Abstract
Over the past decades, the much-debated ‘punitive turn’ has substantially transformed the field of crime policy. However, a simultaneous ‘preventative turn’ has changed the role of the state at least as fundamentally. A case study of Dutch crime policy shows how prevention both complements and contradicts the classic judicial approach under the rule of law. Not the judge and judicial apparatus, but the executive power is pivotal in the approach to crime. Not the legal order, but the public order is the central concern. And not the delinquent, but society as a whole and especially the potential delinquent are the objects of intervention. Prevention may be a logical answer to the crime and security issues of late-modern societies, but it also comes at a price. We are developing towards a ‘guided society’, in which citizens have nothing to fear as long as they have nothing to hide – that is, as long as they do not pose an increased risk.
Introduction: The preventative turn
In 2010, the Dutch Ministry of Justice changed its name. The more than 200-year-old Ministry adopted ‘security’ in its title to become the Ministry of Security and Justice. This is more than a semantic issue and reflects a fundamental shift in the way the Dutch government approaches issues of crime. The name change marked the end of a 30-year development during which prevention of crime and insecurity slowly became a core task of the government next to its classic task of justice administration. As I will argue below, ‘security’ in many ways implies an administrative-preventative approach to issues of crime and other (potential) disturbances of the public order. The current Ministry of Security and Justice houses two souls in one body: two souls that sometimes complement each other, but also have opposing values. Prevention may have many virtues, but also comes at a price. It transforms the role of the state in such a way that it threatens several core values of the liberal-constitutional state.
The Netherlands is, of course, not the only country to have adopted new strategies in crime control. In criminological debates, emphasis is placed on the ‘punitive turn’ that took place in many western countries during the last 25 years of the 20th century (e.g. Downes and Van Swaaningen, 2007; Feeley and Simon, 1992; Garland, 2006 [2001]). This development is characterised by three trends (see Bell, 2010; Carrier, 2010). First, the punitive turn refers to the expansion of incarceration since the 1970s, especially in the United States but elsewhere as well (e.g. Phelps, 2012; Pratt, 2008; Tham, 2001; Van Swaaningen, 2005). Increased incarceration forms a core element of contemporary crime control. Simultaneously, the rehabilitative ideal has declined, transforming ‘correctional’ institutions into ‘warehouse’ facilities (Garland, 2006 [2001]; Irwin, 2005; Wacquant, 2001) – even though many authors argue that the political rhetoric of retribution does not automatically imply a parallel shift away from rehabilitation in everyday practice (Cheliotis, 2006; Phelps, 2011).
Second, the punitive repertoire expanded beyond classical incarceration to include such practices as mandatory sentences and three-strikes laws, the use of the death penalty, supermax prisons, indefinite detention, sex offender registries and community notification laws, boot camps and zero-tolerance policing strategies (Comack and Silver, 2008: 816; Garland, 2006 [2001]). This expanded repertoire transcends prison walls and leads to stricter forms of crime control in the public domain (see Cohen, 2001 [1985]).
And third, the punitive turn is both characterised and triggered by ‘penal populism’ (Mascini and Houtman, 2011; Pratt, 2007). Public concerns about crime and victimisation are translated in ‘get tough’ crime control strategies, a political ‘zero tolerance’ attitude and an increased publicity of penalties, turning them ‘into a symbolic spectacle of reassurance and vengeance for an onlooking public, humiliation and debasement for its criminal recipients’ (Pratt, 2007: 40). This expressive attitude towards crime – or: the politicisation of crime control – coincides with the centrality of the victim in public discourse (Boutellier, 2005 [2002]).
I will argue that the well-documented punitive turn is only half of the story. The very same period is also characterised by a similarly important, but fundamentally different development. In a perhaps less dramatic and less visible way, a ‘preventative turn’ has transformed political reality at least as substantially as the punitive turn has. Garland’s (2006 [2001]) ‘culture of control’ does not merely coincide with an increase in punitive activity, but control practices also extend to, for instance, the preventative monitoring of risk citizens and pro-active policing in the public domain. A ‘culture of fear’ (e.g. Simon, 2007) may spark punitive tendencies, but does not limit itself to the convicted criminals. Rather, it transcends the judicial paradigm with its focus on the attribution of individual guilt and triggers state interventionism into all phenomena considered a potential threat to public order (see Cohen, 2001 [1985]; Foucault, 1979 [1975]; Garland, 2006 [2001]). Opposing the punitive turn and the preventative turn serves the analytic purpose of highlighting the specific rationale and logic of preventative policies. In reality, prevention and punishment are far from opposites. Both strategies often merge or complement each other. For instance, rehabilitation or welfare-based approaches to delinquents have left their mark on imprisonment as well as on preventative policies (Donoghue, 2013: 805; see also Kemshall, 2003; O’Malley, 2010).
