number of important interven- tions into the debates (Pawson and ‘lilley 1992, 1994; Tilley 1993b), in which they promote a paradigm shift to a ‘scientific realist’ model of evaluations (Pawson and Tilley 1994, p. 305). This involves the specification and identification of ‘mechanisms’, ‘contexts’ and ‘outcomes’

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and their inter-relationships. Consequently, they are (rightly) highly critical of dominant quasi-experimental evaluations which ignore both mechanisms and their (social and physical) contexts. At the same time, they argue, this dominant approach - as a result of being method (rather than theory) driven - fails to render explicit the implicit hypotheses which underscore the relationships between mechanisms, contexts and the resultant outcome patterns (Pawson and Tilley 1994, pp. 297-8). With this we concur and this framework largely constitutes the premise of our arguments which follow. However, it is their understanding of mechanisms and their relationship to outcomes which we find problematic. Pawson and Tilley fail sufficiently to distinguish between processual mechanisms and outcome-oriented mechanisms. The former are processes and social arrange- ments which involve the nature of decision making, communication, conflict management and negotiation. They may represent desirable ends in themselves. The evaluation of these mechanisms would focus upon the intrinsic quality and efficacy of the policy formation and implementation processes. The latter, by contrast, are concerned with means to ends. They are relevant (and thus tend only to be evaluated) in so far as they achieve their desired outcomes.* Pawson and Tilley conflate all mechan- isms into the latter ~ a t e g o r y . ~ Mechanisms, for them, are always ‘causal’, that is, they produce (or ought to be conceptualised as seeking to produce) specific ends. This is explicit in Tilley’s (1993b) definition of ‘context’ as ‘the conditions necessary for a causal mechanism to be triggered to produce a particular outcome pattern’ (p. 13). This unduly over- prioritises outcomes at the expense of the processes of policy formation and implementation. This is illustrated by the example of ‘multi-agency co-operation’ and ‘community consultation’, both of which are processual mechanisms which may be essential elements of a crime prevention project but do not, of themselves, ‘cause’ or directly produce given ‘outcome pattern^'.^ They are not necessarily predicated upon a causal relationship with outcomes. In failing to acknowledge this Pawson and Tilley subordinate (possibly inadvertently) processes to outcomes.

Tilley (1993b) in a separate paper, produced for the Home Office Police Research Group, applies this ‘scientific realist’ approach to address some of the questions and issues raised by transferring crime reduction ‘success stories’. He analysed three ‘replication’ projects of the original Kirkholt initiative and uses them to ‘raise a number of theoretical and practical problems in relation to the business of replication’ (p. 1). Tilley is surely correct in his suggestion,that ‘many of the root difficulties are not so much technical as conceptual’ (p. 2 ) . However, we would contend that his use of the concept of replication is somewhat misleading. First, it reinforces the above-mentioned emphasis on outcome patterns. Secondly, it imposes a false rigidity on what is essentially a process of transference. This is evidenced by the consequential false dichotomy that he is forced to present between, what he terms, ‘strict replication’ (where it appears that not even laboratory conditions will suffice) and ‘relativistic replication’ (where it seems that everything is contingent). The inevitable inadequacies of both approaches suggestingly reaffirm his preferred ‘scientific realist

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replication’ (Tilley 1993b, pp. 11-15). Whilst there is much in such an approach which is in accordance with our own view, the framework that hc creatcs, by its all-or-nothing rigidity, unnecessarily polarises the issues. Our preference for the concept of lransferability ~ in which both mechanisms aimed at leading to desired outcomes and processes of decision-making and implementation together are transferred across cultural, social, spatial and temporal conditions - presupposes context specificity without slipping into relativism.

What is clear is that such proccsses can only adequately be addressed through the use of more sensitive qualitative research methods5 ‘This lacunae stems from a much broader reluctance among many researchers to use qualitativc research methods in evaluative research. In our quest for ‘scientific’ and ‘objectivc’ data that can statistically be displayed and defended, therc is a tendency towards what Rock (1988) has called a ‘self- ccnsorship’ of other forms of data. Rock, in a plea for more ‘detailed observational and ethnographic work on the social processes of housing estates’ (p. 1 lo), has rightly criticised this dominant over-emphasis on quantitative research in crime prevention evaluation:

A whole area of knowledgc is systematically suppressed by the limitations of prevailing research methods What has been ‘banned’ corisists in the main of evidence that i s thought to be too pcrsonal, subjective and qualitative. (pp. 1 I o - 1 1 ) I t is evident that there is a need to supplement quantitative research with more qualitative data in the evaluation process. Following Hope and Murphy’s (1983; Hope 1985) warnings, researchers have begun to take seriously the impact of social processes and dynamic interactions in the implementation of initiatives on evaluations of ‘success’ (Sampson et al. 1988; Sampson 1991; Pearson et al. 1992; Crawford and Jones 1995; 1,iddle and Gelsthorpr 1994a). Hope and Foster’s (1992; Foster and Hope 1993) recent work evaluating the impact of the Priority Estates Project is an interesting example of the combination of ‘before-and-after’ victimisa- tion survcy research with ethnographic methodologies. The latter cnabled them to capture the cxtcnt of internal dynamics of community change on the cstates.

