Re-energizing Citizenship: Strategies for Civil Renewal

Re-energizing Citizenship Strategies for Civil Renewal Edited by Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker Re-energ...

Author: Tessa Brannan | Peter John | Gerry Stoker

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Re-energizing Citizenship Strategies for Civil Renewal

Edited by

Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker

Re-energizing Citizenship

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Re-energizing Citizenship Strategies for Civil Renewal Edited by

Tessa Brannan Researcher, Institute for Political and Economic Governance University of Manchester, UK

Peter John Hallsworth Professor of Governance University of Manchester, UK

and

Gerry Stoker Professor of Governance University of Southampton, UK

© Editorial matter, selection, introduction and conclusion © Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker 2007 All remaining chapters © respective authors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 13: 978–0–230–50041–9 hardback ISBN 10: 0–230–50041–2 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Re-energizing citizenship : strategies for civil renewal / edited by Tessa Brannan, Peter John, and Gerry Stoker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–230–50041–2 (cloth) 1. Citizenship. 2. Civil society. 3. Political participation. I. Brannan, Tessa, 1975– II. John, Peter, 1960– III. Stoker, Gerry. IV. Title: Reenergizing citizenship. JF801.R37 2007 323.6–dc22

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Contents List of Figures, Tables and Boxes

ix

Preface

xi

Acknowledgements

xii

Notes on the Contributors

xiii

Introduction Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker References Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Re-energizing Citizenship: Why, What and How? Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker What is the agenda about? The meaning of re-energizing citizenship Why re-energizing citizenship is promoted Crime Tackling anti-social behaviour Regeneration and housing Education Health Local Government Learning from applied social science: Answering the ‘how’ question References Civil Renewal: The Agenda for Empowering Citizens Henry Tam The renewal of citizens’ power Recovering the progressive ethos of empowerment Re-orientating public institutions towards empowerment Strengthening our civic infrastructure Public space for public deliberations Subsidiarity-based decision making v

1 7 8

10 15 16 17 18 19 19 20 22 23 26 26 29 31 34 35 36

vi Contents

Citizenship development Conclusion References Bibliography of civic republican and progressive communitarian writings Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Involvement in Community Involvement: Referral Order Volunteers Sarah Jones with Colin Roberts Background to the Referral Order and community volunteers Background to the case study area The content of panel meetings – theory and reality Implementing change Implications for future practice and concluding remarks Notes References Civil Renewal, Control Signals and Neighbourhood Safety Anthony Bottoms and Andrew Wilson Background to the empirical research Survey results Concluding discussion Four sub-areas Government-citizens partnerships Notes References Anti-Social Behaviour and Civil Renewal David Prior, Kathryn Farrow, Basia Spalek and Marian Barnes Introduction Governance, community engagement and social capital: towards a critical understanding Profile of Greenhill district Crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour Governance and service delivery Anti-social behaviour and civil renewal: context and issues

37 38 39 39

41

43 48 51 54 57 60 61

63 66 70 81 81 86 87 89 91

91 93 96 98 98 100

Contents vii

The impact of anti-social behaviour and the challenge of renewal Change strategies – challenges and dilemmas Conclusion References Chapter 6

Chapter 7

102 105 108 109

Incentive Schemes and Civil Renewal Simon Bastow, Helen Beck, Patrick Dunleavy and Liz Richardson Introducing our four study areas How survey respondents perceived their neighbourhoods Social control: how the residents handle problems Problems caused by young people Problems caused by adults Perceptions of public authorities’ roles How far residents are aware of the incentive schemes and how they evaluate them How residents view alternative approaches to civil renewal Why individual incentives may help foster social cohesion: some brief theory Conclusions: the value of incentive schemes in civil renewal

112

The True Costs of Public Participation Edward Andersson, Diane Warburton and Richard Wilson The issue The case for measurement The case against measurement The evidence base Research methodology The findings Implications The limits of method: economic and evaluative A way forward Recommendations Future work Closing remarks Notes References

138

112 114 115 115 116 117 121 124 128 135

138 139 141 144 146 147 153 154 156 157 158 159 160 160

viii Contents

Chapter 8

Faith, Hope and Clarity: Faith Groups and Civil Renewal Vivien Lowndes and Rachael Chapman Introduction Rationales for faith group involvement Values-added: the normative rationale Capitalizing civil renewal: the resources rationale Representation and leadership: the governance rationale Integration: a fourth rationale? Conclusion: a model of faith group involvement Notes References Conclusion Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker The agenda on re-energizing citizenship The implementation challenge Incentives and costs The normative dimension and conceptual challenges The future research agenda Design experiments Randomized control trials Conclusions References

Index

163 163 164 167 171 175 177 178 182 182 185 185 187 190 191 194 195 199 204 204 206

List of Figures, Tables and Boxes Figures 3.1 6.1

6.2

6.3

6.4 6.5

6.6

6.7 6.8

6.9 6.10

8.1

The Referral Order process The relationship between personal confidence and willingness to report issues to the authorities, across all areas The proportion of respondents who trust officials to back them up, by whether or not they would report problems caused by children to the authorities and by respondents’ level of confidence The proportion of respondents who trust officials to back them up, by whether or not they would report problems caused by adults to the authorities and by respondents’ level of confidence The advantages that respondents saw in incentives schemes Simple Pearson correlations between the scoring of different impacts of local schemes across the four areas Simple Pearson correlations linking measures scored top by respondents and corresponding measures scored bottom How different clusters of factors linked together, by simple Pearson correlation across all four areas How different clusters of factors influence respondents’ views on measures and incentives to tackle anti-social behaviour How the payoffs to individuals vary with the behaviour of other people in a collective choice situation How adding selective incentives into the picture changes the payoffs to individuals in a collective choice situation What are the values behind faith group involvement?

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134 168

x List of Figures, Tables and Boxes

Tables 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 8.1

Recorded crime rates per 1,000 population, 2002–3, 2003–4 and 2004–5 by sub-area Types of recorded crime, by sub-area, 2004–5 (%) No. of victimizations per respondent for selected crimes during the last year, by sub-area (%) Satisfaction with neighbourhood safety, by sub-area Number of perceived area problems, by sub-area Index of Overall Neighbourhood Satisfaction, by sub-area Has neighbourhood become ‘better or worse place to live in last two years’, by sub-area Mean scores on four ‘producing the good community’ scales, by sub-area Membership of social groups, by sub-area (%) Perceptions of policing and crime prevention in neighbourhood, by sub-area (%) Multiple regression (OLS) with satisfaction with neighbourhood safety as the dependent variable A model of faith group involvement in civil renewal

68 68 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 80 180

Boxes 6.1

Some difficulties in the reporting to enforcement chain

119

Preface Together We Can: Exploring how to advance Civil Renewal The Civil Renewal Research Programme was commissioned by the Civil Renewal Unit when at the Home Office1 to inform the government’s Together We Can campaign to empower more citizens to be involved in decision making in partnership with public bodies. The aim of Together We Can is to tackle the barriers which prevent people from exercising their democratic influence over the public realm. With over 60 per cent of people in England and Wales believing that they have no influence over decisions which affect their local areas, there are some serious obstacles to overcome. The chapters written for this book provide a context to the campaign for civil renewal, and build on the findings which emerged from the research programme. They will prompt practitioners and theorists alike to reflect on some of the challenges inherent in deepening our understanding of the problems of civic disengagement, and what solutions should be sought. Although there is now widespread recognition that the democratic health of our society cannot be sustained without the genuine participation of citizens in its deliberations, the options for corrective action are still very much contested. We hope this collection of work will inspire further investigations that can continue to build the evidence base for policy and practical action that seeks at its heart to reinvigorate governance and build a stronger democracy. Dr Henry Tam Head, Civil Renewal Department for Communities and Local Government

1 The Civil Renewal Unit has now moved to be part of the new Department for Communities and Local Government that was set up following departmental restructuring in May 2006. xi

Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Home Office for funding the ‘Civil Renewal Research Programme’2, the research projects of which form the basis of this volume. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the work of Duncan Prime in the Civil Renewal Unit. Thanks are also due to Angie Lewis in the Institute for Political and Economic Governance (IPEG) at the University of Manchester for her assistance in the preparation of the book.

2 The Civil Renewal Unit has now moved to be part of the new Department for Communities and Local Government that was set up following departmental restructuring in May 2006. Subsequent chapters refer to Home Office funding or the Home Office research programme but policy responsibility for work in this area now resides with the Department for Communities and Local Government. xii

Notes on the Contributors Edward Andersson is a Researcher at Involve, a charity promoting public participation Marian Barnes is the Director of Social Research at the Institute of Applied Social Studies, University of Birmingham. Her research expertise is in public participation and community. Simon Bastow is a Senior Research Fellow in the Public Policy Group at the London School of Economics. His research expertise is in public policy and electoral analysis. Helen Beck is a Research Assistant at LSE Housing in the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics. She works on the Capacity Building Programme for Communities Anthony Bottoms is Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow in Criminology at the University of Sheffield. Tessa Brannan is a Researcher at the Institute for Political and Economic Governance (IPEG) at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are in community engagement and policy evaluation, learning and implementation. Rachael Chapman is a Research Fellow at the Local Governance Research Unit in the Department of Public Policy, De Montfort University. Her research interests are in governance, partnership working, local democracy, policy-making legitimacy and regeneration. Patrick Dunleavy is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Chair of the LSE Public Policy Group. His research expertise is in political science theory, British politics, urban politics, electoral systems design, democratization, and citizenship. Kathryn Farrow is a Lecturer in Community Justice at the University of Birmingham. Her research experience is in the probation service, and anti-social behaviour. Peter John is the Hallsworth Chair of Governance and Co-Director of the Institute for Political and Economic Governance (IPEG), University xiii

xiv Notes on the Contributors

of Manchester. His research interests are urban politics and policy, both UK and comparative; public policy theory; civil renewal and social capital; and research methods. Sarah Jones is a Research Officer at the Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Oxford. Her main research interests are in youth justice. Vivien Lowndes is Professor of Local Government Studies in the Department of Public Policy at De Montfort University. Her principal research expertise is in public participation, community engagement, local governance and local democracy. David Prior is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Applied Social Studies, University of Birmingham. His research interests are in local government and citizen participation. Liz Richardson is a Research Fellow at IPEG, University of Manchester. She was Research Co-ordinator of LSE Housing at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics during the research on which her chapter is based. Colin Roberts is a Lecturer in Applied Social Studies and Head of the Probation Studies Unit and Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Oxford. Gerry Stoker is a Professor of Governance at the University of Southampton. His research expertise is in governance, democratic politics, local and regional governance, urban politics, public participation and public service reform. Basia Spalek is a Lecturer in Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her particular research interests are in British Muslims and criminal justice policy, victimization, and corporate deviance. Henry Tam is Head of Civil Renewal at the Department for Communities and Local Government, and Fellow of the Globus Institute for Globalization & Sustainable Development at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He has written extensively on citizenship, responsibility and public service issues. Diane Warburton is a Founding Partner of Shared Practice and a researcher and consultant on public and community participation, regeneration, environmental action, and sustainable development. She is also a founding member of Involve, a charity promoting public participation.

Notes on the Contributors xv

Andrew Wilson is a Police Foundation Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. His research interests are in public perceptions of crime and policing. Richard Wilson is the co-founder of Involve, a charity promoting public participation. He is Deputy Chair of the DTI Public Participation funding committee and an advisor on public participation strategies.

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Introduction Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker

Across the world it is possible to point to initiatives and schemes that rest on contributions from organized citizens. One scheme can be used to illustrate the potential that appears to be embedded in the capacities of civil society. Journalist Roger Cowe (2000) describes with enthusiasm the idea of a ‘time bank’ that originated in the United States and spread to Japan and was being established in the UK: Fancy writing letters in return for some DIY? Time bank, a modern bartering system, is tackling the problems of social exclusion. There is another wealth gap in society, as well as the obvious one between those with millions and those on the breadline. It is the gap between people who have time on their hands and those whose lives are a constant frenzy. This ‘time gap’ works in the opposite direction to the money gap. Typically, the (working) money-rich are time-poor. On the other hand, people with no job and precious little money tend to have all the time in the world, but nothing to fill those hours. Now there is a way of putting value on that spare time, using what are known as ‘time banks’. In Watford, people are swapping errands for housework, letter-writing for woodwork. In Lewisham, south London, doctors are ‘prescribing’ time and in Gloucestershire, there is a county-wide scheme linking nine time banks. This innovative idea is simple…It works rather like a babysitting circle. You do three hours for one member, then you can claim three hours back, either from that member or any other. David Boyle, an advocate of time banks… believes government should be interested in time banks because of the potential for attacking social exclusion. ‘This is really about rebuilding communities, relationship by relationship,’ he says. ‘The(se) kind of networks 1

2 Re-energizing Citizenship

which allow people to support each other have disappeared in many parts of the developed world.’ This depiction of a ‘time bank’ captures some of the hope and ambition that surrounds the potential of the role of re-energizing citizenship in practical and relevant ways. It is schemes like this that have provided the inspiration for developing the research programme presented in this book. The underlying research question is whether and how citizens in civil society can be engaged in meeting social and economic challenges steered by and through a framework of public policy. Civil society can be defined as the network of community groups, associations, and voluntary organizations that are not part of government and, equally, nor do they operate as private companies in the market. The state, the market and civil society form the structural bedrocks of our world and this book looks to the contribution that stems from civil society inputs and practices. However, there are grounds for thinking that the institutions of civil society are under pressure in our societies. The pressures could be the result of increased levels of residential mobility, suburbanization, pressures of time, the disabling and individualizing impact of television and the electronic media, to name just some of the potential culprits identified by Robert Putnam in his influential and seminal work on the issue that he defines as a decline in social capital (Putnam, 2000; 2004). The validity and strength of these claims by Putnam is a matter of considerable academic controversy (Edwards et al., 2001). Yet even within Putnam’s work the idea that civil society might be in trouble to some degree sits uneasily alongside the idea that it is with the resources and passion of civil society that we can find solutions to intractable and difficult problems in our society. In a book written jointly with Lewis Feldstein, Putnam describes the attempts across the United States to get people to engage and tackle social and economic problems. They argue that what ‘these and other undertakings…have in common is that they all involve making connections among people, establishing bonds of trust and understanding, building community,’ (Putnam and Feldstein, 2003; p. 1). The dual nature of civil society – as both problem and solution – is a leitmotif of this book. The malaise in civil society is seen as a key to understanding anti-social behaviour, the weaknesses of regeneration schemes, and the divisions and antagonisms of our societies. Yet the resources and skills hidden away in civil society, if they could be unlocked, are seen as the key to effective intervention to tackle chal-

Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker 3

lenging social and economic issues because civil society reaches parts of our lives that the state or the market cannot reach. We explore in detail attempts to use the capacities and resources of civil society to reenergize citizenship in a range of contexts and ways and, in doing so, address problems that cannot be dealt with by the market or the state. But there is a further contradiction we are examining: whether an active state policy-making process can help unlock that potential embedded within civil society. In the light of the challenges and complexities of this area, the tone of this book is not celebratory or evangelical. It is substantially empirical and, more than that, it is hard-nosed in that it asks what prospects there are for re-engaging civil society to tackle the tough issues of youth offending, neighbourhood safety, anti-social behaviour, economic regeneration, and conflict between civic groups. We are interested in re-energizing citizenship on some tough terrains. The opening chapter is provided by the editors and explores some of the intellectual backdrop to policy in this area in more detail. We ask and begin to answer three questions. What are the advocates of civil society and re-energizing citizenship going on about? We suggest that the idea of re-energizing citizenship has become part of a zeitgeist of the age and is lauded by politicians across the political spectrum. The strength of the agenda, we argue, is its capacity to connect a set of ideas around empowerment, social exclusion, social capital, and community. Next we point out that this agenda involves much more than idle reflection on the part of politicians. We ask what work reenergizing citizenship is supposed to do and discover a growing number of policy programmes that build a concern with re-energizing citizenship into their operation. The third question raised is one that occupies much of the remainder of this book. It addresses the key issues about how re-energizing citizenship can be done and whether the commitment to bringing citizens back in will work. We argue that this is an empirical rather than a normative question. Our research programme is designed to help answer the challenge. Before moving to the research projects, Chapter 2 provides a clear statement of the policy thinking in this area provided by Henry Tam, the civil servant pioneer of the civil renewal agenda in the Home Office in the UK, writing here in a personal capacity. He traces the origins of policy responses at local and national levels and argues that progress is needed on at least three fronts: recovering the progressive ethos of empowerment; re-orientating public institutions towards empowerment; and strengthening our civic infrastructure. Empowerment he


argues is a key challenge as people in deprived estates or marginal circumstances need power to tackle the problems that they face. The motto of policy should be that those with the least leverage to make their positions count should be progressively empowered. Secondly, the institutions of government need be opened out so that people can exercise greater influence over public policy. As Tam argues, the reason why many people may be inclined to surrender what is potentially their most powerful instrument – government acting in their collective interests – in favour of relying on their much more limited personal resources, is because they do not believe they can really influence what their government may do. We need to make engagement with government a viable option for all citizens. Thirdly, Tam argues that the civic infrastructure needs to be strengthened in a way that gives capacity and opportunity to all by giving people support, skills, and a framework in which they can see that collective action by them and with others can make a difference. The delivery of all three of these objectives makes most sense in the context of a devolved structure of practice and decision making as it is local government and local communities that can ‘move mountains’ on these agendas rather than central government acting alone. The individual studies that follow explore how far progress can be and has been made against the programme and commitments outlined by Tam. Sarah Jones and Colin Roberts in Chapter 3 open our account of how re-energizing citizenship might work by focusing on its development in a non-benign area, namely the use of volunteers as community representatives in a criminal justice setting. The case study of volunteers’ involvement in a youth offender referral scheme shows the challenges and limitations that might be expected in developing an innovative and difficult initiative. The gap between the rhetoric of re-energizing citizenship and the practice on the ground is clearly and carefully observed. But the authors conclude on a positive note by identifying a number of changes to the scheme that could make practice in future considerably more successful. Chapter 4 presents the challenge of re-energizing citizenship in another tough arena. The research reported explores whether the promotion of public safety in neighbourhoods can work. The answer provided by Anthony Bottoms and Andrew Wilson is a cautious, yet positive, one. They argue that if public authorities communicate an attempt to regulate disorderly and deviant behaviour by and through various ‘control signals’ – providing reassurance that action will be taken against offenders – then local residents receive the message and


start to adjust their behaviour in a way that reinforces and supports that intervention. Together community and government can make neighbourhoods feel safer. Chapter 5 examines the assumption that tackling anti-social behaviour in local areas can help bring communities together in a way that contributes to civil renewal. This assumption is based upon an approach to crime control in which the community plays a central role and is the basis for recent policies such as Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships. Prior et al.’s research in a deprived district of Birmingham explores the partnership between local agencies and communities which this approach implies. They identify a number of challenges to the way that service providers operate which must be overcome if this partnership is to have fruitful results. In particular, they emphasize the need to build trust and confidence of citizens in public agencies, which has been undermined by citizens’ experiences of these agencies as bureaucratic, unresponsive, inflexible, and unsympathetic. Their conclusion highlights the need to address anti-social behaviour within its social and economic context, and within a wider framework of tackling deprivation. In Chapter 6, Simon Bastow and colleagues explore the problems of halting and reversing a spiral of decline in poorer or disadvantaged neighbourhoods by looking at the provision of incentives to citizens to help stamp out anti-social behaviour. The incentives schemes they investigate on a range of estates are fairly modest in their tone and set up, and range from an expressed commitment to being a good neighbour and the social esteem that goes with that, to modest benefits provided to a household for helping to support others in the community and take on those that are behaving inappropriately. Their research shows that incentives for households and communities in particular can signal to residents that officials in public agencies are positively interested in their area, as well as somewhat improving people’s confidence that they will get a positive response to any concerns from officialdom. Achieving quite small changes in residents’ perceptions and in particular appealing to a minority of residents who are untouched by other measures, can make an important contribution to encouraging civil renewal. However, the study also shows how these kinds of measures illicit different responses within any one community and between communities. Confident people tend to have a much wider range of options available in dealing with anti-social behaviour. More importantly, people are more likely to do something themselves when they do not fear retribution, and they are less likely to fear


retribution when they feel that they have backing from the authorities. Therefore, agency intervention is likely to increase rather than substitute for residents’ own action to tackle anti-social behaviour. In value for money terms, the schemes they examine have achieved some worthwhile gains but in future they warn that the design of schemes will need to be carefully tailored to the context of each community where they will operate. Chapter 7 by Edward Andersson and colleagues takes up the issue of whether it is possible to be clear about what is the economic, valuefor-money case for involving citizens in policy making and delivery. This chapter starts out with a theoretical overview of the case for and against the use of economic models when researching and evaluating participation. The main part of the chapter revolves around the findings and reports on the feasibility of recording the costs and benefits of participation. The chapter concludes with recommendations and ideas for future work. Vivien Lowndes and Rachel Chapman in Chapter 8 examine the key issue of rationales for faith group involvement in civil renewal. In Britain, the intersection of secularism and multiculturalism creates a unique context. Just 10 per cent of British people attend church regularly and attendance is more common among women and middle class people. However, church attendance is actually growing in some urban areas, particularly among black Christians. Despite small congregations, the Church of England also remains a focus for community activity within many localities. A review of existing research and relevant conceptual developments leads the authors to identify three distinct rationales for faith group involvement in civil renewal: the normative, resources, and governance rationales. The normative rationale relates to the intrinsic motivation for faith group involvement in civil renewal. The resources rationale relates to the capacity for faith group involvement: resources are what groups need if they are to be involved in civil renewal. The governance rationale relates to the outcome of faith group involvement. The goal is to engage faith groups in the co-production of services, in policy consultations, and in decision-making partnerships. The great value of this chapter is that it enables policy makers and faith groups to think more strategically about what is the contribution of the ‘faith sector’. Finally, in Chapter 9, the editors sum up the chapters, and seek to tie them together. One theme they note is the different models of human motivation at work in the civil renewal research agenda, such as the economic, cost-benefit model of participation and policy choice, then


more normative and societal-based models, such as those that examine faith. After giving our verdict on the achievements of the research programme, we reflect on the future direction of academic and policyorientated study of citizenship, not just on the need to fill gaps in study, but to advocate particular kinds of study that can elucidate the causal mechanisms at work, both for stimulating civicness and for linking civicness to desirable social, political and economic outcomes. This is because understanding these links is particularly tricky in the civil renewal area. For that reason, the final chapter spends some time setting out an agenda for more experimental studies of the policy area. Two methods are germane to the problem: design experiments and randomized control trials. The former is a qualitative form of evaluation; a real-time form of response to policy problems that seeks to redesign an intervention in line with streams of evidence as they appear. The second is more conventional, whereby randomizing which individuals or communities receive an intervention allows the research to make an evaluation based on comparison with a control group. Whilst randomized control trials are common in areas of social policy and crime, they are relatively new to the civicness agenda, especially in the UK. In terms of the research challenge and the application of new methodologies, the research for this book aims to be the starting point for a fruitful and policy-relevant line of endeavour for the applied social sciences.

References Cowe, R. (2000) ‘Swap shop: The Time Bank idea’, The Guardian, Wednesday August 30, 2000. Edwards, B., Foley, M. & Diani, M. (eds) (2001) Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective (Hanover: Tufts). Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Renewal of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster). Putnam, R. (ed.) (2004) Democracies in Flux (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Putnam, R. & Feldstein, L. (2003) Better Together: Restoring American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster).

1 Re-energizing Citizenship: What, Why and How? Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker

Policy makers and opinion leaders argue that public involvement in public service delivery offers tangible benefits to society by delivering outcomes to policy, improving the quality of democracy and delivering benefits to the individuals who participate. The idea is based on a critique of existing modes of delivering services, which have been too closely tied to the interests and working practices of professionals and both central and local bureaucrats, and the belief that it is society itself that has the critical links and capacities to solve policy problems, albeit with the direct support of the institutions of the state. The building in of the citizen into public decision making and into the delivery of public services has been a central feature of policy initiatives for at least the last fifteen years, growing in significance since 1997, and promises to be a core part of policy for the foreseeable future. The policy agenda draws on practical concerns about how best to tackle social and economic challenges and from the developing intellectual climate of thought on citizenship. The aim is to complement notions of representative democracy with a more rounded role for the citizen. The idea is that some types of governing structures do not have the same legitimacy as before, so there is a need to fill out the space between the state and individual in a way that does not leave decisions to the market, and is a response to more global and internationalized pressures. Such intellectual concerns are not a search for a lost community or a return to traditions of deference, but a search to reinvent the role of the individual in a much changed world in a way that creates meaningful forms of identity, appropriate forms of involvement that are consistent with work intensity and high degrees of mobility, and is smart in the way it yields payoffs for the individual, the neighbourhood and society at large. In short, there are routes to the prov8


ision of collective goods – security, prosperity, community cohesion – that are not generated by the market and which do not rely on command and control, but also do not totally rely on more traditional forms of association, such as through party, trade union or national associations. Civic involvement is a big challenge, but one where public policy makers and intellectuals are agreed that it is worth trying to create a society and polity appropriate for the kind of structures and processes in the 21st century and beyond. Active citizenship has become a central concept in the political agenda. Politicians from across the political range are calling for a reenergizing of citizenship. David Blunkett was one of the first of the current generation of Labour politicians to call for ‘a vision of strong, active, and empowered communities – increasingly capable of doing things for themselves, defining the problems they face and then tackling them together,’ (Blunkett, 2003; p. 1). That concern has been taken up by Gordon Brown and David Miliband, among other leading Labour figures. Gordon Brown has linked the idea of active citizenship to a broader sense of shared values among the British: ‘The British way always was…more than self interested individualism – at the core of British history are the very ideas of “active citizenship”, “good neighbour”, civic pride and the public realm’ (Brown, 2006). For David Miliband, the argument is couched in terms of the need for an empowered society. Citizens ‘for the most part … do not lack the capacity to exercise power, but the means to do so … if the 20th century was about enhancing personal freedom, I believe that the mission for the 21st century must be to spread power to citizens both to act individually and collectively’ (Miliband, 2006). But it is not just Labour politicians that are making a case for a reenergized citizenship. David Cameron, the new leader of the Conservatives, comments: ‘there’s a “we” in our politics as well as a “me.” I want us to bring to the fore the Conservative insight that we’re stronger, more successful and more fulfilled as individuals, families and communities when we do things together, not separately. And so in the years ahead, when developing approaches to the big social, economic and environmental challenges our country and our world faces, my instinct will not just be to say: “what can government do about this?” But to ask: “what can we all do together?’’’ (Cameron, 2005). The former leader of the Liberal Democrats suggests that his party are very interested in this terrain as well. He sees the ‘need [for] a new democratic settlement in this country between Government and the citizen: one which devolves power so that local people can have a say in their local


services. But one that devolves responsibility too, so that parents, pupils and patients are full partners in their education and health care. We Liberal Democrats intend to encourage an “active citizenship”, so that people are in control of their own lives,’ (Kennedy, 2005). The first section of this chapter answers the ‘what’ question. What are these politicians and their ‘policy wonks’ going on about? It argues that the idea of re-energizing citizenship has become part of zeitgeist of the age and is connected to a set of ideas around empowerment, social exclusion, social capital, and community. The next section answers the ‘why’ question. It points out that this agenda involves much more than idle reflection on the part of politicians. Re-energizing citizenship is supposed to do work. There are a growing number of policy programmes that build a concern with re-energizing citizenship into their operation. Politicians are running with re-energizing citizenship because they hope it will help them deal with intractable social and economic challenges. The third section of the chapter and much of the remainder of this book turns to the issue of ‘how’. In particular, it addresses the key issue about whether the commitment to bringing citizens back in will work. Can it be done and what benefits in services, policy and programme terms does it deliver? How can we learn what works in this area?

What is the agenda about? The meaning of re-energizing citizenship Re-energizing citizenship is evocative of several notions: citizen empowerment, worries about social exclusion, a belief in the curative capacities of social capital, and a fondness for community. It is worth exploring these connected concepts in more detail before returning directly to the issues of re-energizing citizenship. Empowerment is about a journey that links the personal and the political. People need to have decision-making opportunities and to believe that they can make a difference. People need to learn that power is not fixed and immutable and that, together, they can seize opportunities to redefine issues, challenge assumptions and divert the flow of power in new directions. Empowerment is not something that can be done to people. It is about them gaining the strength, confidence and vision to work for positive changes in their lives, either individually or collectively (Eade, 1997; p. 4). Social exclusion is a term which establishes that poverty is about more than low income, but is about a connected set of concerns about


significant minorities being excluded from society through lack of access to jobs, good education and civic organizations. It is about something more than the lack of resources held by individuals or households, and focuses on deficiencies in the social integration and power of significant groups in many western welfare states. The UK Government social exclusion unit argues that ‘social exclusion is a complex phenomenon. It is multi-dimensional, and can pass from generation to generation. Social exclusion includes poverty and low income, but is a broader concept and encompasses some of the wider causes and consequences of deprivation,’ (Social Exclusion Unit, 2004; p. 4). Years of economic growth and welfare provision have not resolved these issues of exclusion, yet until they are resolved it would appear that societies are, in a fundamental way, still failing. Social capital refers to the social glue – the networks of ties, information, trust and norms – that binds people and enables them to cooperate more effectively. The works of Bob Putnam and others have popularized the notion of social capital and there has been a considerable growth of studies that identify social capital as either a key independent or dependent variable (see Stolle and Hooghe, 2005; Forrest and Kearns, 2001; Hawe and Shiell, 2000; Productivity Commission, 2003; Office for National Statistics, 2001; Sullivan and Transue, 1999; Durlauf, 2002; Macinko and Starfield, 2001). A successful economy and society needs financial, physical and human capital, but it also needs social capital. That is, it needs the capacity for people to be able to construct programmes and projects together at relatively low cost, in terms of effort, and in a way that overcomes the barriers of social and economic distance. People need to find ways of not being strangers and of developing trust, loyalty and a shared commitment to one another. Social capital exists, therefore, in particular relationships, and its presence enables those relationships to function more effectively and for the mutual benefit of participants. A crucial distinction is often made between bonding and bridging social capital. The former refers to the shared ties between communities of the same social and economic status, and the latter refers to the making of connections across social groups and divides. It is the latter type of social capital that is often of most interest to policy makers. Community is a word that has been sprayed around public policy debate fairly liberally, at least from the 1950s in many western democracies (Taylor, 2003). Commonly, a distinction was drawn between policies that blamed the individuals in a particular community for their outlook and behaviour, and those policy perspectives that took a


more structural perspective and saw the problems of communities stemming from the inequalities and power divisions of capitalist society. For some, the deficiencies of the individuals in communities explained problems; for others, it was the structures of society. The solution, for those that focus on the pathology of communities, was intensive development of those individuals in order to bring them up to the moral standards of the rest of society and break their addiction to a dependency culture. The prescription for those with a radical structural perspective was to advocate confrontation, community protest and a challenge by the powerless to the powerful. The current debate takes a different line. Re-energizing citizenship is not about blaming individuals or the structures for our problems; it is about the part that citizens could play in tackling those problems. These various concepts offer different shades of understanding and opinion as to what the nature of the problem is and what could be done about it. However they share a sense that unless citizens are mobilized and engaged, then the solution to intractable social and economic problems will remain illusive. Communities and active citizens are seen as part of the solution, not a gathering of problematic and pathologically failing individuals or helpless victims in the grip of economic and historical forces beyond their control. The distinctive feature of current debate is that re-energizing citizenship is seen as an essential prerequisite for not only the advancement of democracy but also for making life in the 21st century both fairer for all and more liveable for all. Re-energizing citizenship has become part of a powerful wave of thought and practice. The idea of re-energizing citizenship speaks to something beyond the market and the state. It asks people to go beyond asserting their rights and calls for them to go further in taking on board wider personal and community responsibilities. The language can sometimes jar with the values of individual choice and self-determination, which are so prominent in our societies. The rediscovery of active citizenship is premised on the breakdown of traditional authority structures maintained through the state, companies, schools, churches and communities. Talk of it can sometimes sound like a nostalgic search for some lost golden age; yet its current day advocates see it as a key and practical tool for tackling today’s problems. In the discourse of the last decade active citizenship has been given widespread political and expert support and has entered into debates about tackling a range of social and economic issues. There is a further key assumption that government policies can contribute to – even cause – its revival.


The concept of citizenship is seen as under pressure in today’s world. Market-based globalization has driven innovation and change. It has framed an awesome economic dynamic of change in many countries. But it has done so at a considerable cost to many communities and social groups. For some, the impact is reflected in work demands and a negative impact on family life. For others, the impact has been on the very prospects of them maintaining a livelihood. For the beneficiaries, globalized markets bring greater consumer goods and choice but for many there is a pervading sense that life should be more than a series of commercial exchanges. The civic articulates the idea of being part of something that makes you more than an individual consumer. The state has struggled in its response to globalization to convince the public that it can act effectively to meet the new challenges that have been set. This sense of loss of efficacy, coupled with a general loss in trust with respect to public institutions, has helped to create a crisis of confidence in democratic politics in many countries. Moreover, the top-down and bureaucratic style of traditional state intervention and provision seems less appropriate and legitimate today. Government, in the language of debates across the world, has given way to governance in which state, private and non-governmental organizations and citizens themselves as individual actors form partnerships to attack problems in new ways. The state appears to need to forge a new relationship with the realm of the civic if it is to retain its capacity to act. The world of governing has seen a revolution expressed in a shift from government to governance. The civic is intruding into the world of government and vice versa. Pierre and Peters (2000) see governance as about the state learning to steer society in new ways, but they also see governance as emerging through the development of complex networks and the rise of more bottom-up approaches to decision making. Certainly much of the new focus in governance is on forms of control that go beyond top-down, hierarchical options (see Stoker, 1998). Some focus on the development of public management through contracts (Donahue and Nye, 2001; 2002); others see the increased use of networks as the key to defining governance (Rhodes, 1997; Newman, 2001). Still others define governance as a process of political communication in which both governors and governed negotiate a way forward (Bang, 2003). There has been much attention given to governance arrangements in the context of uncertainty as in many arenas of decision making a wider range of participants are seen to be legitimate members of the decision-making process. Decision makers at the local,


national and international level have experienced increased demands to be held to account in new ways. An additional pressure has been to find new ways to collaborate as the interdependence of individuals and organizations intensifies. Can we deliver governance institutions that provide accountability and an enhanced capacity for collaboration? Powerful patterns of globalization and migration raise issues about how to maintain the cohesiveness of society. Putnam has controversially identified diversity as a limit to social capital, which poses challenges for policy proposals to build social capital. And, in fact, one of the research projects described later in this book is designed to address that very question. More generally, we know from the declining social capital debate that the factors associated with globalization are not good for social capital. Increasingly work-centred lives based on flexible employment are not good for volunteering. Economic change, in the form of more migration, is not good for promoting the social glue either. The increasing dependence on multi-media sources for entertainment in this context is likewise associated with declining social capital. The public participation and engagement promoted by the civic agenda are presumed to have a number of benefits. Burton (2003) proposes four different sets of arguments: that individuals can advance interests via participation (instrumentalist); that participation results in a negotiated collective public interest (communitarian); that participation develops an understanding of policy issues (educative); and that participation enables the expression of individual political identity (expressive). A distinction can be made between intrinsic benefits – those conferred by the process of participation – and instrumental benefits – those which impact on outcomes. Proponents of participation focus overwhelmingly on the intrinsic benefits, including: personal feelings of inclusion and self-esteem (Burton et al., 2004); developing knowledge and capacity (Barnes, 1999); and generating innovative ideas (Dibben and Bartlett, 2001). This focus is reflected in the numerous studies of public involvement and is based on normative claims about the values associated with participatory practices. From this perspective, such practices are inherently valuable and therefore require no further justification (Burton et al., 2004). Re-energizing citizenship speaks to the presumed intrinsic benefits of public engagement in decision making: the idea is that the process of participation is, and should be valued as, a good in and of itself. Yet, re-energizing citizenship consists of more than simply increasing the level of public participation for its own sake, ‘…it demands participa-


tion with a purpose. That purpose is to engage people in making their communities better places for themselves and for those around them,’ (Stoker, 2004; p. 2). Active citizenship is about engaging people in decision-making processes, giving them a say in the planning and delivery of public services, and involving them in their communities and in society in general, as a means to improve outcomes.

Why re-energizing citizenship is promoted The key question from the viewpoint of policy makers is whether reenergizing citizenship can make a difference to addressing social and economic challenges. It is one thing to say what is going wrong; quite another to decide what to do about it. In this section of the chapter we explore the ‘why’ question and ask why politicians think that reenergizing citizenship will make a difference. The rediscovery of citizenship is about rights and responsibilities. The latter speaks to a need to establish norms of behaviour in our overlapping and connected lives that mean that people can live comfortably and easily side by side, without fear and intimidation. The UK Prime Minister (Blair, 2002) has expressed these ideas powerfully around the idea of ‘respect’: Respect is a simple notion. We know instinctively what it means. Respect for others – their opinions, values and way of life. Respect for neighbours; respect for the community that means caring about others. Respect for property which means not tolerating mindless vandalism, theft, and graffiti. And self-respect, which means giving as well as taking. Respect is at the heart of a belief in society. It is what makes us a community, not merely a group of isolated individuals. It makes real a new contract between citizen and state, a contract that says that with rights and opportunities come responsibilities and obligations There are fears that such views will result in a rhetoric that blames individuals or scapegoats certain members of society. There is a danger of outcomes along these lines. But a close examination of various government initiatives in this area shows a subtle mix of empowering and challenging strategies aimed at the citizen. This ‘responsibilities’ agenda can be seen as empowering because people and the way they behave are see as part of the solution to the challenges that our society faces.


Re-energizing citizenship crucially links responsibilities with rights and being a member of a political community. The concept of an active citizenship makes this connection more explicit in its understanding that citizenship is about much more than the passive membership of a particular political entity. To be a citizen in the fullest sense, it argues, you have to be active. It is about a willingness to get involved and make a contribution to both political debate and social action. An active citizen must be involved in something more than the running of a football team or a horticultural society, valuable as those activities may be. The involvement has to reflect some public-mindedness. It is about volunteerism with a purpose that stretches beyond the mutual benefit of a small group. Active citizenship may occur when someone volunteers to help in public service provision or acts as a governor making decisions about a public service, programme or policy. They may engage in these activities as general societal members, or more directly as users of the service or programme. The concept of re-energizing citizenship in policy debates stretches from civic renewal in neighbourhoods, through anti-social behaviour initiatives on housing estates, to sustainable re-cycling, and beyond to energy saving schemes and attempts to improve the eating habits and fitness of the nation. What the above policies share in common, however, is a sense that unless communities and individuals are mobilized and engaged, then it will be hard to overcome the challenges encountered in the 21st century. The surge of interest by politicians in active citizenship has been expressed in many recent policy interventions in the UK. The discovery of the civic is treated both as an objective and as an all-encompassing solution to the challenges of crime (providing a means of social control, cohesion and sanctions), health (influencing individual behaviour and improving access to health care), education (encouraging the engagement of both parents and children), employment (networks providing access to opportunities), and democracy (increasing turnout and citizen engagement, improving government responsiveness). Some of these areas of policy initiatives are examined further below.

