Punishment,protection,and precaution: ‘Project X’ riots and the attitudes towards risk and responsibility in late-modern society

Introduction

On 21 September 2012, heavy riots broke out between youngsters and the police in the small Dutch town of Haren. These incidents followed a so-called ‘Project X party’, initiated by a public Facebook invitation sent out by a local girl for her sixteenth birthday party. Thousands of uninvited youngsters showed up and as the evening progressed the spontaneous party turned ugly with violent riots and vandalism. In the aftermath of the riots, the mayor of Haren was forced to resign, tens of young rioters were prosecuted and convicted, and the public debate challenged the role of both social and traditional media.

The varied and often contradictory ‘blame game’ that followed the riots forms an interesting insight into the attitudes towards risk and responsibility in contemporary risk society in which the response to technological, environmental, and social risks has become a major public and political concern (e.g. Beck, 1986). In order to understand the various interpretations of the ‘Project X’ riots, I turn towards the framework developed by Ewald (2002) and others (e.g. Pieterman, 2008). In his essay ‘The return of Descartes’s malicious demon’, François Ewald aims to outline the current transformation towards a philosophy of precaution and its consequences for security policies. Interestingly, he also describes two earlier historical attitudes towards risk and responsibility, in which individual responsibility and solidarity form the core mechanisms.

Each of these philosophies produces its own set of political responses. Individual responsibility implies accountability for one’s actions. Solidarity calls for protection of the victims of social circumstances. And precaution charges public authorities with the responsibility to prevent future harm. In the following, I will argue that all of these attitudes – and their political consequences – were simultaneously at play in Haren. Moreover, I will propose to use Ewald’s framework as a model for understanding broader trends in contemporary security policies.

In the following, I first discuss the theoretical framework as it was developed by Ewald (2002) and others. Even though many scholars have made substantial contributions to the analysis of risk society, this framework provides one of the most detailed analyses of the changes that have occurred during the last decades. Second, I present a short factual account of the events of 21 September 2012 in Haren. This is followed by the three interpretations of these events through which the people directly involved made sense of what had happened. Ewald’s paradigms are used to analyse these interpretations. Finally, I conclude this paper by summarising and discussing the main findings.

Paradigmatic shifts in risk regulation

Every society has its own way of dealing with risk and danger. The risks we select and the way we regulate them are strongly influenced by cultural bias, as Douglas and Wildavsky argued back in 1982. For instance, our modern attitude towards risks is deeply rooted in a rational worldview, which sets us apart from pre-modern societies: ‘Moderns […] follow a line of reasoning from effects back to material causes, primitives follow a line from misfortune to spiritual beings’ (Douglas, 2005: 3). Even the ancient Greeks turned away from their philosophers and towards their oracles when it came to ‘analysing’ the future (Bernstein, 1998: 17).

Modern societies seek to ‘domesticate fate’, as Dutch philosopher Jos de Mul (2006) puts it. Fate – whether in the form of illness and death or in the form of love and prosperity – is not perceived as an arbitrary phenomenon, nor as an act of divine providence. Instead modern men and women seek to actively control their living environment and to control whatever the future might bring (cf. Giddens, 1991: 111). The 17th-century Enlightenment ushered in an era in which future and probability became the objects of rational analysis. According to Bernstein, ‘[t]he ability to define what may happen in the future and to choose among alternatives lies at the heart of contemporary societies’ (1998: 2). In modern times, ‘fate’ was transformed into ‘risk’, and became the object of analysis, assessment, and regulation.

The modern attitude towards risks allows for the attribution of responsibility and blame (Beck, 1986; Douglas, 2005: 7). The crucial question, then, is what should be done about risks and who is responsible? The answer to this question has also been subject to historical transformations. Several authors have analysed the variations in the modern regulation of risk, especially regarding the issues of crime and security (e.g. Ericson, 1997; Garland, 2001; Schuilenburg, 2012; Sherman et al., 2002; Welsh and Farrington, 2006; Zedner, 2007). Among them is the French philosopher François Ewald, who proposed a distinction between three risk regulation mechanisms. In L’État Providence (1986), he documents the shift from a 19th-century perspective on risk, characterised by individual responsibility, to a 20th-century perspective that stresses solidarity and insurance for dealing with risks outside the control of individuals. The philosophy of individual responsibility, liability, and accountability, which forms the core of criminal law and civil law, assumes that ‘one person cannot transfer to another the burden of what happens to him’ (Ewald, 2002: 274). In accordance with this line of reasoning, the 19th-century night-watchman state refrained from interventions to alleviate the miserable circumstances of the lower classes.