In this paper we will attempt to develop these insights by drawing upon an ethnographic case study of a single initiative which attempted to transfer thc essential characteristics and mechanisms of the Kirkholt Project (Forrester el a l . 1988, 19YO), to a locality within a city in the South East of England. The ’I’enmouth Burglary Project was one of nine crime prevention initiatives which constitutcd a larger research study undertaken by members a team of researchers.h Thc findings of the wider project have been published elsewhcrc (Crawford 1994a; Crawford andJones 1995). In this paper we will concentrate upon thc ‘I’enmouth case study in order to identify some of the problems and possibilities involved in transferring ‘successful’ crime prevention initiativcs. In doing so we will develop a critique of dominant understandings of what constitutes ‘success’, ‘multi- agency co-operation’ and ‘evaluation’ in the field of crime prevention.

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The research methods used in the Tenmouth case study included the direct observation of formal steering group (and other relevant) meetings as well as more informal routinised activities of front-line personnel. This was conducted over a period of nearly three years between the launch of the Anti-Burglary Project, in the summer of 199 1, and the time of writing in mid- 1994. These data were supplemented by semi-structured interviews with front-line project workers, relevant agency personnel, steering group members and community representatives during the same period of time. This dual research strategy afforded us particular insights into the policy- formation and implementation processes particularly relevant to an inter- organisational context. I t enabled the assessment of the disjuncture between what people advocate - what they say they do - and what they actually do in practice. For, as Rutherford (1993) has noted, the ‘institutional dissonance between words and deeds’ is particularly acute within the field of criminal justice (p. 160). A dual strategy allowed us to explore different understandings and levels of meaning regarding what had taken place or had been resolved at an observed meeting. I t also facilitated the evaluation of the interaction between formal and informal representations, forms of communication and conflict. The use of flexible interview methods in tandem with observations allowed important issues such as communication and trust to be revealed and explored. Finally, our long-term involvement with, and study of, the initiative at the same time as conducting comparative research in other sites, presented us with the opportunity to re-interview relevant personnel and to assess the impact of time on their relations and understandings.

Kirkholt and the Tenmouth Case Study: Continuities and .Differences

The Kirkholt Anti-Burglary Project has been well reported by its authors (Forrester et al. 1988, 1990; Pease 1992) and our description of it which follows is drawn from the combination of these sources. As Tilley (1993b) notes the actual nature of the project, its ‘internal validity’, is also the subject of some controversy (p. 2). While noting this contention we do not intend to enter that debate here (see Safe Neighbourhoods Unit (SNU) 1993; Gilling 1993). What is clear is that both Kirkholt and the Tenmouth Project shared the same core aims. These were: (i) the reduction of burglary in the targetted area; (ii) the delivery of the crime reduction mechanisms through a multi-agency approach, and (iii) the eventual local community ‘ownership’ of the project. These were brought together and summarised in the Tenmouth Project Report, which declared the objectives to be:

To devise a joint plan between the statutory and voluntary agencies, commercial sector and the community towards frustrating the activities of burglars and the fear they provoke - and make it work!

Further, the Kirkholt and Tenmouth Projects shared the same five essential processual mechanisms. First, the project design model for both

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initiatives involved four discrete stages: data collection, the development of‘ a corporate agreed strategy, the implementation of crime prevention measures and the evaluation of those measures. Secondly, the process of diagnosing the particular crime problems through local data collection used on the Kirkholt Poject was mirrored in Tenmouth. The Kirkholt study surveyed burglary victims, their neighbours and apprehended local offenders. The questionnaires used at Kirkholt were adapted by the project workers at Tenmouth and again victims, neighbours and local burglars were interviewed. Thirdly, as with the Kirkholt Project, Tenmouth focussed on multiple-victimisation and its prevention through the data collected. I t was believed that by identifying particular groups vulnerable to repeat burglary, that this information could provide guidance on where and when preventativc action could be most effectively targetted. ‘ lhe fourth mechanism was a model of multi-agency collabora- tion. In both projects the police and the probation service constituted the key agencies and seconded workers to a steering group made up of senior agency personnel and representatives from community groups.