Crime Crime is a policy area strongly associated with the rediscovery of active citizenship. Two of the chapters in our book speak to this agenda (see Chapters 3 and 4). A starting point is the notion of community safety: an approach to crime management that places crime and disorder


within a local community context and attempts to address it within that context. This discourse is based upon assumed causal connections between the breakdown of communities and the prevalence of crime and disorder, and appeals to informal processes of social control supposedly inherent in well-functioning communities. It seeks to involve local communities in defining problems, setting priorities, and addressing salient issues (Rogers and Robinson, 2004) and explicitly links crime to the wider risk factors associated with social exclusion (employment, education, housing etc.). A related concept is that of informal social control (Crawford, 1998): the assumption that cohesive, engaged communities can encourage positive and discourage negative behaviour. This perspective forms the basis of policies on crime reduction and prevention, anti-social behaviour, community wardens, neighbourhood watch, restorative justice, and community sentencing, amongst others. The establishment of Crime and Disorder Partnerships (CDRPs) has been a major innovation of the civic renewal approach, forging partnerships between local government, criminal justice agencies, and communities. CDRPs have a statutory obligation to consult the public in the development, implementation and evaluation of crime audits. These are designed to allow local identification of problems and establishment of priorities, creating public support for and ownership of crime management strategies (Newburn and Jones, 2002). The community is also seen as a resource for rehabilitating and reintegrating offenders, reducing social exclusion and re-offending. Restorative justice is an integral concept in civic-focused approaches to crime: ‘…a normative theory and reform movement emphasizing dialogue and reconciliation between victim, offender, and community…’ (Dzur, 2003; p. 279). Dzur argues that restorative justice is best viewed as a ‘democratic experiment’ (p. 281) based on public involvement in, knowledge about, and ownership of the workings of the criminal justice system. The ultimate aim is to seek alternatives to custodial sentences by creating dialogue between the different stakeholders, leading to better mutual understanding and the social integration of offenders.

Tackling anti-social behaviour Numerous initiatives are aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour. These form the background for Chapters 5 and 6 in the book. The argument here is that informal social controls can contribute to the maintenance of standards of behaviour. In some neighbourhoods, conditions have


broken down to the extent that residents and public agencies have tried to re-establish rules of behaviour in more formal ways. Three interesting interventions being tried to create better conditions for socially acceptable behaviours are: – good neighbour declarations, otherwise called community or estate agreements, led by public agencies; – good neighbour agreements led by community organizations; – schemes that reward positive behaviours, with sanctions for negative behaviours. Anti-social behaviour initiatives are about tackling low level criminality and actions that are not criminal but make an area unpleasant or difficult to live in for the majority of residents.

Regeneration and housing Regeneration and housing is another area where active citizenship has played a major part in thinking and it forms the backcloth to Chapters 4, 5 and 6 in this book. Community involvement has a long history in the field of housing (Rogers and Robinson, 2004) and became a popular theme in regeneration some years before its recent proliferation into other areas of social policy. In housing, mechanisms for tenant participation and consultation have been in existence for many years. The demand for tenant involvement and general dissatisfaction with the service provided by local authorities led to the creation of Community-Based Housing Organizations (CBHOs) in Scotland in the mid-1980s (Clapham et al., 1999). These took over many of the responsibilities of local authorities and were based on principles of community involvement and control. These principles have also formed the basis of more recent policy initiatives, such as Tenant Participation Compacts and Housing Cooperatives (Rogers and Robinson, 2004). The emphasis of regeneration projects on neighbourhoods with high concentrations of multiple deprivation recognizes the role of the community, both as part of the problem and part of the solution, in that regeneration. This area-based approach acknowledges the multi-faceted nature of social exclusion and the role of actively engaged, inclusive and cohesive communities in addressing it. Moreover, it takes account of the need for community support and involvement in the successful design and implementation of policies formulated to address local problems. As a result virtually every initiative, whether it is a national policy or a local neighbourhood project, includes provisions for involving the


public. Mechanisms have ranged from information provision and oneoff consultation to community ownership and planning. Many core government programmes, such as New Deal for Communities and Housing Market Renewal, prioritize community engagement.

Education There has been a focus on encouraging parental involvement in their children’s education, based on research findings that closely associate educational attainment with parental involvement. More generally there has been the promotion of public participation in school governance, a policy introduced in 1988. The objectives of appointing citizens as school governors are multiple: to increase participation; to improve public accountability; to bring in external expertise and access resources; to connect schools with local communities and businesses; and to enhance the policy, practice and performance of schools (Ranson, 2002). A more recent policy (albeit with roots in previous initiatives, such as community schools) has been the introduction of ‘extended schools’; schools which ‘interact with and make a wider contribution to their communities,’ (Dyson et al., 2002; p. 3). The idea is to extend the services provided by the school to include other services (health, social services etc.), to provide facilities for the community (learning, leisure etc.), and to offer additional schooling and childcare (Wilkin et al., 2003). Widespread benefits are thought to result from such schemes: improving skills and knowledge of members of the community; encouraging social integration; overcoming pervasive negative attitudes towards education; increasing access to services; providing a holistic approach to children’s education and welfare; and the involvement of parents in their children’s education. Probably the most notable reform, however, has been the introduction of ‘citizenship education’ into the national curriculum. Citizenship is now a statutory subject in secondary schools, covering social responsibility, community involvement and political literacy. The aim is to develop active citizens who have an appreciation of the rights and obligations of citizenship, who engage in their communities, and who live by the values associated with citizenship.

Health Public participation and user consultation have been introduced into the National Health Service as an integral part of a wider series of


‘modernization’ reforms. Initiatives include: statutory consultation by Primary Care Trusts (PCTs); the setting up of health panels encouraging long-term involvement and representation of communities in policy making; and the creation of Foundation Hospitals which are accountable to local communities and include members of the public in their governing bodies. Policies are presented in both intrinsic and instrumental terms; as empowering participants (Salter, 2003) and as improving the responsiveness, efficiency, and legitimacy of services (Rowe and Shepherd, 2002). They are also seen to challenge the professional autonomy and power with which doctors have traditionally been endowed (Salter, 2003), a tactic to remove obstacles to wider reform in the NHS. These policies represent major changes within a health service which has traditionally rested on passive public support, a doctor-patient relationship based on trust, and the assumed superior knowledge and professional integrity of health staff. They also correspond with increased levels of public knowledge and awareness, generated by advances in communications technologies and the media. At the level of implementation as well as the development of policy, it is possible to see the return of the civic in recent initiatives promoting ‘healthy living’. The Public Health White Paper (Department of Health, 2004; p. 19) proposes ‘…engaging everyone in choosing health and tackling health inequalities.’ The emphasis is on individual responsibility for health improvement and illness prevention within an informed and supportive environment created by partnerships between government, individuals, communities, and the private and voluntary sectors. The objective is to encourage individuals to choose a healthier lifestyle; to quit smoking, eat healthily and exercise more. This is designed to signal a move away from a paternalistic treatmentbased health service to a health improvement and prevention service in which individuals play an active role.

Local government At the local government level, the emphasis on the civic is closely related to wider processes of decentralization and ‘modernization’. The 2000 Local Government Act sought to address concerns about disengagement and distrust, unresponsive and unsatisfactory service provision, and accountability deficits via three related policies: statutory obligation to consult citizens in assessing and planning services; innovative voting methods to stimulate electoral turnout; and political management reforms aimed at improving accountability and responsiveness.


Local government’s role was defined by the White Paper (DETR, 1998) as that of ‘community leader’ and each authority was required to prepare a ‘community strategy’ reflecting the aspirations, needs and priorities of the local community (DETR, 2000). The objective of these reforms was to improve the legitimacy and effectiveness of local government and services, both by rejuvenating existing democratic mechanisms (such as local council elections, public meetings, and consultations) and by introducing new ones (such as citizens’ juries, devolved budgeting, and neighbourhood management structures). This explicit focus on engaging communities in decision making and service delivery has manifested itself in a number of ways. There has been a quantitative rise in the number of initiatives aimed at encouraging public involvement but also a qualitative shift in the proliferation of innovative, and in particular more deliberative, methods (ODPM, 2002; Lowndes et al., 2001). Different techniques are seen to be appropriate to different situations or groups of people, enabling a wider reach and facilitating the deeper, more sustained levels of engagement constitutive of civic revival. The principle of citizen participation has also formed a central component of schemes such as Best Value, Beacon Councils, Local Strategic Partnerships and the New Deal for Communities. This is indicative of the sort of ‘mainstreaming’ of public participation into service provision envisaged by the ‘new localism’ agenda (ODPM, 2005a). It is seen as a move beyond more shallow or symbolic forms of public involvement to processes which generate a sense of community ownership, thereby increasing the likelihood of success and sustainability. Many local authorities have developed – whether individually or collectively, independently or as part of a central initiative – various means to improve both the process and the outcomes of engagement. They have moved beyond simply providing the opportunity for greater involvement in decision making, planning and service delivery, to enabling people to respond to, and take advantage of, those opportunities. This may entail capacity-building exercises, which address issues such as lack of skills, confidence, time or resources to participate effectively. It may involve some form of ‘civic education’: ‘…educational, learning or promotional activities…to enable people to become more involved in democratic processes,’ (ODPM, 2005b; p. 5). Less often addressed – although increasingly recognized as crucial – are issues of institutional capacity and culture. Engaging citizens and giving them a greater say in how things are run creates significant logistical challenges for local councils and may require structural and administrative


changes and staff training. Moreover, these processes may challenge existing ways of working and the power structures that underpin these. There are also examples of local authorities working together to find solutions to the challenges presented by citizen engagement. The civic pioneers network comprises a group of local authorities ‘…dedicated to sharing and learning from their successful examples of working with communities and involving local people,’ (Fiona MacTaggart MP, Forward to Gaffney, 2005; p. 5). Part of a Home Office initiative, but one to which local authorities have voluntarily signed up, each civic pioneer makes an explicit commitment to engage people in decision making and service delivery. For a number of local authorities, this commitment forms part of a wider strategy of devolution and localization. Such an approach to sharing learning conforms to recent government focus on evidence-based policy making and the generation of ‘best practice’ case studies. However, it also raises a number of issues about how success is defined and measured in community engagement, and the extent to which it is context-dependent; whether ‘lessons’ can indeed be learned and shared. These latter policy areas of education, health, and local government are not covered in depth in this book. However, we are confident that the findings of the research presented in this book have important lessons for these sectors. Indeed, some of the more general challenges about re-energizing citizenship – the costs and benefits of participation, and engaging with faith groups – are discussed respectively in Chapters 7 and 8 in this book.

Learning from applied social science: Answering the ‘how’ question It is now possible to see what people mean when they talk about active citizenship and why they favour policies on initiatives in this area because they hope that it will provide innovative and effective solutions to wicked issues. We argue that what is missing is enough work on how active citizenship actually works. What are the practical steps that might enable the citizen to connect up with the state in productive ways? What evidence is there that such engagement makes a difference? Much research on civil education and citizenship (e.g. Pattie et al., 2004) tends to use social science indicators to explain levels of participation, which reaches back to a long tradition in social science. But there is not much literature that suggests what governments can do to


increase levels of participation, except perhaps the literature on civic education (see Niemi and Junn, 1998). There is also very little literature on what is the link between civicness and policy outcomes that governments care about, such as low crime, and more civic behaviour on public housing estates. The wider social capital literature is interested in trust and networks, and volunteering per se, rather than the involvement with public service delivery (see Halpern, 2005). And the literature that does exist tends to be confined to ‘global’ measures of outcomes, such as economic growth (Knack and Keefer, 1997; Whiteley, 2000), or to measures of state effectiveness (Putnam, 2000), or derived from surveys (Pattie et al., 2004; John, 2005). There are few studies that examine the micro-level interactions between involvement and outcomes. This is the gap that this book aims to fill. We offer six detailed studies of the challenges involved around the re-energizing of citizenship.

References Bang, H. (ed.) (2003) Governance as Social and Political Institution (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Barnes, M. (1999) ‘Researching public participation’, Local Government Studies (25:4). Blair, T. (2002) The Observer, Sunday 10th November. Blunkett, D. (2003) Active Citizens, Strong Communities – Progressing Civil Renewal, Scarman Lecture 11 December. Brown, G. (2006) The Future of Britishness, speech to the Fabian Future of Britishness conference, 14th January. Burton, P. (2003) Community Involvement in Neighbourhood Regeneration: Stairway to Heaven or Road to Nowhere? Paper 13, ESRC Centre for Neighbourhood Research. Burton, P., Goodlad, R. and Croft, J. (2004) How Would We Know What Works? Context & Complexity in the Evaluation of Community Involvement, Paper 18, ESRC Centre for Neighbourhood Research. Cameron, D. (2005) Hinton Lecture to the National Council of Voluntary Organizations, 23rd November 2005 (www.conservatives.com). Clapham, D., Kintrea, K. and Kay, H. (1999) ‘User participation in community housing: Is small really beautiful?’ in The New Politics of Local Governance, London: Macmillan (ed.) G. Stoker. Crawford, A. (1998) ‘Community Safety and the Quest for Security: Holding Back the Dynamics of Social Exclusion’, Policy Studies (19:3/4). Department of Health (2004) Choosing Health: Making Healthy Choices Easier (London: HMSO). DETR (1998) Modern Local Government: In Touch with the People, White Paper (London: HMSO). DETR (2000) Preparing Community Strategies: Government Guidance to Local Authorities (London: HMSO).

24 Re-energizing Citizenship Dibben, P. and Bartlett, D. (2001) ‘Local government and service users: Empowerment through user-led innovation?’, Local Government Studies (27:3). Donahue, J. and Nye, J. (eds) (2001) Governance Amid Bigger, Better Markets (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press). Donahue, J. and Nye, J. (eds) (2002) Market-Based Governance: Supply Side, Demand Side, Upside and Downside (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press). Durlauf, S. (2002) ‘On the empirics of social capital’, The Economic Journal (112:483). Dyson, A., Millward, A. and Todd, L. (2002) A Study of the ‘Extended’ Schools Demonstration Projects, DfES Research Report 381. Dzur, A. (2003) ‘Civic Implications of Restorative Justice Theory: Citizen Participation and Criminal Justice Policy’, Policy Sciences (36). Eade, D. (1997) Capacity Building: An Approach to People-Centred Development (Oxfam). Forrest, R. and Kearns, A. (2001) ‘Social cohesion, social capital and the neighbourhood’, Urban Studies (38:12). Gaffney, M. (2005) Civic Pioneers: Local People, Local Government, Working Together to Make Life Better, Civil Renewal Unit Report, Home Office. Halpern, D. (2005) Social Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hawe, P. and Shiell, A. (2000) ‘Social capital and health promotion: A Review’, Social Science and Medicine (51:6). John, P. (2005) ‘The contribution of volunteering, trust and networks to educational performance’, Policy Studies Journal (33:4) 635–656. Kennedy, C. (2005) Localism is about Crafting a New Contract between the Public and Politicians (www.libdems.org.uk), 8th December 2005. Knack, S. and Keefer, P. (1997) ‘Does social capital have an economic pay-off? A cross country investigation’, Quarterly Journal of Economics (112) 1251–288. Lowndes, V., Pratchett, L. and Stoker, G. (2001) ‘Trends in public participation: Part 1 – Local Government perspectives’, Public Administration (79:1). Macinko, J. and Starfield, B. (2001) ‘The utility of social capital in research on health determinants’, The Millbank Quarterly (79:3). Miliband, D. (2006) Empowerment not abandonment, speech at the National Council of Voluntary Organizations (NCVO) Annual Conference, 21st February (www.odpm.gov.uk). Newburn, T. and Jones, T. (2002) Consultation by Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, Paper 148, Police Research Series, Home Office. Newman, J. (2001) Modernising Governance, New Labour, Policy and Society (London: Sage Publications). Niemi, R. and Junn, J. (1998) Civic Education. What Makes Students Learn (New Haven: Yale University Press). ODPM (2002) Public Participation in Local Government: A Survey of Local Authorities, Local and Regional Government Research Programme (London: HMSO). ODPM (2005a) New Localism – Citizen Engagement, Neighbourhoods and Public Services: Evidence from Local Government, Local and Regional Government Research Unit.

Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker 25 ODPM (2005b) Civic Education and Local Government: A Literature Review, http:// www.clrgr.cf.ac.uk/publications/odpm/civiceducationliteraturereview.pdf Office of National Statistics (2001) Social Capital: A Review of the Literature, www.statistics.gov.uk Pattie, C., Seyd, P. and Whiteley, P. (2004) Citizenship in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pierre, J. and Peters, G. (2000) Governance, Politics and the State (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Productivity Commission (2003) Social Capital: Reviewing the Concept and its Policy Implications, Research Paper, AusInfo, Canberra. Putnam, Robert (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster). Ranson, P. (2002) The Participation of Volunteer Citizens in School Governance, Research Report L215252043, ESRC Democracy and Participation Programme. Rhodes, R. (1997) Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability (Buckingham: Open University Press). Rogers, B. and Robinson, E. (2004) The Benefits of Community Engagement: A Review of the Evidence, Active Citizenship Centre, Home Office. Rowe, R. and Shepherd, M. (2002) ‘Public participation in the new NHS: No closer to citizen control?’, Social Policy and Administration, (36:3). Salter, B. (2003) ‘Patients and doctors: Reformulating the UK health policy community?’, Social Science and Medicine (57:5). Social Exclusion Unit (2004) Tackling Social Exclusion: Taking Stock and Looking to the Future, Emerging Findings, ODPM. Stolle, D. and Hooghe, M. (2005) ‘Review article: Inaccurate, exceptional, onesided or irrelevant? The debate about the alleged decline of social capital and civic engagement in western societies’, British Journal of Political Science (35:1). Stoker, G. (1998) ‘Governance as theory: Five propositions’, International Social Science Journal (155). Stoker, G. (2004) Transforming Local Governance: From Thatcherism to New Labour (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Sullivan, J.L. and Transue, J.E. (1999) ‘The psychological underpinnings of democracy: A selective review of research on political tolerance, interpersonal trust, and social capital’, Annual Review of Psychology. Taylor, M. (2003) Public Policy in the Community (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Whiteley, P. (2000) ‘Economic growth and social capital’, Political Studies (48:3) 443–466. Wilkin, A., Kinder, K., White, R., Atkinson, M. and Doherty, P. (2003) Towards the development of extended schools, DfES Research report No. 408.

2 Civil Renewal: The Agenda for Empowering Citizens Henry Tam

The renewal of citizens’ power The essence of democracy is its conferment of equal political power on each and every citizen. No one is to count for more or less than anyone else in determining how their collective governance is to be carried out. While ‘one person, one vote’ expresses the democratic spirit, in practice, even possessing a formal vote is no guarantee that one gets to have an equal share of power. Throughout history, all too many factors relating to people’s race, gender, status, income, education and health, have prevented some citizens from gaining as much influence over the public realm as others. Whether the pursuit of democracy moves forward or not depends on how effective we are in empowering citizens to participate as equal members in shaping their polity. Unfortunately, each triumph in advancing the cause of democracy risks complacency setting in. It is therefore periodically necessary to sound a rallying call for the renewal of citizens’ power. The rise of the contemporary civil renewal agenda (or ‘civic renewal’ as it is more often known in America) originated around the 1990s. Democratic solidarity was strengthened during and after the Second World War by progressive reforms in support of social citizenship such as the New Deal in America and the development of the welfare state in Britain. However, optimism was followed by complacency, then disillusionment. From the late 1970s through to the early 1990s, a sociopolitical outlook, which idealized the market as a problem-solving mechanism, gradually became dominant on both sides of the Atlantic. On the alleged basis that market competition would deliver the best of all possible outcomes, and that any collective attempts to hold back competition would, in any case, be futile since globalization meant 26

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that state regulations could be by-passed through moving to the least interventionist countries, people were told to jettison the ‘old’ preoccupation with cutting the inequalities which undermined citizens’ ability to realize their common good through the state, and to embrace the skills and flexibility they needed to thrive as individuals in the marketplace. This market-centric outlook provoked criticisms from civic republican/ progressive communitarian thinkers (see the Bibliography at the end of this chapter for a short selection of their writings) who warned that it would breed a virulent strain of plutocratic individualism, corrosive of social bonds and destructive of political engagement. From the late 1970s to the dawn of the 21st century, reports in Britain and America have indeed pointed to a growing number of young people who put the accumulation of personal wealth above all else, a decline in people’s belief that they can achieve anything by engaging with political parties or public institutions, and rising tensions between groups whose racial or cultural differences still too frequently deflect attention from the underlying economic inequalities which divide them from others in society. Against this background, the call for civil renewal is advanced to reinvigorate democracy, by tackling power inequalities and enhancing citizens’ collective efficacy in guiding public policies for their common good. It has to be taken forward at the local, national, and global levels. Since the mid-1990s there are signs that the campaign is being picked up by democratic champions. At the local level, for example, St Edmundsbury Borough Council, under the leadership of Councillor Gerry Kiernan, devised and implemented an ambitious ‘Working with Communities’ programme (1995–1999) which transformed the relationship between citizens and their local authority as well as other statutory bodies operating in the borough. Today there are over 20 local authorities across England which, as Civic Pioneers, are actively working to empower more local people to shape local policies. At the national level, David Blunkett when Home Secretary launched the Civil Renewal Agenda in 2003, and this was followed two years later by ‘Together We Can’, the Government action plan for civil renewal, which included commitments from 12 Government Departments to improve the capacity and opportunities for citizens to play a meaningful role in determining public policy priorities and their delivery (www.togetherwecan.info). At the global level, the signs are less certain. Given that more and more decisions affecting people’s lives are made by transnational


organizations, we are still a long way off from having democratic institutions at the global level to enable citizens to have a say about what world-wide political action should be taken to prevent private gains from encroaching on the public good. The freedom for market forces (i.e., commercial interests) to operate globally still ranks above the need to empower citizens, especially those in the most disadvantaged parts of the world, to have more control over the impact of those operations. Ultimately, the rolling out of local and national campaigns for civil renewal will need to be backed by a global campaign to strengthen democracy as an inclusive mechanism for all citizens of the world, and prevent the most powerful corporations and states from setting the world agenda for their own exclusive benefit. For this to happen, the differences between activities which support and those which hinder the effective engagement of citizens in steering public decisions to meet their collective needs should be brought out more sharply to policy makers, activists, and the public in general. Many communities of workers, neighbours, political constituents, and users of essential services have become disillusioned by the decline of their collective efficacy, and they need to experience a real change in how they can influence policies and activities which affect their lives. The general trends in reduction in electoral turnout and numbers joining traditional political parties suggest that many people feel they cannot make any real difference. Some have argued that this should not be interpreted as a crisis of democracy because there has been a rise in other forms of ‘political’ expression such as ethical consumerist boycotts and internet-based criticisms. But they miss the point that these latter phenomena do not compensate for diminished engagement elsewhere. For one, the increase in these activities tends to be amongst communities which are relatively confident of the power they possess. They are simply extending their armoury of influence, without reviving those low in efficacy. Secondly, the ‘new’ forms of politics focus on individuals expressing their own personal concerns, rather than enabling communities to develop a shared agenda to tackle their common problems. To meet the challenge of civil renewal, progress is needed on at least three fronts: • Recovering the progressive ethos of empowerment • Re-orientating public institutions towards empowerment • Strengthening our civic infrastructure

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Recovering the progressive ethos of empowerment For any campaign to strengthen democratic participation to succeed, it must win the battle of ideas. It was once a key part of Anglo-American political thinking that those with the least leverage to make their positions count should be progressively empowered. This progressive commitment to power redistribution in turn informed a whole range of more specific policy developments. It was a common theme across social, political and economic reforms to ensure that limitations were placed on the most powerful while the weakest were given support and respect. However, since the late 1970s, this has been pushed to the margins of political discourse. Civil renewal campaigners need to tackle those ideological traps that stop attention being given to the problem of democratic disengagement. For example, the accelerated rate of globalization has encouraged many to claim that frameworks for collective improvement, which had worked within homogeneous national-cultural settings, were now redundant in a complex inter-connected world. The case for the continuous renewal of democracy was supposedly superseded by the onset of the post-modern age. Francis Fukuyama (in)famously argued that we have reached the ‘end point of mankind’s ideological evolution,’ (Fukuyama, 1989; p. 4). The market-based form of society he held to be the core model of ‘liberal democracy’ – which was ‘liberal’ in the sense that it allowed both rich and poor to act as they pleased within their respective means, and ‘democratic’ only in giving everyone a vote in a multi-party system regardless of the hugely different levels of power it actually conferred – was the definitive model for socio-political existence. All future development would be about how different regimes across the world accommodate themselves to function in line with this model. But any attempt to reform it to distribute power more evenly amongst citizens would be misguided and futile. It has even become fashionable amongst some people with progressive leanings, like Anthony Giddens, to suggest that a new approach should be introduced to move our thinking beyond the polarization of the past – not least the preoccupation with the tension between the powerful and the powerless. To the charge that the resurgence of extremism was threatening the vulnerable, Giddens (1994) wrote, ‘Aren’t we now in fact going back to something of an earlier age … where a renewed progressivism must once more fight against racism and reactionary sentiment? I think not.’ In reality, ideological struggles never end. How to redress the imbalance of power between the rich and the poor, the


dominant and the marginalized, will always be contested. Any ideological sleight of hand to cloak social injustice and community divisions as inherently beyond remedy through collective democratic action must be exposed. At the same time, the greater inter-connectedness of the world has ironically helped the rise of relativism. This is reflected in the writings of commentators like Samuel Huntington (1996) and John Gray (1998) who maintain that the world is divided into distinct cultures/civilizations which are mutually impenetrable in ideological terms. Each has its own belief system, and the notion of progressive empowerment has no relevance to those who subscribe to a different worldview. For Gray, it would be arrogant to use ‘our’ perspective to criticize others, for example, for their abuse of human rights. For Huntington, it would be a mistake to try to bring these diverse cultures/civilizations into a common outlook rather than concentrate on facilitating their coexistence (as well as preparing for possible conflicts between them). This relativist outlook has given succour to people who have little time for power redistribution at any level. Yet the more the world operates as an inter-connected whole, the more citizens will need to have greater control over their destiny. This need cannot be met by a global market which will favour the fortunate few and leave the majority in total powerlessness. The values of human dignity and human respect are applicable to all people, and political systems from the local to the global level should be reformed accordingly rather than be allowed to hide behind immunity on the grounds of cultural differences. Finally, the hegemony of plutocratic interests (with the optional garnish of theocentric rhetoric – such as ‘God helps those who help themselves with making money’) has meant that, increasingly, wealth generation is presented as the only appropriate criterion for power allocation. Anyone with any pragmatic sense was expected to concede that the battle against the concentration of wealth/power was not so much over as passé. People who were poor and powerless would be advised that they could change their position by learning the skills to acquire new jobs and better income. But relying solely on people to earn more money is inadequate, not just because some will always be stuck at the bottom as poor performers in the competition to make money, but the gap between the most powerful people and the rest is so huge that very few will have a realistic chance of closing that gap through their financial success. For the great majority of people, the only effective route to protect themselves from the powerful is through collective action as citizens. But unless the case is made for this democratic route,

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all too many could still be duped into believing that they would be better off if their government would do less at their behest, and leave them to rise and fall on their own. It is time to restore political empowerment to the heart of public policies. Attempts to present campaigns for power redistribution as a spent force should be roundly criticized. Civic republicans and progressive communitarians should affirm that the age of ideology is not over, and continue to make the case for engaging citizens in shaping public decisions. The Enlightenment campaign of the 18th century, the Utilitarian reform movement of the 19th century, and Progressive state action of the 20th century, have all offered a central rallying point for those who want to see a more justifiable distribution of power in society. The 21st century will need our own Montesquieu, Jefferson, Mill, Dewey and Keynes; intellectual leaders who are prepared to challenge the vested interests of the establishment as well as the prejudices spread by fundamentalists, and champion the value of empowered citizenship for all.

Re-orientating public institutions towards empowerment In parallel with changing the climate of opinion, the campaign for civil renewal has to direct itself to altering the behaviour of government bodies. The reason why many people are inclined to surrender what is potentially their most powerful instrument – a democratic government acting in their collective interests – in favour of relying on their much more limited personal resources, is down to the fact that they do not believe they can really influence what their government may do. If they are to realize what they can achieve through public institutions, those institutions will at every level need to help citizens have more collective influence over their policies and services. One of the main reasons why politicians and public officials tend to shy away from the empowerment of citizens is that they have for half a century known little else besides the managerialist paradigm. The managerialist paradigm was initially embraced as a solution to the paradox of democratic governance. The sovereign power to govern is so considerable that for centuries reformers advocated putting more and more limits on what the ruling elite/government was able to do. That was until democrats argued that the real challenge was to make government serve the people by making it accountable to all citizens. In theory, the fewer people a government could afford to ignore in seeking to hold on to power, the more it would ensure it acted on


behalf of as many people as possible. In practice, the more people a government had to take into account, the less it could keep in meaningful contact with them regarding their deliberations and concerns. So paradoxically, the wider the democratic franchise, the more superficial the democratic interactions a government can have with its citizens. Typically, civic republicans and communitarians are told that the days when state representatives developed policies through in-depth discussions with citizens are forever gone. As universal franchise became a practical reality, managerialism offered itself as a low-cost bridge between the public and the state. Instead of regarding millions of people as citizens who should realize their civic potential by deliberating with their fellow citizens on what would constitute the common good in different circumstances, it treated them as voting customers who should be persuaded by the most cost effective means to vote in support of one’s bid for political power. The market model thus infects the political system. Just as in commercial marketing, it is not what people, upon careful and responsible reflection, decide they should pursue that determines what is made and sold, but what the producers believe they can achieve in terms of making people feel they want something and selling them that something at a profit. Managerialist politics tells politicians and public officials that engagement with the multitude of citizens is inefficient and unnecessary. To secure sufficient electoral support and hence political capital to govern, those in charge are advised to test what a sample of individuals feel about a variety of issues and put together a package of policies which can be presented as ‘delivering’ what the public wants. This hollow politics worked so long as social complacency, supported by materialistic satisfaction, prevailed. But once people’s civic sensibility was stirred, by a reawakening of their interest in how the power being exercised in their name was really directed, combined with uncertainties magnified by globalization as beyond their control, they could no longer be content with leaving their destiny in the hands of professional experts whose claim to know what was in the public interest had ceased to sound convincing. Consequently citizens began to insist that unless public institutions genuinely engage them in shaping their priorities, they would not invest their trust or support in them. To overcome the managerialist model, government bodies must shift to an inclusivist model where all those affected by their decisions and activities can influence them through open, deliberative and collective engagement. Central to this model is a public empowerment commit-

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ment which requires any given government department or agency to identify communities which could be affected by what it does and enable them to learn about, question, and influence the assumptions and decisions it makes. In support of the campaign for civil renewal, the British Government produced the ‘Together We Can’ action plan which set out how, in a wide range of public policies and services, it would empower more citizens to have greater influence. Public services for children and young people are now directed to involve parents and youths in shaping their priorities. This approach is built into partnerships working at the most local level. For example, young people in Sheffield have been at the heart of the Southey and Owlerton’s regeneration strategy. They have their own decision-making mechanism through the North Sheffield Youth Forum and they can feed their views to the city-wide Children and Young People’s Area Parliament. With their active and informed participation, health services have become more responsive to local users; crime has come down as house prices rise in what was formerly perceived as a problem area. Across urban and rural areas, neighbourhoods and parishes are encouraged to give their input into housing and planning proposals. Through schemes such as Home Zone, residents have a direct role to play in improving traffic management, safety, and the visual quality of their streets. Most schools are moving towards the model of the ‘extended school’ where not only parents but residents in general are invited to make the most of the school’s facilities for the good of the local community. At the same time, decisions concerning where schools are to be located and new learning opportunities for adults are being made much more systematically dependent on citizens’ consideration of the options. Neighbourhood policing is leading the way in bringing citizens and public organizations together to work out how best the problems they face are to be tackled. Against managerialist presumption that problems can be solved more effectively by professionals acting on their own, citizen empowerment demonstrates that the very notion of a ‘satisfactory solution’ can only be properly defined with the input of citizens themselves. Professionals who claim they can solve problems by themselves should not be surprised that their claims carry little conviction with those who live with and understand what problems they really face. Only by engaging people who have first hand experience of what needs to be done can sustainable solutions be found. For example, in Birmingham, people in five targeted areas were given


extensive opportunities and support to develop an on-going dialogue with public agencies with the aim of drawing up short, medium and long-term action plans to enhance community safety. No single outreach method was used, and citizens could determine how involved they wanted to be. Within the first 18 months of the project, crime in the five areas fell by 14 per cent while it fell by just 7 per cent in other comparative parts of the city. With domestic burglary, the drop was even more dramatic at 41 per cent, with the reduction in the rest of the city at only 13 per cent. In health, having a true partnership between citizens and their public services is just as vital. Initiatives such as the Healthy Communities Collaborative are enabling local people to identify their community’s needs and then play a part in carrying out the improvements required. The difference in engaging citizens as contributors to health rather than treating them as passive patients is illustrated by the St Matthews Project in Leicester where health professionals, residents, councillors and other public service providers worked together to develop a multi-agency health and community centre designed under guidance from the local people themselves. GPs have reported significant improvements, and more and more people have moved from long-term health problems into training and jobs. So while the public sector as a whole still has some way to go to embrace empowerment as its core commitment, an increasing number of public bodies are moving in the right direction. If this momentum can be sustained – and this will need support across the political spectrum – then in time the managerialist paradigm will give way to a citizen-focused approach to public governance.

Strengthening our civic infrastructure In addition to public institutions embracing the empowerment of citizens, the civil renewal agenda depends on citizens themselves being more able and ready to exert their influence. Unfortunately, the development of our civic infrastructure is still, on occasions, confused with a voluntarist idealization of the so-called ‘third sector’. Critics of society’s over-reliance on the state or the market have at times converged on this realm of voluntary action because it is where people do good things spontaneously as they once did in a bygone golden age of self-help and charitable giving. But they forget that a power structure which leaves it to the weak to support each other, and the strong to lend a hand occasionally out of the goodness of their hearts, is not an

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inherently more free or benevolent system. When that kind of structure prevailed in Britain before the mid-19th century trend of government action to build a partnership with citizens to secure protection for all, poor people looked out for each other in, no doubt, many instances, and there were big charitable benefactors, but an incomparably greater proportion of people in the country lived, suffered and died in appalling conditions. The comparable lack of a robust civic infrastructure at the global level presents us with a stark reminder of the limitations of voluntarism: at the dawn of the 21st century, 60 per cent of people living in developing countries, that is 2.6 billion people, have no basic sanitation and more than 30 per cent, 1.3 billion of them, have no access to clean water. Instead of shifting expectations from democratic state instruments for change to ever greater reliance on voluntary ‘giving’ (a trademark of the ‘politics of compassion’ on both sides of the Atlantic), we need a more robust civic infrastructure through which people can determine and pursue what is just. Where people hold different opinions, the resolution has to be based on the open assessment of the relevant evidence. The overall aim is to guard against every barrier in the path of people who could make a contribution to deliberating what should be done, every disincentive to offer honest appraisal, and every refusal to develop the capacity of those who can deepen the understanding required.

Public space for public deliberations Communities should be guaranteed a facilitated forum where different ideas, fresh evidence, and counter-arguments can be openly and critically considered by all sides. Two weak points in our civic infrastructure for deliberation relate to its susceptibility to being hijacked by either extreme libertarian or fundamentalist groups. The former tries to argue that everyone has an absolute right to go before any public forum and say, present, or demonstrate anything one wants in the name of free expression. But expressions can be offensive, demeaning, provocative, time-wasting, deceptive, or simply irrelevant. Public deliberations need to be protected from misguided readiness to concede to those who are not actually interested in engaging in a shared discussion. One of the most frequently given ‘reasons’ by public servants in refusing to open up policy or service priority discussions to ordinary citizens is their concern that people with objectionable views or no considered views at all would dominate the occasion


and waste everyone’s time. But by the same token we would not have any open trials or public hearings. Yet we do because those responsible for such activities understand the need to have an independent person, bound by transparent procedures, to moderate proceedings. So in all communities, there should also be arrangements to facilitate deliberations and prevent individuals from exploiting them to abuse others or take up valuable time with irrelevant observations. The fundamentalist approach, on the other hand, tries to secure its position by closing off all future deliberations. It pretends to have a claim to address a public audience on democratic grounds when it has no intention of respecting the rules of democratic engagement should it ever attain sufficient power. Countering their approach is made more difficult because the respect for diversity is sometimes confounded with a general exemption for all assertions based on faith or traditional beliefs from external criticisms. But it is not a question of religion versus secularism. There are many religious people who embrace civic deliberations and recognize that what a single individual (or indeed a group of them) may claim to be ‘God’s word’ cannot serve as the authority to bind others into accepting it. One man’s injunction from God to hurt, abuse, denounce, or for that matter, kill whole categories of people can simply be a case of hate-filled prejudice, warped upbringing, or plain insanity, or even on his own terms, be a trick of the ‘devil’, a divine test to see if he’s got enough basic decency, or a misreading of the holy message. A strong civic infrastructure would not allow any fundamentalist fault-lines to be drilled into its foundation. Those who assert infallibility for themselves should therefore be prevented from usurping the public space and closing it down for others.

Subsidiarity-based decision making For most communities of contemporary society, there are three implications which should be followed through from an application of the subsidiarity principle. First, more power to take a wide range of decisions should be devolved to smaller and more locally-based communities. The managerialist approach has for decades turned the tactical advantages of economies of scale in some spheres into a general dogma about the superiority of large operations. What care to be provided for the elderly, what support to be given to young people, what priorities to assign in reducing crime, are all decisions which have been pulled further and further away from the people concerned. This trend needs to be reversed. This is not to say that funding should be left to local

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communities, because the equitable redistribution of power can require resources to be pooled at the broadest feasible level. The key is for a fair share of resources, along with the power to decide how best to utilize them to meet community needs, to be devolved to the communities themselves. Secondly, the devolution of decisions to more local levels must be complemented by effective involvement techniques – beyond the dry consultation documents and dull public meetings – so that citizens in general and not just the local office-holders can influence those decisions. Outreach work with young people, imaginative deliberative techniques, use of information technology facilitating on-line exchange of ideas, communities’ members acting as opinion testers themselves – there is a wide range of tools to be made more widely known. Thirdly, there will be times when even the state bodies which are currently taking the decisions on behalf of diverse communities cannot themselves exercise sufficient power to deliver what those communities really need. In such cases, there is an obvious case for a federated power structure to be developed so that instead of telling communities that the state is powerless to tackle cross-boundary issues – which could be about environmental damages, drug trafficking, closure of manufacturing bases – communities can be reassured that new arrangements are established with other state organizations to give citizens new options to deal with the problems they face. It has been one of the more unfortunate set-backs for the development of our civic infrastructure that anything above the national level should be treated with suspicion rather than seen as a potential enhancement of citizens’ power.