The 20th century saw the rise of the welfare state, which was legitimised by a fundamentally different perspective on risk and responsibility. Suffering from poverty or illness is not one’s own fault but something to be compensated through (compulsory) collective insurance and by spreading the costs of harm. Solidarity was the conceptual key to regulate the risks of the industrial age (Donzelot, 1984) and came to ‘challenge, reform, and replace’ the mechanism of responsibility (Ewald, 2002: 277). This introduces the notion of the victim, which is absent in the paradigm of individual responsibility and accountability. Issues of public hygiene, workplace safety, and social security arose from the idea that every individual could fall victim to the evils of poverty and illness (De Swaan, 1988). Harms are not the product of individual fault, but of social, economic, and hygienic externalities or ‘social facts’ (Ewald, 2002: 280). The protection of (potential) victims was carried out through insurance schemes (loss compensation) and prevention to reduce the probability of accidents and epidemics.

The paradigm of solidarity, however, ‘may be unraveling before our eyes’ (Ewald, 2002: 282). In 1986, Ulrich Beck argued that many risks of late-modern societies are beyond insurance in the sense that they cannot be contained through the mechanisms of the welfare state. Technological and environmental risks (such as pollution and accidents), but also the social risks of individualised and globalised welfare societies (such as security threats and welfare diseases), are beyond the grasp of collective institutions that compensate harm or deprivation. According to Ewald ‘[t]he problem is no longer so much to multiply the responsibility for risk and to organize the solvency of those who are liable through insurance, but rather to prevent certain risks from being taken’ (2002: 296). Prevention is, however, no longer linked to a rational-scientific utopia, but rather to an awareness of fundamental uncertainty. Precaution – contrary to prevention – is not based on the quantifiable probability of a risk, but rather on the fundamental uncertainty if a harm will occur. In this context, the role of knowledge changes: ‘science […] interests us less by producing new knowledge than introducing new doubts’ (Ewald, 2002: 289). Precautionary interventions are justified if there exists a possibility or plausibility – rather than a quantifiable chance – of irreversible and irreparable harm. The responsibility for precaution is often placed in the hands of public authorities, since risks exceed the individual’s responsibility as well as the scientist’s grasp. Precaution is a political and normative matter rather than a rational or objective one.

Ewald’s three paradigms have been taken up and expanded by others, such as Pieterman (2008) and Kortleven (2013). Pieterman (2008) dubs Ewald’s paradigms into a ‘guilt culture’ that emphasises individual responsibility, a ‘risk culture’ that emphasises solidarity, and a ‘precautionary’ culture that emphasises political or system-responsibility. The general purpose of these and other analyses is to stress the way contemporary times differ from previous eras. However, Ewald himself is well aware that the paradigms he discerns should not be treated as separate historical phenomena: ‘We are not concerned with three worlds that succeed each other over time, each replacing another, but rather with three attitudes with regard to uncertainty, assessed and developed at three moments in time’ (2002: 297). I will argue in the following that the paradigms outlined by Ewald and other scholars should indeed be understood as sedimentary layers, existing next to each other or on top of each other. These paradigms are sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory. Ewald’s theoretical framework is, therefore, not only useful for understanding historical transformations, but also for understanding the contemporary ambiguity of social reality and security policies. The Dutch ‘Project X’ riots serve as an exemplary case for this argument.

In September 2012, the town of Haren was the location for a so-called ‘Project X party’, initiated by a public Facebook invitation to a local girl’s sixteenth birthday party. Thousands of youngsters showed up and as the evening progressed the spontaneous party turned ugly with violent riots and vandalism. In the aftermath of the riots (between 19 November 2012 and 16 January 2013), the research team interviewed 61 adolescents who participated in ‘Project X Haren’, 11 parents of adolescents, 14 residents of Haren who were witness to the events, seven local entrepreneurs, and 22 other relevant persons, such as public managers, police officers, civil servants, and other public professionals. This makes a total of 115 interviews. ¹

The interviews had a double purpose. First, we spoke with eyewitnesses or participants in order to make a reliable reconstruction of the events. And second, we asked them how they interpreted what happened and who they thought should be held responsible. ² This way, we were able to reconstruct the societal attitudes and perspectives that shape the public’s and the authorities’ reactions to the riots. The ‘Project X’ case is particularly insightful for societal attitudes towards risk and responsibility since it was a crisis situation, in which people involved cannot fall back on routines, but are challenged to make sense of an unexpected and unprecedented event (e.g. Boin et al., 2005; Weick, 1995; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2007).