Much has been said about crime prevention and security over the last decades from both criminological and sociological perspectives (e.g. Boutellier, 2005 [2002]; Ericson, 1997; Garland, 2006 [2001]; Kemshall, 2003; O’Malley, 1998, 2010; Schinkel, 2011; Schuilenburg, 2012; Sherman et al., 2002; Terpstra, 2010; Van Dijk et al., 2009; Welsh and Farrington, 2006; Zedner, 2007). There is a vast body of literature on the ‘strategies and measures that seek to reduce the risk of crime occurring, and their potential harmful effects on individuals and society, including fear of crime, by intervening to influence their multiple causes’ (Van Dijk et al., 2009: 169).
However, there is little analysis on the implications of preventative policies on a more general political-philosophical level. Prevention is not only an interesting sociological phenomenon or a specific crime control strategy, it is also an instrument of the state and thereby a relevant factor in the shaping of our contemporary political reality. Public authorities are important actors in the formulation and implementation of preventative practices, but these practices simultaneously transform the role of these authorities. This article aims to outline the consequences of the preventative turn for our understanding of the state in its penal capacity.
A political-philosophical perspective on crime prevention enables an analysis of changes in the range and depth of state interventions (see Finer, 1997). The state is not a unitary actor, but comprised of a large variety of institutions which promote a large variety of values. By talking about ‘the state’ as an abstract entity we risk losing sight of this variety. However, by not taking into account a notion of the state, we might lose sight of the way politics and public authorities shape our political reality.
With his notion of ‘governmentality’, Foucault (2007 [2004]) provided a useful frame to study the specific values by which public authorities are infused and the strategies through which they seek to realise these values (see also Burchell et al., 1991; Dean, 1999, 2007). A study of the state should not focus on the level of formal sovereignty, but on the level of the ‘general management of society’ (Foucault, 2007 [2004]: 105) and on the authorities and agencies that define and deploy binding rules and interventions (2007 [2004]: 108). Foucault himself focused on the way social institutions discipline the behaviour of their objects – such as families, factories, schools, mental hospitals and prisons. However, Deleuze (1992) stated that these strategies of discipline are not limited to enclosed social institutions. He suggested we have entered a ‘society of control’, in which all (in)dividuals are subject to permanent surveillance and modulation of their behaviour.
This notion of ‘control’ has been further developed in criminology by authors such as Garland (2006 [2001]) and Rose (1999, 2000), who focus on the way governments seek to protect society against dangerous elements. The punitive and the preventative turn in crime policy can, at least analytically, be understood as the two faces of social control: the former seeking to isolate criminals from society in order to execute some form of retribution, whereas the latter seeks to manage individual behaviour and social relations before any infraction of social order has occurred (see Black, 2002: 20; Pierson, 2004: 75; Rose, 1999: 4, 2000: 323).
This article presents an analysis of the way the preventative turn has changed the role of the state in its penal capacity. Put differently, this article offers a case study of merely one of the domains in which the ‘preventive gaze’ has left its mark on the role of the late-modern state (Peeters, 2013). A case study enables a detailed and longitudinal empirical analysis of the transformative force of prevention in practice. This article focuses on the rise of crime prevention in Dutch crime policy between 1980 and 2010. Before presenting the case, I shall provide a short analysis of the social and political context in which the preventative turn has taken place. The article concludes with a summary of the main findings and a discussion of the price of prevention: the preventative turn challenges several core values of the liberal-constitutional state.
The expansive logic of prevention
It is important to point out that prevention is not ‘just’ another policy strategy. Instead, it implies a fundamentally different outlook on social reality. Risks are not perceived as a matter of ‘fate’ or ‘bad luck’, but as undesirable future phenomena that can and should be averted by interventions in the present (Stone, 2002 [1988]: 200). Prevention has become a dominant strategy in late-modern societies for dealing with various types of risks – crime being merely one of them (e.g. Bauman, 2000; Beck, 1986; Beck et al., 1994; Bernstein, 1998 [1996]; De Mul, 2006; Ericson and Doyle, 2003; Giddens, 2009 [1990]; Schinkel, 2007). It is the silent force behind many transformations in our understanding of the state, ranging from domains of public health, welfare and youth to domains of infrastructure, warfare and terrorism (Kortleven, 2013; Peeters, 2013). The rise of prevention can be traced back to several structural social and political developments since the last quarter of the 20th century.