Citizenship development Neither the establishment of public deliberative spaces nor the application of the subsidiarity principle will, by themselves, guarantee that outcomes reflecting the concerns of the communities in question will be achieved. They help to bring about the conditions wherein communities are given the tools and the opportunity to exercise their collective judgement as to what they want to see done. A third ingredient is needed to activate civic action and that comes from citizenship development. If there is one breakthrough in the construction of a more robust civic infrastructure in Britain in the last few years it is the recognition


that participatory skills need to be cultivated. For too long state bodies complained that getting citizens involved with ‘their’ activities was counter-productive because the general public did not understand the issues or they engaged in a slow and disjointed manner. Community groups in turn felt that state officials had no empathy with their concerns and did not make their practices and procedures truly accessible for lay people to follow. Now there are signs that both sides are seeking practical learning to develop their abilities to engage more constructively with each other. The ‘Active Learning for Active Citizenship’ initiative is pushing for citizenship skills development to be mainstreamed. The ‘Guide Neighbourhoods Programme’ is helping citizens learn from the experience of others who have effectively developed and applied their skills to shape the public realm. A crucial step is the building of confidence. Community members need to believe that the very act of participation will not lead to negative consequences for them. They should then feel that what they have to say will be taken into account. This is as much about how public bodies listen to what is said, as how citizens develop their views and put them across. The use of Citizens’ Juries has illustrated how the principle of a lay panel considering evidence put before them can be applied more widely. Citizens also need support in developing their skills in critical deliberation – to help detect and expose false arguments. Often the task of examining and challenging unwarranted claims requires citizens to join forces by forming networks or their own campaign organizations. It is essential that when they do so, they follow the practices of empowerment. The same temptation to allow power to drift to the professionals/managers should be resisted. Just because someone is working in the community sector, it does not automatically sanctify the power relations he or she will bring to the communities concerned.

Conclusion The empowerment of communities cannot be achieved by the arbitrary and simplistic cutting back of some local and national public institutions, while allowing private corporations and international government bodies to continue to accumulate their power to shape the lives of others without having to be accountable to them. All public institutions need to make it their core commitment to empower citizens to influence decisions which affect their lives. In

Henry Tam 39

parallel, communities’ civic infrastructure should be considerably strengthened so that citizens can come together to deliberate and reach informed judgements in determining how best their collective interests are met – in dealing with issues they can handle themselves, responding to the proposed actions of organizations, collaborating with state initiatives where appropriate, and federating with other communities to tackle challenges which cut across their boundaries. For this to happen, we need a resurgence of the progressive ethos of empowerment. One of the corrosive effects of civic disengagement is the loss of belief in collective action. So just when people need more than ever to find ways to make the sum of their combined powers greater than its parts, they have slipped further into a false consciousness that individuals should count only on themselves. But raising awareness and understanding of how our common problems can be effectively addressed with the input of citizens is the task of public intellectuals and reformers. Together we can make the renewal of citizens’ power centre-stage in politics again.

References Fukuyama, F. (1989) ‘The end of history?’, National Interest (Summer) pp. 3–19. Giddens, A. (1994) Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press). Gray, J. (1998) False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London: Grant Books). Huntington, S. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster).

Bibliography of civic republican and progressive communitarian writings Barber, B. (1992) ‘Opinion Polls: Public judgement or private prejudice’, The Responsive Community (2:2). Barber, B. (1995) Jihad versus McWorld (New York: Times Books). Bellah, R.N. et al. (1996) Habits of the Heart (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press). Blunkett, D. (2001) Politics & Progress: Renewing Democracy and Civil Society (London: Politico’s Publishing). Blunkett, D. (2003) Active Citizens, Strong Communities: Progressing Civil Renewal (London: Home Office). Blears, H. (2003) Communities in Control: Public Services and Local Socialism (London: Fabian Society). Boswell, J. (1994) Community and the Economy: The Theory of Public Co-operation (London: Routledge).

40 Re-energizing Citizenship Derber, C. (1994) ‘Communitarian Economics’, The Responsive Community (4:4). Derber, C. (1998) Corporation Nation (New York: St Martin’s Press). Donnison, D. (1991) A Radical Agenda (London: Rivers Oram Press). Douglass, R.B. (1994) ‘The renewal of democracy and the communitarian prospect’, The Responsive Community (4:3). Gyford, J. (1991) Citizens, Consumers & Councils (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Levine, P. (2000) The New Progressive Era (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield). Marquand, D. (1988) The Unprincipled Society (London: Fontana). Marquand, D. and Crouch, C. (1995) Reinventing Collective Action (Oxford: Blackwell). Marquand, D. (2004) Decline of the Public (Cambridge: Polity Press). McClain, L.C. and Fleming, J.E. (2000) Legal and Constitutional Implications of the Calls to Revive Civil Society (Chicago: Chicago-Kent College of Law). Oldfield, A. (1990) Citizenship and Community: Civic Republicanism and the Modern World (London: Routledge). Selznick, P. (1992) The Moral Commonwealth (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press). Selznick, P. (2002) The Communitarian Persuasion (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press). Stewart, J. and Ranson, S. (1994) Management for the Public Domain (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Stewart, J., Prior, D. and Walsh, K. (1995) Citizenship: Rights, Community & Participation (London: Pitman Publishing). Stewart, J. and Tam, H. (1997) Putting Citizens First (London: MJ/SOLACE). Tam, H. (1994) Marketing, Competition & the Public Sector (Harlow: Longman). Tam, H. (1995) The Citizens’ Agenda (Cambridge: White Horse Press). Tam, H. (1996) ‘Communitarianism and Citizens Empowerment’, Local Government Policy Making, January 1996. Tam, H. (1998) Communitarianism: A New Agenda for Politics & Citizenship (New York: New York University Press). Tam, H. (2001) Progressive Politics in the Global Age (Cambridge: Polity Press). Taylor, C. (1993) ‘The Dangers of Soft Despotism’, The Responsive Community (3:4). Twine, F. (1994) Citizenship and Social Rights (London: Sage Publications).

3 Involvement in Community Involvement: Referral Order Volunteers Sarah Jones with Colin Roberts

The use of volunteers within the running of the criminal justice system is not a new phenomenon; the probation service from its inception was built by volunteers (Vanstone, 2004) and indeed the use of lay persons as magistrates, special constables and jury members is a foundational aspect of the system as a whole. Recent attacks on the use of community representatives in the criminal justice system (Crawford, 2004, explains how the jury system is under threat for example, and the increasing use of district judges as opposed to lay magistrates) have been, perhaps perversely, accompanied by a growing demand for ‘peer judgment’ in different guises. Various Home Office departments have introduced, or are in the process of introducing, initiatives that aim to bring justice in to a social context; that is, the community affected will be the community that judges. The Juvenile Offenders Unit (now known as the Youth Justice and Children Unit) implemented the Referral Order for young offenders, for example, where a panel of community representatives play a part in deciding what happens to a young person during their statutory order. The newly set up National Offender Management Service (NOMS) are in the process of introducing a similar scheme for adult offenders, and the Department for Constitutional Affairs are overseeing a ‘community court’ initiative currently being piloted in the North West.1 The new emphasis on community justice has changed the way that government bodies want the public to think about crime control and dealing with offenders. No longer is it deemed the sole responsibility of the state to deliver punishment and rehabilitation: …organisations, communities and individuals who previously saw crime control as the sole responsibility of the police and penal 41


system have been encouraged into a new involvement in matters of security and crime prevention, (Crawford, 2003; p. 486). This has been especially prolific in the age of New Labour with the 2005 manifesto promising to ‘give local people a greater say in shaping community punishment,’ (Rogers, 2005). The role of promoting community action and encouraging volunteering has been among the core features of the relatively new Civil Renewal Unit of the Home Office. Using volunteers and local representatives as the drivers for local implementation of national policy in relation to criminal justice work is a relatively radical departure from policy of old. It also raises more questions than, at this time, it is able to answer, especially in relation to evidence of purpose and effectiveness. The links with community and the criminal justice system generally continue to grow, however, especially in light of an increasing body of evidence linking social capital and collective efficacy to lower crime rates (ibid). The axiomatic belief that getting members of the community involved is inherently good overrides the question of what ‘involved’ actually means, implies, or achieves. This chapter is based on a study looking at how Referral Orders operate within the youth justice system. Specifically it looked at how using volunteers as community representatives operates at ground level, comparing the reality with the rhetoric. The recent government push for more community involvement, more volunteers and other means of promoting social capital locally leads to a new focus of investigation. It cannot be assumed that new initiatives will work as intended and the reasons for any disparity need to be looked at closely if the fundamentally important idea of ‘involvement’ is to be sustained and, perhaps more importantly, capable of fulfilling its aims. A case study approach was adopted, using one Youth Offending Team (YOT) to examine the realities of using volunteers in a criminal-justice setting. The ‘holistic, comprehensive and contextualized’ (Cabinet Office, 2003; p. 37) account of the findings in relation to the YOT does not aim to provide a generalized picture of the Referral Order panel volunteers nationally. Instead it aims to provide an exploration of how volunteers are used within one criminal justice team and to pave the way for similar research to be conducted in other YOTs and initiatives, not only to compare and contrast with these original findings but to find the differences in operation that can be shown to influence how good practice grows.

Sarah Jones with Colin Roberts 43

Various data collection methods were adopted, including the tape recording of 41 panels at various stages, allowing for verbatim accounts to be captured and, in relation to the research aims, was essential to understand fully what was happening. We also asked each of the participants to complete a short questionnaire post-panel. Semi-structured interviews were completed with young people, 13 volunteers, nine YOT officers, YOT deputy manager, Referral Order co-ordinator, volunteer co-ordinator, reparation team, victim co-ordinator, Youth Justice Team and Home Office representatives, and local youth court magistrates. In line with the civil renewal agenda, a significant part of the research proposal was an attempt to show how volunteers can work with and influence local policy. A number of focus groups were held for volunteers where they were presented with preliminary evaluation findings and asked to build on the good practice presented to them in order to deal with the poor practice demonstrated.

Background to the Referral Order and community volunteers The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 opened the way for a radical shift in the way youth justice in England and Wales was structured and implemented. To achieve the new statutory aim of preventing offending, the Youth Justice Board (YJB) was created to coordinate the work of locally developed multi-agency YOTs. These bodies comprise professionals from a number of mainstream agencies who work with young people subject to statutory orders. Alongside the creation of this new structural approach, the youth justice system introduced a range of new orders designed to be tailored to the needs of the young person being worked with. Specific risk factors became increasingly important when determining what work was to be done with any individual young person (Communities that Care, 2001). In line with a more widespread shift towards restorative justice within the criminal justice system (Hoyle et al., 2002), and stemming from a suggestion in the 1997 White Paper ‘No More excuses: A New Approach to Tackling Youth Crime in England and Wales’ (Home Office, 1997) the Referral Order was born. Introduced in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999,2 Paul Boateng (then Home Office Minister of State) described the order as (quoted in Wonnacott, 1999) ‘a fundamentally different way of considering how to intervene most productively and effectively in the life of a young


person to stop crime and offending’ and was explicitly focused around the restorative justice principles of responsibility, reparation and reintegration. The Referral Order is designed for young offenders on their first appearance in court and where guilt is admitted. The Referral Order is considered mandatory unless custody is more appropriate or the offence is relatively minor in seriousness and impact, such that a fine or conditional discharge might be more suitable.3 Figure 3.1 details the anticipated progress of a Referral Order. If completed successfully, the young person will have a spent conviction in line with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, thus promoting reintegration into the community. As can be seen from Figure 3.1, volunteers are involved with a young person’s sentence post-court and aim to direct the decision-making process regarding what he or she should do as part of their Order. So-called panel meetings are held between the young person, volunteers who act as the community representative and, ideally, the victim of the offence. Meetings should be held in local venues to further promote the idea of community. The purpose of this panel is to explore why the young person committed the offence, to find ways of repairing some of the harm done to the victims (direct and indirect), and create a programme of work to address the risk factors associated with potential further offending. This is captured in a contract between the young person and the panel member, the terms as agreed to be completed by the young person during his/her time at the YOT. In this way the panel volunteers are, theoretically, playing a significant role in deciding what happens to a young person who has offended in their community with the aim that the young person does not reoffend (and also that the victim feels more satisfied with the outcome). This method of bringing volunteers into the criminal justice system is fairly unusual but similar examples can be found in other jurisdictions. Indeed the Scottish Children’s Hearing system relies on volunteers to deal with young people who have offended without the need to get the court involved in the majority of cases (Buist and Whyte, 2004). The restorative community justice model adopted in New Zealand has inspired the growth of such work in other jurisdictions (Hoyle et al., 2002), a home grown example being the community panels dealing with anti-social behaviour in Chard and Ilminster (Rogers, 2005). A more immediately recognizable comparison with the Referral Order panel process is that of the ‘Vermont Reparative Probation Board’ where volunteers from the community sit with the offender and decide on action points to be completed during their


Young person gets charged with offence.

It is the first offence that brings him/her to court and s/he pleads guilty.

Magistrates have 3 sentencing options: i) Fine or conditional discharge (if the offence is non-indictable i.e. the young person could not have been sentenced to imprisonment); ii ) Referral Order of between 3 and 12 months; iii ) Imprisonment.

Young person gets a Referral Order

Youth Off ending Team (YO T): i) Appoint a YOT professional to interview the young person, coll ect additional information and write a report on the young person’ s situation and risks of reoffending; ii ) Convene a panel meeting comprising of: 2 × community volunteers, young person, family/support, YO T worker, victim (if agrees to attend) and others as appropriate.

Panel led by community volunteers and engages young person in a discussion about the offence, the impact of the offence, impact on the victim and society and what needs to be done to (a) repair the harm to the victim and (b)ensure that they do not reoff end.

Community volunteers negotiate a contract with the young person covering work that should be done by the young person with the YOT, including number of hours as agreed for reparation (either direct or indirect). This contract should be signed by the young person and the volunteers.

YO T and young person work together to fulfil the terms of the contract.

Young Person complies with the contract.

Community volunteers reconvene with the young person and YO T worker every three months for progress review meetings and to ‘ sign off’ the order at the last meeting.

Young person’s conviction is considered ‘ spent’ within the provisions of the Rehabili tation of Off enders Act 1974.

Figure 3.1

The Referral Order process

Young person fails to comply with the contract.

Community volunteers reconvene to breach the young person and send them back to court for re-sentence.

This can happen at any point during the order until the community volunteers sign off the young person.


time with the probation service, again with the intention of incorporating an element of reparation to society and the victim. These Probation Boards were conceived with the aims of ‘providing public safety, offender accountability and victim reparation’ while also ‘building healthy communities, empowered to control their own justice processes and dispute resolution strategies’ (Perry and Gorczyk, 1997; p. 30). Any evaluations of the work done by the volunteers in this context are directly comparable to the situation in the UK and Referral Orders. Referral Order volunteers have been called ‘…the living part of the government’s vision for civic renewal,’ (Hickson, 2005). The study of Referral Orders, and more specifically the volunteer panel members, falls in to the civil renewal agenda in several ways. The first link involves the aim of active citizenship. Getting people face to face with offenders from their communities and being part of the quest for local (and national) crime prevention while improving social integration is a laudable reason to get volunteers involved: …communities are viewed as responsible stakeholders in the maintenance of social norms within the community…[it] is a uniquely valuable form of civic participation. (Boyes-Watson, 2004; p. 687) Earle et al. (2002; p. 143) have commented that the Referral Order represents ‘…a substantial and significant advance of lay participation in the administration of justice.’ The Referral Order has also paved the way for use of community volunteers in other criminal justice initiatives, as discussed earlier. The second link to civil renewal stems from one of the Order’s main features, that of reparation. Young people on Referral Orders agree a certain number of hours and activities for reparation to the victim (directly) or, if this is not possible, the community (indirectly). Theoretically this reparation should provide a means for the young person of repairing the harm that was done and providing a springboard back into the community, to become a responsible and valuable member of that society – thus fulfilling the second aim of the civil renewal agenda, that of strengthened communities. A third link can also be seen to develop from this, especially if the victim gets involved. It allows the victim to build bridges with the young person who committed the offence. Bringing the victim, young person and community members together in one place to discuss the offence, the impact of the offence and, more positively, steps forward to repair the harm builds social


cohesion and responsibility for neighbours, whether actual community neighbours or neighbours in society more generally: It is good that people as citizens are actively involved in decision making in their communities. To be a full citizen means to be involved in decisions that affect yourself and your neighbour, (Stoker, 2004). In a more general sense, the opportunity given to volunteers within this study to have an impact on the operations of the YOT might fulfil the third aim of the civil renewal agenda and promote partnership in meeting public needs. Using volunteers as part of a low level decision-making authority is a different approach from the traditional role of volunteers in criminal justice. Lay magistrates and special constables, for example, are highly trained and hold an authority that is missing from the role of the Referral Order community volunteer. In comparison, the other traditional role of volunteers in this field is that of mentors and appropriate adults, who are often trained differently and tend to do what is required of them by the organizing agency. Referral Order volunteers fall somewhere in the middle and are difficult to define. They have a decision-making capacity and the authority to breach orders where appropriate, but don’t do ‘hands on’ work (in their capacity as panel members) with the young people and to a certain extent still take direction from the controlling organization. This new breed of volunteer has scarcely been observed and commented upon in a critical way and it is not yet known how the level of formality inherent in the structure will act against the community element that is so fundamental to the growing body of volunteering opportunities. Despite the continued and growing deployment of volunteers within criminal justice systems, there seems to be very little evidence as to how this added dynamic actually works and, perhaps more importantly, what impact it has on the offender or on the perceptions of victims and society as to how the system works. Karp et al. (2004) have commented that in comparison to the amount of research that has been conducted on victims and offenders in the criminal justice system, citizen participants remain understudied: We know little about how community members participate in community justice initiatives, who volunteers, their level of commitment


and satisfaction, and their attitudes about the philosophy and practice of the programs in which they participate, (p. 488). Recognition of this element is paramount if volunteers continue to play a part, and indeed want to play a part in criminal justice schemes. There appears to be an a priori assumption within the rhetoric of government and policy, and indeed those directly concerned, that getting the community involved with the criminal justice system and having a direct say on what happens as a part of that system is a good thing. Indeed the rhetorical question of ‘how could it not be?’ seems to direct much discussion in this respect. The empirical evidence seems to be lacking, however, in respect to both the rationale for developing such programmes and for the continued praise that community-based initiatives seem to attract. The prevailing sense of optimism that appears to be rife in this arena shows a somewhat limited appreciation of implementation issues experienced by past initiatives, especially to inform those schemes that follow.

Background to the case study area The study was based in a YOT situated in a shire county of the South Midlands with one large city, covering over one thousand square miles in total and a population of nearly 620,000, approximately 20 per cent of whom live in the main city area (all further references to the YOT will mean the case study area unless otherwise stated). The YOT was one of the pilot sites for Referral Orders and has been training volunteers to run panels since 2000 when the disposal was originally rolled out. Currently working with just over 30 volunteers to cover the whole county and approximately 1,000 panels at various stages each year, the situation in relation to Referral Orders is a fraught one. The YOT experienced, and continues to experience, many of the difficulties associated with implementing a scheme of this sort. For example, the YOT was issued a ‘challenging remit’ of recruiting and training volunteers who were representative of the community at large within a very short time scale, to the extent that in order to get the scheme running the priority aim was to find appropriate people who were available rather than those who were necessarily properly ‘representative’ in line with the spirit of the legislation and guidance (Crawford and Newburn, 2002; p. 482). Professor Rod Morgan, Chair of the Youth Justice Board, has commented that the Referral Order panel volunteers ‘…are brilliantly representative of the community at


large…you have genuine community involvement reflecting local circumstances and opinions and patterns of knowledge and so on and so forth’ (speaking at a conference in 2005) but no empirical basis was provided for this claim. Nor does there seem to have been any substantiated discussion or guidance on which community the volunteers are supposed to be representing (e.g. is it the young person’s community, the victim’s community, or indeed the communities that the panel members come from?) which makes the idea of implementing ‘community participation’ more difficult. The fundamental differences between these potential scenarios make the panel members’ ‘representativeness’ very difficult to gauge in reality. The assumption seems to be that the panel members should come from the same community as the young person (Crawford and Newburn, 2002). This would enable that young person to be reintegrated back in to their community and build a stake in conformity – a factor that can be linked to the prevention of offending and fulfils one of the stated aims of Referral Orders. A further danger articulated by Crawford and Newburn as a result of their original evaluator status is the lack of connection between community representatives and the communities they seek to represent, that is, the volunteers’ ‘normative appeal may be undermined by their empirical lack of representiveness’ (2002; p. 483). They also question where the legitimacy to fulfil such a role derives from. Does a willingness to volunteer make a person inherently ‘different’ and hence not representative of the community they live in? This question is outside the scope of the current study but is one that needs consideration in the future. The situation in the YOT remains one where the limited number of useful volunteers does not meet the demands for community representation (with regards both demographics and locality). It was envisaged that Referral Orders would provide opportunities for a pure version of restorative justice to be implemented. This relies on victims of crime knowing about and buying in to the process which, to date, has been a difficult feat for such schemes generally to achieve (Williams, 2005). The situation in the YOT is no different, despite the best efforts of the victim liaison team. The managerialist demands of National Standard time frames makes victim representation difficult to achieve for an initial panel which leaves volunteers in the position of having to simulate the victim’s position directly plus how the community was impacted indirectly. The absence of victims dilutes the panel members’ effectiveness and forces panel members to deviate from the process highlighted in training materials that are very much focused on the presupposed victim’s attendance. It also clearly impacts on the


reintegration and restorative elements that provide the backbone of the order. Reparation from the young person to the victim and the community generally is a central objective of the Referral Order. The YOT made an executive decision to introduce more group work activities centred on projects for the community as opposed to one to one work.4 The decision to make the majority of reparation work group-based was not an easy one for the YOT management and was explicitly based on budgeting restraints. This was not a popular decision among panel members who feel they have been demoted in their decision-making capacities. The effectiveness of group work on the theory and efficacy of Referral Orders for young people to repair harm and to promote reintegration is debatable, largely due to the inability of an over-worked reparation team to work with young people individually. …regardless of what experience you have on a group, regardless of what supervisors come along, regardless of whether it’s weekends or mid-week, you will lose with any more than one client the restorative justice…you can not stand there and go ‘well, how do you feel about your victim blah blah blah’…they won’t really care, (Reparation Team). In relation to reintegration, Patricia Gray has commented that: In the new culture of control, there is a presumption that reintegration is an individual moral endeavour which will miraculously occur once young offenders have accepted responsibility for their actions and repaired damaged relations with victims and the community, (Gray, 2005). The theory is very obviously not being mirrored in reality and is having a direct impact on the political and welfare imperatives that Referral Orders are designed to address – primarily preventing reoffending by young people taking responsibility, repairing harm and being reintegrated back in to society. It is also impacting on the volunteers in that they feel constrained and unable to truly negotiate with young people during a panel meeting. Despite the obvious difficulties highlighted above, the volunteers, when interviewed, reiterated the importance of the process as a whole for both their role as community members and of helping young people to stop offending. They spoke in terms of putting something


back in to the community, involvement, community support, empowering young people and of healing processes for victims. Each panel member, whether interviewed personally or as part of the focus groups, believed they had an important role to play in the lives of the young people coming before them but were hindered in their efforts by a lack of resources, and at times motivation, from the YOT. They were keen to continue in their civic engagement roles however and even keener to help the YOT improve the situation in relation to the role and use of volunteers.

The content of panel meetings – Theory and reality5 Panel meetings are held at three distinct stages. The initial panel aims to set out the contract with the young person, review meetings at threemonthly intervals are designed to track progress of the order, and signoffs are the final meeting that act as a symbolic nod to reintegration. Volunteer training packs set out expectations in relation to the running and the route of panel meetings that includes guidance on everything from seating and refreshments, introductions, purpose and agenda, to ensuring that all parties present have an opportunity to speak, clarifying what has been achieved and agreed, and requesting breaks to diffuse difficult situations (NACRO, 2004). The level of compliance with expectations within the training manual is discussed below in relation to the studied area. We highlight only the most prevalent here. As discussed above, the physical representation of community has been difficult to achieve for various reasons, but this has also proved difficult on a more abstract level during meetings. The effectiveness of involving lay participants is reliant on the young person having an understanding of the meeting’s purpose, why a volunteer is facilitating such a meeting and, perhaps most importantly in the current context, the significance of having a representative of the community involved with his or her order. Analysis of the panels illustrated that in many instances panel volunteers did not explain their role and purpose to the young person. One of the young people interviewed stated that the point of Referral Orders was to be taken out, given activities, ‘not to give me punishment, they are there to help me.’ The theoretical ideas behind Referral Orders, reintegration and social responsibility are conceptual notions and can be difficult for young people to comprehend. Unless this is explained in terms sympathetic to the individual needs of the young person how can we be sure that the community-driven


panel is having the desired impact? A finding that indicates community representation is not facilitated in actual terms nor even discussed as a concept with the young person raises doubts as to the efficacy of the volunteer’s role as currently played out. Creating a culture of negotiation was recognized as a core part of practice from the inception of Referral Orders but this study was able to demonstrate a lack of real engagement with young people during panels. The theory (YJB, 2003) suggests that this will help the young person to engage with the process and acquire a stake in conformity, making it less likely that they will reoffend. Expectations of panel members include encouraging the young person to take an active and verbal part in the panel process, to answer questions descriptively and help to create the terms of their contract. A clear start is essential to subsequent engagement and understanding. The following description of a contract during the introduction of a panel is assessed as being a particularly confusing example: things you are going to do to help you get focused back again without, you know, to help you control your temper and all the other things, ok? (Initial Panel). By potentially confusing the young person and not checking with them that they have understood, the purpose of the meeting is in danger of being lost, as are the benefits of community representation. The panel members also commonly displayed the tendency of talking to parents if the young person was not engaging as well as they would like. In the absence of engagement there are examples of panel members finding their own explanations for demonstrated behaviour and projecting these on to the young person (for example, did you do it because you were angry/picked on/is it just part of being a teenager? Does it make you cross or sad?). Similarly, panel members can try desperately to start a conversation by projecting explanations (‘Anything that you are fed up with? I mean, how about school? How is school going?’). The evidence demonstrates a culture of non-negotiation, often due to a mismatch in dialogue styles. The idea of incorporating contracts into the structure of the Referral Order was a source of much academic discussion from their inception. Squires and Stephens (2005) have referred to such contracts as ‘spurious’ and Goldson (2000) summarizes the difficulties with the notion of contracts in youth justice by highlighting a) the lack of proportionality, b) a lack of legal safeguards and c) the ‘ethics and justice of requir-


ing a child, perhaps as young as 10, to sign a contract…’. Are Referral Order contracts all that they aspire to be? A major concern demonstrated within this study is that the actual work done by YOT officers has not changed in any significant way since the introduction of volunteers and the Referral Order: …I feel that when we go to panel you have written this panel report and you have got it in your mind what you want to go in the contract and you try and advise the panel to put in the contract and so doing it that way is similar than if I just wrote an action plan (YOT Officer). If panel members are failing (for whatever reason) to negotiate with the young person, are accepting the recommendations of the YOT officer and are not providing any real community representation, the value added by the volunteer’s presence has to be questioned. Of similar concern is the evidence to suggest contracts stemming from initial panel meetings are becoming very similar in substance, if only because the issue of resources described above has made diversity less achievable by the YOT. Contracts that are driven by resources rather than needs identified by the young person and the volunteer is a worrying finding on many levels. A good example of the observations made is the frequent and extensive use of referrals to the substance misuse worker, even where this is not related to the offence. While the panel cannot be seen to condone substance use by the young person, if evidence suggests only occasional use the YOT’s limited resources would be better reserved for those young people with serious substance misuse issues that are directly linked to their offending, especially as there are many external support mechanisms in place to deal with this level of use. The use of jargon within panels reaches almost constant and problematic levels, with phrases such as ‘Group work’, ‘one-to-one’ and ‘consequential thinking’ very rarely being explained to the young person. There was little evidence of panel volunteers clarifying that the young person really understood what was happening, by asking the young person to explain back to the panel what was previously discussed, for example. ‘Do you understand everything we have said?’ followed by a ‘yeah…’ from the young person is very often accepted with no attempt to check the veracity of the ‘yeah’ (Kevin Haines, 2000, mentions this as a potential problem with the Referral Order given evidence in relation to child development). The explanation of


what a ‘spent conviction’ means and entails provides a good example of this. Its importance is often lost in translation from volunteer to young person: …as long as you do all this, there will be a clear run at the end of it. There will be nothing against your name, no police record, (Initial Panel). To ensure that the young person maintains a connection with members of their community (i.e. the panel members) it is necessary to have review panels at three-monthly intervals and sign-off meetings at the end of the order. The important aspect of these meetings is to praise the good, question the bad, and make changes as appropriate. During one review meeting, for example, there were significant amounts of praise for a letter of apology that was written by the young person to the victim but very little questioning of an assertion by him/her that they ‘don’t think it is much of a punishment…’ Engagement with the young person is hindered during reviews when the YOT officer is asked to explain what has happened during the sessions with the young person. Sign-off panels are characteristically short, with panel members conducting a cursory review of the history of the order. Given the situation of the YOT at present it is difficult to assert how sign-off panels can be made more meaningful for the young person, even if they make an effort to attend the panel which is not obligatory. Maintaining links with the community throughout an order, and indeed the community praising the young person at the end of a successful order, are essential elements to the overall efficacy and theoretical basis. Most pertinently, this involves forming a bond of accountability between the young person and members of the community.

Implementing change The civil renewal agenda promotes the engagement of volunteers in a process of change. Promoting localized practice fits well with the community element of recent government policy, maintaining standards but with a localized twist (Crawford, 2004). The volunteers demonstrated an insightful analysis of their behaviour and common themes for improvement that emerged from the volunteer focus groups include: Skills for running panels This included the need to improve listening skills (especially asking the young person to repeat back what they have heard), learning to be


more assertive at enforcing the ground rules and not asking closed or leading questions. Panel members bringing their personal experiences in to the panel meeting was highlighted as being particularly inappropriate, especially if it takes the focus away from the young person. A need for refresher training covering these issues was requested. Skills in engaging young people A particularly common concern evident from both the focus groups and the panel member interviews was the difficulty in really engaging the young person in the process of discussion and negotiation to the level expected in both policy and training documents. Again, refresher training was seen as a possible solution for this. It was felt that fundamentally the most important skill was ensuring that young people understood what was going on at all times. A suggestion by the panel members to build bridges between young people and themselves was to convene a group of those sentenced to Referral Orders in order to discuss what is understood by the terminology and dialogue so frequently used during panel meetings (e.g. substance misuse, cognitive behaviour, reparation). Perhaps more pertinently, allowing the young people to clarify what terminology would be better used and how best these concepts can be explained. Contracts Discussion was largely given over to the realities of YOT resources and how little the contract seems to mean in practice, for example, how little concern is given to implementation failure of an agreed item at the end of the Referral Order. Panel members generally felt that more openness and honesty from the YOT as to what was achievable and realistic in terms of time scales and resources would help immensely. Several suggestions were advanced to improve the situation. One of the focus groups mooted the proposal that contracts actually become vague ideas about the type of work that needs to be done, leaving any specific detail to the professional YOT officer. However, the likelihood that this will lead to most contracts looking the same was realized (e.g. when presented with evidence about substance misuse in contracts one focus group commented ‘…it is the kind of contract that you would write nine times out of ten’). A suggestion that might help the young person feel that they are a more valuable part of the process and engage further with the contract and the panel is to allow them to write their own contract, in their own language and how they understand the issues discussed.


The volunteers were also increasingly concerned with the growing trend by YOT officers for putting recommendations at the end of reports, especially at initial panel stage. It was generally believed that YOT officers were overtly deciding in advance of panel meetings what the final contract would contain, in effect waiting for the panel to rubber stamp what had been recommended. General opinion concluded that this growing practice was unacceptable and volunteers would instead prefer that reports from YOT officers contained a more detailed account of the young person and their situation, especially pertaining to the risk factors associated with the likelihood of reoffending. Reparation In relation to reparation, lack of information on suitable activities that were actually available proved to be the biggest complaint. The general consensus was that the panel process would be improved by having more knowledge of what was available locally for reparation. One way of achieving this would be the creation of a regularly updated book detailing all the active projects. It is believed that this would enable more meaningful dialogue between volunteers and young people with regard to reparation, what they were going to do and why. However, the practicalities of a more panel-driven approach to reparation for the YOT may not be realistic in the current climate. YOT procedures Focus groups were keen to make suggestions on how a change in YOT procedure would positively impact on their role and effectiveness as volunteers.6 Being given more time to read reports before panels start where the case is particularly complicated or the young person has many needs was mentioned as a specific change. The wealth of paperwork and the frequency of meetings were also raised. In relation to the meetings, their perceived uniformity of day and time made it difficult for some panel members to attend as they would like. An improved situation would be fewer meetings (e.g. two per year) held on different days, or perhaps a Saturday, with various speakers, discussions and training sessions. Concerns were expressed about the situation regarding reviews and sign-offs, especially the reliability of information given to the panel members from YOT officers: …some of the review reports I find are a little bit rosy because it is about ‘oh he is proceeding well’ then it turns out they haven’t actu-


ally done anything and have seen the YOT officer once…paint a much better picture than is the reality, (Focus Group). In relation to sign-off panels, the main concern was young people not turning up and YOT officers seemingly making no effort to ensure that they do: …putting absolutely no effort really in to getting the kids to come to sign off and that is the most rewarding bit of the work, for us… (Focus Group). Panel members feel very strongly that young people should attend the sign-off panel, as this symbolizes the reintegrative element of the order. Some panel members have taken to refusing to sign off orders, preferring to reschedule in the hope that the young person will turn up.

Implications for future practice and concluding remarks Evidence on the reality of how initiatives such as Referral Orders are operating is fundamentally important if volunteers are to be an effective force within the criminal justice system and not merely a nod to the community involvement agenda: The involvement of community participation in deliberative forums like YOTs affords the potential to encourage a stronger and more participatory civil society…the extent to which these ideals are undermined in practice by organisational routines, pressures towards formalisation, professionalisation and centralisation, as well as countervailing managerialist forces, constitutes a pivotal axis determining the future shape of restorative justice in England and Wales, (Crawford and Newburn, 2002; p. 493). Although the findings from this study cannot be generalized, it is possible to extrapolate lessons for future initiatives that plan to use members of the community in a voluntary capacity: i)

The importance of scoping studies before any initiative begins is fundamental to its success – i.e. finding out what is realistic and achievable from the organizations and people who will be implementing the programme. For example, what is the tradition of


volunteering in an area, how easy will it be to recruit new volunteers, what are the current best figures in relation to victim attendance. ii) It should not be assumed that volunteers who represent a community will be available to new programmes. The same problems in relation to recruitment will still exist. More research on how to get people to volunteer might be a more prudent start to a new community agenda. iii) Getting volunteers to work on programmes is not an end in itself. Any initiative needs an inbuilt system of monitoring and evaluation that provides real evidence of what is happening at ground level. iv) There should be no assumptions made. If a recipient of an initiative says they understand, this is not necessarily the truth. Understanding is key to many of the ideas that volunteers are attempting to put in place (e.g. community and building social capital) but if this is not explicit the message can be easily lost. While it should be stated at every possible opportunity that the YOT are fortunate to have such a dedicated and proficient group of volunteers at their disposal, a key assumption is that both the YOT and the volunteers need to constantly reassess their position and make changes in line with the findings. The focus groups resulted in many suggestions for change – both practical and structural – that might help to improve the situation of the young person and the volunteer’s place in the YOT. From a structural perspective, and as already discussed, the volunteers were aware that the ‘community’ was not represented as well as it might be. The YOT try very hard to engage with ‘different’ groups but with little success. It is not a problem that has a ‘quick-fix’ but is one that continues to erode the underlying purpose of Referral Orders and indeed community justice more widely. On a more practical level, the evidence suggests changes from both directions – changes in the way volunteers operate during panels, and changes in the way the YOT organizes and facilitates the panels. The biggest change for panel members would be a weightier emphasis on the procedure (e.g. introductions, ground rules, explanations) with much more attention being given to the young person’s understanding during a panel. The issues surrounding reparation could prove to be a good example of the discussion in this section. The situation within the YOT is strained such that one of the main complaints from panel members is the absence of


any real feedback from reparation officers in relation to how well the young person has done (or not as the case may be). The reparation team have similarly commented that they do not have time to promote the victim-based reparation elements during the group work projects that have now become the norm to fulfil the communitybased element. The volunteers could, therefore, take it upon themselves to ensure that the young person understands the importance of this work for paying back the harm that is done to the community – either during an initial panel meeting, or in a review. The young person should be able to tell the panel what they did as part of their group work and, as a result of discussions with the panel, increase their understanding of its significance. More generally, the young person should be asked to reflect back what has been discussed at any given opportunity, this will help to ensure that they truly understand the process. Similarly, a technique used in the Vermont Reparation Boards is for offenders to record work done within their sentence by way of an essay, or project, or photo gallery for presentation to the Board. This notion of the young person ‘showing’ the panel what has been done could enhance the links between the two parties, that is, the young person will necessarily be engaging more with the panel and volunteers will be able to see how they have impacted on the young person and how the work of the YOT is affecting him/her. By making small changes to the way that panels are run it could potentially have a huge impact on the effectiveness of community involvement – not only within the YOT used for this study but Referral Order panels and other similar schemes throughout England and Wales. Recommendations can also be made for changes to the national, legislative framework of the order that might improve both the operational success and legitimacy of community members being involved. When Referral Orders were first introduced a major feature appeared to be that ‘…they mark a significant shift away from a court based judicial model in which the parties are represented rather than speak for themselves,’ (Earle et al., 2002). This is arguably a false premise, as young people still need to go to court to be sentenced and are now entering the court system earlier than ever before (Smith, 2003). The magistrates interviewed as part of this study also pointed out that they do make attempts to interact with the young person by asking them about the background and details of the offence, so in reality it is not a case of a third party speaking for the young person. It is also debatable how much impact the


magistracy have on the minutiae of interventions for young people on other orders. The obvious conclusion to draw is that the process of police to court to YOT is no different for Referral Orders than for other sentences such that the ‘move away from court’ is fictitious. If the government wishes to support a local approach to punishment and crime prevention more generally it might be possible to place more authority in the hands of the Referral Order volunteers by truly cutting out court for the majority of offenders. This would involve young people entering a plea of guilty at the police station (akin to the operation of final warnings), reporting to the YOT for assessment, and then coming to a panel to determine the length of order and interventions for the contract. This would then bolster the role of the community representative and encourage links between the volunteers and the young person. Seriousness might help to determine if a particular case is better dealt with in the courts (e.g. if custody is an option). It might also be possible to involve magistrates as panel members. Obviously a change of this magnitude would involve a thorough consideration of legal and human rights but would help to promote the ethos of both early prevention and civil activity. Unless young people start to understand the significance of a volunteer’s involvement, the government rhetoric and the quest for civil renewal will be in name only: There is clearly still much more that can be done in relation to their involvement as a broader resource in delivering a form of justice that links panels to wider communities in which they are located and the latent forms of social control that reside therein, (Crawford, 2004; p. 696). This study has shown how big the difference between theory and reality can actually be. The commitment of volunteers who want to help make programmes a success has also been demonstrated. The civil renewal agenda, and indeed any strategy for increasing community engagement, can learn a lot from the operation of the Referral Order and more thought needs to be given as to how best to research and evaluate the actual impact such voluntary work can really have.