‘There is no party’ ³

Haren is a relatively posh, quiet town with barely 19,000 inhabitants. It is located a few kilometres south of the city of Groningen, which has close to 200,000 inhabitants. On Thursday 6 September 2012, 15-year-old Merthe created a Facebook event for her sixteenth birthday party, to be held on 21 September at her parents’ house in Haren. Merthe made it a public event so that the friends she had invited could invite more friends. These public events are not uncommon on Facebook, but this time something unusual happened; within one day, already 3,500 Facebook members had signed up for the party. In the following days, these numbers grew steadily as more and more people invited themselves online for the party and forwarded the invitation to their own friends.

Seeing what was going on, Merthe cancelled her Facebook invitation during the weekend. However, these efforts were in vain, since others had already created two Facebook events to promote the party independently from the original event. One of these event pages provided a new label for the upcoming party: ‘Project X Haren’. This refers to the popular 2012 movie ‘Project X’, which tells the story of a high school student who throws a birthday party while his parents are out for the weekend. The party eventually goes out of control and leads, among other things, to his parents’ house burning down. This movie is inspired by real events in Australia in 2008 and has since 2012 been imitated several times by adolescents in France, England, Germany, Canada, and the US. The concept ‘Project X’ sparks images of a party that is supposed to spiral out of control, that is organised illegally (preferably in a posh neighbourhood), and that defies authorities such as parents and police (Van Dijk et al., 2013). ‘Project X’ represents an inversion of societal roles: it is not the parents and police who are in charge, but the adolescents – a common theme in adolescent movies. It is a ‘collision of two worlds’ (Committee ‘Project X Haren’, 2013: 24).

Back in Haren, on Monday 17 September, around 6000 Facebook users indicated that they would attend the party. The event also triggered the creativity of some users, who made YouTube videos, flyers, t-shirts, and maps locating Merthe’s house to further promote the party. Up till then, attention towards the event had been limited almost completely to the online world – despite a local newspaper’s article on 8 September. However, on 18 September, two young interns of one of the Netherlands’ leading newspapers (‘Trouw’) called the local authorities in Haren for a reaction. The communications officer of the municipality said that a local emergency decree (‘noodverordening’) would always be a possibility if the public order should be at risk. This statement suddenly made the online event newsworthy for a ‘respectable’ newspaper as well.

During 18–19 September, ‘Project X Haren’ spread across virtually all traditional mass media – ranging from local television stations to national broadcasting organisations, and from music radio stations to late-night talk shows. Faced with this media attention and with a rapidly increasing number of Facebook guests, the local authorities were forced to react. On Wednesday 19 September – two days before Merthe’s birthday party – the mayor, local head of police, and district attorney opted to try to keep a low profile. The mayor stated publicly that ‘there is no party here’. Two scenarios were discussed by the local authorities. In the first scenario, nothing significant would happen. The hype would remain confined to the online world. In the second scenario, several groups would come to Haren and possibly cause disturbances of the public order. On 20 September, the municipality stated on its website that no permission would be given for a party. This included local residents’ plans to organise an alternative party just outside the town to divert partygoers away from Merthe’s house and the town centre.

In the meantime, the number of Facebook registrations for the party had increased from 6000 to 30,000 between 17 and 21 September. And by the time the municipality started publicly communicating, the online and offline buzz about a possible alternative party and the excitement about actually realising a ‘Project X’ had reached such proportions that nothing could seem to stop it. Adolescents were curious and excited that ‘something’ might happen in a sleepy town (Van Dijk et al., 2013: 51).

On the day of the party, youngsters started arriving in Haren early in the afternoon. They came by train (Haren has a train station at walking distance from both Merthe’s house and the town centre), by bike, by car, and even by foot from the neighbouring city of Groningen. At 14:00, the police put up roadblocks at both ends of the street where Merthe lived, since this was perceived to be the main ‘attraction’ for the party – even though Merthe herself would spend the night in an undisclosed location. The media had placed their vehicles and broadcasting equipment at the street entrance closest to the town centre. During the afternoon, the town remained fairly quiet. For a moment, it seemed that the hype would blow over.

This hope soon evaporated at the end of the afternoon and in the early evening. Over the course of just a few hours, more and more people flooded into the town. Police estimates range between a total of 3000 and 5000 visitors at the peak of ‘Project X’. In the early evening, the atmosphere was festive. There was no pre-organised party, but the people who came created a spontaneous one. Adolescents gathered mainly in the town centre, singing songs, amusing themselves with journalists and television crews, and drinking the alcohol they brought themselves. As darkness started to fall between 19:30 and 20:00, the atmosphere changed. People became more drunk and rowdy, and some of them started igniting fireworks, shouting at the police, and committing small acts of vandalism.

