Crime and Community: Fear or Trust? Author(s): Sandra Walklate Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol.

49, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 550-569 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The London School of Economics and Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/591288 . Accessed: 12/07/2011 02:19
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Sandra Walklate

Crime and community:fear or trust?

ABSTRACT The 'fear of crime' has been at the centre of political and policy debate for some time. The purpose of this paper is to examine critically the continued relevance of that debate in the light of findings from an in-depth two and a half year research project. The findings from that project suggest that the relation people have with crime, criminal victimization, and the fear of crime is mediated by the relevance of their relationship with their local community and their structural position within that community. Understanding the nature of these relationships suggests the question of trust is of greater value in highlighting who is and who is not afraid of crime.

KEEWORDS:Fear of crime; community; ontological security; trust

Crime fears lead to street anxiety. England and Wales now has worse figures than US while Northern Ireland has best record of countries surveyed. (The Guardian, Monday May 26th 1997) As a general rule, trust arises when a community shares a set of moral values in such a way as to create expectations of regular honest behaviour. (Fukuyama 1996: 153)

INTRODUCTION.

The central purpose of this paper is to challenge some traditionally held criminological and political beliefs about the lived reality of high crime areas. In order to achieve this I shall be drawing on (primarily) qualitative data gathered during the course of a two and a half year study of two economically similarly structured, predominantly white, high crime areas within the connurbation of Greater Manchester in the UK I believe, however, that the findings generated by this study have a wider resonance. It is a resonance which has the potential to take the criminological debate on the 'fear of crime' into a different (and arguably better) domain. However, given
Bnt.Jnl. of SoctologyVolumeno. 49 Issue no. 4 December 1998 ISSN 0007-1315 (C) London School of Economics 1998

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that the work on which this paper is based started its life embedded within the 'fear of crime' debate, it is perhaps fitting that attention is paid, in the first instance, to some of the features of that debate.

'FEAROF CRIME'?

The increasingly widespread use of the criminal victimization survey since the 1980s has had a significant impact on the political, policy and academic arenas. In the context of exploring the 'fear of crime' the differential usage of such surveys, by what has been referred to as 'administrative' criminology as compared with 'left realist' criminology, led to a pointed debate in the 1980s concerning the rationality or otherwise of people's (usually women and the elderly) expressed fear of crime. Moreover, as the headline quoted above more than aptly illustrates, the currency that the 'fear of crime' debate has, fuelled by such survey findings, is still very important. Whilst the conceptual validity of the frameworks utilized by such surveys has been challenged by Sparks (1992) and in some respects has been trancended by the concerns of radical feminism (Stanko 1990), the concept 'fear' still appears to hold firm. The question remains, however, as to how and under what circumstances this concept remains useful as an empirical or a policy tool. There are alternatives. Indeed it is from within radical feminism that a different language is proffered ('climates of unsafety', for example, ibid.) in order to better grasp women's structural and personal relationship with the 'fear of crime'. The desire to challenge the conceptual validity of the notion of 'fear' is also reflected in more recent theoretical developments in the UK in this area in which preference is expressed for the more Freudian concept of anxiety (see in particular Hollway andJefferson 1997). Such developments notwithstanding, by the early 1990s both academic and policy concerns had become focussed on the salience of the notions of both 'fear' and 'safety' in relation to crime; with much associated crime prevention work designed to address notions of 'community safety' on the one hand or more straightforward target hardening on the other. It is within this general context that the project on which this paper is based began its life. The project to which I am referring was concerned with how people who live in, go to work in, and go to school in high crime areas manage their routine daily lives. Where did they think it was safe to go? Where did they think it was risky to go? How did they manage their fears, if they had any, within their locality? On reflection there were a number of presumptions embedded in these research questions. The first was borrowed from the work of Giddens. He suggests that All individuals develop a framework of ontological security of some sort based on routines of various forms. People handle dangers and the fear

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associated with them in terms of emotional and behavioural formulae which have come to be part of their everyday behaviour and thought. (Giddens 1991: 44) For Giddens, managing our 'ontological security' is a central problem of late modern society. In part, he argues, this is a consequence of the extent to which 'The risk climate of modernity is [thus] unsettling for everyone: no-one escapes' (ibid.: 124) so that as individuals we 'colonise the future' (ibid.: 125) in order to manage (though not necessarily reduce) our anxieties. In the particular context of managing crime and its associated fears and anxieties some of those management processes may be articulated in our understandings of how, when and where we feel safe. This research project was interested in exploring those processes. The second presumption, on reflection, lay in the way in which this study centred the role of the community, and people's relationship to their community, as a mediating factor in the management of their 'ontological security'. Given that these 'communities' were also high crime areas, this presumption reflects the historical sociological and criminological focus on the inner city (the zone of transition) and its assumed socially disorganized and dangerous nature. Moreover, these were also 'communities' which appeared to be responding differently to their socio-economic circumstances (see below) . It was therefore first and foremost a comparative study of the validity of the notions of disorganization and dangerousness. The difficulty of defining what is meant by 'disorganization' in this context has been commented on elsewhere (see for example, Bursik 1988). Moreover, predominantly North American ethnographic research has illustrated the ways in which people living in high crime areas, such as the inner city, manage their sense of well being in the context of community relationships. (See for example, Merry 1981; Anderson 1990). With the exception, perhaps, of the work of Shapland and Vagg (1988) which compared urban and rural communities, however, little work has offered a detailed analysis of how people manage their routine daily lives in predominantly white, inner city areas in the UK. Given the disturbances that occurred in such areas in the early l990s, and given that each of these areas under investigation featured differently in those disturbances, this research presumed that if the concepts of 'fear' and 'safety' had any salience then surely they could be most usefully explored comparatively in these locations. These two presumptions, ontological security and community, taken together, centred the importance at the beginning of this research of appreciating people's lived realities (Genn 1988; Crawford et al. 1990); of trying to understand, in their terms, what living in a high crime area routinely comprised. In some respects furthering the ethnographic tradition referred to above. However, having taken this as a starting point the data subsequently produced did not support the conceptual apparatus with which the study began. Indeed it is within the tensions benreen that conceptual apparatus (the concepts of 'fear' and 'safety') and what the data