Despite the efforts made by the instigators of the Tenmouth Project to use Kirkholt as a model for their own initiative, there were significant differences between the two projects. First, the Kirkholt Project was a demonstration project, intended to be a template of a crime prevention initiative, the lessons from which were to be transferred to other areas. Consequently, it was well financed and supported by the Home Ofice. A further significant difference between the two projects is that there were non coin-operated fuel meters in Tenmouth properties. I t is clear that a large proportion of the reduction in burglary rates on the Kirkholt estate was attributable to the removal of pre-payment meters.’ While the exact contribution of their removal is unknown, it does raise questions about the possible transferability of the Kirkholt Project mechanisms to residential areas without coin-operated fuel meters (SNU 1993, p. 76).

Additionally, the nature of inter-agency collaboration at Tenmouth differed significantly from the experiences in Kirkholt. In the latter, collaboration took the form of two stage separate secondment. As a result, the probation and police officers never actually worked alongside each other and their duties were clearly separate, relating closely to their ‘normal’ tasks and organisational roles. By contrast, in the Tenmouth Project the police and probation officers worked alongside each other and shared tasks, such as data collection, which were not ncccssarily related to mainstream police or probation duties.

The social, demographic and physical contexts of the two areas differed significantly. Tenmouth and Kirkholt appear to be very different places. Kirkholt is described in the report as being a local authority estate of 2,280 dwellings with ‘well defined boundaries’, being contained by two major roads and two motorways (Forrester et al. 1988, p. 1 ) . The Tenmouth Project has no such physical boundaries. The boundaries that were created to define the project arose as a consequence of local conflict and political expediency. Initially, the seconded probation officer had identified a small area of the city of Tenmouth as having a high rate of

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domestic burglary, based on an examination of police statistics. However, this created a local controversy when the chosen area became publicly known. Local residents in the area expressed concern that a crime prevention initiative in their area would suggest that the locality was a ‘high crime’, ‘problem area’. I t was feared that the locality might subsequently become stigmatised and that house prices might be threatened. In response, the project leaders decided to broaden the scope of the initiative to include two police ‘areas’ of south and central Tenmouth which include eight local authority wards in an attempt to address the residents’ concerns. While Kirkholt was a self-contained estate with a relatively homogenous and identifiable population, this cannot be said of the agency-constructed area of South Tenmouth which was made up of a variety of ethnic groups,’ housing tenure and design.

Throughout the published reports of the Kirkholt Project there is only limited information on the socio-economic context in which the project was situated. We know little about the nature of the social relations on the estate, the local economy, and the history of inter- (or even intra-) organisational relations within the area. This is symptomatic of a general trend in writing up crime prevention initiatives in which projects are abstracted from the specific local contexts which shape the resultant findings. In the search for tangible causal relationships between interven- tions and outcomes researchers are often too hasty to exclude that which is not immediately tangible and quantifiable. The authors of the Safe Neighbourhoods Unit report Crime Prevention on Housing Estates, appear justified in their criticisms of the manner in which the Kirkholt researchers discounted the influence of the local authority’s environ- mental improvements programme on the estate (SNU 1993, p. 110). The local authority undertook a major physical refurbishment of the estate during the project’s life, committing over E100,OOO to this work (Gilling 1993). In Tenmouth, although the Council proposed three residential redevelopments and a major traffic improvement none of these were underway during the project’s life. However, long-term unemployment has been steadily growing in the county over the last few years from 19% of the unemployed in 1990 to 28% by 1993. Given the reliance of the local economy on service industries the area has been particularly affected by the recent recession.

Hope and Murphy ( 1983) note that as well as the local socio-economic context of a project, ‘the organisational context in which new initiatives are to be implemented can be a crucial determinant of the outcome of policy’ (p. 44). This is particularly evident in the case of ‘top-down’ approaches to community crime prevention, where the inter-relations, attitudes and actions of implementors, as well as the structural context and power relations in which policy is put into practice, play an influential role. In Tenmouth there was virtually no established history of inter-agency co- operation between the police and probation service prior to the launch of the Anti-Burglary Project. The initiative arose out of a perceived inadequacy and lack of activity on the part of the key agencies in the field of inter-agency partnerships, particularly in the light of the Home Office

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Circular 44/90 and the ‘good practice guide’ which accompanied it (Home Office 1990). In this sense the project constituted an important test of inter-agency collaboration.