The small police force, which had until then mingled among the crowd, was now lined up to enforce the roadblock to Merthe’s street. Around 700 people were gathered in front of the roadblock. Riot police reinforcements – 32 officers in total – were called in at around 20:50. The moment they arrived, fireworks, stones, beer bottles, and other objects were thrown at the police. According to police officers, the number of active rioters was limited in number – several small groups of mostly boys between 16 and 25 years old. The majority of the crowd remained passive. Many adolescents, who just came for a party, tried to flee the scene. By then, however, chaos was complete. Because of the gravity of the violence and the complex infrastructure of the town centre, it took the riot police until 00:30 to restore order. Haren was quiet again, but was left scarred and shocked, with a total damage of one million euros as a result of vandalism, several burned out cars, and a plundered supermarket.

Punishment: the rioters and their individual responsibility ⁴

I trusted my son. You raise your children that way […]. During the evening news on TV, my wife saw someone running who looked like our son. We dismissed that thought immediately […]. Even though he did not participate in the riots, we realised our son would be associated with them because of these TV images. We said he had to report himself to the police. (Quote from interview with a parent; Van den Brink et al., 2013: 71.)

A first group of interviewees stressed the guilt of the individual rioters in their interpretations of the aforementioned events. Their explanation was plain and simple: there were riots and vandalism because a small group of individuals misbehaved. This group should be held responsible for what happened, and they were: out of a total 110 arrested persons, 13 minors and 55 adults were put on trial. Most of them were convicted with the support of police video footage of the riots. By Dutch standards, they received fairly severe prison sentences and community services. In Ewald’s terminology (2002), this interpretation can be understood as the emphasis on individual responsibility and accountability towards risk and harm. The rioters cannot transfer the burden of their actions to others. Pieterman (2008) would speak of a ‘guilt culture’. Fundamentally, this paradigm sees no other role for the authorities than law enforcement and punishing those who break the law.

Looking at the events through this paradigm in more detail, the majority of the youngsters who came to Haren had good intentions. It was an innocent form of adolescent rebellion. After all, you only live once, and Haren was the place to be on 21 September 2012. If anything, we can accuse them of naivety. Many adult interviewees claim they saw the riots coming: ‘It was evident for me that this wouldn’t be a party. As the number of Facebook registrations grew, I thought: this can’t end well’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 49). Most partygoers were warned by their parents, but did not listen: ‘Parents of adolescents probably had a hard time keeping their children at home’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 70). This, however, does not make them guilty of the riots and the vandalism. The same goes for the media: ‘I don’t believe they had bad intentions’ – as one local said (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 58). They may have generated attention for the party, but they were only doing their job. In the end, it is still up to the adolescents and their parents to decide whether or not to attend.

As for the local authorities, it would be unreasonable to assume they should have seen the riots coming. After all, nobody even knew if this was going to be a ‘real’ party or just remain Facebook hype. Moreover, the fact that people wanted to organise an event without the proper permits does not make the municipality responsible for spending public finances on security or even on organising an alternative party. Many respondents argued that the municipality rightly chose not to organise an alternative party.

So how did things end up going so badly? According to a first group of interviewees, there was a small group who ruined the party for everybody else. According to Van den Brink et al., residents in particular claim they saw ‘scum’ (2013: 33), ‘all sorts of idiots’ (2013: 59), ‘sinister types’, and ‘people you’d rather not be associated with’ (2013: 103). Especially later in the evening, ‘all the fun people left, [and] the nasty characters remained. They were busy destroying our village (Van den Brink et al., 2013). On the evening of 21 September, most adolescents were having fun. They sang, drank, and played music on their cell phones. Until 19:30, the atmosphere was good and it was perfectly safe to walk among the crowd. An hour later, everything had changed. Under the influence of drugs and alcohol, a small group of trouble makers threw stones at the police, destroyed public and private property, and plundered a supermarket: ‘You could tell some people were looking for riots’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 118). Others may have contributed to the riots as well – carried away by the excitement – but it wouldn’t have been possible without the few rotten apples.

What should have happened that evening was firm law enforcement. For instance, the ‘police should have fined everybody who was drinking beer on the streets’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 81). In that sense, some interviewees – especially local residents – blamed the authorities for inconsistent law enforcement: ‘The scum was in charge last night’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 123). Many adolescents we spoke to had exactly the same feeling about the lack of enforcement: ‘People didn’t care about the rules, because there was no chance of being caught. There was no authority: we were in charge’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 22). Interestingly, many of the adolescents who were actively involved in the riots expected police enforcement to be ‘part of the game’: ‘Every now and then, somebody got hit. That’s what you get when you get too close to the riot police. What goes around, comes around’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 111). What ties these interpretations by residents and rioters together is the conviction that crime should be followed by punishment – a viewpoint consistent with Ewald’s paradigm of individual responsibility.

Protection: the script and its unavertable logic

B: ‘You can’t really blame anyone, I think […] for all that has happened’.