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seemed to say that the challenge to traditionally held criminological beliefs about high crime areas can be found. But first, it is important to say something about the areas under investigation.

THE ItESEARCHAREAS

The research areas were located in the City of Salford, part of the Greater Manchester connurbation.l The city of Salford itself is a multiply deprived, predominantly white area battling with the full effects of the closure of the docks in 1972 and years of de-industrialization. It is an area in which the City Council has attempted to sow the seeds of economic regeneration including the creation of one of the first Enterprise Zones in 1981 and latterly with the development of its dockland into an office, leisure and residential development akin to London's Dockland scheme. Arguably the economic and structural changes affecting Salford as a whole have taken their toll on particular parts of the city referred to as 'Old Salford' - its inner-city areas - rather than 'New Salford' - the comparatively wealthy and suburban areas which became part of the City of Salford after 1974. Both these research areas, called Oldtown and Bankhill respectively (we were requested by local residents to anonymize areas so as not to 'tarnish' their image) are in 'Old Salford'. These areas comprise two, predominantly white, local authority wards with similar unemployment rates (Oldtown 22.9 per cent; Bankhill 22.8 per cent), and similar youth unemployment rates (32.4 per cent and 37.8 per cent respectively) but with differing patterns of housing tenure (Oldtown; owner occupied 23.8 per cent, council 61.2 per cent, housing association 7.1 per cent: Bankhill; 34.6 per cent, 28 per cent, and 23 per cent respectively). The two wards are, however, physically quite different and have a very different history. Oldtown was the residential ward which historically housed a great number of the city's industrial workforce and dock labour. It is predominantly a council-owned estate, part of which, known locally as the Oldtown Triangle, is situated in the heart of the estate and which now includes much of the area's lowest standard of housing. The ward has undergone a number of transformations in the last three decades, its back to back terraces being largely demolished in the 1960s and 1970s and replaced with system-built high and low rise housing stock. From the early 1980s Salford Council, controversially, embarked on a policy which sold off many of its worst housing in this area to private developers who transformed these hard-to-let estates on the periphery of the ward into owner-occupied 'yuppy' flats. At the same time some residents of the Triangle area were improving their own housing through the setting up of Salford's (and indeed Manchester's) first housing co-operative. The defunct and derelict dock area became, by 1990, the city's prestigious docklands development. Situated on the other side of a busy

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four-lanehighway from the main body of the ward's residential area it is visiblefrom all parts of the estate. It is at once separated from, and yet a part of the ward. In the l990s the remaining council stock is being improved by Estates Action monies in five distinct phases so that, in mid 1995, the further one travels into the estate the more untouched the area is.Nevertheless housing for owner-occupation has been built - it is a condition of the Estates Action funding that mixed residential tenure is promoted. Perhaps as a result of the area's strong working-class make-up Oldtown wasalways seen as a 'rough' area. Seafarers from all over the world - with their hard-drinking image - frequented its pubs and prostitution was common on the main route past the dock area. After the docks closed the areagained a reputation for crime and disorder. Whatever the truth of this reputation the area became isolated and depressed throughout the 1980s asunemployment worsened and local road-building policies literally cut the area off from its surroundings on all sides with many of its local amenities being demolished in the process. Those amenities which have remained have served as a public arena in which 'grasses' are named through the use of graffiti (Evans, Fraser, and Walklate 1996). With little reason for most city residents to enter the area, this reputation as a problem area has been easily sustained. A reputation further underscored with the reporting of a 'riot' in 1992 in which a carpet warehouse was razed to the ground and gunshots fired at a police vehicle. Bankhill, on the other hand, is a more physically diverse area which, in turn, is more physically connected to surrounding areas so that there is some local confusion as to where the ward boundaries actually are. It is an area of very large early Victorian and Georgian merchants' houses as well of as late Victorian and Edwardian terraces. In Engels' TheCondition the it in Class England is cited as an area of middle-class flight from the Working squalor of the city. Its reputation as a more middle-class area, a step up from the inner-city on the way to the suburbs, persisted well into the latter half of this century. It is, at present, however, very much a part of the 'inner-city'. Its larger dwellings are, on the whole, residential homes for the elderly or community care hostels. Many are divided into flats, rented out by private landlords. Small pockets of council housing have been built in the ward from the 1960s, including a small number of tower blocks. Many of the smaller terraced houses have been bought wholesale by housing associations and improved for rent. Owner occupation is the largest form of housing tenure in the area. Bankhill covers a smaller area than Oldtown but is more densely populated and a higher proportion of its properties are of a poor standard, lacking amenities such as central heating. Alongside this physical diversity lies a cultural diversity unparalleled in other areas of the city. To the North of the ward is an area of predominantly Jewish settlement and many of its residents are orthodox Hasidic Jews. To the east of the ward there are streets with a high proportion of Asian