Questioning the Criteria of ‘Success’

I n tcrms of a short-term drop in domestic burglary Kirkholt clearly was a s ~ c c c s s . ~ There is a danger, however, that by prioritising easily quantifiable short-term measures, preference is given to physical or situational type interventions at the expensc of more social and structural approaches which offer the least tangible short-term results (Gilling 1994, p. 255). As the Morgan Keport notes, there is a risk that the perceived nccd for short-term quantitative evaluation will encourage crime preven- tion activities, ‘which are easily monitored rather than those which are relevant to the longer-term social needs of the neighbourhood, which may not be susceptible to simple evaluation’ (Home Ofice 1991, para 4.52). ’l‘he short-termism of evaluation is evident in the ‘project driven’ approach which pervades much British crime prevention. This largely mirrors the way crime prevention is funded in this country. In a simplified and caricatured form this approach involves: targetting an area; intervening in that area; getting a result; and moving on. I n part this stems from pressures imposed by both Funding bodies and the media for immediate ‘success stories’ (1,urigio and Rosenbaum 1986). There are genuine concerns that ‘before-and-after’ surveys perpetuate such an approach in that they impose pressures of an artificial time span on evaluation. I t also assumes that there is an outcome or an end to interventions. If crime prevention is to be about the broader process of developing institutions and structures of ‘community’ (Currie 1988) and local empowerment, then they will need to go beyond ‘before-and-after’ surveys and involve residents in monitoring effects on an ongoing basis.

The ‘I’enmouth case study raiscs two crucial problems in the evaluation of community crime prevention projects. These are the open-endedness of what constitutes community crime prevention and the problems raised by multiple aims. Let us consider each of these in turn.

(i) IhJning Crime Prevention Widely divergent practices are subsumed within crime prevention work, the conceptual boundaries of which arc particularly vague (Gilling 1994; Liddle and Gelsthorpe 1994b). At one extreme, crime prevention can be (and often is) extended to encompass any interventions which are perceived to have some beneficial impact on the physical world for the local residents or for targetted populations. This may include levels of reported or unreported offences or crimes in general, levels of fear of crime (however classified, see Crawford et al. 1990, chapter 3) , raising people’s awareness (or educating people) about crime and victimisation, satisfac- tion with rcgard to service delivery, the ‘quality of life’, or more nebulous ‘feel good’ factors. It is this malleable essence which allows a flexibility in

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the criteria of evaluation and consequently in that which is described as ‘successful’. Additionally, practical and operational definitions of crime prevention are structured by power relations embedded in organisational imperatives and cultural assumptions. A survey of rank-and-file police and probation officers, in the county in which Tenmouth is located, emphasised the definitional disparities and conflicts which exist between the two organisations (Crawford 1994b, 1994c).’”

(ii) Multiple Aims Multiple aims pose particular problems for evaluation and monitoring (Merry 1982). The authors of the Kirkholt report acknowledge that there was a tension as to which of their principal aims should receive priority (Forrester et al. 1988, p. 1). In particular they confronted a conflict between processual aims of multi-agency collaboration and outcome aims of burglary reduction. In the end, efforts to develop links between agencies and collaborative service delivery, which might produce long-term crime prevention benefits, were superseded by a desire to show quickly that burglary could be reduced. The report’s authors found themselves questioning whether multi-agency collaboration, as a project mechanism, constituted a means to an end or an end in itself. ‘Should we include an element of a burglary prevention package even when it involved the work of only one agency?’, they asked (p. 1) . They concluded that the ‘priority was to prevent crime. The links were a highly welcome bonus’ (p. 1). Kirkholt, it would appear, could be regarded as a failure in terms of the nature of multi-agency collaboration. At no time did the seconded officers work together. The probation officer took up post only after the police officer had finished his tenure at the project and according to Gilling ( 1993) the policy implementation was anything but collaborative.

Multiple aims gave rise to similar problems of evaluation for the Tenmouth Burglary Project. The senior representatives from the police and probation service were able to exploit the open-ended nature of crime prevention in order to redefine and reorientate the original stated aims of the project. This resulted in a different set of criteria being offered for the evaluation of the project. The original intention had been to complete the research phase in the first twelve months. Difficulties, however, led to the project significantly over-running its projected timetable, with the research phase eventually completing over two years later. Concern was expressed that this would delay the seconded police and probation officers’ return to their posts within their own organisations. With the future of the project in doubt, the senior police and probation officers met informally to discuss what was to be done. The senior police officer described this as a time when they ‘put their cards on the table’ and both made a commitment to each other to ‘put the project to bed’ with the launch of the data (Crawford and Jones 1995, p. 22). This meant that what had started as a straight ‘second-wave’ Kirkholt Project, with discrete stages of research and implementation, became a research-based project with policy recommendations. These were to be launched at a public meeting at which point the involvement of the seconded agency

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workers would come to an end. ‘l’he projcct was to be ‘handed over’ to the community to implement.