Notes 1. http://www.ippr.org.uk/articles/archive.asp?id=499&fID=54 2. Now consolidated in the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000

Sarah Jones with Colin Roberts 61 3. The Referral Orders (Amendments of Referral Conditions) Regulations came into force on 18th August 2003. Referral Orders are now discretionary for non-imprisonable offences. 4. Although one to one work is still available where a need can be demonstrated. 5. While an attempt has been made to mention positive aspects as comparative examples, the nature of this section will necessarily focus on the negative aspects. This is in no way presented as an accurate portrayal of the ‘good’ and ‘poor’ practice ratio. 6. An attempt has been made to highlight suggestions the YOT might be better placed to implement (e.g. not budgeting issues).

References Boyes-Watson, C. (2004) ‘The value of citizen participation in restorative/ community justice: Lessons from Vermont’, Criminology and Public Policy (3) 687–692. Buist, M. and Whyte, B. (2004) Decision making and services relating to children and young people involved in offending (Edinburgh: Scottish Executive). Cabinet Office (2003) The Magenta Book: Guidance Notes for Policy Evaluation and Analysis, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Communities that Care (2001) Risk and protective factors associated with youth crime and effective interventions to prevent it (London: Youth Justice Board). Crawford, A. (2003) ‘“Contractual Governance” of Deviant Behaviour’, Journal of Law and Society (30) 479–505. Crawford, A. (2004) ‘Involving Lay People in Criminal Justice’, Criminology and Public Policy (3) 693–702. Crawford, A. and Newburn, T. (2002) ‘Recent developments in restorative justice for young people in England and Wales – Community participation and representation’, British Journal of Criminology (42) 476–495. Earle, R., Newburn, T. and Crawford, A. (2002) ‘Referral Orders: Some Reflections on Policy Transfer and “What Works”’, Youth Justice (2) 141–150. Goldson, B. (2000) ‘“Children in need” or “young offenders”? Hardening ideology, organizational change and new challenges for social work with children in trouble’, Child and Family Social Work (5) 255–265. Gray, P. (2005) ‘“The politics of risk and young offenders” experiences of social exclusion and restorative justice’, British Journal of Criminology (45) 938–957. Haines, K. (2000) Referral Orders and Youth Offender Panels: Restorative Approaches and the New Youth Justice In The New Youth Justice, (ed.) B. Goldson (Dorset: Russell House Publishing Ltd.) pp. 58–80. Hickson, S. (2005) Keynote Speaker In ‘The Referral Order, Two Years On’ (conference) Childrens Law UK, London. Home Office (1997) No More Excuses: A new approach to tackling youth crime in England and Wales (London: Home Office). Hoyle, C., Young, R. and Hill, R. (2002) Proceed with caution: An evaluation of the Thames Valley Police initiative in restorative cautioning (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Karp, D., Bazemore, G. and Cheshire, J. (2004) ‘The role and attitudes of restorative board members: A case study of volunteers in community justice’, Crime & Delinquency (50) 487–515.

62 Re-energizing Citizenship NACRO (2004) The Referral Order: a good practice guide (London: Nacro). Perry, J. and Gorczyk, J. (1997) ‘Restructuring corrections: Using market research in Vermont’, Corrections Management Quarterly (1) 26–35. Rogers, B. (2005) New directions in community justice (London: Institute for Public Policy Research). Smith, R. (2003) Youth Justice: Ideas, Policy, Practice (Cullompton: Willan Publishing). Squires, P. and Stephen, D. (2005) Rougher Justice: Anti-social behaviour and young people (Cullompton: Willan Publishing). Stoker, G. (2004) ‘Experiences of member states with policies for the strengthening of participation at local level’ (Strasbourg: Council of Europe). Vanstone, M. (2004) Supervising offenders in the community: a history of probation theory and practice (Aldershot: Ashgate). Williams, B. (2005) Victims of Crime and Community Justice: Justice Rebalanced? (London: Jessica Kingsley). Wonnacott, C. (1999) ‘The counterfeit contract – reform, pretence and muddled principles in the new referral order’, Child and Family Law Quarterly (11) 271–287. Youth Justice Board (2003) Effective Practice: Assessment, Planning Interventions and Supervision (London: Youth Justice Board).

4 Civil Renewal, Control Signals and Neighbourhood Safety Anthony Bottoms and Andrew Wilson

‘Civil Renewal is about people and government, working together to make life better. It involves more people being able to influence decisions about their communities, and more people taking responsibility for tackling local problems, rather than expecting others to. The idea is that government can’t solve everything by itself, and nor can the community: it’s better when we work together,’ (Home Office, 2006). The statement quoted above appeared on the Home Office’s ‘Communities’ website, in response to the question ‘What is Civil Renewal?’. The research reported in this chapter addresses and tries to explore further the meaning of the final sentence of the Home Office statement, in the context of the promotion of public safety in neighbourhoods (a high-priority policy issue for any government). Within this framework, we pay special attention to the recently developed sociological concept of ‘control signals’. Twenty years ago, Richard Taub, Garth Taylor and Jan Dunham (1984; pp. 20, 172) produced evidence that two Chicago neighbourhoods with high crime rates not only received positive ‘satisfaction with safety’ scores in a residents’ survey, but also had rapidly appreciating residential property values. Since, in science, one well-authenticated observation is sufficient to constitute a falsification, Taub et al.’s research clearly refutes the proposition that a high local crime rate necessarily entails a perceived lack of neighbourhood safety in a given area. The obvious next question is, therefore, ‘under what conditions can high crime coexist with perceived neighbourhood safety?’ One possible answer to this question can be derived directly from the Chicago research, for the authors reported that, in both the areas combining high crime with ‘satisfaction with 63


safety’ (namely, Lincoln Park and Hyde Park/Kenwood), ‘there [were] highly visible signs of extra community resources being used to deal with the crime problem’ (Taub et al., 1984; p. 172). The suggestion was therefore that, in these areas, certain actions by powerful political actors had helped to create a general sense of neighbourhood safety, despite continuing high crime. The language used here by Taub et al., that of ‘visible signs’, is particularly interesting in the light of the later development of the sociological concept of ‘control signals’. This phrase has been deployed by Innes and Fielding (2002) as one of a trinity of linked concepts, the others being ‘signal crimes’ and ‘signal disorders’. Rooted in the theory of symbolic interactionism, the central insight behind this conceptualization is that certain acts communicate (‘send signals’) to the general public, in a way that may promote or hinder the general sense of order in a neighbourhood, or even in society at large. So, for example, while some domestic murders might pass almost unnoticed even in the district where they occur (they are seen as a private matter, communicating no wider threat or sense of unease), other murders can and do send shock-waves across a whole nation. The formal definitions developed by Martin Innes to encapsulate this trio of concepts are as follows: (i) (ii) (iii)

A signal crime is a criminal incident that acts as a warning signal to people about the presence of risk(s) to neighbourhood safety A signal disorder is a form of disorderly conduct that indicates to people the presence of risk(s) to neighbourhood safety A control signal is an act of social control that communicates an attempt to regulate disorderly and deviant behaviour.

Innes’s more recent research, linked closely to the National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP), has focused on detailed qualitative interviews with members of the public in different wards, asking them to nominate any matters in their area that they consider to be potential threats to neighbourhood safety (Innes, 2004; Innes et al., 2004). Three findings from this research are of especial relevance for present purposes. First, there were, in detail, considerable differences between wards in the issues identified. Secondly, the matters identified were not necessarily criminal (for example, they include ‘youths hanging around’, in a way that is perceived as offensive); thus, it is not simply crime that is seen by residents as eroding neighbourhood safety. Thirdly, despite the diversity of the findings in different wards, there

Anthony Bottoms and Andrew Wilson 65

was also an intriguing common denominator, which was that various events in public space were almost always identified as the most threatening signals, whereas residential burglary, a serious but more ‘hidden’ crime, usually received a lower ranking. Thus, it would seem, what happens in public space in residential neighbourhoods is of special relevance to the issue of signal crimes/disorders and control signals, and hence, if Innes is right, to perceptions of neighbourhood safety. In our view, these results, and the ‘signal crimes’ trinity of concepts, are of very great interest. Indeed, using Innes’s work as a point of departure, we would wish to link these matters to some deeper theoretical issues. Anthropologists have shown that human beings are never solitary creatures; they always live in groups. Such groups always have rules, and an eminent anthropologist once argued that ‘the capacity and need to have, to make, to follow and to enforce rules are of cardinal importance for human existence…For without rules there can be neither society nor culture,’ (Fortes, 1983; p. 6). Part of the function of ‘rules’ (broadly understood to include informal rules, and conventions) is to introduce a vital element of predictability into group life, a predictability that (to an extent) we all need for our basic sense of personal security (Wrong, 1994; Giddens, 1984). Moreover, when a significant degree of unpredictability is introduced into social life, this often generates emotions of distress or anger (Barbalet, 1998). Even in a globalized, internet-connected age, human beings cannot exist except as embodied creatures (Dickens, 1990). Embodied creatures can and do, by definition, experience threats to their physical safety, and to their emotional security, as they go about their daily lives – going to work, walking to the shops, meeting their friends, and so on. Safe public space, it can therefore be argued, is a central prerequisite for a secure daily life; and, if what is occurring in public space becomes unpredictable or threatening, then this can be genuinely distressing to an everyday sense of wellbeing (see further Wood, 2004; ch. 8). If all this is correct, it is arguably not in the least surprising that disorders in public space rank so high as indicators of ‘lack of neighbourhood safety’. Retrospectively, we can also note the shrewdness of those in the Hyde Park/Kenwood area of Chicago (see Taub et al., 1984; pp. 99–102) who sought to improve the sense of safety in that area; prominent among these planners were the managers of the University of Chicago, since that prestigious institution is located in the area. As well as investing heavily in the urban infrastructure (including obtaining substantial Federal urban renewal funds), these planners introduced some initiatives that directly addressed ‘safety in public space’


issues – such as a private security force (with direct links to the Chicago Police Department), 24-hour ‘safety buses’ and emergency telephones. The whole package of measures taken in Hyde Park/Kenwood seemed to send a strong ‘control signal’; for while crimes such as burglary remained high (the area is close to a high offender-residence neighbourhood), as noted above the area was nevertheless perceived by the residents as safe, and property values rapidly appreciated. Hyde Park/Kenwood was therefore one of the areas that bucked the usual trend whereby crime rates are inversely correlated with perceptions of neighbourhood safety. Successful ‘control signals’ can sometimes be introduced in the absence of any community consultation, and a good example of this is improved street lighting (see Farrington and Welsh, 2002 for a rigorous review of the research evidence). However, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that, in most social contexts, if residents are actively and regularly consulted about neighbourhood problems, more effective control signals can usually be put in place by the relevant authorities. Moreover, such consultation, and subsequent action, may help to generate confidence in residents that a collective effort to improve the neighbourhood can be made, by residents and authorities working together, thus making it less likely that individual residents will act purely on the basis of their own personal interests, to the collective detriment (e.g. by moving out of the area, or by withdrawing into a private ‘shell’: see Taub et al. (1984) on this individual/collective distinction and its implications). In such a manner, the concept of ‘control signals’ could be seen as potentially linked to the civil renewal agenda. This, in brief, is the theoretical framework that has shaped the empirical research described in this chapter. We will reconsider the relevance of this conceptualization at the end of the chapter, after we have described the research.

Background to the empirical research The research areas The research was carried out in two high-crime, high-disadvantage areas of Sheffield, in both of which we had carried out previous research with a different focus (Bottoms and Wilson, 2004). One of these neighbourhoods is an inner-city area on the edge of the city centre, which has always been a mixed-tenure area; it is here described as the ‘Inner’ neighbourhood. The other area (here called ‘Outer’) is


three miles from the city centre; it consists of what were originally two council estates, but it too has now become a mixed-tenure area. We have subdivided both the ‘Inner’ and ‘Outer’ areas into two sub-areas; within each pair, the historically ‘better’ and ‘lower crime’ area is listed first (Inner A, Outer A), while the historically more notorious area is listed second (Inner B, Outer B).1 Inner is, like many inner-city areas, ethnically diverse, with just under half the population self-describing to 2001 Census enumerators as ‘White British’, and the most numerous ethnic minority group being people of Asian origin (for further details of Census data for the subareas in this study, see Bottoms and Wilson, 2004; Tables 15.1 and 15.2). Inner A is less deprived than Inner B, so for example it has more owner-occupiers and higher employment rates. Mobility rates in both sub-areas are quite high, with about one-sixth of 2001 Census respondents having lived at a different address twelve months previously. Inner has also, in the recent past, been known as the city’s principal drug-dealing location. However, in 2001 it received a significant boost to its fortunes with a large urban renewal grant. Among other things (see later discussion), this has led to enhanced policing and the appointment of local authority community wardens to help maintain order in the area. Turning now to Outer, this area still has 60 per cent of households in social housing, higher than either part of Inner. By contrast to Inner, it is very predominantly (90%) ethnically white; it also has a somewhat lower mobility rate, and a lower proportion of young adults than Inner. As the residents not infrequently point out, unlike Inner it has received no special financial assistance from central government. However, the local authority has provided a team of community wardens to work in the historically ‘worse’ sub-area, Outer B; thus, Outer A is the only one of the studied sub-areas to be without such wardens. Police-recorded crime2 As explained in the introduction, crime rates in the areas are not necessarily decisive in shaping residents’ feelings of safety, and it is the latter which is our principal concern in this chapter. Nevertheless, before turning to residents’ satisfaction with neighbourhood safety, it is important to consider what we know from official sources about crime in the sub-areas. These data must of course be read subject to the standard caveats about the interpretation of official crime data (Maguire, 2002).

68 Re-energizing Citizenship Table 4.1 Recorded crime rates per 1,000 population, 2002–3, 2003–4 and 2004–5, by sub-area (population data taken at date of 2001 Census)

Inner A Inner B Outer A Outer B

2002–3

2003–4

2004–5

145 275 188 242

129 (221)* 184 270

99 (199)* 200 221

* Data suspect because housing demolitions reduced the population denominator; the true rate per 1,000 population is therefore almost certainly higher.

Table 4.2

Types of recorded crime, by sub-area, 2004–5 (%) Inner A Inner B

Serious violence* Robbery Other offences involving violence Burglary of dwellings Burglary (other) Vehicle crime (incl. damage) Theft (incl. fraud and handling) Criminal damage of dwellings + arson Criminal damage (other) Drugs offences Other offences

N

Outer A Outer B

2.8 1.4 14.3 10.2 6.9 27.3 16.2 9.3 4.6 5.1 1.9

3.9 2.0 14.6 7.8 3.4 25.8 10.1 14.3 4.2 8.4 5.6

0.9 2.3 13.2 8.5 5.1 23.6 15.3 20.9 5.3 1.7 3.2

1.2 1.4 14.8 10.3 5.7 24.9 11.9 19.2 4.2 2.2 4.2

100.0 216

100.0 357

100.0 470

100.0 505

* Includes attempted murder; threats to murder; grievous bodily harm/wounding (s.18 and s.20 Offences against the Person Act 1861); arson endangering life; and affray.

Table 4.1 shows overall police-recorded crime rates in the areas in 2002–3, 2003–4, and 2004–5, though this table must be read bearing in mind that, because housing demolitions had reduced the population denominator for Inner B by 2003–4 (see further Bottoms and Wilson, 2004; p. 370), the figure for that sub-area in that and the subsequent year almost certainly underestimates the true recorded crime rate. As will be seen, Inner A was the sub-area with the lowest recorded crime in all three years, and its overall crime rate showed a decline during this period. The other three sub-areas all have high rates, fluctuating somewhat from year to year. In all three years, however (bearing in


mind the denominator problem in Inner B), the highest rates are found in the traditionally ‘more criminal’ sub-areas, Inner B and Outer B. There was some variation between sub-areas in the types of recorded crime, and proportionate distributions for 2004–5 are shown in Table 4.2. Both the Inner sub-areas had higher proportions of drug crimes, and their rates for serious violence are almost certainly connected with the drug trade. Inner B had a particular concentration of serious violence; in this small area, in the twelve months from April 2004, there were three attempts or threats to murder, nine offences of grievous bodily harm (eight under s.18 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861), and two cases of affray. The main offence for which the Outer sub-areas had a higher proportion of incidents was the more serious kind of criminal damage, i.e. damage to dwellings and fire-setting. As we shall see, this was connected to a more general perception among residents of disorder in the public spaces of these sub-areas. The survey The principal instrument used in this research project was a household survey, carried out on a random sampling basis using the Electoral Register as a sampling frame.3 The total survey response rate, across the four sub-areas, was 47 per cent, a similar rate to that obtained in our previous survey in the same areas (Bottoms and Wilson, 2004; p. 375). The response rate was also reasonably similar across sub-areas, the range being from Outer A at 42 per cent to Outer B at 52 per cent. We were not able to assess in detail the differing characteristics of respondents and non-respondents. However, it seems clear that there was a higher response rate among white than non-white residents in the Inner neighbourhood, because (as noted above) about half the population of this area is non-white, but 80 per cent of survey respondents in Inner were white. Another important difference between respondents and non-respondents in the Inner area related to household tenure: whereas, in 2001, over 10 per cent of households in the area were privately renting, among our survey respondents only 4 per cent (5 out of 124) were living in privately rented households. Two other response issues affected both the Inner and Outer neighbourhoods: as in our previous survey in the areas (Bottoms and Wilson, 2004, p. 376), it would appear inferentially that the achieved sample slightly overrepresented both (i) older persons (aged over 45) and (ii) people who had lived in the area a long time. These various items of response skew need to be borne in mind when interpreting the survey results.


Survey results Characteristics of the samples In all, 143 (56.6%) of the 253 respondents were female, a proportion that did not differ significantly by sub-area. The age distribution of respondents was also fairly similar across sub-areas, with Inner A and Outer B having the lowest proportion of pensioner respondents. As previously noted, there was an under-recruitment of ethnic minority residents into the sample. However, when the ethnic status of respondents was compared by sub-area, there remained (as in Census data) a clear and significant difference in the proportion of white respondents in the Inner sub-areas (80%) as compared to the Outer sub-areas (94.5%). Within the Inner and Outer pairs of sub-areas, however, there were no significant differences. All of the areas had a good deal of residential stability: at least half of the respondents in each sub-area had lived at their current address for 12 years or more, and there were no significant differences between sub-areas on this variable. In terms of housing tenure, as expected Inner A stood out as having far more respondents who owned their dwellings (88%) than the other sub-areas (combined proportion = 44%, with no difference between sub-areas), a contrast that was highly statistically significant. Among respondents who rented, the vast majority were in ‘social housing’, in part because of the low response rates from privately rented households in the Inner area (see above). Among all respondents, about a third (34%) reported having children of school age or younger living in the household; this proportion did not differ by sub-area. On the other hand, there was a clear and significant difference between the Inner and Outer areas in the proportion of respondents who had other family members living in the area, but not at their address: Inner 34 per cent, Outer 56 per cent. Thus, the extent of ‘bonding social capital’ (Halpern, 2005) was greater in the Outer than the Inner neighbourhood. Turning finally to educational and economic issues, Inner A was clearly and significantly the sub-area with the most highly educationally qualified residents, but Inner B also had significantly more respondents with advanced qualifications than did the two Outer sub-areas. We will argue later that this difference has not been unimportant to the development of the areas. Inner A also stood out from the other sub-areas on two further variables. The first of these is employment, where a much higher proportion of respondents in Inner A were working full-time. Secondly,


the proportion of respondents in Inner A where there was a car in the household (83%) was much higher than in the other three sub-areas (combined figure = 58%). Victimization Within the interview schedule used in this research, we included a standard (but short) victimization section.4 The key results from this section, as regards notifiable offences, are given in Table 4.3. They show remarkably similar results for the two sub-areas in both the Inner and Outer neighbourhoods, but also a significant difference (P < .05) between these neighbourhoods, with Outer having the higher rates, especially for repeated victimization. Additional confidence in this result is generated by the fact that in a previous (but smaller-scale) victimization survey in these same areas a year previously (Bottoms and Wilson, 2004), a similar pattern of higher repeat victimization in the Outer sub-areas was also apparent. Victim survey results are normally (and rightly) treated as an improvement upon recorded crime data, because they include crimes not reported to the police, and crimes reported but not recorded. Victim surveys do however have some well-known limitations, which include the fact that they ask respondents only about crimes which they or members of their household suffered as victims. In the present context, it is important to recognize that as, in all victim surveys, drugs offences are not included (they are victimless offences); moreover, the recorded serious violence in Inner also made no appearance in the victim survey, because these incidents occurred to persons other than our survey respondents (including non-residents of Inner who came there to deal in drugs). Thus, in assessing overall criminality in the subareas, one needs to take account of data from both the victim survey

Table 4.3 No of victimizations per respondent for selected crimes* during the last year, by sub-area (%)


0

1

2+

Total (N)

64.7 67.9 56.1 52.1

20.6 17.9 15.8 21.1

14.7 14.2 28.1 26.8

100 (68) 100 (56) 100 (57) 100 (71)

* Crimes included were residential burglary, burglary from shed/garage; theft in dwelling; taking car; theft from car; theft from person; criminal damage; assault or threat; and fraud.


(which shows the Inner sub-areas as having less crime), and official data (which show drugs and serious violence to be more prevalent in Inner). Perceptions of the neighbourhood We now reach the heart of the survey, namely residents’ perceptions of their neighbourhoods. We will begin with three ‘primary indicators’, one of which we shall use later as a dependent variable in regression analyses. Primary indicators A particular interest of this research project is residents’ satisfaction with neighbourhood safety. There was one question directly on this topic, which had a possible range from 1 (‘very dissatisfied with the safety of the neighbourhood’) to 6 (‘very satisfied’). Interestingly, there was marked individual variation in the scores in all four sub-areas; indeed, only in the Outer A sub-area was the full range of scores not used by respondents (no-one in Outer A was ‘very satisfied’: see Table 4.4). This high degree of individual variation also characterizes our other primary indicators (see below), and it is in line with previous research in this field (see especially Taylor, 2001). Further exploration showed that there were two reasons for the variation: first, each of the sub-areas had specific ‘good streets’ and ‘less good streets’ within them; and secondly, there were sometimes quite marked variations in scores among different individuals living in the same street. Although there was individual variation, there were also some significant sub-area differences in means on satisfaction with neighbourhood safety (Table 4.4). The two Inner sub-areas taken together were perceived as significantly safer by residents than the two Outer Table 4.4


Satisfaction with Neighbourhood Safety, by sub-area Mean

S.D.

Median

Range

3.59 3.69 3.09 2.79

1.39 1.56 1.48 1.58

4 (n = 66) 4 (n = 51) 3 (n = 56) 2 (n = 70)

1–6 1–6 1–5 1–6

Scoring: 1 = very dissatisfied, 6 = very satisfied Statistical significance: Overall significance of comparison of means using one-way ANOVA, P < .002. Specific sub-area differences were: Inner A vs Outer B, P < .002; Inner B vs Outer B, P < .001; Inner B vs Outer A, P < .05


sub-areas; but there were no significant differences between the two sub-areas within either the Inner or the Outer neighbourhoods. A second primary indicator was a count of ‘Perceived Area Problems’. This was scored (for an individual respondent) on a range from 0 to 7, depending on how many of seven specific matters were rated by the respondent as a ‘very big problem’ or ‘quite a big problem’ ‘to you in your neighbourhood’. The seven selected problems for this purpose were: (i) noisy/problem neighbours or problem families (taken together); (ii) people dumping rubbish/dropping litter; (iii) bag snatching/street robbery; (iv) drugs users/drugs dealers; (v) rowdy young people hanging around; (vi) people damaging private/public property; and (vii) cars revved or driven at high speed around the streets. Although it was developed independently, this index of perceived area problems bears a considerable resemblance to the Home Office’s 2004 measure of ‘High perceived anti-social behaviour’, which also lists seven ‘strands’ of behaviour (see Wood, 2004; p. 15), five of which are functionally identical to those classed here as ‘area problems’. The count of ‘Perceived Area Problems’, therefore, is best thought of as a measure of anti-social behaviour. On this index, there was again a particular difference between the Inner and Outer neighbourhoods, the latter having more perceived problems. Outer B had the highest scores, with both a mean and a median of 3 perceived ‘big problems’ per resident (Table 4.5). In addition to these two indicators of neighbourhood safety and neighbourhood problems, we also developed an Index of Overall Neighbourhood Satisfaction. This was obtained from averages of individuals’ satisfaction ratings on ten items of a more general character about the neighbourhood, with no specific reference to area problems.5 On this variable the pattern of results was somewhat different, in that

Table 4.5


Number of Perceived Area Problems, by sub-area Mean

S.D.

Median

Range

1.87 2.16 2.65 3.08

1.74 1.84 1.94 2.14

1 2 3 3

0–6 0–7 0–6 0–7

Statistical significance: Overall significance of comparison of means using one-way ANOVA, P < .001. Specific sub-area differences were: Inner A vs Outer A, P < .03; Inner A vs Outer B, P < .001; Inner B vs Outer B, P < .01.

74 Re-energizing Citizenship Table 4.6


Index of Overall Neighbourhood Satisfaction by sub-area Mean

S.D.

Median

Range

4.18 4.11 4.11 3.66

0.66 0.81 0.78 0.91

4.21 (n = 68) 4.20 (n = 55) 4.38 (n = 57) 3.75 (n = 71)

2.67–5.67 2.33–6 1.67–5.2 1–5.25

Scoring: 1 = very dissatisfied, 6 = very satisfied Statistical significance: Overall significance of comparison of means using one-way ANOVA, P < .0001. Specific sub-area differences were: Inner A vs Outer B, P < .001; Inner B vs Outer B, P < .002; Outer A vs Outer B, P < .002.

the scores for three of the sub-areas (the two Inner sub-areas, and Outer A) were very similar, but ratings for Outer B were significantly worse (Table 4.6). When the correlations between these three primary indicators were examined, they were all found to be significantly correlated, but nevertheless not so closely identified as to be measuring the same thing: Neighbourhood Safety/Area Problems: Neighbourhood Safety/Neighbourhood Satisfaction: Area Problems/Neighbourhood Satisfaction:

r = –.421 (P < .01) r = .452 (P < .01) r = –.387 (P < .01)

An indication of the reasons for this data pattern can be derived from a case example, which illustrates the quite discriminating responses of many residents to the survey; it also serves to illustrate conditions on part of the most problematic sub-area (according to its residents), namely Outer B. This respondent, a woman aged about 40, had moved to Outer B two to three years ago. She reported that she did not feel at home in the area, because some women along the road ‘drink all day in front of their houses’; the respondent had also fallen out with her next-door neighbour, who is ‘one of this crowd’, therefore she ‘gets abuse when walking home’. Her score on the Area Problems Index was 5 (against a mean for Outer B of 3.08); this was because she rated the following as very big or quite big problems: problem neighbours (see above); dumping rubbish (specifically, a dumped fridge, but generally ‘the streets are a disgrace’); drugs users; rowdy young people; and cars being driven recklessly (allegedly, on one


recent occasion into a nearby wall). On the Neighbourhood Satisfaction Index, this respondent had a mean score of 3.88, which was marginally above the sub-area mean (3.66). Her score on this Index resulted from quite a complex assessment: for four items on the Index she rated herself as in varying degrees satisfied (namely, the appearance of the area, street lighting, availability of public transport and the quality of housing for the money), whereas on four other items she was in varying degrees dissatisfied (namely, the provision of play facilities for young children, convenience of the area to place of work, the racial make-up of the neighbourhood, and the provision of leisure facilities for teenagers). Finally, however, on the Index of Neighbourhood Safety, she expressed herself as satisfied (score 5), a score well above the sub-area mean of 2.79. Presumably, she considered that none of the problems that she had previously identified directly threatened her own personal safety; if so, this was possibly related to the fact that her street seemed to our interviewers to have a relatively high community warden presence. Change indicator In addition to the primary indicators, we also included a question which asked residents to assess how their area was changing (‘in the past two years would you say your neighbourhood has become a better place to live, or has it got worse, or is it about the same’?). Table 4.7 shows that, on this question, there was a marked and significant (P < .001) polarization between the Inner and Outer neighbourhoods, with a palpable sense of progress in Inner, and of decline in Outer. As social scientists have frequently demonstrated, beliefs of this kind can have very real social consequences, and we return to this point later.

Table 4.7 Has Neighbourhood Become ‘Better or Worse Place to Live in Last Two Years’, by sub-area (%)


Better

Same/Mixed*

Worse

Total (N)

35.3 48.1 7.1 14.3

49.2 42.3 39.3 40.0

15.4 9.6 53.6 45.7

100 (65) 100 (52) 100 (56) 100 (70)

Chi-squared (6 df ) = 50.9, P < .001


Issues relating to ‘civil renewal’ A number of variables were included in the interview schedule relating to various aspects of the ‘civil renewal’ agenda. Three are discussed here – first, what might be described as indices of production of the ‘good community’; secondly, political and social participation; and finally, residents’ perceptions of policing and crime prevention activities. Indices of production of the ‘good community’ One section of the interview schedule contained thirteen statements, each accompanied by a seven-point agree-disagree continuum. These were adapted from scale items used elsewhere,6 and were designed to measure the following: • Individual participation in community activities • How well local service agencies were perceived as working for the community (‘Quality of local services scale’) • A ‘community working together’ (CWT) scale • Human and social capital Results from these scales are given in Table 4.8. All indices showed a significant differentiation by sub-area; however, the most marked differentiation was apparent for two of the scales, ‘Quality of local

Table 4.8 sub-area

Mean Scores on Four ‘Producing the Good Community’ Scales, by

Indiv. Partic.

Quality of Local Services

CWT Scale

Human/ Social Capital

Inner A

2.87 (2.08) (n = 66)

3.61 (1.35) (n = 68)

3.44 (1.42) (n = 68)

3.69 (1.50) (n = 67)

Inner B

1.96 (2.04) (n = 56)

3.42 (1.27) (n = 55)

3.26 (1.33) (n = 56)

3.51 (1.43) (n = 56)

Outer A

1.98 (2.20) (n = 57)

2.93 (1.41) (n = 57)

2.85 (1.33) (n = 57)

3.20 (1.58) (n = 57)

Outer B

1.89 (2.01) (n = 70)

2.83 (1.50) (n = 70)

2.37 (1.24) (n = 70)

2.96 (1.66) (n = 70)

Significance

P < .02

P < .003

P < .001

P < .05


services’ and the ‘Community Working Together’ scale. ‘Local services’ showed a now familiar Inner/Outer distinction, with the Inner sub-areas significantly more satisfied with local services than the outer sub-areas. ‘Community working together’, however, showed Outer B as distinct from the other three areas: clearly, there was very little sense of the community working together in Outer B. Membership of social and political groups Some advocates of civil renewal emphasize the importance of community participation in social and political activity in localities. We attempted to explore this issue by asking respondents about membership of social and political groups. ‘Social groups’ were defined as including a range of specified associational activities (see note to Table 4.9 for a full list). Analysis revealed an interesting difference between sub-areas, with Outer B having significantly fewer group memberships than any of the other areas (Table 4.9). Analysis of memberships of political groups (i.e., political parties or pressure groups) showed a different pattern – this time, the two Outer areas both had very low participation rates (less than 2% of respondents), whereas the rates for both the Inner sub-areas were significantly higher (P < .001). Table 4.9


Membership of Social Groups,* by sub-area (%) None

One

Two

Three+

Total (N)

Mean

39.7 39.3 33.3 43.5

29.4 25.0 42.1 30.8

16.2 25.0 10.5 15.0

14.8 10.8 15.0 10.7

100 (68) 100 (56) 100 (57) 100 (72)

1.3 1.5 1.1 1.0

* Groups included: Trade Unions, school governors, parents’ associations, residents’ associations, health groups, religious groups, working men’s clubs, women’s support groups, sports groups, leisure groups, and others. Statistical significance: Overall significance, comparing means using one-way ANOVA, P < .05. Sub-area differences: Outer B significantly lower than all of the other sub-areas (vs Outer A, P < .05; vs Inner A, P < .02; vs Inner B, P < .01).

Perception of policing and crime prevention activities We also investigated perceptions of policing and crime prevention activities in the sub-areas. As in previous studies, the great majority of respondents in all sub-areas had seen the police in cars in the last month (range 79–91%), with no significant sub-area variation (Table 4.10). Conversely,

78

Table 4.10

Inner A Inner B Outer A Outer B Significance

Perceptions of Policing and Crime Prevention in Neighbourhood, by sub-area (%) Seen Uniformed PCs on foot

Satisfied with Foot Patrol level

16.2 18.2 10.7 16.4 NS

18.8 15.4 0.0 6.3 P < .01

Seen Uniformed PCs in vehicle 89.7 90.6 78.6 82.6 NS

Seen Community Wardens on foot

Know of special CP programmes

56.7 67.3 3.6 34.3 P < .001

46.8 45.1 30.2 16.4 P < .001


only about a sixth of residents had seen uniformed police foot patrols in their neighbourhood, again not varying by sub-area. Community wardens (employed by the local authority) had been seen to a substantial extent by respondents in the two Inner areas (approximately 60%), by about a third of respondents in Outer B, and, unsurprisingly because there were no such wardens operating in Outer A, by very few in that sub-area. Finally, many more respondents in the Inner than the Outer sub-areas knew of special crime prevention programmes in their area, no doubt because of special activities fostered under the urban renewal scheme in Inner. Multivariate analysis7 For multivariate analysis, we decided to focus on ‘Satisfaction with Neighbourhood Safety’ as the main dependent variable, bearing in mind that we were seeking to assess how perceived neighbourhood safety is produced, and the extent to which civic participation may be connected to this variable. We carried out the analysis using Ordinary Least Squares Regression, with a set of variables pre-selected on theoretical grounds as being potentially relevant in explaining perceived differences in neighbourhood safety. The regression model (Table 4.11) had a respectable adjusted R2 of 0.36. The strongest link to the dependent variable was found to be the ‘area change’ variable (perception that the area is declining), and some might object that this is almost tautological: isn’t it nearly the same as an index of neighbourhood safety? The contrary argument is that the dependent variable (satisfaction with safety) is about a current state, whereas the ‘area declining’ variable is explicitly about perceived change. Given that, as in Stock Exchange trading, confidence could play an important role in affecting neighbourhood trends, perceptions of decline or resurgence in residential areas might have their own very real local consequences (and research suggests that this is true, for example, in relation to moving decisions: Taub et al., 1984). On balance, we therefore considered it justifiable to retain ‘perception of neighbourhood decline’ in the final model, as an indicator of changing confidence and trust in the area, and as a reminder that such change can sometimes strongly affect overall perceptions of safety. The remaining items in the final model in Table 4.11 fall into two groups. First, there are three items relating to perceptions of crime prevention activity and the delivery of services by local agencies in the area – they are ‘seen police officer on foot’, ‘know of crime prevention programme in the area’ and the score on the ‘quality of local services scale’, the latter being the least strong contribution to the overall

80 Re-energizing Citizenship Table 4.11 Multiple Regression (OLS) with Satisfaction with Neighbourhood Safety as the Dependent Variable Model

Coeff

t

Sig

(Constant) Area Declining CWT Scale Seen PC on Foot Knows of CP Programme Quality of Local Services Scale

1.075 –.633 .218 .612 .481 .154

1.60 –2.71 2.30 2.13 2.12 1.86

.110 .007 .022 .035 .035 .064

Satisfaction with neighbourhood safety on a 1 to 6 scale, where 1 is very dissatisfied and 6 is very satisfied, treated as cardinal. Additional (non-significant) control variables: Sub-areas (Inner B, Outer A, Outer B); Male; Age (pensioner, under 35); Non-white; Tenure (own house or rent); Number of years living in the neighbourhood; Having family in the neighbourhood; Having children at home; Employment (working part-time, not working); Education (HND or above, no education); Internal locus of control scale; External locus of control scale; Human capital scale; Belong to a group or organization; Usually vote in council elections; Seen a community warden in the neighbourhood in the last month; Seen street force in the neighbourhood in the last month; Seen uniformed police officers in a vehicle in the neighbourhood in the last month; Been a victim of more than one crime in the last year. Number of observations = 225 F (29,195) = 7.27 Prob > F = 0.0000 R-squared = 0.355

model (significant only at the 10% level). Of these three items, special interest attaches to the ‘seen PC on foot’ variable, where mean levels did not vary significantly by sub-area (Table 4.10), but those who had observed such officers seem to have gained an enhanced sense of neighbourhood safety.8 Taken together, the three items seem to suggest that residents do indeed relate a sense of neighbourhood safety in significant part to an understanding of how local agencies are delivering relevant services, including policing and crime prevention – an observation that is highly congruent with Innes and Fielding’s ‘control signals’ approach (see introduction to this chapter). The final variable in the regression model is residents’ scores on the ‘community working together’ (CWT) scale – and indeed, this item was more strongly related to satisfaction with safety than any of the ‘delivery of services’ variables. It is worth noting in detail the three items that comprised the CWT scale: 1. ‘It’s easy to join in and work with others on problems in the area’ 2. ‘People in my area often join together to work on local problems’


3. ‘Local community groups do not usually work together on important issues’ (reverse coding) This scale is, therefore, about the indigenous residential community (and local groups within it), as opposed to the adequacy of services provided by local official agencies (as discussed above). It is very interesting that, in residents’ assessments, this scale is strongly related to satisfaction with neighbourhood safety, along with some indicators of official crime prevention/provision of formal services (see above). This is, therefore, consistent with an important theme in the contemporary neighbourhood safety literature, and the Government’s civil renewal agenda, namely that of the so-called ‘co-production’ of neighbourhood safety as between official agencies and local residents (see introduction and further discussion in the conclusion).9

Concluding discussion We return, finally, to the conceptual framework with which we began (see Introduction), namely civil renewal and control signals. In the light of the empirical results of the survey, how useful do these concepts now appear, and what are the implications for policy?

Four sub-areas Let us begin by reviewing the evidence about the four sub-areas, starting with Inner. It is important to emphasize that not many years ago Inner was perceived very differently than it is now: the following, for example, is taken from a qualitative research study in Inner B (code-named ‘East Rise’10) by a Home Office researcher in the year 2000: Compared with [other areas], residents living in East Rise were more fearful and felt more intimidated: ‘a lot are too frightened to complain or come forward’… and ‘…we daren’t walk to the Recreational Centre while it’s dark’. But they were similarly dismayed about having to put up with open drug use on their streets….. [Some] were trying, largely in vain, to get the local council to do something: ‘it’s the Corporation which is dragging its feet; that’s all we hear, things take time’. The feeling that nobody listened to them was common….. (Graham, 2000; pp. 5–6).