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families, Muslims from Pakistan as well as Indian Sikhs. There is also an unequal distribution of 'social problems' within the ward. Certain streets have had very high rates of house burglary, others remain relatively untouched by this form of criminal activity. Gangs of young males assert territorial control in some areas, hanging around in large numbers and painting walls, roads and boarded up houses with graffiti denigrating individual police officers, celebrating local gangs and convicted offenders and generally sending out a very public message of 'control' of the streets, though all of this is a relatively new phenomenon. There are far fewer references to 'trouble' in this area in the local papers before the mid 1980s. However young people 'on the rampage' in the area were reported in 1985 and there were some disturbances on the very east of the ward in 1992. Local residents speak of the area as being in a cycle of decline, and paralleling the blaming in Oldtown, the City Council is often cited as the cause of the decline as they moved 'outsiders' into the area, disrupting a formerly stable community. Talk of this area in these terms provides one of the first clues as to how people living in this community have endeavoured to make sense of what they see, feel and know to be going on around them. So, how do people living in these two similarly structured, though physically different areas, manage their routine daily lives, and to what extent does crime or age or gender inform that routine daily management? Each of the research areas will be discussed in turn.

OLDTOWN

One of the first indications of the way in which people in Oldtown organize their everyday experiences in relation to crime was generated by the questions asked in a household survey of the area. This survey of 296 residents in this ward was modelled on conventional criminal victimization survey questions but fine-tuned to meet the requirements of this project. It was designed to explore questions of feeling safe in the home, in and out of the local area and the measures of crime prevention and personal safety taken. (Specifically, one of the purposes of this work was to identify residents who might be willing to participate in focus group discussions planned for a later date.)2 During the process of conducting this survey it became clear that the questions being asked of the residents of Oldtown did not resonate with their lived experiences of their area. As the qualitative responses recorded by the interviewers revealed, perceptions of safety in the locality were frequently informed by, 'You're alright if you're local round here'. The focus group work went on to validate this notion of 'being local' as one theme of a tripartite discourse which people living in this area appear to employ in order to make sense of, and thereby render more secure, their routine daily lives. This discourse comprised; 'You're alright round here if you're local'; 'People round here don't rob off their own'; and 'I can't name any names

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but what's his face up the road will sort it out'. Each of these themes will be discussed in turn.

'YOU'REALRIGHT ROUND HERE IF YOU'RE LOCAL'

As was suggested earlier, during the conduct of the criminal victimization survey in this area people said such things as It's safe for locals but not strangers in the area'. (Middle-aged male, unemployed, lived in the area for 29 years) Oldtown is a great area if you are a member of the community, went to the local school and grew up with the local villains, but terrible if you're an outsider. (Elderly female, lived in the area 11 years) I've no real problems because I know the people and the area and grew up with local villains and know local youth. (Middle-aged male, employed, lived in the area for 35 years) This view of the importance of local belonging was widely asserted in this research area by all kinds of people, and was reiterated in focus group dis. .

CUSSlOnS, V1Z

It's like a culture thing, if you don't belong here you shouldn't be here sort of thing.... As I say, I could walk about the estate, it doesn't bother me. In fact, when I go out at night, when I go walking round with the dog, I'm more frightened of dogs. When I'm looking round it's not for the lads or anything else, it's the dogs. I think the majority of people feel fairly safe in this area if you've lived here all the time. It's like Sylviasaid, you know who they are. (Middle-aged female, established resident) and importantly was shared by younger and older residents alike, as one fourteen year old said when asked what advice would they give to a newcomer to the area 'Get to know someone who knows other people around'. The importance of this kind of community attachment reflects a number of other aspects of living in this area. As the description offered above implies, Oldtown is quite a physically isolated area especially for those who do not have cars. But there are also close family and kinship ties which underpin this sense of local identity. A finding which resonates with other ethnographic research (Merry 1981). As one member of a police focus group stated . . . on the Oldtown estate, everybody knows each other. It'sjust like one big family, well not a family as such, but one tight community. A clan. That's it. (Male police officer) Moreover to assert that you are from this part of Greater Manchester is taken to mean that you are loyal to this part of the city and have a strong attachment to it given its high profile public reputation. In addition,

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however, this sense of belonging is closely connected to the belief that you will be protected from being a victim of crime if you belong.