A: ‘That might well be the problem, that you can’t accuse anybody’.

(Quote from interview with a 16- and a 14-year-old student at a local high school; Van den Brink et al., 2013: 2)

Another group of interviewees did not see the riots as the fault of misbehaving individuals, but instead expressed an understanding for the unfortunate coincidence of the events. Their perspective was more descriptive than accusatory, and also stressed the role of ‘innocent’ adolescents, parents, and journalists in causing the riots. They expressed acquiescence and saw the many shades of grey between good and evil. What happened was the unintended, unprecedented, unforeseeable, and unavertable result of the collective actions of the media, the parents, the authorities, and the adolescents.

This interpretation can be understood as an expression of a ‘risk culture’ (Pieterman, 2008) or the ‘solidarity paradigm’ (Ewald, 2002). As individuals, we are part of a broader social system that produces risks outside our direct control. The attribution of guilt is pointless and unreasonable if every individual’s acts are merely a link in a broader chain of events. To a certain extent, almost everybody involved – the authorities, the parents, the residents, and the partygoers – were the victims of circumstance. Seen through this paradigm, the proper course of action is not to severely punish rioters or blame authorities for a lack of prevention, but to try to understand what happened, learn from mistakes, and compensate the damage done. For instance, strict enforcement during the evening would have probably just made things worse: ‘How can you possibly takethe alcohol from the kids without causing trouble?’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 81). After the events, compensation came not only in the form of insurance, but also through a damage restitution fund: 45 of the convicted rioters were ordered by the court to donate 250 euros (for minors) or 500 euros (for adults) into a fund for the victims. Also, the events led to a public debate about the role of the media in triggering the event: did the media just report the news or did it also help to ‘make’ the news?

The interviewees interpreting the events through this paradigm expressed a particular interest in the role of the innocent adolescents who came to Haren and the role of the social and traditional media. Let us start by looking more closely at the former. Most kids we spoke to never expected that the party could turn into violent riots. Even most adolescents who were convicted for their participation in the riots stated in court that it was never their intention to cause disorder. They claimed to have been whipped up by the crowd, by the excitement, and by the alcohol. In the words of a local resident: ‘The power of social media has been underestimated. Kids are, after all, sensitive to group pressure. And to alcohol. They hardly think about the consequences of their behaviour’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 50).

It was exactly the large crowd of innocent adolescents looking for fun that created the perfect context for an unintended riot. In the words of one adolescent: ‘It was about the us-against-them feeling. All those kids in one place and the police standing in line. Everybody wanted to be part of such a spectacle’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 22). An adolescent who was later convicted for his part in the riots described what happened as follows: ‘At a certain moment, a few of them started throwing and vandalising things. I thought: now it’s possible! Let’s seize the moment. I just thought: this is so cool! You know how it is when you’ve had too many drinks. You get carried away’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 19). Contrary to the explanations provided by the interviewees in the aforementioned ‘punishment paradigm’, many people also claimed that it was mostly very normal kids who were involved in the riots (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 104).

Many party-goers were caught off guard by the sudden riots. A large part of the chaos during the late evening can be explained by the fact that many tried to flee the scene, but got lost in the narrow streets between police and rioters: ‘People panicked. They thought there was a party. Those people wanted to leave but had no way to escape’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 34). Moreover, several innocent adolescents experienced the riot police’s heavy handed enforcement: ‘I saw people run away, but reacted too slow and stumbled. While lying on the ground, they hit me with a truncheon on my back and on my head’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 19).

The role of the media was also heavily discussed. According to many respondents, social media played a crucial role in mobilising youngsters to come to Haren. Facebook’s design – with options to comment and share – allows for a quick spread of information and for rapid organisation of flash mobs (cf. Van Dijk et al., 2013: 18). Furthermore, many kids were also mobilised ‘offline’, since they were excited about the prospect of seeing friends and of something extra-ordinary happening (Van Dijk et al., 2013: 51). However, the hype ‘really got going after the [traditional] media picked it up’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 49). Newspapers, talk shows, and radio stations played a crucial role, according to many respondents: ‘Had it just stayed on Facebook, less people would’ve shown up. But it became a serious thing when other media started reporting about it’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 57).

Even though there are only a few examples of media actively mobilising people to come to Haren, their coverage did have an undeniable effect on the extent of the hype and on its chances of crossing over from the online world to the ‘real’ world. According to several youngsters: ‘Especially popular radio stations said it would be a cool or fun party’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 57). The role of reporters in Haren on 21 September was also not left unmentioned by many residents. Strategically located with their broadcasting equipment at the entrance of Merthe’s street, their mere presence sparked the attention of adolescents and added to the general excitement.

