'Safety: everybody’s concern, everybody’s duty?' Questioning the significance of 'active citizenship' and 'social cohesion' for people's perception of safety

Abstract

The catchphrase “Safety: everybody’s concern, everybody’s duty” implies that in order to safe-guard the social order and safety we, the professionals as well as the public, need to unite and work together. In this sense, social connectedness and civic engagement are perceived as the prime sources to counter crime and people’s perception of safety. In this paper, we will first clarify that the references to ‘active citizenship’ and ‘social cohesion’ in criminal policy discourse are the result of the development of ‘perception of safety’ as an autonomous subject for research and policy. Policymakers have come to see (in)security as a phenomenon that needs to be explained by taking into account crime and non-crime related factors. Next, we will describe the emergence of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘active citizenship’ as natural barriers against crime and other deviant behaviour and as prerequisites for people’s perception of safety. In the third part, however, we will point out that both concepts are not necessarily positively interlinked with people’s ‘perception of safety’. Moreover we will indicate that activating civic engagement and stimulating social cohesion can even be detrimental to people’s perception of safety. In the final part we will suggest that in order to understand people’s perception of safety, we need to consider the process of identity formation and social categorization