'PEOPLE ROUND HERE DON'T ROB OFF THEIR OWN'

Again this belief was asserted by different kinds of people living in different parts of Oldtown. So people said things like People don't take off their own - businesses are more likely to be hit by crime. (Young unemployed female, lived in the area most of her life) Teenagers here still have a code about leaving people they know alone. (Middle-aged female, lived in the area for 33 years) Criminals live here and rob elsewhere. (Young female, employed, lived in the area for three months) But some of the thieves, they won't rob your house, so its alright here cos they won't rob your house, or mug old women. (Fourteen-year-old school boy) and this interchange between three fourteen year old school girls Sabine: No, but people who live down Oldtown don't nick out of Oldtown. Erica: Look after their own.

Sonya: They look out for each other. Sabine: Someone from Oldtown won't nick off off someone from Oldtown. They'd probably go down Bankhill to do it like Bankhill would come down here. Erica: They don't mug anyone, they do big firms. They're not going to lose owt are they.

These two beliefs: 'You're alright round here if you're local' and 'People round here don't rob off their own' were expressed so frequently that arguably they amount to a 'neighbourhood dogma' (Elias and Scotson 1965). In other words, they are not individual views formed in the isolated moment of an interview or a product of the focus group process, but have a shared local currency beyond these particular contexts. The origins of these local beliefs are probably quite complex, but the influence of a quasi-political network, the Salford Firm, a locally well known criminal gang, is undoubtedly one factor contributing to these responses and underpins a further feature of the local discourse under discussion here.

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'I CAN'T NAME ANY NAMES BUT WHAT'S HIS FACE UP THE ROAD WILL SORT IT OUT'

Assertions of this kind reflect an underlying understanding and implicit acceptance of Oldtown as a 'self-policing' community. An understanding aptly illustrated in this quote from a police focus group It's always been a self policing community, always has been. But I think that is also a weakness in the community. They still dislike vandalism and they dislike most crime that goes on, but they are unwilling to break from the community chapel. The community is strangling itself, because they have to break free from old traditions, and the old, 'I can't name any names but what's his face up the road will sort it out. (Young male police officer) Whilst for this police officer, not unsurprisingly, the idea of a self-policing community is problematic because of the likely consequences of such activities, for people living in this area it is not so clearly a problem. There's also a positive side sometimes. It doesn't always work one way, sometimes it works another. I've heard of a case a few months ago where a lad had broken these pensioners windows and he'd run off. Now a couple of people found out who he was, dragged him back to this house, and asked if it was him. When they said it was, they made him apologise, gave him a thump, and told him if he was ever anywhere near there again they would come back for him. Needless to say, he's never been anywhere near. It has its own rules as well. They sort things out their selves. (Middleaged female, established resident) Such stories of 'sorting things out' have a long standing tradition in this area and allude to the unspoken ways in which criminal activity of a more general kind is less likely to be challenged in such areas. For example, one retired senior police officer who had worked in this area for over fifteen years told us They were then doing public displays of handbrake turns.... In fact, there was one team who were doing it a lot and knocked three thirteen year old girls down. They were not badly hurt, fortunately, but they could easily have been killed.... Eventually the people in the car had to pay 650 or make an offer.... The other side of that offer is that if you don't take it you get done over for being a grass, so it's a bit like an offer you can't refuse. These quotes serve to sharpen further our understanding of the management of well-being in this locality. There is a fine balance to be struck for all residents, young and old, between accepting that the presence of criminal activities which people believe are governed by a code of ethics of a kind and from which the community might benefit (by receiving stolen goods, for example) and the knowledge that to offend that code7 either

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knowingly or unknowingly, might result in an individual being named as a 'grass'. As this fourteen year old boy states But really in the end itsjust best to ignore them. But if you really want to start trouble, grass. So whilst people living in this area are intimidated by the presence of the criminal gang and its activities, they also believe that that same presence affords them a level of protection from criminal victimization not provided by official agencies. Indeed, it was stated on more than one occasion by residents that they believed the presence of the Salford Firm had kept 'hard drugs' off the estate. This emphasizes the importance of being known locally and being known as local. As one fourteen year old boy advises people new to the area 'Make sure you know people'. The resultant effect of these findings seem to suggest that for people living in Oldtown, the notion of the 'fear of crime' is one that does not resonate with their expressed feelings about crime in their area. Their sense of belongingness and the trust invested in the importance of being local equip people living in this area with a sense of security which for them is not problematic even though they may well have empirical evidence and experience of criminal activit,v which might suggest the contra. y. Moreover this sense of security is shared by young and old, male and female alike. In some respects, then, these views leak an image of a highly organized community well defended from outsiders and outsiders' views of the area as problematic, in which the question of whom do you trust appears to be a salient one in understanding the management of 'ontological security'. It is difficult to find the same kind of coherent and heterogeneous community response in Bankhill.