These observations were made prior to Inner receiving its urban regeneration grant from central government (in 2001). Since then, considerable amounts of money have been spent on improving the appearance and security of the area. This has included building projects, improved street lighting, clearing up litter and fly-tipping, the creation of a dedicated community policing unit, and the introduction of community wardens and an anti-social behaviour team. The previously mentioned demolition in Inner B, although not related to the central government grant, also had the effect of removing many void properties and some of the least desirable housing in that sub-area. There have also been some city- and county-wide police operations against drugs and street crime, strongly associated with Inner. In particular, in 2003 there was an initiative aimed at key parts of the South Yorkshire drug market, and in Inner this resulted in a number of arrests of alleged drug dealers. This, together with the additional police presence from the new community-based officers (see above), plus the installation of CCTV, has significantly reduced the level of visible drug dealing and, it is claimed, has displaced the drug market to the fringes of the area. We carried out an earlier survey and observations in Inner in 2003–4 (Bottoms and Wilson, 2004), and then the current research in 2005; it is very clear from these studies that the sense of alienation felt by John Graham’s (2000) respondents in 1999 has been considerably reduced. Indeed, one of the most striking results of the present research is the marked sense of recent general improvement in Inner (and especially Inner B) – see Table 4.7. It seems reasonable to interpret at least many of these changes within the framework of Innes’s ‘control signals’ theory – the urban regeneration activities, plus the tighter enforcement of the drugs trade in Inner, have given its residents confidence that the authorities, collectively, care about the area; and the authorities, in turn, seem to have successfully communicated a signal that they are attempting to deal with the area’s problems firmly but also sympathetically. Certainly, there is a markedly reduced feeling that the authorities ‘don’t listen’ (as we have seen, a common complaint at the time of Graham’s research). Moreover – and this seems to be a point of some general importance – it would appear that the residents’ ability to organize and develop informal social control was inhibited when there were insufficient ‘control signals’ from the authorities; conversely, when some significant action by the authorities was perceived, that appeared to deliver a growing confidence in the area, and with confidence has come an increased will-


ingness to participate in community activities and problem-solving (see the results for the ‘Community Working Together’ scale, Tables 4.8 and 4.11). The authorities’ ‘control signals’, however, were not arbitrary, but were to a significant extent based on listening to the residents’ concerns about a range of issues in the area. If at this stage we reconsider, in overview fashion, the various tables in this chapter, we can first note that Inner A, the least economically deprived of the four sub-areas, performs consistently well, with rankings of first or second on most variables. Inner B, by contrast, has the second worst recorded crime level, with, as we have seen (Table 4.2) some significant residual problems of the drug trade and associated serious violence (its serious violence rate remains the worst of the four sub-areas). Despite this, Inner B actually scores best among the subareas on a number of survey measures, including ‘satisfaction with area safety’ and ‘neighbourhood improving’. The co-existence of these perceptions with the continuing high drugs and serious violence takes us back to Taub et al.’s (1984) research, and these authors’ findings that high perceived safety can coexist, at least to an extent, with high crime. On the basis of the limited amount of qualitative observational research that we were able to undertake in Inner B, our best interpretation of this is that residents knew that the drugs trade and violence continued to occur in their sub-area, but they also felt that, as a result of the changes that had taken place, such activities did not dominate everyday life in the way that they used to; in particular, public space in the area felt safer, less dominated by the ‘open’ (highly visible) drug markets. Thus, residents of Inner B could be said now to adopt a ‘headdown’ approach to the residual problems of drugs and violence, thankful for the improvements and building better community links in the new situation. The sense of improvement is powerful, and to an extent self-fulfilling. What then of the Outer neighbourhood within the framework of control signals theory and civil renewal? Here the picture is much bleaker, but as with Inner one can usefully differentiate between the two sub-areas. Outer B has for many years been one of the most criminal and problematic sub-areas within Sheffield; as demonstrated by the depressing sequence of bottom rankings in the tables of our research, it retains this position, not least in the eyes of its own residents. More interesting for present purposes is Outer A, traditionally a markedly ‘better’ estate than Outer B, but with signs of deterioration for some years now (see Bottoms et al., 1989; 1992; Bottoms and Wilson, 2004). Outer A retains some advantages; it is the second lowest sub-area in


terms of recorded crime levels, and equal second on the general ‘Index of Overall Neighbourhood Satisfaction’ (Table 4.6). But it scores less well than the two Inner sub-areas on ‘Satisfaction with Neighbourhood Safety’, and the ‘Number of Perceived Area Problems’ (Tables 4.4 and 4.5); and on the ‘Neighbourhood Change’ variable, it was palpably worse than these Inner sub-areas (Table 4.7). This is therefore a subarea where the residents are visibly losing confidence in the social fabric. Their score on the ‘Quality of Local Services’ scale was also lower than either of the Inner sub-areas (Table 4.8), and qualitatively there were many comments (reminiscent of Graham’s observations in Inner five years beforehand) about the local authority not listening to residents. Qualitative analysis also suggested that attempts by local residents to communicate with the authorities often failed, as the two sides ‘talked past’ each other. This could have been influenced by the lack of residents in Outer A with higher educational qualifications – but at any rate, there was definitely a communications deficit, with residents’ views not being fully understood. This in turn led to feelings of frustration. Since residents in this sub-area were well aware of the significant amounts of money that had been spent in Inner (only two miles away), there was also a sense that deprived areas that are not inner-city multicultural areas are less likely to receive attention and grants from the authorities. In terms of ‘social capital’ indicators, Outer A ranked very low on political memberships, but was not significantly different from the two Inner sub-areas on social memberships (Table 4.9), and it had the highest ranking among the sub-areas for ‘other family members living in the area’. Outer A is, then, clearly not deficient in what Hope (1995; p. 24) has usefully described as ‘horizontal’ community participation (‘expressions of affection, loyalty, reciprocity, or dominance among residents, whether expressed through informal relationships or organized activities’). Where, on the evidence of this research, it is deficient is in Hope’s ‘vertical’ dimension: that is, ‘relations that connect local institutions to sources of power and resources in the wider civil society of which the locality is acknowledged to be a part’. From the point of view of the residents in Outer A, there were few ‘control signals’ being transmitted by those in power, it was difficult to communicate with such persons, and the area was plummeting rapidly downhill (Table 4.7). This sense of decline was made worse by the memories of what the area used to be like, for there is no doubt that, as Girling et al. (2000) have argued, local residents always view particular problems in their area within


the context of a broader understanding of the history of the area and current comparisons with other areas. Our detailed research provided ample evidence of incidents of anti-social behaviour in Outer A, so we are not disputing the reality of residents’ perceptions; but those perceptions were certainly framed by contrast to a manifestly better past, just as the perceptions of residents of Inner B were shaped by recent memories of a manifestly worse residential area. In this respect, this research reinforces that strand of urban research which has pointed to the great importance of the general ‘sense of direction’ (improvement or ‘tipping’) in which an area is heading, and the difficulties of altering such a sense of direction once it becomes established (see e.g. Taub et al., 1984; Schuerman and Kobrin, 1986; see also the prominence of the ‘area declining’ variable in the regression reported in Table 4.11). Overall, therefore, we believe that our research into these sub-areas provides substantial support for the importance of the ‘control signals’ theorization in the context of neighbourhood safety; and, as we have seen, in places this also dovetails well with aspects of the ‘civil renewal’ agenda. But our research has, arguably, also raised a question as to whether ‘control signals’ is quite the right phrase to use. Certainly there is a control element; but earlier in this conclusion, when speaking of Inner B, we wrote that the urban regeneration activities, plus the police crackdown on drugs, ‘have given [the] residents confidence that the authorities, collectively, care about the area; and the authorities, in turn, have successfully communicated a signal that they are attempting to deal with the area’s problems firmly but also sympathetically’. This is social control, certainly, but it is also social empathy; and both messages have been successfully communicated in Inner. These comments also connect with Ralph Taylor’s (2000) important research on ‘incivilities’ (anti-social behaviour) in Baltimore, from which one of his most important ‘take-home’ messages was that in studying local neighbourhood problems and neighbourhood safety, there is a strong need for ‘theoretical integration’: Theorising on incivilities needs to reconnect more firmly with works in the areas of urban sociology, urban political economy, collective community crime prevention and organisational participation. Changes in neighborhood fabric, neighborhood crime rates and residents’ safety concerns are each tangled topics with a range of causes. To gain a clearer picture of these processes, it is necessary to


break away from [incivilities] per se, and broaden the lines of inquiry (Taylor, 2001; p. 20). Our much smaller research project strongly supports this message.

Government–citizens partnerships Let us return, finally, to the Government’s civil renewal agenda. As indicated in the introduction to this chapter, our research was from the outset developed in order to attempt to contribute to that part of the civil renewal agenda that is officially described as ‘government– citizens partnerships’ (or, more colloquially, ‘it’s better when we work together’). We think we can reasonably claim that one of the central results of our study strongly supports the ‘government–citizens partnerships’ approach. We refer here to the regression analysis on ‘Satisfaction with Neighbourhood Safety’ (Table 4.11). As previously discussed, this model had three variable types included within it, namely: (i)

(ii) (iii)

Perceived action by the authorities (‘seen PC on foot’, ‘knows of crime prevention programme’, and, to a lesser extent ‘quality of local services scale’) Perceived action by citizens (‘communities working together scale’) A ‘change’ variable, relating to accelerating/declining confidence in the area

Our previous discussion, especially that relating to Inner B, strongly suggests that ‘positive area change’ tends to flow from action by the authorities, which allows citizens to participate in their communities more fully, and to exercise informal social control more effectively. If that is correct, then the ‘area change’ variable is itself an indicator of ‘government–citizens partnership’ or the lack of it. Over and above this, the model includes explicit variables relating to contributions made respectively by the authorities and by local communities. We believe that this result is heartening, and gives a clear pointer for policy. We end by making two further comments about it. First, the Home Office statement quoted at the beginning of this chapter is, we think, open to some mild criticism. Its comment about ‘more people taking responsibility for tackling local problems, rather than expecting others to’ arguably does not fully appreciate the impor-


tant distinction between the ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ aspects of social capital (see previous discussion), and the sense of powerlessness that local people feel when, in their understanding, those with the power to assist by the leverage of resources into the area are ‘not listening’. Government, central and local (and including police services), needs to understand its central role in initiating what Innes calls ‘control signals’, a role that usually cannot realistically – in a modern context – be taken by local residents. Within that framework, however, the Home Office statement appears certainly to be right in saying that ‘it’s better when we work together’. Secondly, and to end on an optimistic note, we need to draw to readers’ attention the recently published Home Office evaluation of the National Reassurance Policing Programme (Tuffin et al., 2006) – a programme to which, it will be recalled, Martin Innes’s research was closely linked. The Home Office research is not, strictly speaking, a formal evaluation of the ‘control signals’ approach, because Innes’s theoretical work was still being developed when the Home Office evaluation began (Tuffin et al., 2006; p. 20). In a broader sense, however, the evaluation is, without doubt, closely connected to the ‘control signals’ approach, because that approach strongly underpinned, from the outset, the practical programmes put in place by those running the National Reassurance Policing Programme, which were then evaluated by the Home Office. After rigorous testing, the Home Office research reported generally very positive results: the evaluation revealed ‘a consistent picture, which shows that positive change in key outcome indicators in the trial sites, such as crime, perceptions of anti-social behaviour, feelings of safety after dark and public confidence in the police, was attributable to the National Reassurance Policing Programme’ (Tuffin et al., 2006; p. 93). These strong results (which were not published until our own research was complete) can, therefore, reasonably be said to add substantial weight to our own argument – linked to the results of our small-scale study – that there are important potential links between civil renewal, ‘care and control signals’, and neighbourhood safety.

Notes 1. In Bottoms and Wilson (2004), different area and sub-area names were used. So, what is here called Inner A was there called A1; similarly, Inner B = A2, Outer A = B2, and Outer B = B1. In the earlier study, additional adjacent sub-areas (A3, B3) were studies, but they were not included in this research.

88 Re-energizing Citizenship 2. We are extremely grateful to our colleague Dr Andrew Costello for supplying us with this data, based on his longstanding collaboration with South Yorkshire Police. 3. The interview schedule is available on request from the authors. 4. Victimization surveys are a standard criminological tool, designed to complement official police statistics by asking residents about crimes committed against them in the last year, whether or not these offences have been reported to the police. See generally Maguire (2002). 5. The ten items comprising the Index of Neighbourhood Satisfaction were: provision of play areas for under 10s; quality of infant schools; quality of secondary schools; the appearance of the area; quality of street lighting; convenience for travel to work; availability of public transport; ethnicity of the neighbourhood; housing value for money; leisure facilities for teens. The average score for each respondent for items answered was calculated; hence if, for example, a childless respondent said he/she knew nothing about the quality of local schools, the average of the eight other items was utilized. 6. See Jakes and Shannon (2002). We are most grateful for the inspiration that we obtained from Jakes and Shannon’s work, but we adapted their ideas and items freely for our own purposes. 7. We are extremely grateful to Tessa Peasgood of the School of Health and Related Research (SCHARR), University of Sheffield, for her considerable work on the multivariate analysis. 8. It is theoretically possible that certain sorts of people are more likely to notice officers; if this were the case, a result of this kind would merely be a disguised statement of personal characteristics. However, exploration of this possibility found little empirical support, and detailed geographical examination of the residences of those who claimed to have seen officers on foot suggested that there were plausible reasons why they might have done so (e.g. proximity to main roads). The result is therefore treated at face value. For further empirical support for the importance of the ‘police on foot’ variable, this time in relation to ‘public confidence in the police’, see Tuffin et al., 2006; p. 89. 9. We also ran an alternative version of the regression on satisfaction with neighbourhood safety; this included (as the model in Table 4.11 does not) the Number of Area Problems as an independent variable. Not surprisingly, in view of Innes’s results on the importance of perceived incivilities for perceptions of neighbourhood safety, the alternative model was dominated by the Number of Area Problems (P < .001). This displaced the ‘area declining’ variable from the model, but interestingly, all the other independent variables shown in Table 4.11 as significant at the 5 per cent level remained significant in this second analysis: namely ‘CWT scale score’ (P < .016), ‘knows of CP programme’ (P < .016) and ‘seen police officer on foot’ (P < .035). This is reassuring as an indicator of the robustness of these variables in relation to the prediction of satisfaction with neighbourhood safety. 10. ‘East Rise’ covered Inner B and an adjacent sub-area not studied in the present research.


References Barbalet, J.M. (1998) Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bottoms, A.E., Claytor, A. and Wiles, P. (1992) ‘Housing markets and residential community Crime careers: a case study from Sheffield’ in Crime, Policing and Place: Essays in Environmental Criminology (eds) D.J. Evans, N.R. Fyfe and D.T. Herbert (London: Routledge). Bottoms, A.E., Mawby, R.I. and Xanthos, P. (1989) ‘A tale of two estates’, in Crime and the City (ed.) D. Downes (London: Macmillan). Bottoms, A.E. and Wilson, A. (2004) ‘Attitudes to punishment in two highcrime communities’ in Alternatives to Prison: Options for an Insecure Society (eds) A.E. Bottoms, S. Rex and G. Robinson (Cullompton, Devon: Willan). Dickens, P. (1990) Urban Sociology: Society, Locality and Human Nature (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf). Farrington, D.P. and Welsh, B.C. (2002) Effects of Improved Street Lighting on Crime: A Systematic Review, Home Office Research Study 251 (London: Home Office). Fortes, M. (1983) Rules and the Emergence of Society, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Occasional Paper No 39 (London: Royal Anthropological Institute). Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society (Cambridge: Polity Press). Girling, E., Loader, I. and Sparks, R. (2000) Crime and Social Change in Middle England: Questions of Order in an English Town (London: Routledge). Graham, J. (2000) Drug markets and neighbourhood regeneration (Unpublished report available from the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics and Political Science). Halpern, D. (2005) Social Capital (Cambridge: Polity Press). Home Office (2006) ‘Communities: What is Civil Renewal?’ http:// communities.homeoffice.gov.uk/civil/about-civil-renewal/civil-renewal Hope, T. (1995) ‘Community Crime Prevention’ in Building a Safer Society (eds) M. Tonry and D.P. Farrington (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Innes, M. (2004) ‘Signal crimes and signal disorders: notes on deviance as communicative action’, British Journal of Sociology (55) 335–355. Innes, M. and Fielding, N. (2002) ‘From community to communicative policing: “signal crimes” and the problem of public reassurance’, Sociological Research Online 7(2) [http://www.socresonline.org.uk/7/2/innes.html] Innes, M., Hayden, S., Lowe, T., Mackenzie, H., Roberts, C. and Twyman, L. (2004) Signal Crimes and Reassurance Policing (Guildford: University of Surrey). Jakes, S. and Shannon, L. (2002) ‘Individual and community mobilisation survey.’ Online report at http://ag.arizona.edu/fcs/cyfernet/nowg/ IndividualCommunityMobilisationSurveyPacket.pdf Maguire, M. (2002) ‘Crime Statistics’ in The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (eds) M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner (third edn) (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schuerman, L. and Kobrin, S. (1986) ‘Community careers in crime’ in Communities and Crime (eds) A.J. Reiss and M. Tonry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

90 Re-energizing Citizenship Taub, R.P., Taylor, D.G. and Dunham, J.D. (1984) Paths of Neighborhood Change: Race and Crime in Urban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Taylor, R.B. (2000) Breaking Away from Broken Windows (New York: Westview Press). Tuffin, R., Morris, J. and Poole, A. (2006) An Evaluation of the Impact of the National Reassurance Policing Programme, Home Office Research Study 296 (London: Home Office). Wood, M. (2004) Perceptions and Experience of Antisocial Behaviour: Findings from the 2003/2004 British Crime Survey, Home Office Online Report 49/04 (London: Home Office). Wrong, D.H. (1994) The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society (New York: Free Press).

5 Anti-Social Behaviour and Civil Renewal David Prior, Kathryn Farrow, Basia Spalek and Marian Barnes

Introduction A clear example of the ‘new governance’ identified in chapter 1 is found in policies to address problems of crime and disorder in local areas. Whilst crime policy under New Labour is shaped in part by a continuing commitment to the punishment and incapacitation of offenders, it is also characterized by a commitment to methods of crime control in which ‘the community’ occupies a central place (Garland, 2001). Indeed, the promotion of such methods – generally grouped together under the broad heading of community safety – has been one of the government’s major policy priorities (for detailed discussion, see: Benyon and Edwards, 1999; Crawford, 1998, 2001; Hughes, 1998; Hughes and Edwards, 2002; Hughes, McLaughlin and Muncie, 2002; Matthews and Pitts, 2001). Issues of local governance are at the core of community safety policy. The Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs), established by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 in every local authority area in England and Wales, have become a significant feature in the new governance landscape. They bring together the local authority and the police service as lead partners, along with other key agencies such as the fire service, health services, probation service, housing associations and voluntary and community sector organizations, with statutory responsibilities to respond to those problems of crime and disorder whose impact is felt most acutely in the everyday life of neighbourhoods and communities. If this new architecture for crime and disorder governance constitutes one of the major thrusts of current policy, a parallel thrust is evident in the broadening of the crime and disorder agenda to encompass the problem of ‘anti-social behaviour’ (Social Exclusion Unit, 91


2000; and see commentaries in: Brown, 2004; Matthews, 2003; Burney, 2005; O’Malley and Waiton, 2005; Squires and Stephen, 2005). This issue was also brought to prominence by the 1998 Act, which provided new powers to the police and local authorities to respond to behaviours that were not necessarily criminal but had a serious negative impact on the quality of life of individuals and communities. The principal weapon created to deal with them was the Anti-Social Behaviour Order – a civil order which prohibits an individual from specified types of behaviour for a period of up to two years (with breach of the order punishable by a prison sentence of up to five years). Another of the Act’s innovations was the Child Curfew Order, which enabled all children aged under 16 years to be banned from defined areas at specific times if they were unsupervised by an adult. Further legislation, in the form of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, extended the powers available to local agencies, for example introducing Dispersal Orders which enable the police to intervene in designated areas to disperse groups of people perceived as likely to engage in anti-social behaviour. A key theme running through these initiatives is that anti-social behaviour is not just a problem in certain disadvantaged areas, but is an issue for the whole of society, and indeed one that threatens the very fabric of democratic, civilized life (Blunkett, 2002, 2003a; Faulkner, 2003). The governance of anti-social behaviour thus has implications that extend beyond the specific terrain of crime control, its success being seen as crucial to the collective wellbeing of a complex, diverse citizenry (Prior, 2005). This chapter discusses findings from research into the Government’s claim that tackling anti-social behaviour in local areas helps bring communities together and thereby contributes to the goals of civil renewal (Blair, 2003; Blears, 2003). The study focused on one district – Greenhill (not its real name) – within a large urban local authority where reducing anti-social behaviour is a high-profile priority and is being pursued through a range of partnership-based interventions. Research was conducted with key groups of stakeholders operating at different ‘levels’ of governance: a district-wide group of officials from a range of partner agencies with overall strategic and operational responsibilities for delivering the district’s Community Plan; a partnership body of residents and officials representing one of the four wards in the district; and three neighbourhood-level initiatives aimed at involving residents in addressing local needs and problems, one of which included a group of young people. Structured discussions with these

David Prior, Kathryn Farrow, Basia Spalek and Marian Barnes 93

groups involved a total of 47 people, and were supplemented by 16 individual interviews with officials and residents. The approach used for this research derives from Theories of Change (ToC) evaluation methodology (Connell & Kubisch, 1998). This focuses on the links between the activities, outcomes and contexts of initiatives. It involves researchers working with stakeholders to identify the implicit theory underpinning decisions to adopt particular activities and strategies in order to achieve objectives. It identifies both long-term outcome objectives, and the short- and medium-term outcomes that would indicate that the activity is on track to achieving long-term aims. Importantly, it also seeks to make explicit the rationale for decisions to work in a particular way. In this study we used the ToC approach to: • highlight objectives and rationales in responding to anti-social behaviour, and the contexts in which these responses are being developed • identify evidence of differences and potential conflicts between stakeholders in relation to these objectives and rationales • suggest a number of activities and outcomes that are needed if the conditions for meeting the twin aims of reducing anti-social behaviour and promoting civil renewal are to be put in place. The chapter asks if civil renewal can be achieved through anti-social behaviour interventions. It first reviews the conceptual terrain in which the interventions are based. It then explores through our case study the constraints, dilemmas and contradictions that are revealed when the interventions are put into practice. The concluding sections of the chapter identify broader lessons.

Governance, community engagement and social capital: towards a critical understanding Civil renewal is concerned precisely with the relationship between citizens and communities. It is presented as a dynamic concept suggesting development, growth and regeneration in collective life, based on an assertion of positive social norms and values and enhancement of the skills and practices of citizenship (Davies et al., 2004). Participation in community activities for the benefit of the community as a whole, rather than for individual benefit, is prioritized as an obligation of citizenship (Barnes et al., 2004).


The civil renewal agenda draws explicitly on a theory of ‘social capital’ which is seen as providing a detailed understanding of the forces that bind communities together (Blunkett, 2003b; Strategy Unit, 2002). The theory argues that social capital – the networks within communities, the ways that people connect with each other, the shared values, and feelings of identity and trust between community members – contribute to both individual and collective wellbeing, not just in a general ‘feel good’ sense but in specific outcomes such as improved health and educational attainment (Halpern, 2005). Indeed the Government makes the claim that in communities where levels of social capital are high, problems such as crime and anti-social behaviour are fewer (Blunkett, 2003b). Civil renewal is thus concerned with the extent and quality of relationships between people as they go about their everyday lives in their local communities. This can be conceptualized by reference to ‘bonding’ social capital (the social ties between people with similar identities and interests, enabling collective action in pursuit of common goals) and ‘bridging’ social capital (social ties between people with different identities and interests but some shared experiences, enabling dialogue between groups and agreement on joint action in pursuit of certain common goals) (Halpern, 2005). It encourages development of the organizational forms in which those relationships and networks are developed and maintained: clubs, societies, community organizations and other forms of association. Civil renewal is also concerned with the quality of relationships between communities and the state, which may be conceptualized as ‘linking’ social capital (ibid). This is because, on the one hand, social capital theory rests on a belief that local communities are simply the most effective agency for dealing with local problems; while on the other hand they cannot fully realize this effectiveness without support from government (Blunkett, 2003a). From this perspective, government has a key role in the development of social capital, in building the organizational capacity and leadership that will enable communities to take responsibility for themselves and to act on that responsibility. Civil renewal also has implications for change within government itself, including the agencies and policies of crime control. The key mechanism for change is community engagement. In line with the principles of civil renewal, the promotion of community engagement in strategies to reduce crime and disorder is aimed at creating a new relationship between the public and the agencies of crime control, based on trust and public confidence (Blunkett, 2003a; p. 27–35).


Various elements of the conceptual framework within which this study is located are contested, both with regard to their theoretical appropriateness and coherence and to their practical effectiveness. Employing the conceptual framework in the research thus requires us to do so with a critical awareness of its potential ambiguities and shortcomings. Changes in local governance need to be assessed in light of a number of tensions or ambivalences, identified in the academic literature (see, for example, Newman, 2001; Sullivan, 2001 and various contributions to Stoker, 1999). Thus there is a tension between central prescription and local autonomy, in particular the view that changes inspired by theories of devolution, decentralization and localization are invariably constrained by centralizing control tendencies in the form of ever more detailed demands for upward accountability in relation to performance and resources. This relates to the dominance of managerialist values and techniques in the agencies of governance, one effect of which can be to squeeze out the potential for alternative means of addressing local needs and problems to be identified and tested. Moreover, such problems may be exacerbated by a reliance on inadequate or simplistic notions of ‘community’ in policies that exhort agencies to promote public engagement and participation (Barnes et al., forthcoming). Finally, there are questions about the effectiveness of the ‘partnership model’ in addressing complex issues, given substantial differences of power, legitimacy and resources between the partners, and tensions between the pressures on agencies to commit to partnership working and to be accountable for meeting individual objectives and targets (Craig and Taylor, 2002). Most of the points made in the previous paragraph can be applied to the governance of crime and disorder (Crawford, 2001). In addition, there are two major issues of critical contention. The first concerns the social consequences of the ‘criminalization’ of an ever widening range of behaviours, bringing greater numbers of people into the operations of the criminal justice process (Squires and Stephen, 2005). This applies especially to young people, at whom anti-social behaviour policies are largely directed, causing them to become a prime target for crime control interventions. The risk is of young people, as a social group, being made to feel subject to controls that exclude them from ordinary, everyday social life, thereby exacerbating existing feelings of alienation and detachment. The second concerns the relationship between policies of crime control and other domains of social or public policy, in particular the increasing penetration of crime control objectives and approaches


into areas such as child care, family policy, youth services, education and, more broadly, social and economic regeneration (ibid). The risk here is both of distorting the priorities and practices of those other policies, and of overlooking the potentially more effective contributions those policy and service domains can make in their own right to the prevention of criminality. Current policy emphasis on the participation of local people and communities in the process of public decision making and service delivery leaves a number of important questions unresolved. Thus, the assumption that participation and engagement is necessarily positive in its effects underpins much current policy prescription but is not examined (Barnes et al., 2004). Further, the ways that participation is promoted in specific policy discourses suggest that participation has different purposes in different policy contexts. Such differences are not reflected in the overall prescription for ‘more participation’. There are also unexamined assumptions about how ‘the public’ or ‘the community’ is itself constituted for the purposes of participation, and there is a specific question to be addressed about how far understandings within formal agencies about who ‘the public’ is when participation is being sought relate to the identities and motivations of those who actually do become involved (Barnes et al., 2003). There is a need to critically assess ideas and propositions about social capital that are incorporated in policy statements (Fine, 2001; Johnston and Percy-Smith, 2003; Roche, 2004). Social capital is a highly contested concept among social and political theorists, and debate ranges from whether the identification of a set of relationships as a form of ‘capital’ that can be used to generate further benefits is itself a valid or coherent concept, to the different ‘levels’ of societal interaction at which it may or may not be applicable, to the nature of its component parts and the specific mechanisms through which it operates. These, again, are questions that need to be addressed through empirical research; our intention is not to dismiss the potential usefulness of the idea of social capital, but simply to recognize that it raises controversial issues that tend to be ignored in the policy framework that provides the backdrop to our work.

Profile of Greenhill district Diversity and difference Greenhill District covered a population of 107,000. It comprised four wards, stretching from the edge of the city centre to the


eastern boundary of the local authority area. The population was very ethnically diverse, with 54 per cent White and 46 per cent Black. Most of the latter were from South Asian Muslim communities and resided in two wards close to the city centre (63 per cent and 65 per cent South Asian respectively). These wards displayed many of the characteristics of typical ‘inner city’ areas, including a very high proportion of young people. The central ward was the most ‘suburban’ of the four wards, although it included a very large social housing estate. It was predominantly White, but with a significant (13%) minority ethnic population, again mainly South Asian. The most easterly ward was overwhelmingly White and contained large Council housing estates. Both these wards had significantly older populations than the two majority Asian wards. Respondents drew attention to considerable differences in the ethnic, cultural and religious profile of the District’s population. This went beyond the obvious recognition of an ‘east-west’ or innercity/outer-city divide. Rather they identified significant differences within these areas; for example, between different ethnic communities within the Muslim Asian population, or between two historically and geographically distinct White communities in the outermost ward. Deprivation and disadvantage Overall, the district experienced high levels of deprivation. In three of the four wards, the Index of Multiple Deprivation was 68, 64 and 56, against the city average of 41. Specific deprivation indicators included over 9,000 Council housing properties of which 75 per cent were judged to be below the ‘decency’ standard; an unemployment rate of 11.5 per cent compared with a city average of 7.6 per cent; and mortality rates from heart disease for under-75s at 27 per cent above the city average. Within individual wards, certain indicators of deprivation and disadvantage were stark: • Unemployment in the two Asian majority wards was 19 per cent and 14 per cent • In one of these wards, 50 per cent of the working age population had no qualifications • In three wards, between 45 per cent and 48 per cent of households had no car • In the outermost ward, 44 per cent of households were lone parents with dependent children.


In spite of this, the district had not been the beneficiary of any major regeneration programmes – a notable contrast with many other deprived areas of the city.

Crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour Greenhill is ranked as the second worst district in the city on the Composite Community Safety Index developed by the local CDRP. Interestingly, the core crime categories prioritized in national crime reduction targets (Residential Burglary; Robbery; Vehicle Crime; Violence Against the Person; Arson) were not the main focus of concern: crime rates overall did not indicate exceptional problems. The issues that gave rise to greater concern in the district were: • Drugs – with a particular concentration of problems in one ward. • Disorder – including criminal damage, disorder offences and ‘false and malicious ignitions’. • Violence – high levels of hate crime and domestic disputes. • Criminal Use of Firearms, linked to the high level of illegal drugs activity. In relation to anti-social behaviour, a number of geographical ‘hot spots’ had been identified. The kinds of issues involved included: prostitution; nuisance neighbours; harassment and abuse; vandalism; graffiti; gangs of youths; drugs; rubbish and litter; and parking on grass verges. Perceptions reflected both in local public surveys and in comments made during this research by service providers and residents suggested that these issues were indeed a major area of concern and a focus for current interventions.

Governance and service delivery Governance and service delivery arrangements can be described at the three levels of district, ward and neighbourhood. Governance at the district level Greenhill District, part of a new structure only created in 2004, functioned as a tier of political and service management between the full Council and the local wards. It had responsibilities for the strategic social and economic development of the area, the establishment of partnership structures and processes with other key


public agencies, consultation and engagement with the local population and the delivery of a number of local authority services. The key governance institution was the District Committee composed of the 12 elected Ward Councillors, supported by a District Management Team of Council officers headed by a District Director. They worked with a senior-level partnership body including representatives of the Police, Primary Care Trust, Fire Service, a number of voluntary organizations and other Council departments. Multi-agency Action Plans had been developed to address key priorities; these included Action Plans for Anti-Social Behaviour and for Young People. Governance at the ward level Each ward had three elected Councillors who comprised a Ward Committee with formal, although limited, powers and responsibilities delegated from the Council. The Committees had no service delivery responsibilities, but had authority to allocate resources from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. Their other main functions were to provide a public forum for discussion of local needs and issues, and to represent the wards’ interests to the District Committee. The Committee was supported by a formally constituted advisory group of local residents and local service providers who met on a regular basis, facilitated by a full-time Council officer allocated to the ward. These ward-level arrangements pre-dated the introduction of the district-level structures by some years and were thus, in some wards at least, well established, experienced and knowledgeable sources of information about local needs and issues. Governance at neighbourhood level There were no formal structures for neighbourhood-level governance within Greenhill District. The local authority provided support for bodies called Neighbourhood Forums where there was a local demand for one. These covered populations of 3,000–4,000, were led and managed by residents, and were forums for raising and discussing local issues. There was very substantial variation across the city in the presence or absence of Neighbourhood Forums; within Greenhill District there were two, each covering part of the two majority Asian wards, but none in either of the other wards.


Anti-social behaviour and civil renewal: context and issues Here we discuss the general context and a number of specific issues that influenced the prospects for reducing anti-social behaviour and building a basis for civil renewal in Greenhill. The deprivation context The deprivation indicators noted above and the comments of respondents in this study suggested that a large part of the population experienced a poor quality of life, with much time and energy taken up in ensuring day-to-day survival of self and family – a context that did not obviously lend itself to the growth and flourishing of civil renewal. This raised serious concerns about the longterm impact on young people of the experience of growing up in an area of severe deprivation: not just a lack of material resources and access to decent services, but also an impoverished quality of family life and parental influences. Many respondents referred to the effects of children being brought up by young inexperienced parents and within families where anti-social behaviour towards each other was the norm. This negative family experience could then be exacerbated if young people were blamed as the principal cause of much anti-social behaviour in the public sphere (for wider discussion of these issues, see Squires and Stephen, 2005; p. 78–84). In our study, young people in one neighbourhood clearly felt resentful about being automatically blamed in this way, and there was a danger that the combination of the deprivation they experienced and the suspicion to which they were subjected would result in a profoundly alienated generation. There are issues here for advocates of the ‘respect’ agenda in current political discourse: young people in deprived communities do not feel they are being respected and this is unlikely to help in the struggle against antisocial behaviour (Edwards and Hatch, 2003; Smith, 2003; Barry, 2005). The cultural context Community strategies aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour need to take into consideration the ethnic diversity of the area. In Greenhill, the structure of the different communities reflected other South Asian communities in British cities, where chain migration from Pakistan and Bangladesh has reproduced village and kin networks (Khan, 2000; Abbas, 2005; Peach, 2005). The large and con-


centrated nature of these communities means that they are able to generate and sustain networks of associations that perpetuate religious norms and cultural identities, both separate from and feeding into, mainstream society (Khan, 2000; Lewis, 1994). In the language of social capital, such communities tend to be strong in the maintenance of ‘bonding’ relationships between members, but much weaker in the creation of ‘bridging’ relationships to those with different faith and ethnic allegiances and ‘linking’ relationships to sources of power and authority. For some respondents in this study the result was to add a layer of complexity to the process of governance. Moreover, in Greenhill, as elsewhere, the challenge of engaging the South Asian Muslim communities faced both the legacy of persistently high levels of deprivation and the dissatisfaction with this legacy increasingly voiced by second or third generation British Asian citizens (McGhee, 2005; p. 55–58). A number of respondents referred to community-specific perceptions of the ‘crime problem’ (including the nature and prevalence of anti-social behaviour) and of ways of dealing with it. Thus, one police respondent suggested that in Asian areas of the district, groups of youths gathering on the street was not seen as ‘anti-social’, whilst behaviours that were seen as unacceptable, such as theft, were often dealt with by direct action. Community-specific responses could also mean giving low priority to crime and anti-social behaviour because individuals from ‘traditional Muslim communities’ may prefer not to speak, or to disclose information, about negative or traumatic events for fear of exacerbating the problem (Spalek, 2005). This clearly impacts upon minority ethnic involvement in community strategies aimed at responding to anti-social behaviour. The significant generational gap within these communities compounds this issue further, since problems in communication and differences in the values that the different generations hold, can mean that older people, consciously or subconsciously, ignore or are ill-equipped to deal with any crime or anti-social behaviour that is engaged in by younger individuals from within their own communities. On an even broader level, it was evident – although this was not an issue the research was able to address directly – that heightened tensions arising from the association of terrorism with Muslim Asian communities and the experiences within those communities of increasing Islamophobia in Britain made the whole process of engagement in civil and political life extremely difficult (Spalek, 2002; McGhee, 2005).


The impact of anti-social behaviour and the challenge of renewal There is an immense challenge implied in the notion that local communities should be encouraged and enabled to tackle problems of antisocial behaviour. Residents participating in this study, by and large, had very pessimistic views about their prospects for achieving positive change. This pessimism stemmed both from a lack of confidence in their capacity to accomplish anything constructive that would not quickly be negated by those who engaged in anti-social behaviour, and from a perception of the danger of reprisals, whether physical or verbal, from such people. It was also fed by what they generally regarded as the failure of the public agencies to do anything effective about putting a stop to anti-social behaviour. Evidence of such attitudes was apparent at all levels of the study – frequent comment was made about people’s fears in going about their everyday lives, in using parks, shopping centres and other public spaces, and in having to make special arrangements to avoid potential dangers in very mundane activities (for instance, the resident who would phone a neighbour to keep a watch over her as she walked from her garage to her flat). Experiences such as these appeared to be widespread. Formal and informal capacity Unsurprisingly, there were significant differences in the capacity and opportunity to act between the levels of district, ward and neighbourhood, but these differences had important implications for strategies to tackle anti-social behaviour and promote civil renewal. One important feature was the contingent nature of formal neighbourhood level arrangements involving partnership between statutory agencies and community groups; in a small minority of areas such arrangements were reasonably well established, in others they existed but in a precarious form, and in many areas they did not exist at all. But even where formal initiatives did exist at neighbourhood level, there was often little power or capacity to make things happen. There were clear differences in informal capacity within neighbourhoods, for example, between the neighbourhoods with a majority South Asian Muslim population, where strong bonding relationships and close networks based on faith and regional identity were apparent, and those with a majority White population where networks were often quite weak and, in some cases, effectively non-existent. There was a suggestion from some officials that in the areas with a majority Asian population there were more individuals, groups and community


organizations with experience and knowledge in project development and bidding for resources, and in working with formal processes of regeneration and renewal. However, there were also concerns about the capacity of such individuals and organizations to turn short-term successes in gaining resources into longer-term positive impacts, and the possibly exclusive nature of the bonding relationships. Differences in informal capacity between neighbourhoods also related to the presence or absence of volunteer community leaders who were prepared to initiate and organize action within the neighbourhood: local residents who had the personal skills and determination to bring fellow residents together in forms of collective action and simply make things happen. There was a strong example of this in one of our research study sites, which seemed in stark contrast with the other two neighbourhood-level research sites. Trust and distrust All of the discussions with stakeholders highlighted the importance of collective action in building and maintaining trust, both between citizens within a community and between citizens and agency officials. Trust emerged as a key requirement in its own right, alongside the achievement of material results, confirming Shaftoe’s claim that ‘… “reliable trust” is a fundamental pre-requisite for a safe society,’ (Shaftoe, 2004; p. 201). For many respondents, the absence of trust was one of the key factors contributing to the decline of quality of life in neighbourhoods and to the diminishing capacity, of both residents and formal agencies, to intervene effectively to deal with problems of crime and anti-social behaviour. In our studies of initiatives at the neighbourhood-level, trust-distrust was variously a critical factor in relationships between: • • • •

fellow residents young and old people of different ethnicity citizens and agencies.