What sets late-modern societies apart from modern societies is their awareness of the ‘sour fruits of progress’. Whereas modern man was set on subjecting nature to human control and reason, the late-modern man is confronted with man-made risks and with the unintended consequences of his own efforts to realise progress (Ankersmit, 1996; Beck et al., 1994; Frissen, 1999). When Beck (1986: 254) coined the notion of ‘risk society’, he stressed that risks are no longer external to man (such as nature), but products of modernisation. Man becomes victim and culprit at the same time (1986: 50).
This loss of modern optimism (Trommel, 2009) stretches beyond the technological and nuclear issues which Beck originally spoke of. They also concern social relations: modern societies have become individualised and globalised, and morally and culturally fragmented (Bauman, 2000; Boutellier, 2011). Social control and order are not self-evident anymore, but need to be constructed in a complex and dynamic context. Compliance to laws and authorities is also not self-evident, but needs to be enforced on a daily basis.
Moreover, late-modern societies are not only characterised by the emergence of a new type of risk, but also by the rise of a new sense of vulnerability and sensibility towards risk and uncertainty. Perhaps precisely due to unprecedented levels of security in the western world, we have become sensitive to violations and threats to our security – a classic example of Wildavsky’s (1977) adage ‘doing better, feeling worse’.
Despite these transformations, late-modernity is still very much a progression of the modernist belief in the human abilities to ‘domesticate fate’ (De Mul, 2006) and to ‘colonise the future’ (Giddens, 1991: 111). Prevention implies a belief in the ability to foresee and avert unwanted future scenarios. We may have lost the sense of modern optimism, but we have not lost the modern governing principles (Trommel, 2009).
Transformations in the realm of politics provide further triggers for new forms of government interventionism. Of special importance here is the way authority is constructed in contemporary society. Complementary to Weber’s (1972 [1922]) well-known traditional, charismatic and rational-legal authority, scholars have identified the ‘performance’ of politicians and public professionals as a necessary element for gaining authority and legitimacy in contemporary politics and society (e.g. Hajer, 2009; Jansen et al., 2012).
Authority is no longer bestowed upon politicians or public professionals simply because of their formal position and function, but must be acquired through a constant delivery of performance and the monitoring thereof in everyday situations. The quest for ‘performative authority’ triggers teleological politics that aim for social effects. In the context of crime policy, both the punitive and the preventative turn can be seen as expressions of this type of authority, whereas the formal task-orientation of justice administration fits the rational-legal type of authority. In present society, however, social order cannot be realised through criminal law alone.
Our contemporary social and political context provides the perfect conditions for prevention to thrive, but its relevance for the role of the state can be further emphasised by analysing the immanent logic of prevention itself. This logic does not predetermine transformations in the role of the state, but it does provide insight into the way social reality is perceived through a ‘preventive gaze’ (Peeters, 2013). In short: prevention is a boundless, elusive and expansive concept and therefore tends towards an ever more comprehensive, detailed and timely approach to risks.
First, prevention is boundless since a potentially infinite number of phenomena can be relevant objects of intervention. Prevention deals with future probabilities, not with established facts. What exactly counts as a risk is not only open to cognitive (e.g. Koger and Winter, 2010; Slovic et al., 1982; Tversky and Kahneman, 1974), cultural (e.g. Douglas and Wildavsky, 1983 [1982]) and social biases (e.g. Kasperson et al., 1988; Vasterman, 2004), but also to fundamental uncertainty. Some risks may be quantifiable, such as the probability of a major storm occurring, but many risks deal with individual or a limited number of cases. Especially in these last cases, one can only resort to scenario studies or professional judgement. To put it more provocatively: the limits of prevention are constituted by the limits of imagination. In order to rule out every risk, one has to heed every imaginable scenario. Prevention is often propagated by means of backward reasoning, but preventative practices are implemented through forward reasoning. This confronts authorities with an unlimited number of possible futures.
Second, prevention is elusive. In the case of quantifiable risks, such as crime statistics, one can roughly evaluate prevention by measuring the differences between the situation before and after preventative measures have been taken. However, when designing preventative measures, there is in principle no criterion to decide how much should be done: one can never know whether one is doing enough to prevent a hazard from occurring. Even after a hazard has occurred, one is still left with the question of how much more action would have been necessary to have prevented it, and whether such action would have been within the bounds of ‘reasonable’ behaviour. (Ravetz, 1980: 47, emphasis in original)
Third and finally, prevention has an expansive logic: ‘the sooner, the better’. The effectiveness of preventative interventions increases as measures can be taken in an early stage of risk development. This immanent characteristic of prevention leans towards an ever more timely approach to risks. As a consequence, preventative policies often imply early detection and early warning of risks: surveillance, monitoring and screening are necessary preconditions for effective prevention. And in personalised preventative measures, such as the prevention of juvenile delinquency, adolescents and children become the logical object of intervention. Early childhood development programmes seek to promote children’s well-being and prevent undesirable lifestyles.