BANKHILL:OLDER PEOPLE

Bankhill, environmentally, is somewhat different than Oldtown. Even for long standing residents, there is some uncertainty as to where the ward boundaries of Bankhill begin and end. The differences between these two areas, however, run deeper than this. One of the first indications of those differences was identifiable in the initial responses by our focus group participants to the photographs we had taken of the area presented to groups as a way of facilitating discussion. On more than one occasion participants expressed a certain amount of disbelief that the photographs were of their area given the absence of litter in them. Concerns about litter, graffiti, and boarded up properties, were frequently expressed. (See Skogan 1990). Such concerns are reflected in the way in which people in Bankhill appeared to articulate their day to day experiences of living in this locality, namely 'This area is going downhill rapidly' and 'These people in this ward have no trust of even their own sons'. Interestingly enough, however, these views were not shared by young and old alike.

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From the survey data gathered in this ward (300 respondents), three times as many people surveyed thought that their area was going downhill than in Oldtown. As an expressed belief, however, this has a number of different strands to it. The community is lost. It's losts itswandering about because there's no backing up from anywhere. That includes the social services. It's alright them saying, 'we do this', but there's no backup from anywhere. They avoid it. You get problem families on housing estates you can get rid of them. You get problems in private accommodation, you can't. When they go on the private market getting private housing, you can't shift the buggers. It's a hell of a problem around here. And people may look at it and they say . . . they close their door to it. (Established male resident, Bankhill) and I can honestly say that on that road ten years ago, that you could go down that road and you'd get all your shopping down there. All your shopping. It was a community on its own. There was everything, all the people out. You lost this community relationship, community spirit, now people don't want to know you. Like I said, you're knocking on their door and they'll think its either the police or somebody to fill them in, and they stay behind the curtains. Sad, isn't it? (Established male resident, Bankhill) This sense of a lost community, then, is seen to be rooted in a number of processes; the rapidity of social change, the changing housing market, the influx of newcomers with problems, and the lack of response by 'the authorities'. A downward spiral, alongside the high crime rate, which resonates with the work of Skogan (1990). This latter frustration was expressed in a number of different ways in the focus groups discussions; from exchanging strategies on how to get 'the council' to do things to attributing blame for local problems on 'left wing' and/ or 'do-gooder' social workers and academics who have no real sense of what it is like to live in the area. This felt lack of community co-operation, or vacuum of neighbourliness as it might be called, leaves all sorts of spaces for the generation and perpetuation of other fears (as shall be discussed below). It also reflects not so much a lack of loyalty to the area, but a sense of despair as to what can be done to halt these processes in rapidly changing economic circumstances. As one resident states It's a shame it had to come to this. We never foresaw this at all. Most people, like me and Linda have done, they've bought their houses. You think you'll be there for so many hundred years. You might sell them

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later, go somewhere else. Your dreamss going down the drain. Itss not there anymore. You just don't know what's going to happen. (Local resident, area 6) The consequences, then, of this sense of loss exemplified in the view that 'This area is going downhill rapidly' appear to be twofold; on the one hand residents still reach out for 'the authorities' to do something, and on the other hand there is a sense of withdrawal from each other. This withdrawal is clearly connected to the second of the themes identifiable in the data; 'These people in this ward have no trust even of their own sons.

'THESE PEOPLE IN THIS WARD HAVE NO TRUST EVEN OF THEIR OWN SONS'

This expression is part of a statement from a police focus group discussion which is worth quoting at length. The fear amongst people in this ward that you're pointing to now, is that it could be the next door neighbour that burgles you, yousre not sure who to trust. When there's no trust amongst a neighbourhood, it perpetuates. Theysre looking over their shoulder and theysre thinking there's a fear and perhaps it doesnst even exist . . . these people in this ward have no trust of even their sons. Focus group discussions around crime in Bankhill, unlike Oldtown, were articulated in terms of fears and especially fear of young people. For example During the day Ism fairly confident, I'm not hundred per cent confident. After little Flora got mugged, that started a lot of things up in the area. Who'd do that to a little old lady. It got a lot of publicity in the paper. Some of my friends arranged that they'd meet a certain day every week . . . They're my age or even younger and that said, Oh well at least we'll be in a groups, pity there's not a wine bar or something, joking you know. (Elderly woman, Bankhill) Much of this fear is indeed expressed in relation to young people, as the following examples illustrate We've reached the stage where we suspect children, all children, and youths and girls. You suspect them all. (Elderly female, Bankhill) Itss like terrorisrn really. Theysre getting kids and those kids are being brought up (this way). It's like the people in Northern Ireland that never knew anything else only war, and they grew up to be terrorists, itss the same with round here. (Established resident, Bankhill) There was a boy with a wheelbarrow full of tools he broke into the park keeper's shed and walked out of the park with the wheelbarrow. There were about three of us standing there, we watched them. We were bad