In one of the neighbourhoods, relationships of distrust seemed to predominate despite the presence of a project intended to build community responses to crime and anti-social behaviour. Little headway had been made because the scale of crime and disorder seemed too great for the level of resources available to the project, community relationships were too fractured for a single project to address, and the project itself was perceived as an external intervention with little neighbourhood


ownership. The neighbourhood was viewed as a ‘problem’ both by residents and officials, with little trust on either side in the capacity of the other to address it effectively. The second neighbourhood provided an example of building trust between community members through local activities, especially those involving different ethnicities or particular groups such as Asian girls who, for cultural reasons, posed particular challenges in relation to community involvement. Much of this success relied on the determination and commitment of one or two residents, in talking to fellow residents about their needs, organizing small-scale activities to meet those needs and gradually gaining the confidence of diverse groups (for example, Asian parents or boys involved in gangs). Research in the third neighbourhood, involving sessions with both adult and youth groups, suggested that trust was beginning to develop between residents and local agencies, particularly through officials from the Council and the police specifically attached to the neighbourhood who were able to establish personal relationships with residents. In addition, a development worker employed by the local church provided a core resource in organizing community-based activities and linking them to the statutory agencies and was trusted both by residents and the agencies. However, the research suggested that these optimistic observations needed to be qualified. First, while neigbourhood residents were developing trust in individual officials, this did not extend to the agencies themselves – the police, local authority and central government were all severely criticized for failing to make significant improvements to the area. Second, there was a serious absence of trust between the adult residents and the young people in the neighbourhood. Third, there was an equally evident lack of trust in the police by young people, who saw themselves as routinely victimized and assumed to be causing trouble – the exception here being the individual Neighbourhood Police Officer who had gained the young people’s confidence and respect. Impact of policies and services Certain policies and practices of the public agencies were perceived as generating negative impacts which helped create the conditions for anti-social behaviour, for example: • social housing policies which created estates with little or no amenities and public spaces that were conducive to crime


• housing management practices which resettled people from other areas without reference to existing needs or conditions in the new host neighbourhoods • use of short-term funding to start new projects or services which folded when funding ran out, leaving residents frustrated with and distrustful of official agencies • forms of policing practice which demonized particular social groups. There could be a danger in the pursuit of ‘quick wins’, as advocated by some officials, if these initiatives were seen as ‘too little, too late’ or as ineffective, as comments by residents suggested. It was also difficult to challenge apathy and distrust when residents viewed many initiatives as ‘talking shops’ rather than offering lasting solutions.

Change strategies – challenges and dilemmas Various strategies for intervention and change were identified by officials and residents, and in what follows we discuss a number of challenges and dilemmas that these strategies appeared to pose. Enforcement of powers to deal with anti-social behaviour This was a key point of tension (Burney, 2005; Millie et al., 2005; Farrow and Prior, forthcoming). Respondents at all levels in this study supported direct action to deal with the perpetrators of anti-social behaviour; at the same time, doubts were expressed at all levels about the effectiveness of current enforcement practices and, particularly by residents, of the authorities’ capacity to sustain enforcement (for example, of the conditions attached to ASBOs). Even stronger doubts were voiced about the usefulness of other powers, such as Dispersal Orders, with the police noting the need for such powers to be used sensitively and differentially in different parts of the district. There was a real dilemma here. Residents wanted and needed to see decisive action being taken to deal with anti-social behaviour if they were to develop trust in the public agencies, yet they were unconvinced by the effectiveness of the action and sometimes unhappy with the impact it had on their communities. They could also be unhappy, as were the residents in one neighbourhood, when they perceived a differential response as unjustified and unfair. The risk is that the inappropriate and/or ineffective deployment of enforcement powers can run counter to the objective of generating trust and the conditions for civil renewal.


Working with young people This was another issue of considerable tension and ambivalence, among officials as well as residents. The strong association of anti-social behaviour with the actions of young people meant that, for many respondents, an enforcement-based approach was both necessary and appropriate, although this was qualified by some officials as needing to be accompanied by educating and informing, and by virtually everybody as needing to be used alongside much better provision of facilities and activities for young people. However, for some officials, enforcement was the wrong place to begin (at least for the great majority of young people) and what was needed was a developmental process of working with young people from deprived and troubled backgrounds that would sow the seeds for their growth into responsible, confident and engaged citizens. The difficulty was in gaining the resources to support such an approach when current policy priorities demanded evidence of shortterm action to meet measurable targets. But the responses of the young people we heard from in one of the neighbourhoods lent weight to the arguments in favour of the longer-term preventative approach – an approach which, apart from anything else, seeks to take seriously the perceptions and understandings of young people themselves (Squires and Stephen, 2005; p. 72). Community engagement Community engagement is at the heart of attempts to promote civil renewal and of many local initiatives to tackle anti-social behaviour. In this study it was identified as a core challenge by politicians, officials and the minority of residents who were willing to become engaged. The dilemma is whether community engagement is required in order to tackle successfully a number of the needs and problems that face local communities in Greenhill (of which anti-social behaviour is just one) or whether progress has to be achieved in addressing those needs and problems before community engagement can become a serious proposition. Inevitably, a balance between the two approaches is needed, but the strong conclusion from our research was that community engagement could not be achieved as a result of an over-arching top-down plan – rather, there needed to be local, small-scale but real progress in developing constructive relationships between residents and agencies as a foundation for more ambitious engagement on the big issues.


This is perhaps especially relevant in an area of highly diverse communities. It suggests a need for greater investment in neighbourhoodlevel service delivery, with service providers more directly attached to localities, getting to know the residents and their needs, identifying the real priorities for the community and ways of responding to them that will have community support, and mediating effectively between residents and the service managers. Where such arrangements were in place in Greenhill, there were signs of positive response from residents. But this needed to be accompanied by tangible evidence of a willingness to tackle substantial deficits in the local infrastructure and physical environment. Without some such demonstrations of commitment by the public agencies to improving the area, it seemed doubtful whether the evident pessimism and distrust displayed by many residents could be overcome. Capacity building Building community capacity is closely linked to community engagement, but was identified as a distinct aim, especially by officials. It focused on the development of institutions to support civil renewal at community level and on the skills and knowledge that communities needed to enable them to participate successfully in public affairs. The core issue in Greenhill was the absence, in many parts of the district, of any existing institutional capacity, and the presence of a population alienated and worn out by the multiple deprivations and difficulties faced in their everyday lives. Where some indication of capacity did exist, for example in the ward-level group we studied, in which considerable knowledge and experience had developed and there were strong links to formal decision-making processes, it involved a very restricted group of people who by their own admission had been unable to extend their membership, particularly to younger people. Elsewhere, tenants and residents groups existed and were, variously, linked in to formal processes, but were generally seen as narrowly focused and not representative of broader community interests. Whilst two of the neighbourhood groups we studied were involved in positive processes of capacity building with public sector partners, both gave clear indications of fragility and were still in the very early stages of development. Different challenges were presented in the areas of majority Asian Muslim population, where community groups and organizations certainly existed based on faith and ethnic identity, but did not seem to be well connected into formal governance processes.


Our research suggested that ‘capacity building’ must be a core objective but that for it to be successful a commitment to long-term developmental work was required – work that would take place in very localized contexts and would gradually construct the kinds of relationships between fellow community members that could support a capacity for engagement. However, such effort risked being frustrated if residents’ experience of being engaged in formal governance processes was of systems dominated by institutional rules and norms, incapable of embracing diverse ways of debating or acting together, and overly constrained in their capacity to respond to the messages that emerge (see Barnes et al., forthcoming). Organizational development alongside community development was necessary for real change to be achieved. The implication of this for the objectives of the civil renewal agenda was that, in much of Greenhill, they were unlikely to be achieved for a long time but that when they were, they were more likely to be sustainable and to deliver the results desired by residents.

Conclusion Can anti-social behaviour interventions contribute to civil renewal? This chapter has raised a number of issues specific to developments in Greenhill; here, by way of conclusion, we reflect briefly on the more general relevance to our question of one major issue: the quality of relationships between public agencies and citizens. This is important because the policy claim for a positive connection between reducing anti-social behaviour and enhancing civil renewal implies an active governance role for local agencies as ‘partners’ with citizens and communities. Yet this research indicates some hard challenges for agencies if they are to establish the confidence and trust of citizens required to make the relationship work constructively. One kind of challenge involves the need to overcome traditional problems of bureaucratic public service delivery: criticisms were made of the unresponsive and unsympathetic approach of service providers, and an attitude that viewed residents only as problems. If such perceptions are justified, then there is clearly a major issue to be addressed if residents are to be encouraged to become engaged and to work constructively with the public agencies. A different kind of challenge for the agencies is in being sufficiently flexible to be able to recognize and adapt to different types and levels of community organization in different neighbourhoods; this is particularly important in an area of great ethnic diversity with quite different forms of ‘social capital’, some


of which do not sit comfortably with governmental understandings of how community networks and organizations should operate. A more specific requirement for flexibility is in the public agencies being able to support and facilitate the activities of local volunteer activists whilst not being threatened by or seeking to subordinate them. Underpinning these relationship issues is the question of trust. Given that building and sustaining trust is a core component in the policy of civil renewal, there are quite profound implications for public agencies arising from the analysis of our research data. It suggests that not only are there no quick or easy answers to the question of how to build trust within local communities, but that the way forward must be gradually negotiated and constructed as a series of specific localized strategies to fit the needs and characteristics of individual neighbourhoods. There cannot be a single generalized strategy for creating trust at neighbourhood level that could be applied uniformly. The potential for trust is also affected by the persistence of high levels of multiple deprivation across large areas of the district. Aspects of this were presented to us time and again as factors which not only impacted on the everyday life experiences of citizens and communities, but also generated great scepticism about the positive intentions of the public agencies or, at least, about their capacity to turn those intentions into actions. This will require evidence of real material commitment on the part of the various agencies to addressing residents’ concerns. For the local agencies, then, the social, economic and environmental conditions in the area mean that there are serious problems to be addressed. Anti-social behaviour is just one dimension of these problems, raising a question about the relative priority that should be given to this as against other substantial urgent issues. Tackling anti-social behaviour needs to be located within a broader governance and policy framework that enables the problem to be assessed and solutions developed alongside responses to other aspects of deprivation.

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110 Re-energizing Citizenship Barnes, M., Newman, J. and Sullivan, H. (2005, in press) ‘Discursive arenas: deliberation and the constitution of identity in public participation at a local level’, Social Movement Studies. Barnes, M., Newman, J. and Sullivan, H. (forthcoming) Power, Participation and Political Renewal: Case Studies in Public Participation (Bristol: Policy Press). Barry, M. (ed.) (2005) Youth Policy and Social Inclusion. Critical debates with young people (London: Routledge). Benyon, J. and Edwards, A. (1999) ‘Community Governance of Crime Control’, in The New Management of British Local Governance (ed.) G. Stoker (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Blair, T. (2003) Progress and Justice in the 21st Century (London: Fabian Society). Blears, H. (2003) Communities in Control: Public Services and Local Socialism (London: Fabian Society). Blunkett, D. (2002) ‘How Government Can Help Build Social Capital’. Speech to a Performance and Innovation Unit Seminar on 26th March 2002 (London: Home Office). —— (2003a) Active Citizens, Strong Communities – Progressing Civil Renewal (London: Home Office). —— (2003b) ‘Civil Renewal: A New Agenda’ (London: Home Office). Brown, A.P. (2004) ‘Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime Control and Social Control’, The Howard Journal (43:2) 203–211. Burney, E. (2005) Making People Behave: Anti-social behaviour, politics and policy (Cullompton: Willan Publishing). Connell, J. and Kubisch, A. (1998) ‘Applying a Theory of Change Approach to the Evaluation of Comprehensive Community Initiatives: Progress, Prospects and Problems’, in New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives Vol. 2: Theory, Measurement and Analysis (eds) K. Fulbright-Anderson, A. Kubisch and J. Connell (Washington DC: The Aspen Institute). Craig, G. and Taylor M. (2002) ‘Dangerous liaisons: local government and the voluntary and community sectors’ in Partnerships, New Labour and the Governance of Welfare (eds) C. Glendinning, M. Powell and K. Rummery (Bristol: Policy Press). Crawford, A. (1998) Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Politics, Policies and Practices (Harlow: Longman). Crawford, A. (2001) ‘Joined-up but fragmented: contradiction, ambiguity and ambivalence at the heart of New Labour’s “Third Way”’ in Crime, Disorder and Community Safety (eds) R. Matthews and J. Pitts (London: Routledge). Davies, L., Schweisfurth, M., Williams, C. and Yamashita, H. (2004) ‘Concepts in Civil Renewal’, in Researching Civil Renewal (ed.) Civil Renewal Research Centre (Birmingham: University of Birmingham). Edwards, L. and Hatch, B. (2003) Passing Time: A Report about Young People and Communities (London: Institute for Public Policy Research). Farrow, K. and Prior, D. (forthcoming) ‘Responding to anti-social behaviour: reconciling top-down imperatives with bottom-up emotions’ Community Safety Journal. Faulkner, D. (2003) ‘Taking citizenship seriously: social capital and criminal justice in a changing world’, Criminal Justice (3:3) 287–315. Fine, B. (2001) Social Capital Theory Versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium (London: Routledge). Garland, D. (2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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6 Incentive Schemes and Civil Renewal Simon Bastow, Helen Beck, Patrick Dunleavy and Liz Richardson

The problems of halting and reversing a spiral of decline in poorer or disadvantaged neighbourhoods have been studied from a wide range of different perspectives, each of which has tended to contribute a distinct impetus and set of proposals to civil renewal efforts. This study uses a ‘rational interests and beliefs’ perspective to study situations where people must make decisions on what to do at the same time as other people, that is, in ‘collective choice’ contexts. This kind of approach has not been much applied in previous studies of community processes or civil renewal in the UK. We reserve the theory exposition for the end of the chapter, and concentrate first on explaining how we gathered information for the study using surveys and focus groups in four areas, three with incentives schemes and one without. Our surveys interviewed around 200–250 people in each of the four areas, using a questionnaire developed in prior focus groups in each area. We examine what these results show about the factors affecting people’s willingness to behave co-operatively towards each other, to support social norms, and to think better of the authorities. We also explore people’s perceptions of and attitudes towards the incentives schemes and show how they may have a limited but useful effect.

Introducing our four study areas Our four study areas are different in their social make-up but all have, or have had, some problems of social deprivation. The Blackthorn estate, Northampton is a 1970s new-town development of public housing with modern and green-leafed streets. Following a high level of council house sales, it is currently a mixed estate of public sector and private housing and more than half (52%) of houses are owned. Community 112

Simon Bastow, Helen Beck, Patrick Dunleavy and Liz Richardson 113

safety problems have been tackled over the last few years through coordinated action by agencies and residents. The incentive scheme we focus on is the ‘Blackthorn Good Neighbours Project’, run as a local community/voluntary organization. The Project offers individuals and households individual benefits from taking up services offered, such as childcare, adult education and trips out. It also offers collective incentives through the provision of facilities and services that help local individuals and households to get to know each other more and thus to develop greater neighbourhood solidarity and cohesion. In contrast to Blackthorn, the Morningside estate in Hackney consists of medium rise, walk-up blocks of flats, originally built as council housing in the 1950s. It is now run by the Sanctuary Housing Association, which took over the properties in 2002. At this time the estate had numerous problems. The Association reasserted control over the properties and undertook physical renovations. The active management of the estate has made a big difference to the physical appearance and social life of the estate, both of which have radically improved in recent years. The incentive scheme here is run by the local housing association and called a ‘Good Neighbour Declaration’ scheme. It takes a mainly symbolic form, with the association asking residents to sign up to a personal contract on how they will behave. People who sign are given a certificate and a window sticker to publicize their involvement. Our case study area in Salford was Lower Broughton, with around 1,100 households included in the survey zone, of whom around 800 were social housing tenants (mostly local authority tenants). Just under a quarter (23%, 260 households) own their homes. Lower Broughton generally is an area of mainly Victorian terraced housing, and a small late-1970s estate, the Camp Street Estate, of 120 homes managed by Irwell Valley Housing Association. The incentives scheme we focus on is run by Irwell Valley Housing Association and called ‘Gold Service’. It is the most ambitious of the schemes studied, but which only applied to tenants of the housing association, not all households in the study area. The scheme provides individual cash bonuses and faster maintenance services to households who pay their rents promptly and have no breaches of their tenancy agreement. It also offers some collective incentives through ‘Community Gold’, where tenants can choose to pool their bonuses for community benefit, and the association will double the value of the bonuses in these cases. The final area we studied has no incentives scheme, and serves as a form of control area. It is part of University ward in Middlesbrough. It


is an inner city area which mainly consists of Victorian terraced housing, 43 per cent of which is owner-occupied, 36 per cent privately rented, and 19 per cent rented from social landlords (mostly housing associations). Lower Broughton and University ward are both areas subject to debate about area decline and housing abandonment, and action is currently being taken to tackle this.

How survey respondents perceived their neighbourhoods Residents in Blackthorn had some mixed views about their estate. Some stressed its good points, such as the environment and social stability. Other people felt there was less neighbourliness compared to what they were used to in the past or had experienced elsewhere. The middle view in the focus group stressed that neighbourliness in the modern period was different from past ideals: There’s no Coronation Street stuff going on. People are neighbourly but not in an intrusive way. Neighbourhood links in the Hackney area partly reflected the level of diversity, and number of newcomers. Links seemed to be less welldeveloped and residents had a more minimalist view of what good neighbours should do. More than one in six respondents said in our survey that they knew nobody else in the area. Yet in the focus group people were positive about living in Morningside and most got on with their neighbours. Some participants preferred to associate chiefly with people in the same ethnic or language group: I tend to try and be friends with people from Turkey, because I am from Turkey. I don’t trust others…I want to be a good neighbour but I don’t know other people from different countries. People in Salford are much closer to the ‘Coronation Street’ image of neighbours popping in and out of each other’s houses and actively looking out for each other than in the other areas. One focus group participant said she knew ‘90 per cent’ of the neighbourhood as friends or associates: ‘We’ve been brought up like that, to say hello to people’. Other comments included: If I go out I give him [my neighbour] the keys and he checks if anyone is in the back.


Participants in the group here defined neighbourliness as ‘looking out for each other’ or intervening in times of crisis or illness. For other people the very stability of the neighbourhood created some barriers: I’ve only been here four years…I didn’t go to school here, so I don’t know people or have the same rapport. A session with young people in Middlesbrough showed a recognition that residents in the area often had extensive networks of loose contacts. In all the areas the vast majority of respondents regularly say hello to their neighbours, and in most areas three fifths also regularly do a favour for a neighbour – although between one in six and one in four respondents say they never do favours. In Hackney doing favours for neighbours is much rarer. Overall, these neighbourhoods exhibit a high level of social trust, with 47 per cent of respondents saying that they would look after keys for a neighbour. In Salford far more respondents said that they visited with neighbours in their home.

Social control: how the residents handle problems To get at some of the difficulties surrounding collective action, we focused in our survey on two key problems of social control – what people would do if children, young people or young adults were causing problems in the area near their homes; and what they would do if problems were being caused by adults. These two situations emerged strongly in our focus groups as the most important and prevalent things that worried participants and caused unease about how their neighbourhood was developing.

Problems caused by young people In all our areas both our interviews and focus group participants saw the problems posed by young people growing up as a key influence on neighbourhood relations. Large groups of young people hanging out in groups can sometimes seem threatening, but are common because of the lack of things to do in the evenings or at weekends. And where organized gangs develop, or local residents feel hesitant to walk past such groups or experience disrespect or rudeness, these problems


become more concrete. However some focus group participants in all our areas argued for a more live-and-let-live approach: Boys in gangs – just because they’re [a] large [group of people] doesn’t mean they’re bad. When I talk to them they respond, but if I’m rude to them they’ll be rude back. (Hackney) If they [young people] want to sit in a corner and drink then that’s up to them but the fact is they’re damaging things for others. (Salford) In Middlesbrough the young people we spoke to also identified specific damage caused by young people on the streets as the problem, rather than young people hanging out per se: things like ‘graffiti on the walls, smashing glass bottles, starting [fires]’. Our survey found between one in ten and one in four people would not intervene with young people, chiefly because they would worry about the consequences of doing so. Even amongst those who said they would intervene, many said that they would be worried about doing so. The proportion of respondents who said they would intervene directly with the children or young people was lowest in Hackney, where respondents would place more reliance on talking to parents, although they would also worry quite a lot about doing so. Northampton showed the highest proportion of respondents saying that they would not intervene directly with either children or parents, only indirectly via going to the authorities. Across the four areas taken as a whole, over one in five respondents said they would not intervene at all if children were causing a problem, and another one in ten said that they would only intervene indirectly. Some 44 per cent of respondents would worry a lot about intervening and a slightly smaller proportion would be confident in intervening, with the remainder having mixed attitudes.

Problems caused by adults The main local difficulties caused by adults were generally seen by our focus group participants as to do with loud music, late night disturbances, not looking after gardens or the immediate vicinity of a property, rubbish left out too early or late for collection, in Hackney the way that rubbish was put into bins, and so on. In some groups hints or open discussion about darker issues about drug use and sales emerged


and were clearly important problems, along with ‘problem’ families who failed to control their children effectively and perhaps were systematically creating problems across a wider picture. More than half of our respondents across all four areas said that they would not feel confident and would feel worried in intervening in problems caused by adults, but more than a third of people said they would be unworried. One respondent in five would again not make any attempt to intervene if problems occurred, and a further one in eight would only intervene indirectly. Our survey shows that across the four areas, respondents in Salford were the most active, with more than two fifths talking to the adults in question and a few to other adults in the households involved. By contrast, in Northampton this proportion fell below a third of respondents. A majority of the respondents who would intervene would worry about doing so, especially in Salford and Hackney, so that this is not a step to be lightly undertaken for most people.

Perceptions of public authorities’ roles We asked our survey respondents across the four areas how often they contacted the local authority or other agencies and the police. In a well-functioning community there should be only a minority of people who need to regularly raise an issue with public authorities, and our survey shows that only between 14 and 29 per cent of respondents contacted agencies monthly or more. (In Hackney the proportion contacting the police was exceptionally low). By asking also if people never contacted authorities we also wanted to check how far residents saw this as an option. Generally around 70 per cent of respondents said that they never contacted the police (but over four fifths in Hackney). Around three fifths of people never contacted the local authority or other local agencies, the proportion being least in Salford and highest in Middlesbrough. These data might suggest that contact with the police and local authorities is of low importance in shaping residents’ attitudes, but in fact we show below that these interactions between citizens and authorities are very important for shaping people’s overall attitudes towards intervening. We asked our survey respondents how often they saw police officers or officials from the council around their area, and found that there were some striking variations across areas in responses. In Hackney both the police and council officials were very visible, whereas respondents in Northampton were quite evenly split about how often they


saw either type of official. Responses in Middlesbrough and Salford were more in the middle, albeit with the police seen as more visible than the local authority. There is a high degree of association between how often respondents reported seeing police officers in their neighbourhood and two different measures of the proportion of respondents rating the police efforts locally as beneficial for the neighbourhood. The areas where people had the most defined attitudes were Hackney, where police efforts were seen very favourably, and the Blackthorn estate in Northampton, where respondents were the most critical of policing. There is now a much lower level of local police presence on Blackthorn, but the local force supplied us with an impressive documentation of crimes and problems in the local area, suggesting a degree of vigilance. In the focus group there were suggestions that participants saw themselves as on the edge of town and served only episodically by officers arriving only briefly from the town centre to handle emergencies. By contrast, the Morningside estate in Hackney is close to other facilities and focus group participants mentioned a frequent police presence there. Some well-known barriers to local residents reporting issues to the police came up in the focus groups with residents and are shown in Box 6.1. There was some evidence that the use of measures such as ASBOs to achieve speedier solutions to some problems was appreciated – but residents also worried that problems would only be displaced; that the real ‘ringleaders’ might not be caught in the net; that these measures gave people no recourse for appeals if mistakes were made; and that those caught by them had no reason to change their ways. We asked our survey respondents to agree or disagree with the statement ‘This neighbourhood is well looked after by the council and other authorities’. In Hackney nearly half (47%) of respondents agreed, then 38 and 34 per cent in Salford and Middlesbrough respectively, and just 26 per cent in Northampton, a very wide difference of opinion. When respondents were asked to score the work of police and the council together in one question, Hackney respondents gave a strongly positive rating to the Metropolitan Police and their local council, while those in Northampton gave far more low scores than high scores to both types of public authority. In Salford there was a positive balance for both the police and the council, but in Middlesbrough the police were scored somewhat more positively than the council. To see how public authorities’ responses make a difference to respondents attitudes we grouped them by whether or not they would report local problems with young people or adults to the authorities, and by


Box 6.1 chain

Some difficulties in the reporting to enforcement Examples from the focus groups

First stage barriers – reporting incidents safely • The local housing office where people could report incidents safely had closed: – ‘They took them out, they were our point of contact’. • There isn’t a safe way to report things to the police: – ‘If you report something they ask did you get the registration number? No. Well, can you go back out and get it! It puts you off’. – ‘You’re afraid if you put in a complaint. Then people in suits will come to your house with a clipboard. If you went to the old [housing] office it was more discreet and accessible’. Second stage barriers – trust in the authorities – ‘I wouldn’t [call the police]. Because there isn’t any point’. – ‘I’ve got no faith in the police’ – this respondent mentioned that he had received a response to a previous report of school children vandalizing a bus that it would be ‘too much paperwork’ for the officers concerned to register. – ‘I went to see XX and he’s so hopeless. I can’t believe [the agency] pays him…The best thing is to leave them alone’. • Some respondents complained that the police are made aware of crime hot spots but do not respond fast enough – for instance, a dumped stolen car was reported, but because of delays ended up being burnt out. Other people argue that when police respond they antagonize people with heavy handed policing. Some participants in focus groups felt that reporting is encouraged to help police to gather data, but doesn’t lead to a response to specific incidents. • There are long lags between making a complaint and action happening: – ‘The time it takes to deal with things is devastating for people in neighbourhoods. The time lapse between a complaint and justice being done is 2–3 years, to get all the evidence, etc’. • Having to give evidence in court is very intimidating.

how confident they would feel in doing so. Figure 6.1 shows the net willingness of respondents to report young people and adults, given differing levels of personal confidence and worry about consequences. The net column totals suggest that respondents were more reluctant to report young people than adults. Confident respondents were split evenly on willingness to report young people, suggesting that many would feel confident enough to deal with the problem directly or did not think it necessary to get authorities involved. Responses on adults


C onfidence and level of worr orr y about inter vening i Confident and would not worry about the consequences

Mixed

Lack confidence and would worry about the consequences

Total

Reporting R children to the authorities

17 – 17 = 0

7 – 7 =0

12 – 24 = –12 12

36 – 47 = – 11

Reporting adults to the authorities

20 – 9 = 11

6 – 3 =3

14 – 31 = –17 17

40 – 43 = – 3

Figure 6.1 The relationship between personal confidence and willingness to report issues to the authorities, across all areas. Would report – would not report, and net willingness score

100 80 60 40

ld n Wo u

p ot r e

h or t c

il dre

ld r Wo u

n

epor

Percentage (%)

20 d t c hil

ren

0 Confident and would not worr y

M ixed

Lack confidence and would worr y

Figure 6.2 The proportion of respondents who trust officials to back them up, by whether or not they would report problems caused by children to the authorities and by respondents’ level of confidence

100

60 40 lt s t a du ep or r t o s ld n a dult Wo u p or t ld re Wou

Percentage (%)

80

20 0 Confident and would not worr y

M ixed

L ack confidence and would worr y

Figure 6.3 The proportion of respondents who trust officials to back them up, by whether or not they would report problems caused by adults to the authorities and by respondents’ level of confidence


however seemed to be more polarized. A much higher proportion of confident respondents were willing to report adults to the authorities, and similarly a much higher proportion of low confidence respondents were not willing to report. We then looked at how many respondents in each of the resulting sub-sets trusted public officials to back them up if they reported a problem. Figures 6.2 and 6.3 show the results, first for problems with young people and then for problems with adults. The height of each of the blocks in both Figures shows the percentage of respondents in each of the six categories who did not trust the authorities to back them up. The level of respondent confidence and worry seems to be an important determining factor in both. For example, around 80 per cent of respondents who said they would not report young people and have low levels of confidence said that they did not trust the authorities to back them up. Strikingly though, just under two thirds of respondents who said they would report young people and had low levels of confidence still said that they did not trust authorities. The level of distrust of authorities amongst respondents with high levels of confidence was much lower, around 22 per cent for those respondents who would not report young people and 30 per cent for those who would report.

How far residents are aware of the incentive schemes and how they evaluate them The three incentive schemes studied here have been relatively smallscale activities, compared with the scale of normal housing maintenance and capital expenditures in these areas, and compared with the costs of the employees of local agencies who work in the areas. The average costs of running Gold Service were £71 per household involved per year, of which three quarters of this money is paid back to the household and the remainder spent on administration. The Good Neighbours Declaration in Hackney, after set up costs, subsequently assigned part of one member of staff’s time to promote it, with the amount diminishing over time. The average cost per year is around £6 per household covered by the scheme. The majority of the funding for the Blackthorn Good Neighbours Project in Northampton goes on salaries for a full-time worker plus money for voluntary agencies to undertake activities. This works out at an average cost per household on the Blackthorn estate of under £25 per year, but of course the Project only serves the much smaller number of households whose members make use of its facilities and services. In the focus group the Irwell Valley tenants knew a lot about the scheme and generally liked


it, but other local residents who were homeowners of course had not heard of it. This pattern also applied in our survey, which included only a minority of Irwell Valley tenants, of whom just over half had heard of the scheme. Given that membership of Gold Service is over 90 per cent of tenants, it is very likely that some were members but did not identify themselves as such. Most people in the focus group recognized that the Good Neighbours Declaration in Hackney had mainly a symbolic value. None the less it was seen as helpful in a minor way. The three individual incentive schemes were better known than the general council policy in Middlesbrough. Irwell Valley Gold Service was the one about which some local people knew a lot, but even here many housing association tenants were unaware of what it meant. In Northampton people were most divided between those who were sure they did not know what the scheme was and those who felt they knew a little about it but were unclear about the details. This pattern mirrored a divide in the local focus group between a few very wellinformed and enthusiastic participants who knew what the Blackthorn Good Neighbours Project entailed and most of the group who had heard only vaguely about it. Amongst those who felt they knew something about the incentives schemes and the Middlesbrough council strategies, we asked respondents to indicate which aspects they scored best about each scheme, shown in Figure 6.4. In Salford Gold Service and in Middlesbrough the council policies against anti-social behaviour were seen as most useful in creating a change for people to be punished; the Salford scheme also had more in it for people personally. In Northampton the value of the scheme was mostly in making people aware of a local effort to improve things on the estate. The schemes were scored most consistently across areas in terms of ‘making me feel that there is more backing from the authorities’, which was the most salient aspect in Hackney. Looking at how attitudes towards incentives linked together, there seemed to be a split between those respondents who felt more incentivized by punitive aspects of the schemes and those who felt more incentivized by reward aspects. Figure 6.5 shows simple Pearson correlations between incentives that respondents scored highest and corresponding incentives that they scored lowest. The stronger the positive correlation, the more likely respondents were to score an incentive lowest given that they had scored a particular incentive highest. The two strongest correlations linked respondents who top scored ‘Creating better chance that people will be punished’ and ‘Making it more obvious when rules are broken’, and low scored on ‘Making me feel


Number of respondents in each neighbourhood i scoring incentives top Northampton

H ackney

Salfor l d

M iddlesbrough

(of 170)

(of 167)

(of 182)

(of 172)

Making me feel I am part of a wider effort to im prove things

78

37

66

45

Making me feel that there is something in it for me to be a better neighbour

55

54

65

38

Making me feel that there is m ore backing from the authorities

66

70

72

61

Creating a better chance that people will be punished

68

66

86

95

Making it more obvious if I don’t follow the rules

40

45

69

72

Top scoring r measure

Figure 6.4

The advantages that respondents saw in incentives schemes

…and correlation w ith other measures scor ing bottom Feeling part of a wider i r effort

M aking me feel like li there is something in it for me

Making me feel there is more e backing fr om the authorities r

Top scor ing m easur e Feeli ng part of a wider effort

Creati ng better chance that people will be punished i

Making it more obvious when rules are broken r

–.23

.20

.22

.20

Making me k m feell like there t iis something in i it for me

…

…

.17

.22

.14

M aking me fee l there is more backing fr om the authorities

.18

.21

…

.14

.14

Creati ng better chance that e people will be punished

.25

.30

.15

…

…

Making it more obvious when rules are broken

.22

.29

…

…

Figure 6.5 Simple Pearson correlations between the scoring of different impacts of local schemes across the four areas


that there is something in it for me’. The reverse of this did not show such strong correlations, suggesting that those respondents who responded most to reward aspects did not tend to be so resistant to penalty and rule-based aspects.

How residents view alternative approaches to civil renewal We evaluated the potential appeal of incentives schemes using small rewards by comparing levels of support with other possible solutions raised by focus group members, including spending money on improving the physical fabric of estates and local housing. Individual incentives schemes scored less well than any other of seven alternative policies put to respondents as possible ways of improving neighbourliness and reducing levels of anti-social behaviour. The element of writing down detailed rules of conduct present in the Salford and Hackney schemes did considerably better, and the element of rewarding the community for group efforts somewhat better than individual incentives. However, both in the focus groups and in the survey responses it is clear that local respondents saw fairly traditional measures such as directly punishing anti-social behaviour and making it easier to report it as more effective, alongside fairly expensive measures such as improving the physical fabric of areas. …and correlation with other measures scoring bottom

Top scor ing measure

Make it easier Upgrading Punishing Encouraging Establish Reward the to report anti- local homes anti-social community written rules community social behaviour events of behaviour behaviour

Make it easier to report anti-social behaviour Upgrading local homes

–.11 –.13

Rewarding individuals for good behaviour

…

…

.15

.11

.17

…

…

…

.15

.19

…

…

.15

.19

…

…

…

…

…

Punishing anti-social behaviour

…

…

Encouraging community events

…

…

…

Establish written rules of behaviour

.10

…

…

…

Reward the community

…

…

.15

.13

…

Rewarding individuals for good behaviour

.26

.21

.16

.16

…

–.10 –.11

Figure 6.6 Simple Pearson correlations linking measures scored top by respondents and corresponding measures scored bottom Note: All correlations have p value < 0.01


There are three main clusters of responses in the larger data set spanning across all four study areas. Figure 6.6 shows simple Pearson correlations linking top scoring and bottom scoring measures. The data again suggests three clusters of response: a ‘punitive’ set, where respondents put their faith in cracking down on people behaving badly (e.g. as seen in a correlation of 0.19 between those scoring punishing ASB top, and rewarding individuals bottom) and generally dislike the idea of rewards or incentives; a ‘collective renewal’ set where respondents look to physical renewal or more community events (e.g. as seen in a correlation of 0.15 between those scoring upgrading local homes top, and rewards for the community bottom); and an ‘incentives’ set with fewest respondents who tend to dislike the punitive policies and community policies (e.g. as seen in a correlation of 0.26 between those scoring individual rewards top, and easier reporting bottom). These patterns also vary a good deal in the responses from fewer respondents in each of the four study areas, but this broad separation is present in all of them. Figure 6.7 illustrates rather crudely the main correlative links between key clusters of attitudes across all four areas. Unbroken lines denote positive Pearson correlations, and broken lines show negative

Level of participation in neighbourhood life Personal willingness to intervene via different paths

Perception of the neighbourhood

Perception of the authorities

Personal stake in the neighbourhood Worry and low confidence Attitude to measures and incentives

Pearson Correlation –5 > x > 5 –3 > x > 3 –2 > x > 2

Figure 6.7 How different clusters of factors linked together, by simple Pearson correlation across all four areas


correlations. On the left hand side, the sketch confirms the relatively strong negative correlation between worry and fear of retribution of respondents, and willingness to intervene (see previous Figures 6.3 and 6.4). It is interesting however that these two clusters are not directly linked to respondents’ overall perception of the neighbourhood. These are connected indirectly via ‘Level of participation in neighbourhood life’ and ‘Perception of the authorities’. This seems to suggest that respondents’ perceptions of the authorities and their inclination to ‘do their bit’ and participate may act as important (if at times weak) links between improving personal efficacy, and reducing the effects of fear of retribution (on the left hand side of Figure 6.7), and improving general perceptions of the neighbourhood (on the right hand side). An interesting detail in Figure 6.7 is the relatively isolated position of ‘Attitude to measures and incentives’. This gives a broad indication of respondents’ level of support for measures to tackle anti-social behaviour and the extent to which they are susceptible to incentives and penalties. We might expect high index scores here to suggest quite a positive outlook on potential for improvement and change, and conversely, low scores to suggest negative outlook, disillusion, or other fatalistic attitudes. The only significant link to this cluster is from ‘perception of the authorities’, suggesting that those respondents who have a positive attitude towards measures and incentives generally also have positive attitudes towards the authorities. The potential here to use measures and incentives to feed positive perception into the whole system is obvious. Figure 6.8 examines the nature of measures and incentives a little further. The table shows the significant results of an OLS linear regression, with ‘Attitudes to measures and incentives’ as a dependent variable and other clusters featured in Figure 6.7 as independent variables. The total explanatory power of these independent variables together is shown by the R Square score in the bottom row (running from low 0 to high 1). Perhaps confirming the link in Figure 6.7, the results across all four areas suggests that variation in attitudes to measures and incentives amongst respondents is most effectively explained by respondents’ perception of the authorities. However, this is only significant in Northampton and Salford. In Hackney we noticed that the extent of participation in neighbourhood life was linked quite strongly with personal efficacy, and once again, degree of participation is shown to explain, albeit rather weakly, variation in the attitudes towards measures and incentives.


All eas All ar areas

Northampton

Positive percepti on of the authori ti es

.354**

.512**

Level of w orry and l ow conf i dence

.176** .176**

Hackney

Salf ord

Middlesbrough

I ndependentt factors .303**

.157**

Positive percepti on of the neighbourhood

.253**

Level of partici pati on i n neighbourhood lif e

.330**

–.200*

.153*

Personal w il li ngness to i ntervene vi a di fferent paths

.045* .045*

.084*

Personal r stake i n the neighbourhood

.091*

.158*

Total R Square

.207

.315

.188

.383

.152

P value < 0.01 = **, P value < 0.05 =*

Figure 6.8 How different clusters of factors influence respondents’ views on measures and incentives to tackle anti-social behaviour P value < 0.01 = **, P value < 0.05 = *

In the focus group discussions, we raised the idea of individual rewards or incentives and found that they were quite controversial. Most of the discussions were around community issues and policies and some participants reacted adversely and vocally to the idea of individual rewards. Some worried that rewards would undermine social solidarity and introduce new lines of division between residents, when the most important thing was to help people pull together. Some participants apparently feared that they would miss out in a rewards scheme, perhaps over little things like an occasional noisy party or missing one week’s rent deadline, and hence that schemes could not be administered fairly. These criticisms attracted little rebuttal from other participants, but afterwards some people mentioned that they thought incentives were a good idea and others, more agnostically, that they could not do any harm. Only a minority of participants were active in welcoming the idea of incentives. At the same time the schemes already in use attracted a lot of support, which grew when they were explained to those who had not previously heard of them.