If the pro-ject is evaluated using its criteria of burglary reduction then undeniably it has been a ‘fidilure’. I t failed to make any interventions in the physical world.” However, after the redefinition, the project was able to be described as a ‘success’ in that it has informed the local community to whom it was ‘handed over’, by producing information about burglary that would help the agencies and the community tackle crime. The eventual report declared:

community action in the fight against burglary.

The participants of the Tenmouth Burglary Project were able to argue that it was a successful undertaking by identifying ‘provoking debate’ and ‘community action’ as preventative strategies that can be used in the ‘fight against burglary’. The project was perceived to be a ‘success’ on a further level. Despite the lack of statistical data to support any claims, it was believed that the collaborative element of the project had created a new- found atmosphere of trust and had improved inter-organisational relations. Indeed, it was seen by the police and probation service as such a ‘succcss’, in this regard, that they jointly embarked on a second crime prevention initiative in another part of the county.

l h i s highlights one of the pre-eminent differences between Kirkholt and Tenmouth which also gives us an insight into the nature of such joint endeavours. The terms ‘multi-agency’ and ‘inter-agency’ are used interchangeably in the crime prevention literature (Liddle and Gelsthorpe 1994a, p. 4). It is, however, worth drawing attention to the very real differences between conceptions of ‘partnership’ work, by making a distinction between these terms. Clearly, not all initiatives conform neatly to one or other of the polar ‘types’ which we present, nevertheless, we suggest that they are illustrative of, and epitomise, certain tendencies and differences in the nature of collaborative work between criminal justice agencies.’*

Multi-agency relations exist where more than one agency contributes to an initiative. The formal (or more informal) contact is located largely within existing organisational roles and practices. Officers within each organisa- tion whose professional expertise is considered relevant to crime prevention often are identified as ‘link’ personnel. Their core tasks remain largely unaltered, as multi-agency work is grafted on to existing practices, or those practices are redefined. This understanding of partnership work is lucidly outlined by a council officer from one of the other initiatives in our wider study:

‘Partnership means putting everybody’s role into perspective and fitting it together so they don’t need another job specifically, they need to understand how they tit in and then do their job in an open and public framework, so in effect turning up at the [initiative] and making sure that people take a corporate approach is all that’s needed in addition to their existing tasks. Doing the same task a different way is how I perceive it’.

[this report] will inform its readers, provoke debate and evoke

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This would seem to be more representative of the type of collaborative work on the Kirkholt Project.

Inter-agency relations, by contrast, are those relations which interpenetrate and thus interrupt ‘normal’ internal working relations. Thus new structures and forms ofworking may arise and operate, potentially outside of the participating organisation’s core structures, roles and practices. Individual officers from the key organisations may be relieved of their core professional duties and take on new duties, defined by the new structures. Consequently, inter-agency relations involve a degree of blurring of organisational boundaries and an associated loss of organisation auto- nomy. Given the differential power relations between agencies this is often an uneven process in which certain agencies (often the police) are able to dominate local inter-agency relations thus increasing their control over policy formation and implementation (Sampson et al. 1988; Crawford and Jones 1995).

Inter-agency linkages may be housed physically and spatially outside of the key organisations from which they are drawn, reaffirming their distance from the organisation. In the Tenmouth Project for example, officers worked out of a ‘neutral location’ provided by a local business firm. In some cases they may develop their own specific identity which can cause tensions between ‘project loyalties’ as against ‘organisational loyalties’. Tensions may lead project workers to prioritise project goals at the expense of their parent organisational goals, There was a continual source of tension in the Tenmouth Project, where officers often identified project goals as taking precedence over conflicting organisational needs. Their shared commitment to the project often meant that they would manipulate their own organisations in order to achieve these new goals. The senior police officer on the project commented:

‘we shared a lot of confidences about what was going on in each others’ organisations and we were able to contrive and force issues - playing one organisation off against the other so that both organisations agreed’.

Beyond the officers’ mutual trust and personal commitment there appears to be a loyalty to the new inter-agency unit, although neither absolute nor unconditional. These tensions indicate that such inter-agency linkages are likely to be unstable and potentially short-lived. They also draw our attention to the importance of intra-organisational relations in evaluating inter-organisational practices (Pearson et al. 1992, p. 65).