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citizens because we should have stopped them, we were frightened to stop. Ism sixty three, I was frightened to stop him, it was a boy of about twelve. I know he'll come back with his pals. (Elderly male, Bankhill) Young people, then, are especially to be feared in Bankhill. They are the outsiders. Moreover, for some residents the construction of their fears in this way is rooted in quite a sophisticated knowledge and experience of how youth criminality is organized in the area, as one resident stated When I see blokes on bikes now, they might be innocent, but to me they're part of that gang and that's who they are, and I do not like to see anybody on a bike. (Female, established resident) What is particularly interesting about the assertion of these two ways of talking about crime in Bankhill is not only what they represent in terms of how people talk about their area, that is, what is present in that talk, but also what is absent. These presences and absences are in stark contrast with the presences and absences of crime talk in Oldtown. In Bankhill there is no sense of 'being alright if you're local'. People in Bankhill do not feel protected by their localness but do feel threatened and frightened by the localness of the criminality in their area. A fear which is in part generated by the fact that they do watch and notice what is going on but the vacuum in neighbourliness commented on earlier renders them hesitant to challenge what they see ( qua Skogan 1990) . In some respects, then, especially for older people, this is a frightened community, lacking in trust, in which the features of social disorganization as discussed by the Chicago School seem to have some salience. For younger people, however, the emphases are somewhat different.

BANK:HILL: YOUNGER PEOPLE

Younger people in Bankhill, perhaps not unsurprisingly, do not express the view that 'this area is going downhill' with the same kind of vehemence. Focus groups discussions with thirteen to fifteen year old school children revealed that they recognized the problems in their area, and frequently discussed them in terms of vandalism, graffiti, and car theft, but they nevertheless felt that 'it wasn't so bad round here'. For them moving awaywould mean leaving their mates. Moreover moving away, they believed, did not necessarily guarantee better circumstances with respect to crime. Indeed in some respects living with what was known, and therefore known to be managed, was a much more comfortable prospect. Whilst some of the younger people talked to accepted their problematic status to older residents, for example All we do is hang about on the streets and that's what makes it better like . . . a big group of us and we can have a laugh, like old people think we're ... and we're not hurting them.... (Fourteen year old female)

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these young people were, for the most part, far more concerned with the processes of managing their own lives in relation to other young people; 'the gangs'. When discussing their safety for example they raised such issues as Most of the time you just walk past. But it depends who it is, if you know who they are, if their faces are known its OK What you can't do is expect to be safe if you go up the other end and into someone else's area. (Fourteen year old male) When asked what kind of advice they would offer to keep safe in their area young males and females alike said; be known, keep your head down, make sure you don't step out of line. All of these phrases reflecting the routine concern that these young people had of how to manage their own lives without either getting into trouble with older people or getting into trouble with the 'gangs'; that is being labelled a 'grass'. How best to achieve this balance was open to debate; whether to look scared or to look tough, but it was a balance which was articulated by these young males and females alike. When it came to talking more specifically about crime, these groups of young people expressed beliefs similar to those found amongst the Oldtown residents Robbing houses, not many lads do it round here, they go to.... When they go and nick cars they don't do it round here. (Fourteen year old female) Gang members don't burgle their own. They do factories and the houses of people who are stuck up. (Fourteen year old male) So perhaps not unsurprisingly these young people, whilst obviously routinely sharing the same physical space (the street) in which much of the criminal activitytaking place in this area occurred, struggled both to occupy that space and distance themselves from it. If for no other reason, they frequently knew by name who the offenders were, even if they did not see themselves in that category. So, when compared with the responses of older residents, there are self evident tensions between the two. The question remains, however, as to how to make best sense of the differences and similarities between the views expressed in these two similarly structured, high crime areas.

EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF TRUST

The concept of trust has been relatively underexplored in the social sciences. In discussing the question of 'ontological security' Giddens (1991) has argued that trust is most clearly evidenced in traditional societies through kinship relations, local communities or religious commitment.

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However he goes on to argue that the absence of these mechanisms in late modern societies renders trust no more than a matter for individual contractual negotiation. A similar argument is presented by Luhmann (1989). Gellner (1989) too suggests that urban life is incompatible with trust and social cohesion suggesting that such processes are rooted in rural, tribal traditions. Yet as Fukuyama (1996) implies trust is also an essential part of modern life. Without it economic relations cannot flourish. These, of course, are also relations which cannot be completely controlled. Trust is therefore essential. The kinds of trust which exists, however, may not always be necessarily about creating 'regular honest behaviour' as Fukuyama states. It may just as likely be about creating regular dishonest behaviour. Arguably, it is the regularity or otherwise of the behaviour which sustains or threatens social relationships. Giddens (1991) and Beck (1992) both argue that the increasing awareness of the importance of trust is the concomitant effect of a greater awareness of the possible future damage of risk taking activity alongside the challenge to universalism posed by post-modernism. As Misztal (1996: 239) states By destroying the grounds for believing in a universal truth, postmodernity does not make our lives more easy but only less constrained by rules and more contingent. It demands new solutions based on the tolerant co-existence of a diversity of cultures. Yet although post modernism encourages us to live without an enemy, it stops short of offering constructive bases for mutual understanding and trust. In a sense this quote endorses the view of Fukuyama expressed earlier. It certainly centres the need for understanding the changing nature of trust especially in the context of social relationships which are increasingly characterized by diversityand the celebration of difference. In order to 'live without an enemys requires trust. But how does trust manifest itself? The relevance of this question has been explored in the criminological context to a certain extent by Nelken (1994). The value of exploring the question of trust is raised b,vNelken (1994) in the context of the importance to criminology of engaging in comparative research. In his review of what might be learned by engaging in a comparative analysis of white-collar and/or corporate crime, Nelken (1994) suggests that a number of questions become pertinent for criminology. These questions are, whom can you trust, how do you trust, how much can you trust, and when can you trust. Such questions are pertinent not only for the crimes of the powerful. The comparative data presented here would also support the usefulness of exploring the mechanism of trust which underpin people's sense of ontological security in these two high crime areas. This may be suggested by the notion of a 'square of trust'.