Why individual incentives may help foster social cohesion: some brief theory Here we try to model how each individual actor will behave so as to get the best available outcomes for themselves (called maximizing their net benefits), subject to the behaviour of other people involved in the situation. For residents in run-down or running-down areas of cities this problem of their welfare being dependent upon others is a serious one. However much someone may look after or improve their own property and behave considerately towards their neighbours, much of the benefits they get from living there can be blighted by other people behaving in anti-social ways in nearby properties, in the streets, or in the area generally. The consequences of neighbourhood problems outside your own control can be very severe. People may feel isolated or frightened inside their own homes and may have to put up with outside interference (such as loud noise or harassment) or run risks when they go out (such as crime or assault) that make their lives intolerable. Once a certain proportion of people encounter such problems, there may begin to be reputational disadvantages to living in such a neighbourhood. People begin to be aware of the stigma associated with their own address or encounter adverse reactions from insurers or taxi drivers when giving their address. If residents in areas that become run down are homeowners they may find their properties reducing in value or at a limit, becoming very hard to sell. If they are tenants of the council or a housing association, they may have few effective choices of alternative places to move to. Figure 6.9 shows how this problem is modelled by the rational interest and beliefs approach. The left-hand column shows that an individual resident has a choice of three courses of action – to behave cooperatively with others, to do nothing or abstain, or to ‘defect’ and behave in a selfish way that harms others. In the context of neighbourhoods with some problems, the main ways in which people can behave co-operatively are first to avoid any form of anti-social behaviour that will cause others anxiety or harm; and second, to do their bit to help enforce norms of co-operative behaviour generally around the neighbourhood, for instance, by reprimanding young people who may be behaving badly or reporting behaviour that seems suspicious to the police or authorities. The trouble here is that these interventions to support norms and help maintain social control are costly for individuals – for instance, the children and young people you talk to may be rude in return or play pranks on you, and someone whom you report


may resent you in future, or worse still take actual reprisals against you. So individuals will be reluctant to incur these costs, unless they think that their intervention will have some reasonable chance of success. The top of the table in Figure 6.9 shows that how others behave will be the decisive influence on whether social control can be maintained or not in a neighbourhood. Normally any individual resident will have a very small impact on how the neighbourhood’s social life develops, because they are only one of many people involved. In the first column, enough other people behave co-operatively with each other to ensure that social norms operate in the local area, with people who step outside them encountering reprimands or disapproval from most people and perhaps having their infractions reported to the police or authorities. By contrast, the rightmost column here shows a situation where not enough people behave cooperatively to sustain social norms or social control within the neighbourhood. Here the situation can go from bad to worse as those people who are still trying to maintain normal patterns of social relations feel more and more isolated and hence ineffective, struggling against widespread anti-social behaviour amid a wider reluctance of people to ‘get involved’ in discouraging adverse trends. The only situation where the actor will herself influence whether the benefits of social control are obtained or not arises in the middle column. Here the neighbourhood is so finely balanced, in a transition state or ‘tipping point’ between social renewal or decline, that the choices of an individual resident can make a visible difference, helping to set the area on one course or another. The cells in the middle of the table show the payoffs that an actor receives depending on which column of the table they are in and how they themselves behave (which determines only which row of the table they end up in). If the actor behaves co-operatively she will have to incur some costs in doing so (C), and these will always reduce the benefits she would otherwise receive, for instance from abstaining. The trouble is that from the individual actor’s point of view she alone can normally make no strong difference to social stability or decline in the neighbourhood. If enough other people sustain social norms and behave co-operatively she will receive the benefits of social stability (B), whereas if not enough do so then she will lose these benefits and get zero. In either case, that is if the resident knows that she is in the left-hand or the right-hand column of rows 1–3 (p. 130) Figure 6.9, then her own choices cannot determine whether the major benefits of social control B arrive or not. Only if the situation is finely balanced in


OTHER PEOPLE I N THE NEI GHBOURHOOD I. Enough co-

Transition zone

II. Not enough

operate, so that

(or ‘tipping point’)

others co-operate

social control is

between social

so social control is

maintained and

control and

not maintained

the

neighbourhood

and the

decline

neighbourhood

ACTOR i chooses neighbourhood is

declines

to:

stable

Behave co-

Benefits of social

Benefits of social

No benefits of

operatively (for

control (B) minus

control (B) minus

social control minus

instance,

costs of

costs of intervening costs of intervening

intervene to

intervening

co-operatively (C)

co-operatively (C)

support social

co-operatively (C)

Uncertainty

No benefits of

controls) Abstain (do

Benefits of social

nothing)

control (B)

Defect (join in

Benefits of social

Personal gain from

No benefits of

anti-social

control (B) plus

defecting (D)

social control (0)

behaviour)

Risk of sanctions

plus personal gain

against defectors

from defecting (D)

social control (0)

(A) Figure 6.9 How the payoffs to individuals vary with the behaviour of other people in a collective choice situation

the middle column above will the individual resident behaving cooperatively be enough to secure the major benefits B, whereas if she abstains or defects B will not materialize.

Simon Bastow, Helen Beck, Patrick Dunleavy and Liz Richardson 131 Expected utility to Actor i of behaving co- operatively

[1– pI – pII] * pI*[ –C]

[B– C]

pII*[–C]

rather than abstaining (= probability of being in a column times the net benefits of being in the top left cell on p 130 rather than the top middle cell on p 130) Expected utility to Actor i of behaving co-operatively

[1– pI – pII] * pI*[–C + A]

[B– C – D]

pII*[–C –D]

rather than defecting (= probability of being in a column times the net benefits of being in the top left cell on p 130) Figure 6.9 How the payoffs to individuals vary with the behaviour of other people in a collective choice situation – continued


We have added some other elements of costs and benefits in particular cells here. If most other people are co-operating (in column I) but actor i decides to defect and behave anti-socially then she incurs A, the risk of costs being imposed on her by the majority in terms of social disapproval or being reported to the authorities or (in repeated cases in the UK now) of having an anti-social behaviour (or ASBO) being made against her. On the other hand, if not enough other actors are cooperating to maintain social control (so we are in the right column on p. 130) and if actor i then chooses to actively defect and behave in antisocial ways she will get to enjoy D, a special benefit from defecting. In economics there is a general approach to determining what to do in choice situations called ‘expected utility’. The idea here is that you should work out how much you stand to benefit from different courses of action and then multiply the benefits of each course by how likely they are to occur. The top row on p. 131 shows how this calculation is done for the choice between either behaving co-operatively or abstaining from any interventions. If enough other people behave cooperatively then whatever actor i does they will get B, so B drops out of the calculation. The only thing that stays in is the negative costs of behaving co-operatively in the top row on p. 130 compared with the middle row on p. 130. If not enough other people behave co-operatively, so that the neighbourhood begins to decline, then whatever actor i does as an individual they will not get B. Instead actor i can only incur C – the negative costs of behaving co-operatively in the top row on p. 130 compared with the middle row on p. 130. In other words, if she knows that enough people will behave co-operatively then actor i is best off by free-riding on their activity. And if not enough others will behave co-operatively then doing so on your own is a doomed effort and you would again do better to abstain. The only time when actor i should rationally behave co-operatively is if the neighbourhood is at a tipping point – for then her positive commitment can influence the arrival of the main benefits B, which will dwarf the costs involved. Unfortunately, however, the probabilities of being in either column I or column II in Figure 6.9 will typically be very high, and the probability of being in the middle column will be very small (1-pI-pII). So looking across the top row on p. 131 the normal position will be that it virtually always pays a rational actor not to behave co-operatively and instead to be inactive in supporting social norms and social control. For completeness’s sake we also consider in the bottom row on p. 131 above the expected utility for residents of behaving co-operatively on the one hand compared with actively defecting and taking part in anti-


social behaviour on the other. (This will perhaps be a relevant choice only for a minority of people who would get some positive benefit D in column II, that is, who would enjoy behaving in an anti-social way). If enough other people are going to participate in maintaining social control (that is, in column I) then what matters is the balance of the costs C borne by co-operators versus the penalties A impacting on defectors (after allowing for the level of risk here). If A are greater than C then it will be better to support social cohesion than to defect. If not enough other people are going to support social norms then defectors benefit doubly, first from avoiding C and then from gaining D, the benefits accruing to active defectors. Co-operation is thus clearly a no-win situation here, unless the probability of being in the middle column at a tipping point rises sufficiently to offset this strong disincentive to participate in co-operative behaviour. To see the difference that introducing individual incentives for cooperators makes, consider Figure 6.10. These positive rewards are ‘selective incentives’: they only go to people who behave in an actively co-operative way, and not to abstainers, still less (of course) defectors. This means that S only occurs if actor i decides to choose row 1 in Figure 6.10. Row 4 also shows that if the rewards S can be made to be larger than the costs of behaving co-operatively C then it becomes rational to participate, rather than abstain. Comparing columns I and II here shows that this is also true whether or not enough other people will join actor i to sustain social norms in the neighbourhood. Adding in the middle column will tend to strengthen the incentives for cooperating rather than abstaining. If an actor is considering a choice between behaving co-operatively and defecting we move to row 5 in Figure 6.10. If enough other local people will sustain social control to create a risk of punishment for defectors, the cost A, then the rationale for co-operating is strengthened further. As long as (S+A) exceeds C then it is best for the actor to co-operate. However, if not enough people will sustain co-operation, so that the situation is in column II, then the calculation for actor i in row 5 is more strained. Here the selective incentive S will have to be bigger than both the costs of participating C and the benefits of defecting D put together. If in fact S is less than (C+D) then people may continue defecting if the situation is clearly in column III. Summing up this brief theoretical exercise, a rational interests and beliefs approach suggests that giving individual rewards or incentives to people in vulnerable neighbourhoods can have a positive impact in creating inducements for people to actively co-operate with their


OTHER PEOPLE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD I. Enough other

II. Not enough other

actors co-operate, (or ‘tipping point’)

actors co-operate,

so that social

between social

so social control is

control is

control and

not maintained and

maintained

neighbourhood

the neighbourhood

decline

declines

ACTOR i chooses to: Behave

Transition zone

B + S –C

B + S–C

S– C

B

0

0

B –A

D

D

co- operatively Abstain (do nothing) Defect Expected utility to Actor i of behaving

[1– pI – pII] * pI*[S –C]

[B +S –C]

pII*[S –C]

co-operatively rather than abstaining Expected utility to Actor i of behaving

[1– pI – pII] * pI*[S–C +A]

[B +S–C–D]

pII*[S –C –D]

co-operatively rather than defecting (behaving in an anti-social way) Figure 6.10 How adding selective incentives into the picture changes the payoffs to individuals in a collective choice situation

neighbours rather than being apathetic or disengaged; and in somewhat strengthening the incentive for people to behave co-operatively rather than in anti-social ways, especially if it is clear that enough other people are co-operating to maintain social norms and cohesion. The most important advantage of incentives is that in use (i) above they only need to be big enough to offset the costs C associated with


behaving co-operatively. If these costs can be held down, then a relatively small S will create an individual incentive across the board for people to behave co-operatively. In use (ii), however, selective incentives will work best only if enough other people are co-operating to create a meaningful risk of penalties for defectors. If, on the other hand, neighbourhood social control is not flourishing, then the incentives S have to be substantial enough to dissuade people from defecting and behaving in anti-social ways that are individually beneficial to them. For example, a reward scheme for being a good neighbour with some cash value attached might dissuade someone who might otherwise play loud music outdoors from doing so – they might be motivated to keep the sound down so as to avoid complaints that would lose them their reward. The views that we have considered in this section are very simple ones and to approximate to any given empirical situation there are many extensions and refinements that could be considered. The exposition so far has assumed for simplicity’s sake that actors are basically self-interested, but there is every reason to believe that residents in vulnerable or renewing areas are just as concerned about the wider community in which they live as any other social group. One way in which recent influential social theory has suggested that we could incorporate this concern is via the concepts of ‘trust’ and ‘social capital’, variables which are determined by broader social processes at the whole community level. A great deal of work in experimental economics and psychology has shown conclusively that people will normally co-operate with each other ‘far more’ than they should do in terms of strict rational choice models. For instance, in experimental situations deliberately set up to give people incentives to defect, around two in every five people will none the less begin by behaving co-operatively. In the study methods used, we have sought to examine the applicability of the rational interests and beliefs view, while yet incorporating elements of the broader social influences acting in our chosen neighbourhoods.

Conclusions: the value of incentive schemes in civil renewal The incentive schemes already in operation have been either relatively modest or deliberately narrowly targeted in their ambitions. In their strongest form they challenge conventional ways of thinking. Levels of detailed awareness of schemes generally are relatively low, even where membership levels are high. Yet they are positively evaluated when recognized by our survey respondents. Incentives appeal


strongly to only a minority of the people included in our survey. But they seemed to attract support from a relatively distinct group who would not be easily reached by other measures. There is no doubt that the schemes are well down most residents’ list of priorities in our study areas, and yet they seem to play a useful role in encouraging attitudes to cohere more than they might otherwise do. Incentives for households and communities in particular can signal to residents that officials in public agencies are positively interested in their area, as well as somewhat underpinning people’s confidence that they can refer issues to officials and perhaps get a positive response. Achieving quite small changes in residents’ perceptions here, or appealing to a minority of residents who are untouched by other measures, can both make an important contribution to encouraging civil renewal. Our focus groups and survey data revealed complicated and often somewhat contradictory attitudes on anti-social behaviour. Variations across our four areas were obvious, and served as a reminder for caution when drawing general conclusions. Perhaps most striking across all our areas was the relationship between the low confidence and worry on the one hand, and options for intervention on the other. Confident people tend to have a much wider range of options available in dealing with anti-social behaviour. More importantly, people are more likely to do something themselves when they do not fear retribution, and they are less likely to fear retribution when they feel that they have backing from the authorities. Therefore, agency intervention is likely to increase, rather than substitute for, residents’ own action to tackle anti-social behaviour. Linked to this seemingly important nexus are two further clusters of attitudes: perception of the authorities; and the degree of participation in neighbourhood life. As Figure 6.7 suggests, these factors act as important links to improving residents’ overall perceptions of their neighbourhood and their commitment to making it better. It is here that individual incentives and rewards can have a role to play. With any possible ingredient of policy it is important to ask not just whether it can have some effect, but also at what cost. Individual incentive schemes are relatively cheap to organize, especially compared with some of the other solutions which we asked respondents to compare them with. And they may reach out far more widely than traditional community incentive schemes, bringing more people into a more individual relationship with public agencies, especially those people who pay their rents on time and behave co-operatively towards their neighbours. In ‘bang per buck’ terms, then, the results here are


broadly encouraging for individual incentives and they certainly are supportive of the general approach to analysing civil renewal suggested by the rational interests and beliefs perspective. As new incentive schemes are devised, however, it will be important for policy makers to recognize that they are still unfamiliar and, for some people, controversial. The design of schemes will need to be carefully tailored to the context of each community where they will operate.

7 The True Costs of Public Participation Edward Andersson, Diane Warburton and Richard Wilson

The issue We really have no idea how much we spend on participation; it tends to be cobbled together from different budgets at the end of the financial year – Local Authority Chief Executive in interview with Involve1 This view is not unusual of those working in institutions with significant public participation commitments. Therefore, despite the large public investment in the civil renewal agenda and other efforts to increase public participation in the UK, we know relatively little about the resource implications of involving the public in decision making (Le Quesne and Green, 2005; p. 24). Such a scarcity of cost/benefit data is credited with undermining practice and eroding transparency in service delivery. In response, Involve has carried out research into the economics of participation (2005b), including both a review of existing work and primary research on current economic recording in participatory projects. We found that many of the most important impacts of public participation are intangible, they are economic externalities. In many senses the purpose of this work is therefore to get a better understanding of these externalities. We do not expect to develop models which indicate approximate (or contingent) values for these externalities. Instead it is hoped that through gathering data on public participation we get a clearer understanding of its impact and establish principles which underpin practice. Useful parallels can be drawn here between this work and environmental economics. Environmental economics has not established universally agreed financial values for clean air, but has 138

Edward Andersson, Diane Warburton and Richard Wilson 139

set principles such as the ‘polluter pays’ principle which have proved highly influential in guiding policy. Through this research, therefore, we have documented the dominant issues in this field and propose a strategy to start shedding light on the murky world of public participation analysis. The two key components of this strategy involve gathering data from future projects and developing a theoretical framework for understanding both the internal and external costs and benefits of public participation. Through this work we hope to build foundations for a new economics of public participation. An economics which, in the medium term, will support our immediate need for data and transparency and, in the longer term, will produce principles which support better participation and more democratic government. A number of studies have emphasized the need for an increased understanding of the economics of participation, the costs involved and the value added (Burton et al., 2004; Sefton et al., 2002; Jackson, 1999; Countryside Agency, 2004). Involve’s research highlighted both opportunities and challenges in taking this field forward. The research also led to the production of a simple framework for recording costs and benefits at the project level. This field has proven to be a difficult area to research. Important factors are largely unknown and there is not a lot of research to build on. Involve’s research in this area has been a useful ground clearing exercise and a step in the right direction. This chapter starts out, however, with a theoretical overview of the case for and against the use of economic models when researching and evaluating participation. We then review the existing evidence base and summarize the methodology used in Involve’s research. The main part of the chapter revolves around the findings from Involve’s case study research and what this tells us about the feasibility of recording the costs and benefits of participation. The chapter concludes with the recommendations and ideas for future work.

The case for measurement The literature contains numerous compelling arguments for the increased measurement of the costs and benefits of participation: Better Budgeting Better understanding of the true resource implications of public participation could enable better budgeting practices. Lack of data means that project managers have no benchmark for their own expenditure


on participation, and may fear that their costs are too high. Fear that transparency exposes projects to criticism can turn the current lack of cost data into a vicious circle. Conversely, as more data becomes available, more practitioners may be willing to share their own information more openly. Better Participation Practice There is a finite amount of resources to spend on participation. This is true for the ‘supply’ of events and initiatives, but also for the ‘demand’; the time and interest of people who take part. Where projects are under-resourced they often fail to deliver the intended outputs and outcomes (Momenta, 2003; p. 11). Different methods of engagement have different implications as far as the time and money required to drive them is concerned (Involve, 2005a). There is no direct causal link between the expenditure and the outcomes of public participation. Understanding what benefits a certain method is likely to deliver and at what cost will enable decision makers to better tailor engagement to each individual case. Transparency and value for money The government’s drive to increase public participation represents a significant investment of resources, both directly, in the form of upfront expenditure, and indirectly, in the form of opportunity costs of time and money. From setting up long-term structures like citizens’ panels and local strategic partnerships to running one off events like consultations and citizens’ juries, government is committing public funds to participation. Some stress that this public expenditure should be made transparent (Burton, 2004). Avoiding engagement fatigue There is a real need to take the economic incentives and disincentives of participation seriously. Growing disillusionment with public participation, or ‘engagement fatigue’, is a serious problem which threatens the very foundation of the civil renewal agenda, namely the willingness to get involved (Involve, 2005a; Newburn and Jones, 2002; p. 52). Recent ESRC-funded research has explored the motivations for participation and has established guidelines for how to ensure that participants are not put off by the costs of taking part (Simmons and Birchall, 2005). A lack of understanding of what attracts and repels potential participants can lead to badly planned – and targeted – engagement, a waste of resources, and the further spread of engagement fatigue. Currently


many participation projects are designed and carried out from the perspective of the delivering institution rather than the participants (Involve, 2005a). Involve has found that the task of managing and running public participation is often left to relatively junior staff members whilst the budgets are set further up in the decision-making structures. Budgets are, in practice, often set using a combination of past experience and gut instincts (Involve, 2005a). A number of factors, including the relative isolation of participation workers and financial pressures on the delivering body, mean that the budget assigned to a participation project is often too small. Because there is so little robust information available on appropriate costing for public participation, those tasked with carrying out the project often find it difficult to make the case for more resources, often leaving them with a difficult choice between: making do, but knowing it may be ineffective; giving up to avoid the risks of poor practice; or making the case for more funds without solid evidence upon which they can be justified. New resources can be overtime by staff members, volunteer assistance, or ‘burying’ participation-related costs in other budgets (Momenta, 2003; p. 17; Reitbergen-McCracken, 1996; p. 3). These tactics lead to vicious cycles. In the first case, the under-funded project doesn’t live up to expectations, leading to disillusionment and even less willingness to invest in participation in the future. If ‘hidden’ resources are brought in to make sure the project works the delivering body will be given the impression that good participation can be had ‘on a shoestring’. Researching the resources required for good participation could help deal with these problems and encourage good practice.

The case against measurement While there are evidently good reasons for more research in this field, there are also a number of objections and criticisms against economic evaluations of participation; especially those based on mainstream economics. Both practical challenges and more ethical objections to the economics of participation are listed below. Some of these are found in the academic literature, others are prevalent among those engaged in public participation and were revealed through conversations with academics and practitioners during the course of the research. As one interviewee put it: I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea that someone will decide whether or not ‘participation’ is ‘economically viable’. The


question should be whether there is scope for the participant to change things. Not will their participation be ‘cost effective’ (Interview with Involve, 2005). Challenges Costs and benefits hard to measure Participative processes tend to be highly complex, often with large groups of participants, long-time scales, multiple (often intangible) outcomes, and complex, multi-layered contexts in which the participation activity is only one of many related initiatives (Burton et al., 2004). Cause and effect, as in most social initiatives, can be very difficult to identify and attribute to one specific set of activities. Areas where economic evaluation is more common (e.g. infrastructure and planning projects) tend to have more concrete costs and benefits, and a sizeable body of research on cause and effect relationships (Sefton et al., 2002). This complexity can make it a daunting task to devise an economic model that accurately captures all major costs and benefits. The cost of the evaluation may also be an issue, especially in cases where external specialist skills are needed, where large amounts of data need to be gathered, and/or where the time frame is long. Lack of recording Many project managers do not have detailed data on participation costs and benefits available in a format easily accessible for research or assessment purposes. Some may not have had a separate budget for participation activities, because it was just part of what were seen as overall project management costs. Some may have decided the project needed more participation than expected by others in their organization, so actual costs were hidden under other project costs (Countryside Agency, 2004). In other cases, contractors/consultants may see their costs as commercially confidential, and not been willing to allow the information to be shared more widely by their clients. Also, costs may be incurred at various points in the project management process, by different parts or levels of the organization, so the data is very dispersed. Novelty Many forms of public participation have only recently been developed (Lowndes et al., 2001) and it is therefore not entirely surprising that there is little information on the costs and benefits of these new methods at the current time.


Ethical objections Scepticism towards economic models Modern economics is dominated by neo-classical economic theory. This school of thought assumes that people are self-interested and rational, aiming to maximize the benefits to themselves and only undertaking actions that give them clear benefits (Pollak, 1998). Neoclassical economists struggle with explaining altruistic behaviour and why people spend resources participating when the benefits of the process are often widely dispersed. Neo-classical economics assumes that individuals will ‘free-ride’ on the efforts of others wherever possible, commonly leading to situations where the combined actions of egotistical individuals create undesirable results for everyone (Rydin and Pennington, 2000; p. 156). Many people engaged in public participation do not recognize this depiction of human behaviour and question the use of models of analysis that rely on it (Marshall, 1999; Beierle, 2002). However, it needs to be pointed out that there are many economists who share the criticisms against neo-classical economics listed above. Behavioural economics is a discipline of growing importance that looks at why people in some cases will act in their own interests, but in others will act for the good of society as a whole (Dawney and Shah, 2005). This school of thought, which focuses on social norms and values, is very useful for understanding why and how participation works and when it might not. Other academics explore happiness and wellbeing as alternative ways of measuring benefits rather than focusing on money (Frey and Alois, 2004; New Economics Foundation, 2004). Cost-Benefit Analysis unsuitable for assessing participation Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is one of the most well-known and widespread practical economic tools in use today. CBA has been criticized on a number of accounts, including the focus on monetary figures, the discounting of future benefits and costs, and the disregarding of many intangible factors (Pearce, 1998; House, 2000). In the case of public participation, the main problem is to do with the need for monetary values in CBA. Since many of the benefits of participation are intangible, like social capital, community cohesion and improved information flows, they are very difficult to measure in pounds and pence (Burton et al., 2004). Some interviewees in this research claimed that CBA and related techniques would tend to undervalue the intangible


benefits of participation and oversimplify the issues. They feared that it could potentially reduce the space for innovation and experiment by concentrating effort on those activities that produce benefits and costs that are easy to measure. Participation is beyond value Some people go even further and claim that the benefits of participation are beyond value altogether. Some studies have shown that the mere process of thinking about something in terms of personal costs and benefits tends to ‘crowd out’ more collective altruistic thinking. In cases where participants are primarily motivated by altruism, introducing monetary incentives can actually decrease the levels of participation. This is because monetary incentives cause people to ask themselves what they personally gain out of their involvement as opposed to what society at large gains (Frey and Goette, 1999). The argument could therefore be made that introducing economic thinking into participation could have a ‘corrupting’ influence, further strengthening the tendency for people to think about themselves as ‘consumers’ rather than ‘citizens’. This could reduce people’s willingness to participate. Economic figures may be misused Statistics have a tendency to take on life of their own. One participant interviewed as part of this research refused to estimate how much time and money he had spent taking part in a process. He claimed he had previously given a ballpark figure to researchers for costs to his organization and opponents of the participation process had quoted this out of context. Numbers and statistics have a strong influence on decision and policy making, but they are easy to manipulate (Boyle, 2004). It seems that the very lack of existing work on the costs and benefits of participation increases the risk that research results will be used in an inappropriate way.

The evidence base A number of studies have been carried out which examine the costs and benefits associated with participative processes. While the evidence base is sketchy, most studies indicate that the resources invested in participation are well spent. In this section we give a few examples of the existing studies and what they have found.


The World Bank and participation The World Bank has been a pioneer in researching the costs and benefits of participation. Research in the 1990s, involving staff interviews and a comparative statistical study, found that on average 10–15 per cent more time was needed in the design phase for participatory projects. However the overall time for the programme was not necessarily longer. While participatory programmes required more supervision during the early stages, programme managers experienced less need for supervision further on (World Bank, 1994). The report states that participation was ‘the single most important factor in determining overall quality of implementation,’ (ibid; p. 23). Costs and benefits of participatory agricultural research Lilja et al. (2004) conducted research into a participatory agricultural research project in Syria, comparing it to more traditional agricultural research. Using data on the adoption speed of new barley breeds, the costs and benefits of the two types of research were explored. The discounted results suggested that, due to faster adoption, participatory research delivered faster results and up to 260 per cent more benefits compared to conventional methods (ibid; pp. 29–30). The budget of the participative barley-breeding programme was shown to be only 2 per cent higher than that of conventional breeding programmes (ibid; p. 30). UK service user involvement Recent evaluations for the ODPM of 15 user involvement projects included an analysis of the costs and benefits. Costs were higher compared to projects with minimal levels of participation, but this was found to be negligible when improved outcomes (crime reduction of up to 50 per cent in some areas) were factored in. Participative processes were found to cost between £45 and £60 more per household per year, which is roughly equivalent to the costs of providing local CCTV (ODPM, 2005; p. 9). Cost of conflict in the Environmental sector The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2005; p. 25) included a cost comparison of two potentially contentious power station licensing applications, one with a high degree of participation from the start and another run in a more ‘traditional’ way. The ‘Early planning and engagement’ example involved fewer staff than the ‘Reactive engagement’ example (five compared to 20), took less time,


produced better publicity, and as a result was much cheaper (£56,500 compared to £242,000). However, it is important to note that these are just two anecdotal examples and it is not clear how representative these costs are. Direct democracy and happiness A study of self reported happiness in Switzerland found a link between the level of direct democracy in a canton and the happiness of the population (Frey and Stutzer, 1999). The research also showed that the effect on happiness was three times higher among Swiss citizens than among foreigners living in these areas. Thus wellbeing seems to be generated by the process of involvement itself and not just from any improved outcomes that participation produces (ibid; p. 18). However, in other cases public participation has been linked to stress and a reduction in wellbeing among those participating (Kagan, 2006; Manring, 1998). The evidence base so far appears to be limited but the existing findings do strengthen the economic case for citizen engagement and civil renewal. Research has demonstrated clear cases where public participation in decision making and services has delivered impressive results and added real value. However the research so far has been selective, both in its choice of cases to study and the costs and benefits to measure. More work is needed, especially on what effects different contexts and settings have on the costs and benefits of participation.

Research methodology As well as a review of the literature, Involve’s study included primary research. Fifteen case studies were carried out in the autumn of 2005. These case studies were based on qualitative telephone interviews with the relevant project managers. In four of these case studies this information was supplemented with qualitative interviews with participants and senior decision makers. The interviews for the case studies, carried out using structured questionnaires, aimed to determine how the people involved perceived the costs and benefits of the process. Questions were asked about costs both to the delivering body and to participants. The focus on subjective rather than objective costs and benefits was based on previous research by El Ansari and Phillips (2004) who found that the subjective perceptions of the cost benefit ratio can be as important for the viability of a project as the actual cost level. This


does not mean that objective costs are unimportant to participation, but we felt that the subjective aspects in this case merited more research. There are limitations to the case studies that need to be made clear. These studies are not meant to evaluate the projects themselves, or to produce accurate or complete depictions of their ‘true’ costs and benefits. Their purpose has been to locate the blind spots in our understanding of the economics of participation. In many cases the financial information that we have been able to gather has been incomplete or rough estimates rather than confirmed figures. The sample has been small and may have been unrepresentative. Therefore, taking the figures at face value and using them to judge the relative worth of these projects or participation in general would be a misuse of the research. We selected studies to provide a wide spectrum of participatory processes. The projects studied differ when it comes to: • Geographical focus (different areas across England and Wales) • The delivering body (public, private, voluntary/local, regional, national) • The purpose of the process (from information to co-production) • The number of participants (from less than ten to over a thousand) • The time frame (from one-off events to ongoing processes that have been running for years)

The findings The 15 case studies revealed interesting results. A number of patterns emerged through comparative analysis. These findings are illustrated below with examples taken from the case studies. Project managers found costs to be easier to measure than benefits In most cases the understanding of the costs was clearer than that of the benefits of the process among interviewees. Costs were more frequently cited in measurable units such as pounds or hours. We also found through our research that monetary valuation of benefits (and some costs) does not come naturally to people. Even in the case of a very straightforward process with clear outcomes and a short time frame, like the example from Wales listed below, the project manager found it impossible to place a monetary value on the benefits of the process. In more complex processes this becomes even more difficult


and often placing a financial value on even the most basic costs becomes a laborious and time-consuming task unless the measurement is built into the process from the start. This imbalance in the ability to measure costs and benefits has implications for the suitability of CBA as an analytical tool for evaluating participation. The fact that it is easier to identify costs, and that it is complicated and time-consuming to place a clear monetary value on intangible benefits might lead to the important but ‘difficult’ benefits being undervalued or overlooked completely in CBA.

Example 1 Local Regeneration – Torfaen County Council – Pontypool, Wales This was a one-off information-sharing event held around a local regeneration project. The aim was to provide information to residents and workers in an area affected by redevelopment. The project manager had a very clear idea of what monetary costs the process had entailed, both for the council and developer, but also for the participants. He was able to specify the costs involved in renting the venue (£500), leaflets (£5,500) and staff costs (£2,000). However when asked about the benefits his ability to quantify was less developed. He was able to show that the process had met its objectives and estimated that he had saved time compared to if he had contacted each stakeholder individually rather than run the event. However he could not express these benefits in as clearly measurable terms as he could with the costs.

Clear benefits exist – although they are hard to measure While it was often hard to present the benefits of participation in a quantifiable format, most project managers could clearly demonstrate ways in which their projects had been successful. Examples of evidence of benefits cited by project managers included comparisons with previous projects where participation had not featured as prominently, and feedback from participants. The lack of quantifiable benefits was not indicative of a general lack of real benefits associated with the participative projects. However there is a real issue in that the benefits are hard to explain or prove in clear terms. A lack of clear evaluation opens up participation to criticism. It is, however, important to emphasize that measurable outcomes are not the only ones of importance.


Example 2 Nature Conservation – English Nature – Humber Estuary, England This was a large-scale engagement project around extending the areas designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in the Humber estuary. One English Nature interviewee had experience of past attempts to improve protection in the estuary. The previous time a review of site designation was on the table, major conflict and resistance from industry cost English Nature tens of thousands of pounds in legal costs and ultimately the extension of the SSSI was blocked. In comparison, the participative approach led to industry stakeholders supporting the site designation. The decision maker claimed ‘by spending money up front on participation at the start of the process we avoided legal costs further down the line’. He also emphasized the improved relationships with industry as a major long-term benefit, which compared favourably to the conflict-prone relationship that previously existed.

Staff costs dominate the economics of participation In the vast majority of the 15 cases, staff costs were identified as the largest individual cost heading. In many cases staff costs were larger than all other costs items combined. People’s time appears to be the single most important cost factor in participation and this would be a good area to focus limited resources for measurement. This mirrors research findings by the ODPM (2005; p. 61). Even in cases where the monetary cost was low, the hidden staff costs were often significant (see case study – example 3 – on p. 150). Participant time costs were significant in some cases and not in others, depending on the level of engagement. Putting a monetary value on the time of participants presents a number of challenges, not least because the time participants put into a process can either be seen as a cost or a benefit depending on whose perspective is taken. There is no clear-cut answer to which side of the balance sheet participant time should be attributed where attempts are made to balance the costs and benefits of participation. How participants value their time will often depend on the type of process they are involved in and what is in it for the participants (Andersson, 2006). Participants often have altruistic motives In many cases we found that participants did not exhibit the mentality that neo-classical economic theory might lead us to expect.


Example 3 England

Service Improvement – Camden Council – London,

Camden Council set up a mystery shopper project in 2005 to gather information about the level of service that disabled visitors received at council reception points. This mystery shopper exercise relied on participants from Camden’s citizens’ panel rather than professional mystery shoppers recruited via an agency. The up front monetary costs for hiring were lower than they would have been if a research agency had been used as the volunteer participants were compensated with gift certificates rather than a wage. However, the management and training costs for the participants were higher compared to using professional mystery shoppers (who would already have the required skills and training) but these internal staff costs were not recorded in an identifiable way. Interestingly we found that the project manager and the decision maker interviewed in this project had very different understandings of the costbenefit ratio. The project manager felt that the participative process was superior to the market research driven mystery shopper process, while the decision maker felt that the participative process was too resource intensive to manage and she ‘would bring in a professional agency next time’. This difference of opinion could either be indicative of the fact that, in the absence of shared recording of costs and benefits, subjective views of the cost-benefit ratio can differ widely, or reflect that different individuals within institutions value different outcomes and participation may not be the best route to reach them all.

Participants are often motivated by a will to do right and to contribute to society as a whole rather than looking out for their own interests. This mirrors other similar research into the motivations of participants (Simmons and Birchall, 2005). These findings are important as research has shown that, where altruistic motivation plays a large role in motivating participation, material incentives sometimes reduce the level of participation. In other words, in some cases introducing monetary compensation for voluntary work can lead to lower levels of volunteering. This is because the self-centred way of thinking is triggered by the introduction of personal payment into the equation and this ‘crowds out’ the altruistic commitment. In short, altruism and material self-interest do not mix easily (Frey and Goette, 1999). The type of participation will determine whether or not altruistic motivation will play a key role or not. In our research we found examples of both.


Example 4

Health Advice – Easington PCT – Easington, England

This was a collaborative effort by the local Primary Care Trust and a cancer charity to set up a health support service in a local shopping centre. This service relied on volunteer participants for its day-to-day functioning, including the provision of information about cancer to the public. When asked about their motivations for taking part the participants cited motives like ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘giving something back for the help I received’. When asked about financial compensation (beyond the PCT providing free transport) the interviewees felt that they were happy not to receive any, something which indicates strong altruistic motives at play. It should be pointed out that the participants in this case mostly were retired and it could be argued that their time had lower opportunity costs than people of working age. In other cases such as the regeneration event in Torfaen, (see example 1) participants expressed much more self-centred motives for their participation. The type and focus of the process would seem to have a large impact on this.

Project managers are often unwilling to place a monetary value on participation In several of our case studies we came across what economists call lexicographical preferences, this means that valuation is based on ethical principles rather than self-interest. Economists have traditionally tended to ignore or discount lexicographical preferences as being unrealistic and based on hypothetical principles rather than what a person would actually do in a real life situation (Spash, 2002). Several answers by project managers indicated that they viewed the value of the benefits of participation to be beyond measurement. A number of project managers were unwilling to assign economic values to elements of their projects; while

Example 5 Children and Families – Barnardos Wales – Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales The project was a long-term engagement project run by Barnardos Wales. The aim is to engage parents in order to break the cycle of poverty and powerlessness in the local community. The project manager was very sceptical of the value of economic analysis in understanding and improving participative practice. He expressed unease over what the resulting economic figures might be used for, especially if they did not accurately reflect the true benefits of the project. When asked about using replacement costs, in this case training costs, as a proxy for the value of practical experience in running projects he felt that they were not comparable goods and that the valuation would therefore be pointless.


this was not universal, it still indicates that economic evaluation may meet with some resistance on the ground. One project manager described the experience of working with the community as ‘priceless’ for staff members, whereas another refused to place a value on new information created by the process. The assumption seemed to be that to place a price on these benefits and qualities was to devalue them. Recording fragmented by unit Recorded costs and benefits were often incomplete and only referred to the costs and benefits that accrued to the body gathering the data. In some cases the problem with the data was that it was fragmented; where programmes were run in partnership between organizations the economic information was often only available for individual partner organizations and no one had a full overview. In other cases the problem was that the information was too aggregated; many people charged with carrying out participation only do this as part of their job. The research found that often timesheets and other records do not distinguish between time spent running participative projects and other activities. In addition to this, the costs and benefits of the participants were less well-known than those accruing to the delivering body. These findings are mirrored elsewhere (Environment Agency, 2004; p. 6).

Example 6 Nature Conservation – English Nature – Humber Estuary, England Participants in the Humber project found it hard to distinguish the time they spent involved in the English Nature project specifically as they were simultaneously engaged in multiple processes in the area which all required time and effort. No notes or distinction were made of the amount of time spent on each individual process. Similarly, within English Nature the legal costs and direct costs of participation were recorded separately and were not compared, despite the fact that legal fees were a defining cost in previous processes (see example 2 above).

Example 7

Science Policy – Citizens’ Jury – Halifax, England

In the case of a citizens’ jury on an emerging science issue, the project manager was uncomfortable disclosing the stated budget. He did not think it would give a true understanding of the project. He estimated that the budget included less than half of the actual resources that had gone into the project in the form of overtime and other efforts to ensure that the project was delivered well. In his opinion, this was not unusual, as funders have very limited understanding of what was required for successful participation. Much of the overtime was used to build relationships and trust with participants.


Budgets often do not reflect reality In some cases existing budgets and economic records did not reflect the reality on the ground. Often agreed budgets seem to be on the low side, forcing project managers to put in overtime or find additional resources to add to the project. This can create a vicious circle where budgets are set too low and project managers spend a lot of effort and time finding new resources which are then hidden from view to avoid exposing the overspend. The lack of readily available cost information can create the false impression that participation can be done at low cost without negative effects on quality. Short-term funding is a problem Several project managers mentioned short-term funding as a problem for their organizations. Constantly having to pursue new funding whilst delivering existing projects deducts from the quality of the process. A related problem is that the short duration of projects makes it hard to retain staff. This constant loss of valuable experience and skills was a problem for several interviewees. Example 8

Sport – London Civic Forum – London, England

This project revolved around engaging ‘hard to reach’ communities in East London around the London 2012 Olympic bid. It was a short-term project and once it was over the project manager left the Civic Forum because there was no continued funding for the position. The interviewee stated that this was not the first time this had happened and that it was a problem as staff members learnt a lot of useful skills while running projects.