This marginal organisational location of much inter-agency work produced real implementation problems on the Tenmouth Project. For example, the intra-organisational status perceptions of crime prevention within the police generated conflicts which seriously affected (and in turn were affected by) the nature of resultant inter-agency relations. In order to invert the prevailing caricature of crime prevention work within the police - so aptly described by Harvey e t al. (1989) as ‘a sort of pre-retirement course for experienced but tired detectives’ (p. 88) - the senior police officer involved in the project recruited, as the seconded officer, someone recognised throughout the local force as destined for higher office. He had

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hoped that the association of such a ‘high-flyer’, would raise the profile of crime prevention within the force. Howevrr, the organisational preference for officers to have worked in CID before promotion, resulted in the seconded officer’s move from the project. The senior police officer explained the reasons for the move and (in his own typically understated manner) its impact:

‘For personal career development rcasons [she] was taken off[the project] and she is now in CID. Wc see hcr as a bright star in the future and thc police service wanted to develop her career in pcrsonal terms. And this had, again, an unfortunate effect on the projcct. A slight impetus was lost . . . but unfortunately the old culture of the police service meant that she needed to get wider experience of CTD’.

‘l’he subsequcnt withdrawal of a central and prominent figure in the project precipitated an immediate crisis a t the inter-agency forum in which the prohation service threatened to withdraw their seconded officer. Future relations became strained as the change of personnel was felt to be a down-grading of the general police commitment to the project.

During the life of the project the project managers were also forced to rrplace the seconded probation officer who had been instrumental - by her enthusiasm and ability to build confidencc among sceptical police officers - in the initial establishment of the project. Similarly, a number of senior officers associated with the steering committee moved posts and consrquently altered the nature of their personal relations with the project. In the county in which the project was located there was a history of considcrable suspicion and distrust between rank-and-file police and probation officers (Crawford 1 9 9 4 ~ ) . Individuals on the project had done much to break through some of the cultural misperceptions. T h e high staff turnover rendered particularly difficult the establishment of inter-personal trust rclations, which arc so important for the development and perpetuation of eKectiw inter-agency relations (Crawford and Jones 1995; Sampson 199 1 ).

Problems of Funding

Kirkholt was a well-resourced ‘demonstration’ project. As well as the human resources made available by various agencies, L75,OOO was set aside from the Local Authority Housing budget to improve the security hardware of victimised dwellings during the life of the project. The Tenmouth Prqject, by comparison, was run on a ‘shoe-string’ budget. ‘The principal resources provided were human, by way of the police and probation services’ commitment of two members of staff for a period of two years.I3 Additional support staffing was also provided by both agencies to assist in the workers from time to time. Beyond this, however, the project workers had to find their own resources. They managed to attract several small grants.14 They also secured premises rent free from a local firm and uscd a local leisure facility as a vcnue for their initial launch and to publicist: the final report.

I n this regard, the project was very much in keeping with central

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government’s philosophy of self-funding and its emphasis upon the virtues of self-reliance. Government policy has promoted the role of the private sector as a source of funding for crime prevention. T o this end Crime Concern was set up in 1988 (Bright 1991). Our research findings show that some crime prevention projects spend much of their effort and time raising just enough resources to enable them to continue with their core objectives. The Tenmouth initiative was continually delayed and eventu- ally redefined largely as a result of operating on a ‘shoe-string’ budget which expected major material resources from the private sector. These were either not forthcoming or, when they were, actually added to the time delays. For example, on the Tenmouth Project the analysis of the surveys became a source of recurring problems for the project workers. The research company which had promised to process and analyse the data from the victim, neighbour and offender surveys, withdrew its services. The initial commitment to conduct the data analysis was withdrawn when a change in management personnel resulted in an unsympathetic response. This threw the project into turmoil.

This was not the end of the problems arising from commitments made by local private enterprises. The project workers struggled from one attempt to the next to get the data processed. They secured the promise of free computing equipment from another local company, however, the second-hand computer which eventually arrived was unreliable and unsuitable for the task. I t also ran software with which none of the workers were familiar. Eventually the senior probation officer on the project was able to provide technical assistance. Subsequently, the data was transferred to more suitable software and the task was eventually completed by additional personnel from both the police and the probation service,

The catalogue of dificulties confronted throughout the life of the project and its subsequent redefinition amply illustrate the crucial role of funds for the implementation of crime prevention strategies. I t highlights some of the problems associated with a self-financing philosophy (a problem that Home Office ‘demonstration’ projects rarely face). Further, it illustrates the point that the level and continuation of commitment by the private sector in crime prevention funding is subject to fluctuations in the local economy. The recession which affected the local economy particularly harshly (especially between 1990 and 1993) made attracting resources and investments extremely problematic.