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OF THESQUARE TRUST

565

In Oldtown, the question of trust can be represented by Figure I (with apologies to Young 1992, who talks of the 'square of crime') . In this square of trust, whom you can trust, how you trust and how much you can trust (Nelken 1994) at an individual level depends upon where an individual is located between the four corners of the square. From the evidence discussed here it would appear that people trust as much as the local neighbourhood dogma permits whilst simultaneously endeavouring to avoid 'public shaming' (being labelled a 'grass'). This takes the form, primarily of trusting other local people, because they are local. This does not mean, however, that other individuals are not trusted. But those others are trusted in a highly individualistic and fragile manner and that trust is dependent upon what those individuals do with the trust invested in them. This may, for example, include trusting individual police officers and individual officials from other agencies, but it certainly does not mean offering generalized trust to those official agencies. The risks of 'public shamings are too high a price to pay for whatever benefits might accrue from such a co-operative venture. These processes do not mean, however, that the anarchistic politics of the criminal gangs have won the hearts and minds of this community. But it does mean that we may have to re-think some of the mechanisms and the contexts whereby social solidarity is produced and maintained. Arguably, however, trusting relationships look somewhat different in Bankhill. These relationships seem to be differently mediated by age. (See Figures II and III). In Bankhill it is very difficult for older people (Figure II) to create a balance between the four corners of the square of trust and hence some sense of ontological security. The responses here appear to suggest that Officialagencies Salford'firmx

Neighbourhooddogma 'Being Localx

FIGURE I.

Familyand kinship networks

Thesquareof trustin Old Town

566 Official agencies

Sandra Walklate
Friendship and community

Distrust

'Young peoplex

'This area is going downhillx

FIGURE II.

Thesquareof 'trust'in Bankhillfor older people

Official agencies 'The gangsx

Being 'knownx
FIGURE III.

'This area isnxt so badx

Thesquareof 'trust'in BanEhillforyounger people

older people are stillwillingto offer a generalizedtrustto the 'officialagencies'. Moreover,there are friendshipand communitygroupswhich strive to offer some kind of militation against a totally atomised existence. However, the belief that 'This area is going downhill rapidly' and the expressedfearsof young people underminethe sense of belongingnesson which the potential for trustingrelationshipsinherent in the call for help from 'the officials'might be developed.Thus there is an absence of social solidarity(being 'alrightbecauseyou're local') and a withdrawal from the processeson whichsuch solidarity mightbe predicated.Foryoungerpeople the picture is somewhatdifferent (see FigureIII).

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Foryounger people there is clearlya strugglefor them to create a sense of place for themselveswithin this community.They know they cannot be seen to be talkingto 'officialss, whichfor them might include older people. They also know that to stay out of trouble of different kinds they have to manage the tightropeof being known,but not being a 'grasss, particinor pating in criminalactivity. them, trustexists between those who know For each other, but not much beyond. Their ontological securityis finely balanced between these processes stayingvery much within the confines of being known and what they know. Hence the nature of the elements to their sense of ontologicalsecurity(FigureIII). The implicationsof thinking about the lived realityof people's experiences of high crime areas in this way are manifold, especiallyin understandingthe mechanism,whichmightunderpinpeoplesssurfaceresponses to surveyquestions.These implicationsraisefundamentalquestionsabout how we understandthe nature of communitiesin high crime areas, the policy possibilitiesin such locations,alongside the continued relevanceto talkin termsof the 'fearsof crime.

CONCLUSION

This studyhas illustratedthe waysin which a long term detailed examination of communityresponses to social problems can facilitate not only theoreticalquestionsbut also questions of policy and practice. Given the waysin which such areashavebeen, and are becoming, the centralfocus of political rhetoric, if not practice, such detailed understandingswould appearto contain importantmessages.For example,Andersonand Davey (1995) have reported on the increasing influence of the ideas of 'communitarianism' UKpolitics.Led by the AmericansocialscientistEtzioni, in this school of thought believesthat 'weneed to create "anew moral,social, and public order based on restored communities,without allowingpuritanism or oppression"'(ibid.:18). This is not the place to enter into a detailed critique of the validityor otherwise of Etzioni'sideas. However invoking the concept of the communityas a vehicle for generating and managingsocial change has been espoused by those on both the left and the right of the politicalspectrum.This is nowhere more the case than in the arenaof crimeand crimeprevention.Community crimepreventioninitiatives have proliferatedover the last fifteen years. A central dilemma posed by these policy responsesis, however,whatis meant by community? The datapresentedhere certainlychallengesthe makingof anyeasypresumptions concerning how similarly structured communities might respond to their experiencesof crime.The findingshere stressthe importance of understanding the processes which differently place different communitiesand differentsections of communitiesin relation crime and their routine management of crime related problems. A facet of what Massey (1995) has referred to as the layering of communities. Such an