Dutch crime policy: 1981–2011
Research design
The following empirical account of developments in Dutch crime policy between 1977 and 2011 serves as an exemplary case for the understanding the consequences of the preventative turn. Even though the Netherlands has its own specific pragmatic political cultural and its own specific interpretations of crime prevention, the literature suggests that developments in Western European nations are highly comparable (Van Dijk and De Waard, 2009: 130; see also Boutellier, 2011: 87; Garland, 2006 [2001]; Huster and Rudolph, 2008; Krasmann, 2007).
The case study is based on an extensive study of the Dutch central government’s crime policy memoranda, the annual Queen’s speeches at the opening of the parliamentary year, the Government Declarations of Policy on Taking Office, 1 and the various coalition agreements 2 (Peeters, 2013). In total, some 100 policy memoranda and documents were selected for analysis. In order to show the differences in crime policy before and after the introduction of prevention, the longitudinal study goes back to the point in time right before prevention made its entry in Dutch crime policy. For analytical purposes, the following policy genealogy is divided into four periods: pre-1985; 1985–1992; 1993–2001 and 2002–2011.
Documents were analysed at the level of the government’s ‘definition power’ (the capability to determine political problem definitions and the state’s role and responsibility) and at the level of the government’s ‘intervention power’ (the capability to determine the nature of state interventions, to organise power resources and agencies and to select the relevant objects of intervention). The following account thus covers both the justification and limitation of the role of the state (Gribnau, 2009) as well as the range and depth of actual state interventions (Finer, 1997). Detailed insight into the practices of professionals and agencies involved in crime prevention falls outside the scope of this article. The focus lies on structure, not agency (Giddens, 1984).
Crime policy and the classic rule of law (pre-1985)
Roughly speaking, crime policy in the Netherlands before the 1980s consisted of gathering crime statistics, managing the capacity of the police, public prosecutor, courts and custodial institutions, and setting priorities in law enforcement. Put differently: ‘The activities of the judicial system were directed at arresting and judging the largest possible number of criminals’ (Van Ruller, 1999: 19; translation RP). Crime policy was the nearly autonomous domain of police and justice (see Coalition Agreement (CA), 1977: 90). However, local police forces were experimenting since the late 1970s with forms of situational crime prevention. It would take some political turmoil, however, for this new strategy to spill over to policy and politics and really gain momentum.
Pre-1984 national crime policy in the Netherlands was still firmly rooted in the rational-legal paradigm. The state’s responsibility was to protect citizens against infringements on life, liberty and property by fellow citizens (see Locke, 2003 [1689]: 271). This responsibility is of a legal and reactive nature: it is legally attributed to public authorities, it requires that breaches of the public order are legally defined and states that no one can be punished or be made to suffer except for a breach of law proved in court (Dicey, 1959 [1885]; Zouridis, 2009). Moreover, the rule of law does not aim to understand or explain crime as a social phenomenon. It is only interested in the attribution of individual guilt (‘mens rea’) (e.g. Tebbit, 2000: 129).
Since the late 1970s, however, political concerns about rising crime figures had been growing. Petty crime figures had risen dramatically: from 130,000 registered crimes in 1960 to over 1,000,000 in 1984. 3 In response, the government ordered a study into the possibilities of more preventative strategies. This study would eventually lead to the 1985 policy memorandum Society and Crime, which introduced prevention as a complementary strategy next to police work and justice administration (Brizée, 1985). At stake were ‘growing disturbance amongst the population concerning rising crime figures, the imminent diminishing of the people’s trust in government’s role as protector of personal and collective interests, and the imminent decay in citizen norm compliance and social control’ (SC, 1985: 13). 4
Pre-crime government intervention implies a ‘temporal shift’ from the traditional judicial reaction repertoire (Zedner, 2007). Prevention transforms the administration of justice into a last resort for the cases in which prevention fails. The analytical distinction between serious crimes and petty crimes, such as vandalism, bicycle theft and shoplifting was characteristic of this preventative turn (Christophe and Clement, 1988: 23). The former remained the more or less exclusive domain of police and justice, but the latter became subject to administrative prevention.