Community Ownership

The final aim of the Tenmouth Project was ‘community ownership’. Underpinning both the Kirkholt and Tenmouth Projects was the idea that the community was to become custodian of the work initiated by the seconded workers:

It has been important to remind ourselves of the basic decision that having nurtured the fledgling initiative, the statutory agencies will require it to take wings

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on its own . . . community ownership of the srheme, and its further development, is the outcome to which we aspirc. (Forrcster el al. 1988, p. 29)

‘I’he Tenmouth Report claimed that the Kirkholt Project had ‘highlighted the importance of giving back to the community its ability to deal with crime’. This idea was central to the Tenmouth initiative where reference was frequently made to the project being ‘handed over to the community’ when the work of the seconded officers was completed. However, the conception of ‘community involvement’ implicit within the project is a n example of what Kosenbaum ( 1987) refers to as an ‘implant’ approach to crime prevention, whereby a set of mechanisms are implanted into the local social environment. This was colourfully recognised by a senior police oficcr on the project who, on reflecting on the lack of policy implementation, identified a tension between transferring a set of mechanisms into an area and the expectations that the community will take over responsibility and ownership of those pre-ordained structures:

‘But when you talk about community, people smile and it’s a nice sort of friendly thing, but if you ,just leave it [the project] out thcrc iri the community it just withers away and dies. You need someone to pour some water on it and fertilise it. But not own it! That is the great difficulty with Neighbourhood Watch that the police, to promote it, have tried to own i t too much, and now we are having to withdraw our owncrship of i t because we don’t have the resourccs and it’s withering. . . We need to water and fertilise it [thc project] in a way which doesn’t deplete our resources but allows i t to blossom out there in the community’.

There was, however, little community involvement during the life of the project, largely because the technical parameters of the project had already tieen set by Kirkholt. T h e agency personnel openly acknowledged the limited nature of community representation on the steering committee and that those representatives co-opted onto the committee had a negligible role to play. ’I‘hc seconded police officer noted:

‘There isn’t anything for them to do. We are collecting the data, and we are now analysing the data. I think when the results are published and it is decided what sort of course of action to take as far as putting measures into effect, then they will come into their own. I suppose that it’s a bit unfair on them to say: “Well, just sit back for nine months or whatever i t is, and we’ll call on you again”. But I think that that is just the way i t is’.

T h e community representatives were largely excluded from the real decision-making process (see Crawford and Jones 1995, p. 26). They were riot privy to the decision to change the project which was taken privately and informally by the senior representatives from the police and the probation service. ’The attendance of the community representatives a t the steering group gradually declined during the period when the seconded officers were involved in the collection and analysis of the research until there was only one person from the community regularly attending steering group meetings. There were varied reasons for this. One of the representatives took a lengthy holiday, another found difficulty managing their involvement with their work commitments, whilst one stopped attending (and later left the project permanently) because she

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found the meetings ‘boring. Several of the representatives recognised that their role had not been central, as one of the representatives remarked:

‘The workers are the ones that know what is what . . . The community has had a very limited role so far, we are there, we are listening . . . In so far as the drawing up of the report is concerned, the workers did that, put the facts together’.

Appeals to community, like those expressed throughout the Tenmouth Project, presuppose that communities have an inherent capacity to mobilise their own resources of social control. As such, community initiatives often have come to be seen in economic terms, as potentially cheaper alternatives to existing state institutions. In many senses the community has been promoted as a source of resources to which the responsibility for aspects of crime control can be devolved.

This notion of community as a resource reaffirms a self-financing philosophy underlying interventions. Communities are being asked to help themselves in the prevention of crime, although the nature of the resources communities have at their disposal and, indeed, what actually constitutes ‘community’, are rarely articulated. This approach gives a pivotal role to private business, voluntary bodies and ‘active citizens’. As with responsibility, so the burden for failure is shifted. I t presumes that all the necessary resources for successful crime prevention pre-exist within the community and only need to be harnessed. I t presupposes that these resources will be given willingly and freely, but ignores, as our research illustrates ‘the fact that the cost of tapping resources can considerably exceed the value of the benefits received’ (Association of Metropolitan Authorities 1990, p. 19). Implicit in this is a failure to recognise that some communities are more capable of tapping resources and informal community control than others. More importantly, those communities with the most severe crime problems are most likely, not only to have less resources at their disposal, but also, to lack even the most elementary social structures, upon which community crime prevention seeks to build. The research on Neighbourhood Watch has time and again exposed this dilemma, that community responses to crime are easier to generate in exactly those areas where they are least needed and hardest to establish in those where they are most needed (Rosenbaum 1987).