Most interviewees did not blame journalists for reporting on what happened. However, their reports were not mere depictions of reality. They were also part of that same reality. And by describing the reality, they were influencing and changing that reality. People are reflexive beings; they react on what they hear and see. The attention generated by the media for ‘Project X Haren’ was a necessary element in making it become ‘real’: widespread attention and a belief that something will happen were key elements to draw adolescents to Haren. Many interviewees expressed discontent with the lack of responsibility traditional media had taken in the days before ‘Project X’. The media created the necessary conditions for the party and the eventual riots to take place.

And then, finally, there is the film ‘Project X’. The whole idea of a ‘Project X party’ was exciting: it was not approved of by most parents and the public authorities, it was something new, and it appealed to an adolescent’s taste for (mild) rebellion and adventure. As one adolescent put it: ‘Who’s curiosity wasn’t triggered by a name such as Project X?’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 44). All events – from the moment Merthe’s Facebook invitation was labelled as a ‘Project X party’ to the violent outbursts of 21 September – can be seen as examples of life (intentionally and unintentionally) imitating art. The label ‘Project X’ provided the plot for what had to happen next.

Even though the film alone cannot explain what happened, it did provide a storyline that adolescents sought to recreate in real life: ‘Certain elements from the movie were imitated’. Moreover, ‘I think [the kids] all knew exactly what that movie was about’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 50). Looking back at the course of events, everybody acted according to their designated role: adolescents played the role of thrill seekers, the posh town of Haren provided the perfect location, the mayor played the role of the naïve parent (by publicly stating ‘there is no party!’), the party ran out of control, and the worlds of adolescents and adults collided violently. What happened in Haren can be understood as a re-enactment of the film ‘Project X’. The real and the fictional were intrinsically tied together. The movie script had its unavertable course – no single actor was able to stop it, and everybody was caught up in its peculiar logic.

The interviewees who interpreted the events through the ‘solidarity paradigm’ did not blame any actor for the riots – including the local authorities. The rioters, the media, the police, and the municipality were part of something bigger than they could oversee or influence by themselves. Focusing on the role of the authorities, many people did not expect harsh enforcement or punishment for the rioters, nor efforts to prevent the riots from taking place. Strict enforcement would have probably made things worse during the evening of the party, harsh punishment would be unreasonable towards adolescents who got carried away by the events, and prevention was unattainable given the largely unprecedented and unforeseeable nature of the events. Instead, these interviewees saw it as the role of the police and the municipality to express solidarity with the victims, more specifically, with the residents who suffered damage during the riots, and with the adolescents who unwillingly became part of the riots.

Precaution: the authorities and their lack of imagination

If you say ‘there is no party’, you have to make sure that there will be no party.

(Quote from interview with a local resident; Van den Brink et al., 2013: 80)

A final group of interviewees focused on the role of the local authorities. Not individual rioters looking for trouble, not an unavoidable dynamic, but the failed attempts to prevent the riots by police and municipality explain what had happened in Haren. The authorities should and could have done more in the days before 21 September. If the authorities had taken their responsibility seriously, the party would not have taken place or at least the rioters would not have had the chance to cause so much trouble. This interpretation fits into Ewald’s paradigm of precaution and Pieterman’s precautionary culture. Even though interviewees acknowledge the difficulties in assessing the exact necessary amount of preventative measures, ⁵ the local authorities were to blame for their serious lack of imagination. ⁶ Their worst-case scenario did not even come close to the gravity of the actual riots. Many locals say they had seen the riots coming days before the events. So should have the municipality and the police. Instead, they basically allowed the events to take their uninterrupted course. Therefore, many interviewees place responsibility for the riots in the hands of the police and the municipality. Seen from this paradigm, the resignation by the mayor of Haren shortly after 21 September was a logical decision.

According to many interviewees, the authorities could and should have seen the events coming: ‘The municipality and the police have underestimated the party’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 78) As early as 8 September, Merthe’s father had approached the local police with concerns about the number of uninvited Facebook guests for his daughter’s birthday party. A day later, the mayor’s son had privately informed his father about the online hype as well. Unsure how to handle this case, the police and the municipality monitored the situation in the following week, but decided to keep a low profile, hoping that it would remain a small internet hype. The authorities held on to this strategy until 19 September, a day after the unfortunate statement by the municipality’s spokesperson to a national newspaper about a possible local emergency decree. By that time, however, the municipality had already lost control over the public debate: ‘The municipality was so naive to keep saying there wasn’t going to be a party. But the hype had already started!’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 48). The mayor’s statement that ‘there will be no party in Haren’ was greeted with mere amusement on the internet. In the words of one of the party-goers we spoke to: ‘[…] the mayor said there isn’t going to be party, but he’s not the one to decide, damn it! We decide if there’s going to be a party or not!’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 85). The municipality seemed hopelessly unaware of the dynamic that social and traditional media can create.