Petty crime and the preventative turn (1985–1992)
The overburdening of the justice administration apparatus caused by the massive increase in petty crime urged the government to rethink its existing approach to law enforcement: ‘Nothing less than the credibility of the democratic and social constitutional state is at stake’ (EL, 1990: 52). 5 In its reorientation, the government came to perceive crime as a societal instead of a merely legal phenomenon. Attention shifted to the causes of crime, which the government sought in increased wealth (which led to an increase of commodities as potential targets of vandalism and theft), but mainly in the individualisation of society.
Social control and ‘respect for law, police and judge declined. Compliance with legal norms and sentences was no longer an elementary legal duty for many citizens, but instead a behavioural option to be assessed through pragmatic pros and cons’ (EL, 1990: 7). In the more traditional society of the past, there were far fewer possibilities for deviant behaviour and crime (EL, 1990: 5). However, the current ‘more selfish and non-conformist society’ (IPSC, 1987: 15–17) 6 was more vulnerable to crime. Previously held rational-legal assumptions that people will abide by the law simply because a violation of the law constituted a punishable act or because the threat of severe punishment outweighed the benefits of criminal behaviour had to be rejected.
According to the government, prevention could only work if it was perceived as a ‘shared responsibility’ (SC, 1985: 37) between public authorities and society. Society is as much part of the solution as it is part of the problem and, therefore, needs to be strongly involved in preventing crime (SC, 1985: 36). Citizens are called upon to abide by the law, but also to take their responsibility in the technical prevention of their property and in the enforcement of social norms in their direct living environment.
As a consequence, prevention makes society as a whole the object of political concern and state intervention. Both ‘citizens for whom the compliance with legal norms is more or less natural and citizens who belong to the group of potential or incidental perpetrators’ (SC, 1985: 36) were relevant for the government. Also contrary to the traditional judicial approach is the fact that prevention turns crime into an administrative instead of merely a legal issue. Especially mayors, who are responsible for public order, have a ‘pivotal role’ (SC, 1985: 49) in crime prevention.
Simply doing more of the same will result in substantial financial sacrifices without any guarantee of success (SC, 1985: 35). Therefore, the government introduced administrative prevention in response to the negative consequences of a society that was becoming more complex and more anonymous (EL, 1990: 4). The new preventative strategy included technical prevention (locks, door furniture and alarms to protect property), the redesign of the built-up environment (squares, public parks, apartment blocks) to reduce opportunities for criminal behaviour and increased police and functional surveillance to compensate for the decrease in social control.
Personalised prevention: The people behind petty crime (1993–2001)
Instead of calling upon society to turn back or undo the negative effects of individualisation and other structural societal developments, the Dutch government took on a more active role in the prevention of crime during the 1990s. Local authorities mostly carried out the first wave of crime prevention, but central government support became necessary once prevention turned towards the more structural causes of crime (Van Swaaningen, 2005: 290). Instead of mere situational crime prevention, the government started to focus on the people behind petty crime and the neighbourhoods they live in.
Target groups consist of people with a statistically higher chance of delinquent behaviour, mainly habitual or repeat offenders (CC, 2001: 10), 7 adolescents, younger generations of cultural minorities, and drug addicts (SR, 1993: 64; SP, 1995: 15; SP, 1995: 19). 8 Structurally preventing crime was seen as a matter of reintegrating offenders into society and preventing potential offenders from sliding off into a criminal career.
The breeding ground for criminal behaviour was, according to the government, ‘the concentration of social problems such as unemployment, dropping out, one-parent families, pollution and littering in the public domain, addiction and crime in certain metropolitan neighbourhoods’ (LES, 1996: 18). 9 Especially children and adolescents were seen as the beating heart of these new urban problems (LES, 1996: 18). As a consequence, crime prevention started to develop a strong link with welfare policies.
Risk and at-risk adolescents became the logical object of preventative intervention: ‘More so than adults, adolescents are susceptible to behavioural interventions. The earlier interventions against signs of criminal behaviour take place, the greater the chance of success’ (JD, 1995: 6). 10 Early detection and early intervention can help prevent problems at a later age. Personalised approaches were developed, which included parenting support, language education for poorly integrated minorities, supporting drop-outs, fighting school absence and providing information on the dangers of alcohol, drugs, vandalism and violence.
This development leads prevention further away from the practices commonly associated with the punitive turn in crime policy. However, the preventative and punitive turn overlap in another strategy: the increase in the visible presence of the police in the streets (CA, 1994: 26; see also CA, 1998: 69) for purposes of law enforcement and prevention of crime through deterrence. The preventative element of surveillance is especially stressed by the government: ‘In the presence of surveillants, people feel less inclined to act in an inappropriate way towards fellow-citizens’ (SP, 1995: 29).