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understanding renders universal policy responses highly problematic, politically difficult to manage, yet nevertheless a real issue, if the purpose of such processes is still to make a difference. This implies, at a minimum, the need for a much more carefully and locally nuanced approach to the policy process. The data presented here also serves to challenge how the 'fear of crime' debate has been constructed. These data clearly suggest that little purpose is served in perpetuating survey findings which endeavour to offer general statements on what are often very local and locally experienced problems. That survey findings still fuel political and media interests should not be under-estimated. What such findings do not do is carry us towards a better understanding of the mechanisms underpinning people's expressed fears. It is only through a better understanding of those mechanisms and how people routinely manage their lives that a better understanding of what might be called 'fear' will be found. In some respects, then, this work furthervalidates the approach taken by Merry ( 1981) and Anderson ( 1990), and certainly supports the importance of longer term, comparative work which might provide a more informed understanding of the underlying mechanisms which may produce different surface problems. As a result it standsas a significant challenge to the further pursuit of the 'fear of crime'. Itis perhaps time that criminology and criminologists grasped this particularnettle. (Dateaccepted: June 1998)

SandraWalklate Department Sociology of ManchesterMetropolitan University

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research on which this paper is based was funded under the ESRC's Crime and Social Order Initiative grant number L210252036. An earlier version this paper was presented as a Plenary of Address to the Australia and New Zealand Society of Criminology Annual Conference held in Brisbane inJuly 1997.

NOTES

1. The areas under investigation were part the SalfordDivision of the Greater of Manchester Police. The recorded crime rate Salford as a whole was, at the time for of study, significantlyhigher than the the national average;forexample, in 1992 the incidence recorded crime in England of and Wales was 10,500 per 100,000

population,inSalforditwasl6,660.Whilst the two areas under investigation did not correspond with police boundaries, for example, the recorded burglary rate for the sub-divisionin which Bankhillwassituation was 70.3 per 1000 population in 1993, and was88.4 per 1000 population for the sub-divisionwhich included Oldtown.

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Moreover, police officers believed that there was a significant under-reportingof crime in each of these areas. (See Evans and Walklate1997). 2. 596 residents were surveyed in total ensuring that each locality in each of the wards was adequately represented in the total sample. Willing participants for the focus groups were chosen from the survey respondents. Focus group discussionswere held in the local areas and comprised in total 21 residents in Oldtown and 29 residents in Bankhill. In each area discussion groups were organized to cover established residents, newcomers, males, females, and older residents. In addition focus group discussionswere held in each area consisting of school children in years 9 and 10, males and females. Police managersmet as one discussion group, and beat officers met as separategroups for each area under
. . .

569 about crime in high crime areas'. Paper presented to the BritishCriminologyConference, Belfast,July. Fulmyama,F. 1996 Trust:TheSocialVirtues and the Creation of Prosperity,London: Penguin. Gellner, E. 1989 'Trust,cohesion, and the social order' in D. Gambetta (ed.) Trust: Relations, Makingand BreakingCo-operative London: Basil Blackwell. Genn, H. 1988 'Multiplevictimisation',in of M. MaguireandJ. Pointing (eds) Victims A Crime: New Deal? Milton Keynes: Open UniversityPress. Giddens,A.1991 ModernityandSelfIdentity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hollway, W. and Jefferson, T. 1997 'The risk society in an age of anxiety: situating of the fear of crime', BritishJournal Socioloe 48(2): 255-66. Luhmann, N. 1989 'Familiarity, confidence, trust:problems and alternatives'in MakingandBreakD. Gambetta(ed. ) Trust: Relations, London: Basil ing Co-operative Blackwell. Massey,D. 1995 SpatialDivisionsof Labour, London: Macmillan. Merry, S. E. 1981 UrbanDanger:Life in a of Neighbourhood Strangers,Temple UniversityPress:Philadelphia. Misztal, B. 1996 Trustin ModernSocieties, Oxford: Polity. Nelken, D.1994 'Whomcan you trust?The future of comparativecriminology', in D. Nelken (ed.) The Futures of Criminoloe, London: Sage. Shapland,J., and Vagg,J. 1988 Policingby London: Routledge. thePublic, and Skogan, W. 1990 Disorder Decline,New York:Free Press. Sparks, R. 1992 'Reason and unreason in some problems in the consti"leftrealism": tution of the fear of crime', in R. Matthews and J. Young (eds) Issuesin RealistCriminolov, London: Sage. Stanko, E. A. 1990 Everyday Violence, London: Virago. Young,J.1992 'Ten points of realism'in R. Matthews and J. Young (eds) Rethinking The Criminology: Realist Debate,London: Sage.

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