Moreover, the municipality not only remained silent and passive for too long, but when it finally started communicating in the days before 21 September, its strategy was unclear, uncertain, and hesitant. One interviewee summarised the authorities’ message as follows: ‘On Thursday, they said: we will close off the village. On Friday: let’s just hope for the best’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 80). This interpretation makes sense if we take a look at the following statements made by the mayor and deputy mayor of Haren on local radio and television:

Another criticism concerns the municipality’s refusal to organise an alternative party outside the town centre. In the days before 21 September, there were several initiatives by local residents who believed the crowd would come no matter what. It would, therefore, be wiser to facilitate their desire for a party in an organised and regulated manner: ‘If there is nothing to do, riots are just about the only logical outcome’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 20). Plans and schedules had already been developed – complete with a stage, artists, catering, and private security. On 20 September, the municipality decided not to give a permit for an alternative party. The main argument: the security of the visitors could not be guaranteed – an argument that, in hindsight, was at the very least ironic.

A final point of criticism expressed by our interviewees concerns the way the authorities had prepared for the evening of September 21 itself. The municipality decided not to close off the entire village (except for the street where Merthe lives). Large groups of adolescents were able to access Haren by train during the entire evening – even after the riots had already started. According to the authorities, stopping the regular train service would burden innocent travellers and would perhaps lead to trouble at neighbouring train stations. Many locals criticise this decision: ‘Why wasn’t the traffic stopped? Why did the trains keep arriving?’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 82). The plan was to divert visitors to football fields outside the village. Also, there would be a ‘nuanced alcohol ban’, meaning that the consumption of alcohol in the public domain was forbidden, but the possession of alcohol was allowed. On the evening itself, however, only a handful of visitors were diverted to the football fields and the alcohol decree was not enforced by the small police force. A crowd of adolescents was able to gather freely in front of Merthe’s street and drink alcohol out in the open – including minors: ‘People were drinking out in the open. They were drinking from crates of beer in front of the police’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 32).

By the time the riots started, it became painfully clear that not enough police backup was present in Haren. Moreover, the police force that was present in the village was poorly prepared for emergencies – which was also acknowledged by the police: ‘In hindsight, we realised we should’ve had more police officers walking around. The riot police arrived too late and with too little personnel’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 61). And a local resident summed up the evening up as follows: ‘The number of police offers was minimal. There simply wasn’t any authority […]. It was anarchy, the street was in charge and this called for celebrations’ (Van den Brink et al., 2013: 110).

Conclusion

Despite all the commotion, ‘Project X Haren’ was – objectively speaking – a relatively innocent event. There was only one person seriously injured, and most of the damage was restored quickly – the town looked as if nothing had happened the very next day. Still, ‘Project X Haren’ managed to dominate the Dutch news in the weeks before and after 21 September 2012. Exactly because there was such a strong public reaction, ‘Project X Haren’ can teach us something about the cultural sensitivities of the risk society. In the aftermath of the riots, local residents, media, and authorities focused on finding explanations and attributing responsibility. Using Ewald’s (2002) theoretical framework, I was able to distinguish three different paradigms among our interviewees. A first group of people stressed the individual guilt of the rioters. A second group understood the events as the result of an unforeseeable and unintended dynamic. And a third group pointed out the failure of the authorities to prevent the riots.

This analysis shows that the social attitude towards risk and responsibility in Haren was not cohesive but rather quite ambiguous. As Ewald already pointed out, it is crucial to view contemporary risk society with its emphasis on prevention and precaution, not as a unitary historical phase, but rather as the addition of a new perspective on uncertainty to the two older perspectives of individual responsibility and solidarity (Ewald, 2002: 297). Moreover, the analysis shows how we need each of Ewald’s paradigms to understand the political reaction to the events in Haren. Sentencing of the rioters, financial compensation of the victims, and the resignation of the mayor follow from the respective paradigms of the punishment of delinquents, protection of victims, and precaution by the authorities. In short, only by taking all three attitudes towards risk and responsibility into account can we explain the variety of interpretations and the following, often contradictory, political responses.

In a broader context, the findings are also applicable to the ambiguities of contemporary security policies. Even though there has been an undeniable surge in preventative approaches in recent decades (Bauman, 2000; Beck, 1986; De Mul, 2006; Peeters, 2013; Pieterman, 2008), this perspective is only partly satisfactory in understanding the nature of security policies, which are characterised by such diverse practices as zero-tolerance policing, victim compensation, personalised prevention programmes, and surveillance of the public domain. A quick overview of the literature shows how at least three different techniques can be distinguished, and how these can be linked to Ewald’s three attitudes towards risk and uncertainty.