These new neighbourhood-level and personalised approaches implied that police, municipality, public prosecutor, correctional facilities, probation office, schools, youth care and welfare work were all acknowledged as relevant actors in the organisation and implementation of prevention. Crime prevention is not limited to a specific task or formal authority, but has many different faces: deterrence through surveillance, reparation of street furniture, reintegration programmes in detention to prevent recidivism, early detection of school absenteeism, family support for parents with problem adolescents and so on. Social approaches are as much relevant for crime policy as surveillance and law enforcement are.
Without prevention, ‘the judicial apparatus will remain the dumping-ground of social issues in the welfare state’ (LES, 1996: 20). Therefore: ‘Crime control starts with prevention’ (CC, 2001: 2). This more focused and more timely intervention repertoire is a logical progression of the preventative approach to petty crime: instead of merely ‘stopping’ individual criminal acts by means of surveillance, technical prevention and redesigning the built-up environment, the government now seeks to tackle the perceived structural social causes of crime. These causes are found in the characteristics of problematic neighbourhoods and individuals with a higher risk of showing criminal behaviour in the future. The new preventative repertoire operates in closer proximity to citizens and aims at intervening as soon as possible.
Prevention in the security paradigm (2002–2011)
Security Starts with Prevention – the title of this 2007 policy memorandum captures the spirit of crime policy in the new millennium. The notion of ‘security’ had been lurking in the shadows during the 1990s, but became the dominant policy paradigm as of 2002. Back in 1985, prevention had transformed crime from a strictly legal issue into a societal issue. Now, the security paradigm broadens the preventative scope from the legally limited notion of crime to a potentially infinite number of (subjectively identified) threats to public order: ‘Security can be defined as the presence of a certain order and peace in the public domain and as the protection of life, health and property against acute or potential infractions’ (ISP, 1999: 9). 11
A crime can be seen as an individual incident. Security, however, relates to a more structural characteristic of specific areas in the public domain. Security is a ‘status’, crime is an individual act. Moreover, ‘security’ moves away even further from the legal paradigm. Crime is but one of the relevant factors for a state of security – others include nuisance, degradation of the living environment, and subjective feelings of security among the general public. The Dutch government set out to make society more secure – both in objective figures as in the subjective feelings of citizens (TSS, 2002: 7). 12 Concerns for the public order rather than the legal order fuel government policy and justify state interventions. The government aimed to ‘protect society’ (TSS, 2002: 32) and ‘reclaim the public domain’ (TSS, 2002: 18).
Prevention and security share a conceptual affinity. They constitute a ‘Wahlverwandtschaft’ or ‘elected affinity’ (Weber, 2006 [1904/1905]). They complement and reinforce each other. First of all, both notions are ‘semantic dragnets’ (Boutellier, 2005 [2002]), which can be applied to a potentially infinite number of phenomena. Moreover, security already implies, among other things, the absence of crime. Crime prevention forms the core of any ambition to improve security. Simultaneously, security expands the range of preventative activities. Furthermore, security also provides a semantic device for more punishment-oriented approaches to crime. In many ways, ‘security’ enables a conceptual merger between preventative and punitive rationales. The punitive and preventative turn both have a place in the security paradigm.
More than before, the government made ‘risks’ the explicit objects of state intervention in the security paradigm. Risk citizens, especially habitual offenders and problem adolescents, are the designated objects of personalised approaches to prevent future deviant behaviour. Risky places, such as train stations or problematic neighbourhoods, and risky times, such as nights out, are the focal point for increased surveillance and law enforcement efforts. And risk factors, such as drugs, alcohol and other ‘catalyst[s] for aggressive behaviour’ (SSP, 2007: 5; 8–9), 13 are the object of disincentive policies.