Conclusions

In this paper, we hope to have demonstrated that the evaluation of crime prevention initiatives is plagued by more than just the success or failure of policy and/or its implementation. The paucity of knowledge about the transferability of crime prevention initiatives across social, cultural, spatial and temporal contexts leaves us with little challenge to a dominant framework which: (i) prioritises the physical and the tangible; (ii) emphasises an ‘implant approach’ to crime prevention; (iii) prioritises outcome evaluation at the expense of the evaluation of social processes, and (iv) emphasises a short-term project orientation rather than a longer-term strategic approach to crime prevention. As a consequence certain types of

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intervention are marginalised while a straight-jacket is imposed upon what is perceived to be ‘appropriate’ dofinitions of locality, types of crime, evaluation and ‘success’.

O u r research illustrates the pivotal role of resources, both human and material, for the implementation of crime prevention strategies. A self- financingphilosophy-as promoted by thegovernment-which is predicated upon the private commercial sector or ‘communities’ as the providers of such resources, fails to acknowlrdge the differential means and capabilities of certain communities, groups and organisations and the legitimate cxpectations as to the state’s responsibility in the field of communal/ personal safety and crime control.

By abstracting crime prevention projects from their spccific social circumstances we are in danger of rcifying crime prevention to the level of a false science. I n the quest for quick technological fixes we have become Minded to the complex social relations which are embedded in, and help determine the direction of, a given crime prevention initiative. As we hope we have made clear, this is not to suggest that we can learn nothing from past experirnccs, in the name of relativism, but to argue that to better understand why certain mechanisms and processes are more effectivc and more valuable within given contexts we need to be sensitive to the nature of those circumstances and evaluate them accordingly.

Notes

’ We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Ruth Goatly and Judy Heather throughout the research process and their valuable input into discussions regarding the fieldwork findings. Further, we would like to thank Nick Tilley, Susan Flint and Ian Brownlee for their many helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This leads to a related failure to emphasise the importance of qualitative research in monitoring and evaluation. It is only in their conclusions that Pawson and Tilley (1994) allude to the fact that mechanisms may be analysed on different levels by reference to ‘policy, project, or practice’ (p. 305). Both of these are identified by ‘l3lley (1993b) as constituting two of the ten essential attributes of the original Kirkholt Project (pp. 3-4). The importance of this observation was reinforced in a recent article in this Journal by James and Bottomley (1994). They state that the conclusions of their research case studies into probation ‘partnerships’ in response to the government’s ‘Tackling Offending’ initiative:

dcmonstratcd that what appear on paper to bc similar inter-agency strategies can be very difkrcnt in practicc, making hazardous any assessment of inter-agency work on the basis of documentary evidence alonc. (p. 165)

The name of the project is fictional in order to preserve the confidentiality of those involved in the project as agreed at the outset of the research. Hence, whilst references are made to the Tenmouth report in the article i t is not to be found documented in the ‘Reference’ section. ’ This is particularly pertinent given that the burglary rate, prior to the upgrading of household security, on the Kirkholt estate was so high. During the

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first five months of 1985 recorded domestic burglaries on the estate were equivalent to an annual rate of 24.6%, over double the average rate of all burglaries (both reported and unreported) for high-risk areas in the 1984 British Crime Survey (Pease 1992, p. 224; SNU 1993, p. 75). In addition, we know that 49% of the burglaries on the estate involved the loss of money from prepayment meters. ’ South Tenmouth has the highest ethnic minority population in the county. Whilst 4% of the county residents are from ethnic minority groups, the figure rises to 20% in South Tenmouth. Half of that population is of Pakistani origin, with significant numbers of Indian and African-Caribbean people living in the area. ‘’ The rate of burglary on Kirkholt fell to 40% of its pre-initiative level within five months of the start of the programme without any obvious displacement (Forrester et al. 1990, p. 4).

’(’ This lack of clarity has led some commentators to refine classifications of crime prevention mechanisms principally in terms of the way in which they are supposed to have a preventive effect and their intended impact on crime (Ekblom 1994, p. 190). However, this approach vests considerable power in decisions about what should ‘count’; that which is included or excluded as relevant in the process. These are essentially political choices and the danger, once again, is that physical and situational approaches, by default, will be given priority.

I ’ Although, representatives of both agencies claimed that it had influenced organisational policy-making.

l2 Elsewhere we have emphasised this distinction by reference to multi-agency relations as representing ‘accommodating’ and inter-agency relations as representing ‘innovative’ structures (Crawford and Jones 1993).

I” The project was initially awarded a ‘pump-priming’ grant of E3,000 from the local probation charity. This was used to print the questionnaires and to pay for day-to-day costs such as the telephone and electricity. Including funds from the district council, the Police Property Act Fund and a grant from the county council of nearly E3,500.

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Date submitted: September 94 Date accepted: November 94

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