First, criminologists have noted a strong emphasis on punitive strategies since the last quarter of the 20th century (e.g. Downes and Van Swaaningen, 2007; Feeley and Simon, 1992; Garland, 2001). Mass incarceration (particularly in the US) and decline of the rehabilitative ideal (e.g. Irwin, 2005; Wacquant, 2001), zero-tolerance policies (Garland, 2001), and penal populism (Pratt, 2007) are common ways to deal with issues of crime and security.

Second, the same period is characterised by placing the victim as central in the public discourse (e.g. Boutellier, 2002; Wilson, 2009). Doing justice to victims forms the legitimacy of ‘get tough’ policies on crime. And in a broader sense, the vulnerability of late-modern societies is a strong argument for protection by the state. However, the victim-oriented perspective extends beyond ‘penal populism’. It also blurs the boundaries between ‘risk citizens’ and ‘at-risk citizens’. Particularly juvenile delinquents and repeat offenders are, at least partly, perceived as victims of their own social and personal circumstances (e.g. Peeters, 2013: 214–232; Sampson and Laub, 1993). This element of solidarity forms a sharp contrast with the punitive perspective, which implies the possibility of drawing sharp boundaries between guilt and innocence.

And third, preventative policies have emerged as a dominant strategy in the approach to crime and insecurity (e.g. Ericson, 1997; Kemshall, 2003; O’Malley, 1998, 2010; Schinkel, 2011; Schuilenburg, 2012; Sherman et al., 2002; Welsh and Farrington, 2006; Zedner, 2007). Common preventative interventions include control of the public domain, and early intervention towards risk adolescents and repeat offenders. Whereas the punitive approach emphasises the guilt of the individual delinquent and the victim-oriented approach stresses the protection of vulnerable citizens, the preventative approach attributes public authorities with the task to foresee and prevent harm.

Based on the former arguments, I suggest that Ewald’s three paradigms can be used as a model for understanding the contemporary societal attitudes and political responses towards risk and responsibility. Graham Allison once taught us the importance of using different theoretical models to fully grasp the complexity of social reality with his famous analysis of the Cuban missile crisis (1971). The paradigms of punishment, protection, and precaution may serve a similar purpose for the complexities of the risk society and its security policies.

Moreover, applying these three paradigms simultaneously may be the most appropriate way to pass judgement on serious disturbances of the public order. Every paradigm produces its own logical political response, but also has its own specific shortcomings. The punishment paradigm stresses individual responsibility, but pushes the social context in which individuals act to the background. The protection paradigm emphasises the unique circumstances of an event, but fails to mention the responsibility and free will of those directly involved. And the precaution paradigm identifies the role of the authorities, but marginalises the responsibility of the actual perpetrators and the unforeseeable dynamic of social interaction. Perhaps the only way to do justice to the complexities of reality is to analyse them through all three paradigms. Only then can we achieve a more or less full understanding and overcome the temptation of easy answers.

An important shortcoming of Ewald’s paradigm, however, is its instrumental focus. It allows different strategies of government to be identified, but, in the case of Haren, falls short in explaining why our interviewees use a certain perspective and why youngsters participated in the riots. Here, we need to take cultural and emotional elements into account, as well as the use of substances such as alcohol and drugs. Cultural criminology provides interesting explanations in this respect. For instance, research on ‘edgework’ shows why people deliberately take risks during leisure activities (e.g. Lyng, 2005), which might explain the ‘you only live once’ attitude adopted by the youngsters in Haren (Committee ‘Project X’ Haren, 2013). Furthermore, others have pointed out the potentially seductive nature of criminal behaviour (e.g. Katz, 1988). In Haren, fiction – in the form of the movie ‘Project X’ – provided a powerful mechanism of seduction for many adolescents.

The role of the media in the case of ‘Project X Haren’ deserves a final consideration. The local authorities were confronted by a dynamic that might have been new to them, but will very likely become a more common governance concern in the future. The mobilisation and organisation of flash mobs through social media, the creation of hypes by traditional media, the blurring boundaries between the fictional (such as the movie ‘Project X’) and the real world, and the quick spread of online information and opinions pose new challenges for police, politicians, and policy makers. The mediatisation of society urges us to rethink the implications of Ewald’s framework. As the ‘Project X’ case shows us, the speed and complexity of interaction problematises the attribution of individual guilt, as well as the possibility of control by public authorities. At the same time, however, the ‘culture of control’ (Garland, 2001) pushes authorities towards increased security efforts. The tension between both trends is an important theme for future research.