Risk citizens form the object of personalised approaches (SSP, 2007: 2). With regard to habitual offenders, the government’s ambition was to ‘arrest this group earlier, detain them longer and create services to decrease recidivism’ (TSS, 2002: 5). Specifically for the prevention of recidivism, special penitentiary institutions for the rehabilitation of very active habitual offenders were established. Here, the prevention perspective is intertwined with a punitive perspective: punishment is used as a preventative tool. And with regard to at-risk adolescents who threaten to slide off into a criminal career, the government aimed to intervene ‘as early as possible’ (SSP, 2007: 2), since this offers the greatest chance of behavioural change. Here, the prevention perspective and the welfare perspective are intertwined: care is used as a preventative tool. The government sums up this strategy as follows: Early interventions, at the moment when [adolescents] are still susceptible, are important from a pedagogical point of view. This concerns the broad target group of adolescents, both Dutch native and cultural minorities, as well as those adolescents who have just begun to commit criminal offences such as vandalism, scooter-, bicycle- and cell phone theft, intimidation, annoyance, et cetera. […] But this also concerns adolescents who are driven towards crime and are in need of help. In all these cases, we are dealing with adolescents who are probably at the start of a criminal career if we do not intervene. Absenteeism (and, as a consequence, a low level of educational attainment) is an important risk factor. An accumulation of risk factors, such as a poor family situation and a lagging emotional development, increases the chance of an adolescent running into trouble, or sliding downhill even further. This way, they can become the habitual offenders of the future. (TSS, 2002: 15)
Based on indications of risks in the development of a child, a broad range of interventions is available: For every specific situation, the most appropriate strategy is determined. Examples are family support for parents, mentor programmes on a voluntary basis in secondary education, preventing language arrears, preventing early school leaving, supporting adolescents to earn a relevant diploma for the labour market, labour market mediation, living under supervision for adolescents living alone, and boarding school-like services which offer corrective programmes. (TSS, 2002: 42)
In the public domain, the government focused on places and times with an increased risk of crime, violence and annoyance, such as train stations, bar districts, shopping centres, areas around coffee shops, places where adolescents loiter, et cetera. The object of intervention is citizens’ direct living environment: ‘The street, the neighbourhood, the district are, beside the direct environments of home and work, the social environments in which we live every day’ (CA, 2007: 24). Besides stricter law enforcement, efforts consisted of increased surveillance and increased competences of the executive branch (TSS, 2002: 34).
The mayor became increasingly important for the state’s activities in the public domain. This indicates a shift in the balance of power in the government’s approach to crime: whereas the judicial power is dominant under the rule of law paradigm, the executive branch has primacy in preventative policies. A mayor’s responsibility to uphold the public order is not a punitive competence, but a preventative or restorative competence (NGB, 2010: 9). Mayors can appoint ‘urgency areas’ (TSS, 2002: 35–36) in problematic neighbourhoods with a high risk of crime and degradation. There, public authorities have more discretionary powers to improve security without prior judicial involvement, such as:
Stop and search/‘preventative frisking’ (article 151b Municipalities Act 1992): since 2002, the police may carry out searches of persons and vehicles for weapons (guns, pepper spray, knuckledusters) or illegal substances without a specific cause or suspicion. CCTV-surveillance (article 151c Municipalities Act 1992): even though already a longer standing practice, mayors have a legal basis for CCTV-surveillance since 2006. In principle, installing cameras is intended as a preventative measure and not as a tool for criminal investigation (NGB, 2010: 27). Administrative custody (articles 154a and 176a Municipalities Act 1992): since 2000, mayors have the authority to – under legal conditions – order the preventative custody of persons for a maximum of 12 hours. This competence is aimed at keeping (groups of) troublemakers away from large manifestations (such as demonstrations) or events (such as football matches). Preventing hooliganism and severe annoyance (articles 172a and 172b Municipalities Act 1992): since 2010, mayors have additional means to prevent expected violence or annoyance by known troublemakers (such as football hooligans, drug addicts and problem adolescents). These means include an ‘area ban’ for a minimum of 24 hours and a maximum of nine months to bar individuals from certain places (such as bar districts, tube stations or football stadiums on match days), the possibility to forbid public gatherings for specific individuals, and a ban to bar children under the age of 12 from certain areas without parental guidance (NGB, 2010: 32–34). Temporary restraining order: since 2008, mayors may deny a person access to their own house for a maximum of four weeks in case of a clear and serious risk of repeated domestic violence (NGB, 2010: 45).
At first sight, the punitive and preventative turn have a strong overlap in these interventions, which combine surveillance and pre-crime policing. Upon closer inspection, however, the motivation for the government to introduce these measures is largely preventative: they either aim to prevent disturbances of the public order or aim to prevent further criminal or otherwise undesirable behaviour.
Conclusion and discussion: Why prevention is not always better than cure
Since the 1980s, the Dutch government has slowly developed an extensive preventative repertoire to tackle problems of crime, security, and public order. This has brought about a fundamental shift in the way the state operates in its penal capacity. Not the judge and judicial apparatus, but the executive power forms the core of policy making. Not the legal order, but the public order is the central concern. Not the courthouse, but the public and sometimes even private domain are where the state operates. And not the delinquent, but society as a whole and especially the potential delinquent are the objects of intervention.
The preventative repertoire has two distinct strategies – a negative and a positive one. The former focuses on ‘incapacitation’ or obstructing citizens from showing deviant behaviour. Typical techniques are surveillance (e.g. Bannister, 2005; Vande Walle et al., 2012), actuarial justice (e.g. Feeley and Simon, 1992; Schinkel, 2011), anti-social behaviour measures (e.g. Crawford, 2009), and situational crime prevention (e.g. Cohen, 1979; Sherman et al., 2002). These measures have often been described as part of the ‘punitive turn’ in crime policy (e.g. Garland, 2006 [2001]). However, these ‘punitive’ elements are mostly instrumental to preventative objectives.
The ‘positive’ prevention strategy focuses on ‘capacity building’ or supporting citizens to show desirable behaviour. Typical techniques here are treatment in detention for juvenile delinquents and habitual offenders, early detection of risk adolescents (e.g. Keymolen and Broeders, 2013), and family support programmes (e.g. Welsh and Farrington, 2006). Here, crime prevention often overlaps with welfare policies, albeit that care and support are instrumental to preventative objectives.
The preventative turn has altered the role of the state in the realm of crime and social order as much as the punitive turn has done. Whereas the punitive turn is characterised by punishment and retribution, by a decline of the rehabilitation ideal and by a politicisation of crime control, the preventative turn complements and sometimes contradicts that image with an emphasis on pre-crime policing strategies, the subordination of rehabilitation ideals to the objectives of security and public order, and a politicisation of the public domain by, especially, local authorities.
Over the course of three decades, prevention in Dutch crime policy has followed an expansive path. Crime prevention started off with ‘obstructing’ criminal activities through technical prevention and redesign of the opportunity structure, moved towards intervening on the perceived causes of criminal behaviour through personalised approaches towards risk citizens, and resulted in a broad repertoire to combat all sorts of disturbances to the public order, such as crime, nuisance, degradation of the living environment and subjective feelings of insecurity.
This preventative repertoire has come to complement the traditional legal-reactive approach to crime. But besides being complementary, the rule of law paradigm and the preventative paradigm also have opposite logics and values (see Blad et al., 2011). 14 The classic administration of justice operates within the strict boundaries of criminal law. State interventions are severely limited by law and only justified after a breach of law is proven in court.
The grounds for crime prevention, however, are comparable to the ‘duties of care’ commonly associated with the welfare state: the administrative branch of the state is responsible to deliver a certain performance, without a clearly defined limitation of this responsibility and without a clearly defined end goal. However, crime prevention is a form of ‘unsolicited care’, whereas the welfare state usually comes in the form of ‘social rights’ which citizens can make use of if they so please. The initiative for intervention in crime prevention comes from the state.
This gives crime prevention a strong arbitrary character. It thrives in the discretionary spaces of the rule of law, exemplified by the expansion of executive competences in crime control. Moreover, preventative interventions are justified on the basis of subjective risks: ‘reasonable doubt’ is an argument for, not against intervention. And finally, prevention only finds its limitations in the interventions explicitly reserved for criminal law. Thereby, prevention threatens to become a bypass for the innocence principle in criminal law, for privacy laws and for parental authority. Therefore, we have to find ways to incorporate prevention in a system of checks and balances – for instance by developing a set of rules of thumb for moderation of prevention or by allowing a stricter judicial check on the constitutional nature of preventative interventions.
Prevention is not an outright attack on the constitutional state, but its aim is to render it obsolete. The innocence principle is left intact, but it is ‘preceded’ by a set of regulations designed to ensure that people show self-control in the face of social, financial and lifestyle temptations. You can enjoy freedom as long as you are able to control yourself. You can enjoy privacy (the right to be left alone) as long as you are willing to give full transparency. You can enjoy parental authority as long as you can prove to be a responsible parent. The definition of normality becomes stricter. And the opportunities for deviance are reduced. This is the price of prevention – it is the counter reaction against the negative consequences of freedom. Prevention aims for docility.
A free society requires permanent control and intervention in order to remain orderly, as Foucault (2010 [2004]) already pointed out. The reasoning is this: If citizens lack the rationality or willpower to control themselves and if society does not have the proper regulating mechanisms, the state has to step in to make citizens act responsibly. The key challenge for governments is to incorporate concepts and mechanisms of liberty – free choice, responsibility, autonomy – into a scheme of control and capacity building. Prevention is here to stay, given the particular nature of late-modern societies and their problems. In many ways, crime prevention seems to mimic the mechanisms of social control in the less fragmented, less individualistic, and less complex society of decades past. We are developing towards a ‘guided society’, in which citizens have nothing to fear as long as they have nothing to hide – that is, as long as they do not pose an increased risk.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Dr. Ronald Van Steden for his critical comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