Implications These findings show that the current lack of data on the economics of participation causes problems, including the under-funding of projects and associated risk of failure, and is likely to do so in the future unless steps are taken to improve our knowledge in this arena. The solution to this challenge is not, however, simply to embrace cost benefit analysis. As our study has shown, the reductive nature of conventional economic analysis is inadequate to capture the richness of impacts accrued from public participation. Doing this research, we were struck by the many parallels between the emerging field of participative economics and environmental economics. Many of the challenges facing researchers are the same, such as the intangible quality of many costs and benefits (Burton et al.,


2004) and the value-laden and contentious nature of the economic research. The growth and development of environmental economics in the 1980s was opposed by a number of prominent environmental thinkers who felt that the application of economic thought to the environment risked devaluing the qualities of nature (Jacobs, 1991). The concerns identified through this work have strong parallels with those expressed by some members of the environmental movement in response to the reluctance to participate in contingent valuation surveys of environmental goods (Gregory, 1986). Just as people are not comfortable in representing their valuations of the environment in monetary terms, many feel the same way about the outcomes of participation processes. A number of interviewees were worried that the benefits of participation, such as social capital and conflict resolution, would be downplayed if attempts were made to measure their value in monetary terms. It remains to be seen if the development of an economics of participation will take a similar trajectory as the development of environmental economics, with an increasing use of sophisticated economic models, or if more small-scale evaluations with less costly techniques will work better.

The limits of method: economic & evaluative Social research of any kind is only ever a rough approximation of reality. Purists view the application of economic analysis to public participation as ill-advised, as it results in the comparison of apples and pears, i.e. the economic inputs and social outcomes. Others believe its reductive quality will fail to adequately capture the impacts of participation. At the same time, there is a need to remove the shroud of data scarcity from public participation and find means of illuminating the field’s impacts. Not only can choices be made without a common measure, that is often how they are made… No-one resolves [environmental conflicts] by looking for some common unit. They weigh not measures but reasons for and against a proposal. They argue, debate and come to some agreement, (O’Neil, 1997; p. 80). As the quote above indicates, we are constantly forced to make choices between ‘apples and pears’ in our daily lives, options which are not


immediately comparable but still need to be weighed against each other. An arena where this occurs frequently is healthcare; when deciding how to spend resources treating and preventing heart disease we have to weigh programmes that promote exercise against medication (Sefton et al., 2002). It is acceptable to compare different options using a simplified model, as long as the assumptions underlying it are transparent and open to criticism. Similarly, in the field of civic renewal there are numerous reasons for involving people and approaches for achieving it, and each has its own set of costs and benefits. With the rising expenditure on public involvement and participation there is likely to be an increased demand that these options are properly evaluated. At the same time as accepting that a common unit for comparing the inputs and outcomes of participatory processes will not be achievable, it is important that a better sense of the value participation takes from or adds to society is achieved. Indeed, many of those interviewed as part of this research raised concerns around reducing public participation to narrow financial data sets, whilst accepting that a much greater understanding of participation is required. There is clearly, therefore, a tension between a need for data and ensuring that data does the subject justice – the age-old quantitative versus qualitative debate, but in a participative form. While it is important to base decisions around engagement on evidence, it is equally important to be realistic about the limitations of evidence-based decision making. The ideal of complete information is an untenable goal. Economic valuation can be expensive and time consuming, and the majority of economic valuation studies rely heavily on values from past studies which are transferred to others (Pearce, 1998; p. 95). We can never reach a complete understanding of the implications of the various engagement options or their likely impact on a changing and dynamic world. Indeed, all economic analysis contains assumptions and can only act as a decision-making guide. The costs and benefits of a process will therefore always be only one of several factors2 that decision makers consider in choosing methods or in using participatory approaches in general. It can be tempting to resort to the easily measurable factors when evaluating the progress of participative processes. However, the simplest indicators often leave a lot to be desired. Simple indicators are often process indicators rather than outcome indicators, but participants are often in it for tangible outcomes (Jackson, 1999). Two common (process) indicators used today to assess success are the number of participants, and participant satisfaction or perceptions of influence


(commonly measured using feedback forms). These statistics are important to gather, but are not good indicators of success on their own. In evaluating its engagement programme in the Ribble catchment area, the Environment Agency (2004) compared the costs of different engagement options with the number of people who took part, creating a per head measure of effectiveness. The web site was found to be the cheapest option at 90p per person, but was considered by the Agency staff to be the least effective. In contrast the vision-building events cost from £48–96 per stakeholder engaged, but were considered ‘the most effective way of engaging the public’, based on the experience of the staff (Environment Agency, 2004; p. 60). That is not to say you get what you pay for but a costs per participant approach can obscure as much as it clarifies when it comes to value for money. Participation is not just about getting ‘bums on seats’; in many cases it is not about getting the most people into the process but the right people to deliver the desired outcomes. Basing success around attendance rates is flawed. Satisfaction and other subjective measures are similarly limited measures of success. Satisfaction is often measured through end-of-event feedback. Our work shows that such approaches, although useful, are seriously limited in gaining honest and accurate accounts of participant satisfaction. There is also the issue that the subjective view of the participants may be at odds with the actual influence they have had. In some cases, participants will leave an event feeling good and empowered without the event necessarily leading anywhere, conversely sometimes participants will not perceive themselves to have had an impact whereas they have significantly influenced the outcome (Coglianese, 2002).

A way forward Despite concerns over data collection and analysis, our research points to a clear need for a much better understanding of the costs and benefits of public participation. This understanding cannot be achieved through data gathering alone, but must also be supported by new theoretical frameworks and principles which can guide decision making in this arena. We have therefore developed a twin track approach to moving this agenda forward to meet both these needs. Data gathering There is a need for much improved data on the costs and benefits of public participation. It is well established that gathering information after


a participative process has been completed is far from ideal, both in terms of its high costs and quality attained. It is far better to establish systems for collecting data as the project is taking place, when participants and commissioners can be accessed and the process is fresh in their minds. With this in mind, we have developed a framework (Warburton et al., 2005) for use in this task.3 We are aware that simply producing a framework is inadequate; its use in collection of data is what really counts. A new theoretical framework Just as in the 1970s and 1980s environmentalists and economists cooperated to produce environmental economics, we are hoping that the data gathered through the process outlined above can go some way to creating an economics of participation. We are not suggesting that we will agree on a financial value for social capital or community cohesion, but we do hope that, just as environmental economics opened up an awareness of the value a resource can give society, an economics of participation will do the same. For example, it is now agreed that our environment provides an invaluable repository for the waste generated by many activities (e.g. driving and manufacturing). Some economists have even put a financial value on those activities of disposing the waste if the environment was unable to process them. Similarly, through this work we hope to shed light on the financial relationship between the cost of creating social capital through project support and the wider impacts that social capital then creates through reduced crime or social cohesion, which in turn have financial benefits in themselves. It can be argued that if you refuse to place a value on a benefit or cost you run the risk of it being considered to have no value in economic analysis. We will not, through this work, reduce civic life to pounds and pence, but we might be able to demonstrate that there is a relationship between what money you invest and the kind of society you have. What type of community do you get for your money?

Recommendations • If economic evaluations are to make definitive claims about the economic value of public participation, they must capture all significant costs and benefits to the organization delivering the participation and to the direct participants. Where possible this should be extended to other groups affected by, but not directly part of, the participation exercise.


• Given the dearth of information available, a simple and cheap model for data gathering is needed. We suggest using and developing the Involve Framework produced to record costs and benefits as part of day-to-day project work. • Studies must be undertaken carefully and sensitively in ways that contribute to the development of economic assessment of participation. The results of these initial studies also need to be handled carefully as initial estimates may not be accurate or representative (which will not be clear until a number of studies have been completed).4 • Fixed budgets are problematic for participation practice. Although better information on costs and benefits will help project managers budget more effectively, fixed budgets can be incompatible with iterative and dynamic participative processes and the changing decision-making environment within which they exist.

Future work The following areas where more work is needed have been identified: • Disaggregating intangible benefits – Further research is needed to disaggregate and define the component elements of concepts such as social capital, community cohesion, strong and resilient communities etc., to make it possible to assess what types of participation activity, and in what circumstances, may lead to specific outcomes. • Basic Evaluation – The lack of basic financial information indicates that more investment in basic evaluation is needed. Economic factors should form part of a larger evaluative analysis. • Comparative studies – Researching the effects of participation in specific settings can further the development of best practice and contribute to the development of analytical frameworks. Possible future studies might include: – Comparisons of spending on participation, and expected benefits, in different areas and regions (e.g. nationally across OECD countries, in UK local authorities or Local Strategic Partnerships). – Comparative studies of different levels of participation in similar circumstances (e.g. minimal consultation required by legislation compared to more in-depth engagement in similar circumstances, to compare costs and benefits). – Comparative studies of similar participation in different areas and contexts, to test the importance of context in these exercises – a major gap in current data.


• Distributional effects. Who the beneficiaries of participatory working are can be as important as how large the benefits are. More research is needed into how the costs and benefits are distributed between groups and the impacts of these on the processes, institutions and individuals. • The link between actual and perceived costs and benefits. Research has shown that the perception of the costs and benefits can have a large impact on people’s willingness to take part. It may be useful to further examine these incentives and barriers in more detail.

Closing remarks Our analysis suggests that better data and understanding of the costs and benefits of public participation will improve participatory practice and service delivery generally. Critically our analysis tells us that, at present, poorly resourced consultation wastes citizens’ time, creates cynicism and ‘consultation fatigue’, breeding further distrust of government and undermining future attempts at increasing participation/democratic legitimacy. An increased understanding of what participation actually costs would go some way to countering this. Through research we can develop a cumulative evidence base which can help people carry out prospective evaluation of the likely costs and benefits, helping to determine when and where participation is appropriate. It may well lead to less public participation, at least in the short term, as decisions not to go ahead are made due to a lack of resources. This research indicates that at this moment in time it is better to support quality not quantity. By learning more about what costs and benefits participants encounter, and thus what deters and encourages participation, we can ensure that the ‘demand’ for participation keeps abreast with the ever increasing ‘supply’ of partnerships, consultations and initiatives. And finally we have an opportunity here to unpick the wider implications of a participatory politics; is this a kind of politics we want, or indeed can afford? It is time to move from the shrouded world of hidden budgets, to a clearer world of transparent consultation. Can we afford to move from tick box consultation to an empowered participatory democracy? How do we back the participatory rhetoric with financial muscle? These questions can only be answered by understanding the true costs of public participation.


Notes 1. Involve is a charity dedicated to putting people at the heart of decision making. Involve undertakes four core activities linked to public participation: influencing decision makers; providing new thinking on what works; promoting better practice; and strengthening networks in the UK participation field. 2. Other factors include social acceptability, equity, and transparency. 3. The Involve Costs and Benefits Framework can be downloaded from www.involving.org along with a supplementary note of how it might be best used. 4. Marshall (1999; p. 12) rightly points out that ‘costs comparisons between participatory and top-down modes of governance are flawed unless they account for the costs of all activities required to achieve a given policy objective.’ Such a flawed approach might lead to ill-informed decisions being made that save money in the short run, but end up costing more (Le Quesne and Green, 2005). As far as possible, economic studies should compare and contrast participation with a counterfactual scenario.

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Edward Andersson, Diane Warburton and Richard Wilson 161 Frey, B. and Alois, S. (2004) Happiness research: State and Prospects (Basel: Center for the Research in Economics, Management and the Arts) (Working Paper No. 2004–10). Frey, B. and Stutzer, A. (1999) Happiness, Economy and Institutions (Zürich: University of Zurich) (Working Paper No. 15). Frey, B. and Goette L. (1999) Does Pay Motivate Volunteers? (Zürich: University of Zurich) (Working Paper No. 7). Gregory, R. (1986) ‘Interpreting measures of economic loss: Evidence from contingent valuation and experimental studies’, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (13) 325–337. House, E.R. (2000) ‘The Limits of Cost Benefit Evaluation’, Evaluation (6) 79–86. Involve (2005a) People & Participation: How to put citizens at the heart of decision-making (London: Involve). Involve (2005b) The True Costs of Public Participation (London: Involve). Jackson, E.T. (1999) The Strategic Choices of Stakeholders: Examining the FrontEnd Costs and Downstream Benefits of Participatory Evaluation (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Institute) (Paper prepared for the World Bank Conference on Evaluation and Poverty Reduction, June 14–15 1999). Jacobs, M. (1991) The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future (London: Pluto Press). Kagan, C. (2006) Making a difference: Participation and wellbeing (Liverpool: Renew Northwest). Le Quesne, T. and Green, C. (2005) Can we afford not to?: The costs and benefits of a partnership approach to the Water Framework Directive (Godalming: WWF) Lilja, N., Ashby, J. and Johnson, N. (2004) ‘Scaling Up and Out the Impact of Agricultural Research with Farmer Participatory Research’, in Scaling up impacts of agricultural research (ed.) D. Pachico and S. Fujisaka (Cali, Colombia: Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical) pp. 25–37. Lowndes, V., Pratchett, L. and Stoker, G. (2001) ‘Trends in Public Participation: Part 1 –Local Government Perspectives’, Public Administration (79) 205–222. Manring, N.J. (1998) ‘Collaborative resource Management: Organisational Benefits and Individual Costs’ Administration and Society (30) 274–290. Marshall, G.R. (1999), ‘Economics of incorporating public participation in efforts to redress degradation of agricultural land’, Paper presented at the 43rd Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society and the 6th Annual Conference of the New Zealand Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, 20–22 Jan. 1999 (Christchurch, New Zealand: NZARES). Momenta (2003) Public Dialogue and Policy Development: Case Studies: A Momenta Report Prepared for the Council for Science and Technology (London: Council for Science and Technology). Newburn, T. and Jones, T. (2002) Consultation by Crime and Disorder Partnerships (London: Home Office) (Police Research Series Paper No. 148). New Economics Foundation (2004) The Power and Potential of Wellbeing Indicators: Measuring Young people’s Wellbeing in Nottingham (London: New Economics Foundation). ODPM (2005) Improving Delivery of Mainstream Services in Deprived Areas – The Role of Community Involvement (London: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister).

162 Re-energizing Citizenship O’Neil, J. (1997) ‘Value Pluralism, Incommensurability and Institutions’ in Valuing Nature: Economics, Ethics and Environment (ed.) Foster (London: Routledge) pp. 75–88. Pearce, D. (1998) ‘Cost-Benefit Analysis and Environmental Policy’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy (14) 84–100. Pollak, R.A. (1998) Notes on how economists think (Chicago: Joint Center for Poverty Research) (Working Paper No. 3). Rietbergen-McCracken, J. (ed.) (1996) Participation in Practice – The Experience of the World Bank and Other Stakeholders (Washington DC: World Bank) (World Bank discussion paper No. 333). Rydin, Y. and Pennington, M. (2000) ‘Public Participation and Local Environmental Planning: The Collective Action Problem and the Potential of Social Capital’, Local Environment (5) 153–169. Sefton, T., Byford, S., McDaid, D., Hills, J. and Knapp, M. (2002) Making the most of it: Economic evaluation in the social welfare field (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation) Simmons, R. and Birchall, J. (2005) A Joined-up Approach to User Participation in Public Services: Strengthening the ‘Participation Chain’, Social Policy & Administration (39) 260–283. Spash, C. (2002) Valuing Social Consequences of Environmental Change: Economic Methods and Their Limits. Evaluation of Sustainability Euroconferences: Conference Proceedings (ed.) U. Kopp, A. Martinuzzi, and U. Schubert, May 23–25, 2002 (Vienna: Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration) pp. 75–87. Warburton, D., Andersson, E. and Wilson, R. (2005) The True Costs of Participation – a draft framework (London: Involve). World Bank (1994) The World Bank and Participation. World Bank Learning Group on Participatory Development (Washington DC, World Bank).

8 Faith, Hope and Clarity: Faith Groups and Civil Renewal Vivien Lowndes and Rachael Chapman

Introduction Government statements on civil renewal identify a role for faith groups in building the skills and confidence of their members to play an active role in society (Home Office, 2003a). UK policy in other areas also identifies a role for faith groups in: service provision (education, housing); governance (at neighbourhood, LSP and regional level); consultation (health and police); and community building (community cohesion, regeneration). Engaging faith groups is part of a broader government strategy to mobilize the resources of civil society in pursuit of citizen wellbeing and better governance. But there is also an assumption that faith groups have special qualities that enable them to play a particular role in civil renewal. This chapter sets out to uncover the often implicit – and sometimes competing – rationales for faith group involvement in civil renewal. A review of existing research and relevant conceptual developments leads us to identify three distinct rationales for faith group involvement in civil renewal. We term these the normative, resources and governance rationales. The chapter examines the extent to which current policy and practice reflects these three rationales, drawing upon documentary analysis and interviews with policy makers and faith group representatives (at the national level and in the city of Leicester). Emerging tensions, as well as potential contributions, are highlighted. The chapter assesses the relative importance of the three rationales for different stakeholders. The chapter proposes a model of faith group involvement that specifies the relationship between the three rationales, their key components in practice, and the challenges they afford to both policy makers and faith communities themselves. 163


Rationales for faith group involvement The clearest statement regarding the role of faith groups in the civil renewal policy programme comes from the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett: The government is involving different faiths so they can each bring their distinctive perspective in helping to meet common needs. I have set up the Faith Communities Unit (FCU) in the Home Office to promote engagement with faith groups and local leaders who are so important in developing the skills and confidence of their members in playing an active role in society. A Steering Group has been looking specifically at how faith groups can have a greater input into policy, (Home Office, 2003a; p. 22). In 2005 the work of the FCU became part of the remit of a new Race, Equality, Cohesion and Faith Directorate. In the light of the 2001 disturbances in the Northern towns (and the more recent events in Birmingham), faith group involvement has become associated particularly with strategies to foster community cohesion (Home Office, 2001; Cantle, 2005). There is a close overlap between the aspiration for community cohesion and the goals of civil renewal. As the Home Office website explains: Multi-cultural communities are often multi-faith communities and this should be fully recognised in policies aimed at promoting diversity. Fostering understanding and respect between different faiths is vital in practically implementing community cohesion strategies. The Home Office aims to help bring about a society in which different belief systems, whether religious or otherwise, are understood, respected and valued… The experience and resources of the faith communities are invaluable and the Home Office strives to ensure that these communities are given the opportunity to participate fully in society through voluntary activity and other faith based projects (Home Office, undated). However, the relationship between faith and ethnicity is a complex one: different faiths are practiced within the same ethnic group, and specific faiths have followers of many different ethnicities. People from minority ethnic groups may not see faith as primary to their identification, as is the case for many white British people. As this chapter will

Vivien Lowndes and Rachael Chapman 165

show, community cohesion is a specific (and contested) policy goal that does not, in any necessary way, flow from the involvement of faith groups in civil renewal. From an academic viewpoint, evidence linking faith and civic engagement is limited – and confusing. A relationship has been established between religious involvement and trust in political institutions, but there is no clear relationship with civic competence (Gabriel, 1995). There is also no clear evidence of a link between ‘social capital’ and faith activity. Putnam’s (1993) pioneering study of social capital across the regions of Italy found that the most devout churchgoers were the least civic-minded individuals in surveys carried out over a 20-year period. Putnam came to the conclusion that religious involvement was an alternative to civic engagement rather than a part of it. Putnam (1993; p. 171) argues that ‘good governance in Italy is a by-product of singing groups and soccer clubs, not prayer’. A sharp contrast is provided by survey evidence from the USA, subsequently analysed by the same author. In his influential book Bowling Alone, Putnam explains that – in the post war period – religious involvement is second only to education as a predictor of civic engagement. Putnam (2000; p. 66) shows how American churches act as ‘an incubator for civic skills, civic norms, community interest and civic recruitment’. A third strand of evidence contradicts both the previous propositions. The European Values Survey found that, among 29 countries over a 30-year time period, there was no relationship between religiosity and social capital (measured in relation to levels of trust and civic engagement) (Halman and Pettersson, 2001). It seems that intervening variables are important in determining the link with social capital. Three factors are of particular importance: how faith groups are organized; whether they provide members with opportunities to learn civic skills; and whether they have an overt public policy orientation (Verba et al., 1995; Lowndes, 2004). Most research on faith and civic engagement comes from the USA and is concerned only with Christian churches (see Smidt, 2003; Burns et al., 2001; Putnam, 2000; Verba et al., 1995). In Britain, the intersection of secularism and multiculturalism creates a unique context. Christianity is the main religion in Britain (72%); people with no religion make up 15 per cent of the population; 5 per cent of the population belong to a non-Christian denomination (half of whom are Muslims) (ONS, 2004). Just 10 per cent of British people attend church regularly and attendance is more common among women and middleclass people. However, church attendance is actually growing in some


urban areas, particularly among black Christians. Despite small congregations, the Church of England also remains a focus for community activity within many localities. However, the religious make-up of some British cities varies considerably from the national profile: in Leicester, for instance, 45 per cent of people identified themselves as Christian; 15 per cent as Hindu; 11 per cent as Muslim; 17 per cent as having no religion (2001 census data – see Leicester City Council, 2005). A recent survey in the city uncovered 250 faith groups supporting 450 different social projects (with a response rate of 67%) (Leicester City Council, 2004). In terms of ethnic groups, 26 per cent of the population described themselves as Indian in the 2001 census but there are other significant black and ethnic minority communities too (Pakistani, Caribbean and African, including recently arrived Somali refugees). The relationships between faith and ethnicity are complicated; for instance, the ‘Indian’ community has Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Jain elements, while the ‘Muslim’ community includes citizens originally from countries in Asia, Africa and East/Central Europe. The Home Office Citizenship Survey highlights the importance of religion as an arena for civic participation and volunteering in Britain. Religion is the fourth most important arena for civic and social participation, and formal volunteering; its importance also appears to be growing (Home Office, 2003b). A survey conducted in Greater London identified more than 2,000 faith-based social action projects in the city, employing 3,000 people, supported by 13,500 volunteers, and with 120,000 beneficiaries. The total figures are likely to be far higher, given that the response rate from worshipping communities was just under 30 per cent (London Churches Group, 2002). How does government policy aim to build upon, and support, this reservoir of active citizenship in pursuit of its civil renewal goals? Drawing on existing research, we can identify three ‘in principle’ rationales for faith group involvement: • A normative rationale which stresses the role of faith groups in relation to community values and identities, linked both to their ‘theology’ and their enduring presence within communities. • A resources rationale which focuses upon the organizational capacity of faith groups (in developing members’ skills, mobilizing volunteers, providing staff and venues), and their role in reaching socially excluded groups.


• A governance rationale which identifies the representative and leadership role of faith groups inside communities and within broader networks and partnerships. In the next section we consider the extent to which current policy and practice reflects the three rationales, drawing upon a range of data sources: an analysis of policy documents; a review of existing research; interviews with national-level faith group representatives and with faith leaders in the city of Leicester; and interviews with central government policy makers (Home Office and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM)) and local practitioners (Leicester City Council and Leicestershire Constabulary).1

Values-added: the normative rationale This rationale is stressed chiefly by faith groups themselves, although our research showed that policy makers do appreciate the role of faithbased values and identities in motivating citizens to be involved in their communities. There is interest in the role of faith groups in ‘remoralizing’ public life, playing a role in identifying and articulating common values as a basis for improved community cohesion at the local level and even a new sense of citizenship and ‘Britishness’ at the national level. Faith groups were seen by policy makers as offering a distinctive ‘ethical and cultural dimension’ vis-à-vis other civil society bodies. Involvement in civil renewal can provide an opportunity for citizens to articulate dimensions of their faith (e.g. sympathy, generosity, resilience – in a Christian context, or ‘hospitality’ for Sikhs, or the ‘struggle to see’ for Muslims), and can also provide an opportunity for people to learn more about their own ‘faith in action’. Several interviewees were keen to stress that this was not the same thing as proselytizing – a fact not always understood by critics of government support for faith-based action. Respondents noted that faith involvement in civil renewal often has an ‘implicit’ as well as explicit dimension. Many ‘people of faith’ are involved as active citizens and community leaders (and as public and voluntary sector professionals): their faith shapes their motivation and practice, even if it is not explicit. Faith groups may see an important role for ‘prayer’ or ‘grace’ (to take Christian examples) in their community work – these are not cultural ‘add-ons’ but practices aimed at achieving specific ends. It is easy, in this context, to see how communication problems can arise between


faith groups and secular policy makers on the ground. Indeed, there was a certain amount of cynicism among faith group respondents about the attempts of policy makers (and local practitioners) to hijack the normative agenda – for instance, claiming ‘grass roots legitimacy’ on the basis of faith group involvement without actually engaging with the values and practices of those groups. A yet more hostile reaction argued that: ‘The government doesn’t want to hear about what makes us faithful people. They’ll fund us if we don’t do anything religious with the money’. The London Churches Group (2002; p. 20) observed that local government officers were often cautious about engaging with faith groups due to concerns that they would use funding for evangelism or proselytizing. On a different tack, some faith group representatives expressed concerns that involvement with funded community projects could ‘corrupt’ people of faith, distracting them from more fundamental goals. Indeed, some faith groups may not regard community work as within their ‘calling’ (London Churches Group, 2002; p. 20). A report for the Home Office that looked at the contribution of the Diocese of Birmingham to urban regeneration commented on the tension encountered at parish level between ‘business decisions and Jesus decisions’ (Cairns et al., 2005; p. 50).

Transformation & Action

Positive Vision

Peace & Harmony Humanity

Relationship Buil ding

Neighbourliness

I dentity

Equali ty

Justice

Reconciliation & Mediation

Normative Values & Principles

Service to God & Others

Soli darity

Long-term Focus

Trust & Understanding

Forgiveness

Confidence Buil ding Wellbeing

Figure 8.1

Charity

Hope

Honesty & Openness

What are the values behind faith group involvement?


Figure 8.1 specifies the values associated with faith involvement in civil renewal, as they were presented to us by leaders and representatives of the major faiths. These are values shared by the different faiths, although specific elements may be more or less stressed by particular groups. But what is distinctive about the normative stance of faith groups vis-à-vis other civil society organizations? Three dimensions stand out: the holistic commitments of faith groups; their embedded identities in communities and over time; and their diversity. Holistic commitments Cairns et al. (2005; p. 3) note the importance of the faith ‘mission’: of ‘demonstrating and sharing God’s love in the community’; of service to local people; and of meeting needs, as a powerful motivating force for volunteers and action. Another report argues that: ‘Social action is a fundamental part of the practice of many faiths because the requirement to serve people in need is central to the teaching of most faiths’ (London Churches Group, 2002; p. 6). In a general sense, faith group involvement may be associated with a sense of hope and a belief in positive change, allied with a clear vision of a better future (Lewis, 2001; p. 4). Faith groups can be described as having a ‘holistic’ approach because they are, in principle, concerned with whole communities (of a particular faith) rather than specific interest groups or segments within that community. Faith groups aim to include and be of service to people within their community of all ages, social classes and ideological persuasions. Indeed, as our interviewees often pointed out, significant events throughout the life course are often marked by faith involvement – birth, transition to adulthood, marriage, and death. Faith groups are concerned with the wellbeing of the community in a general sense; they are not formed to address a single issue or cause. The holistic perspective of faith groups underpins their potential to provide a uniquely ‘joined up’ contribution to civil renewal goals. Embedded identities Faith groups are often able to offer a long-term local commitment, perspective and presence. This is seen as stemming from the centrality and continuation of worship within community life (Farnell et al., 2003; p. 41). The associated degree of stability is reflected in a desire to be part of solutions that address root causes of social problems rather than just the symptoms. Reith (2003; p. 10) points out that faith groups will be


engaged in their local area long after short- and medium-term regeneration initiatives and/or funding cycles have finished, and can therefore add value to shorter-term initiatives. Because of these features, faith groups are well placed to build community commitment and ownership and to develop wider civic engagement (Lewis, 2001; p. 4). Tensions can arise, however, between the long- and short-term perspectives of faith groups and policy makers respectively. Faith groups may offer a ‘valuable corrective’ to output-oriented policy programmes that underestimate the time it takes to build trust and personal relationships (Community Cohesion Panel, 2004; p. 32). This difference in perspectives can lead to tensions within partnership arrangements. Research in the urban regeneration field found that faith groups were highly critical of government programmes, which they saw as being: too complex; too centrally controlled and ill-attuned to specific local issues; too bureaucratic; not sufficiently holistic and interconnected; and in many cases, ineffective, producing a collective sense that money is spent but ‘nothing much changes here’ (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2003; p. 4). Diversity Faith groups emphasize their own diverse and distinctive identities. The equality of each individual is also a key tenet of most world religions. Acknowledging the role of faith groups in neighbourhood life and public policy can be a way of validating, even celebrating, the diversity of communities (Reith, 2003; p. 7). But this relies upon respecting the distinctive identities of faith groups (and their internal diversity), and resisting the temptation to ‘homogenize’ a faith sector within policy discourse – or assume that different faith groups can easily ‘pool’ their distinctive normative resources. (The potential for faith groups to act as ‘mediating structures’ (Reith, 2003; p. 6) in fostering cross-cultural contact is discussed later in the chapter.) The government draws an explicit link between faith group involvement and the wider promotion of diversity: Current Government policies highlight the need to incorporate the diversity of society into the mainstream. Faith communities represent a significant element of diversity – both by virtue of straightforward variety of faiths and because of the overlap between faith and ethnic or cultural identity (DETR, cited in Angoy, 2005; p. 6).


We have seen in this section that involving faith groups in civil renewal brings with it an explicit debate about values – and the possibility (even likelihood) of value conflict. Such debates may challenge policy makers and practitioners because they bring to the surface values that are usually submerged for political reasons (e.g. the redistributive aspects of some government policy), or because they involve a direct challenge to public policy norms (from equal opportunities to short-term target-driven funding). Policy makers and practitioners may be uncomfortable with discussing some values head-on, especially where reference is made to religion. Not all faith groups are civicminded; they may specifically define themselves in opposition to secular values or to other religions. The normative rationale for faith group involvement does not presume value consensus, but it does highlight the importance of an open debate over the values that underpin civil renewal policy and practice.

Capitalizing civil renewal: the resources rationale There are two distinct ways of looking at this rationale. From a ‘topdown’ perspective, the emphasis is on mobilizing the resources of faith groups (staff, volunteers, members, social networks, donations, venues) in the service of civil renewal. From a ‘bottom-up’ perspective, the focus may be on the resources that faith groups themselves can access from the state through their engagement with civil renewal (e.g. grants, new buildings, training). These different versions of the ‘resources’ rationale can cause some confusion, even tension, in relationships between faith groups and policy makers. In which direction should resources be flowing, and with what ‘strings attached’? There are, of course, significant differences among faith groups in relation to their existing resources – crucially between the Church of England and minority faiths. Erroneous assumptions can easily be made; it is important to note that not all faith groups fit a building- or membership-based conception. For ‘theological’ reasons, some faith groups may accept more readily the principle of a broad community use for their facilities (e.g. the cultural as well as worship role of the temple in Sikh and Hindu communities). Many interviewees supported the idea of ‘faith awareness training’ for policy makers and practitioners. One government respondent stressed the problem of ‘ignorance’ on both sides – the ignorance of faith groups about how to deal with government, and the ignorance of government about the character of different faith groups and their beliefs. But real conflicts may also arise


when faith groups are required or asked to accept certain contract or funding clauses. For instance, faith communities may want to employ someone in a community project who is ‘of their faith’, which may raise serious questions about equal opportunities (see London Churches Group, 2002; p. 20). The resources rationale is emphasized by those who see faith groups as a ‘distinctive part of the voluntary sector’, stressing their role as civil society bodies able to work in partnership with government. The ODPM respondents felt that there were benefits for faith groups in aligning themselves more closely with the rest of the voluntary and community sector – this would enable them to become more visible and get access to more resources. The Church of England was described as ‘the biggest voluntary sector organization in the country’ – with a presence from the House of Lords down to every parish in the country. There was some cynicism from faith groups that they were used as ‘a cheap way into anywhere’, as part of an instrumental approach to gaining access to communities and community resources. Government respondents recognized that faith groups were wary of the prospect of co-option, and were best regarded as ‘critical friends’ and partners on their own terms. (It is, of course, possible that faith groups may use engagement with policy makers in an instrumental fashion as a route to securing scarce funding or facilities.) Policy makers certainly recognize that the ‘resources’ rationale can lead to cynicism among faith groups; as one interviewee said: ‘it is important that we don’t just go to them when we need them’. But resources provide an important focus for dialogue between policy makers and faith groups, given the potential benefits to both ‘sides’. Regional Development Agencies in several regions (including London) have undertaken mapping exercises to establish the number of faithrelated community projects and volunteers. There is also a current Church of England-led project to establish a ‘community value formula’ that would allow faith groups to calculate their input to communities beyond worship (including, for instance, volunteer hours) (CULF, 2005). Home Office respondents with a specific remit for working with Muslim communities were concerned to stress how few resources some local faith groups had access to. Farnell et al. (2003; p. 40) comment on the ‘significant inequalities between faiths in their present ability to engage’. Faith groups may actually be a potential route to engagement in civil renewal, but one which requires the injection of resources and capacity building to be effective. An example was provided of a


Learning and Skills Council-funded project to train 120 imams in leadership and management. The importance of supporting faith-led training and capacity building was emphasized by some respondents, as was the role of ‘brokerage’ bodies like the Faith Based Regeneration Network or Faithworks which could mediate between faith groups and policy makers. There are three different types of resources implicated in this rationale for faith group involvement: human, social and physical capital.

Human capital Faith groups contribute a leadership and management capacity and their members exhibit a particular willingness to volunteer within communities (Farnell et al., 2003; p. 7, 22; LGA, 2002; p. 7). Reith (2003; p. 10) argues that faith can be ‘an incredibly powerful source of motivation that engages individuals in services and volunteering’. Clergy themselves play important practical roles within civil renewal and urban regeneration projects (in representing communities and providing administrative support for faith group involvement), while also mobilizing volunteers and ‘leading by example’ (Cairns et al., 2005; p. 4). Staff and volunteers from a faith group background are not just ‘extra bodies’, they bring with them distinctive expertise. They have an in-depth and historical knowledge of the community (or particular sections of it), and a special capacity to offer a holistic view of renewal. This can be particularly valuable in the case of socially excluded groups (Reith, 2003; p. 10; Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2003; p. 1; Lewis, 2001; p. 4). But the pressures faced by volunteers from faith groups are, however, the same as those for secular volunteers; for example, demands on their time, skills, experience and confidence. Like other communitybased organizations, faith groups report difficulties in attracting volunteers, particularly into leadership roles (Cairns et al., 2005; pp. 33–4). The age profile of many volunteers also leads faith groups to express concern about the sustainability of their human capital resources over the long term (Farnell et al., 2003; p. 41, 23; Cairns et al., 2005; p. 18).

Social capital Faith groups may have a degree of credibility that many service providers do not have because they are regarded as part of the community in contrast to public sector professionals who are ‘parachuted’ in


(Reith, 2003; pp. 9–10). They can provide access to social capital within a community – that is, networks of trust and reciprocity. Faith groups may ‘offer a channel to some of the hardest-to-reach groups’ (Angoy, 2005; p. 6), particularly where faith and ethnicity are closely linked. Faith groups are also important arenas, especially in black communities, for making contact with young people. Research on urban regeneration initiatives confirms the role of faith groups in accessing social capital among disadvantaged and socially excluded groups, including some minority ethnic communities (Furby et al., 2006; Farnell et al., 2003; p. 7; Northwest Development Agency, 2003; pp. 6, 4). The manner in which faith groups are able to mobilize social networks may also be distinctive. There is potential for faith communities to adopt a ‘bottom-up’ approach by involving and empowering local people and ensuring genuine participation; for example, developing a sense of local identity and pride, promoting self-sufficiency and helping them establish a common vision (Lewis, 2001; pp. 5, 9). Farnell et al. (2003; p. 42) make a similar point, arguing that: ‘the close local involvement of faith communities, characterized, at its best, by careful listening to socially excluded people, offers a significant ‘grassroots’ voice to inform and correct ‘top-down’ policies’.

Physical capital Faith groups may have access to physical capital that can be utilized in civil renewal. In some localities they may have the only building in a neighbourhood that is available for wide community use (see Farnell et al., 2003; pp. 21–22; London Churches Group, 2002; p14, 19). Cairns et al. (2005; pp. 26–27) note that faith groups may be keen to ensure buildings are well used and may allow other groups to use them. Although the same research suggests that potential users do not always feel comfortable in buildings that have a religious as well as secular use (Cairns et al., 2005; p. 19). Christian groups are much more likely than other faith communities to have buildings (London Churches Group, 2002; p. 14). When asked about future policy directions, a respondent from the Church of England argued passionately for assistance with ‘heating churches’ (and other faith buildings), given their unique role as community spaces. As a government evaluation points out: ‘Many of the physical resources, namely faith community buildings, have the potential for providing community spaces for many neighbourhood renewal initiatives. However, many of these buildings require renovation and adap-


tation to realize this potential’ (Angoy, 2005; p. 50). Faith groups may even come to regard such resources as burdens rather than assets, given the costs incurred in relation to maintenance and restoration (Farnell et al., 2003; p. 22).

Representation and leadership: the governance rationale The Home Office (2003a; p. 22) argues that faith groups have a leadership role based upon the development of the skills and confidence of their members to play an active role in society, but which also involves fighting discrimination and promoting understanding between communities. The governance rationale was stressed particularly by respondents from the Home Office who were working on engaging Muslim groups in civil renewal. Community involvement was seen as vital to tackling the problems of multiple disadvantage, which afflict many Muslim communities. It was argued that in localities with good systems of community involvement and devolved governance, there is less conflict. The difference between ‘representation’ and ‘involvement’ was highlighted. As one interviewee explained: ‘An imam sitting on a local partnership is not enough. It’s good but it needs to be backed up by capacity building and more active citizens’. It is also important to understand who ‘representatives’ actually represent. For instance, specific strategies may be needed to seek the views and interests of Muslim women (for example, mothers in focus groups exploring issues of health, education and housing). An interviewee from the Home Office argued that other minority faiths (Jews, Sikhs and Hindus) had long recognized the importance of involvement in governance for the health of their communities. The Home Office stressed the importance of working with faith groups at the local level to facilitate involvement in school governing bodies, area forums, and so on. The aim is to work with Muslim groups to overcome the ‘governance deficit’ that exists in some communities. Given the demise of many forms of traditional politics (e.g. membership of political parties), there is clearly a ‘space to be filled’ by citizens who become active through the faith route. In some localities, faith groups are the only bodies able to reflect the views of a particular ethnic group. Inter-faith networks also provide opportunities for representation, whether as official advisory bodies to local councils and other organizations or as a focus for ad hoc deputations on specific issues or events (LGA, 2002; pp. 7, 24).


Faith group respondents stressed the importance of their leadership role at the very local level, highlighting their contribution to governance arrangements at the neighbourhood or parish level (preferably feeding into local authority-wide Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs)). In their report on the Diocese of Birmingham, Cairns et al. (2005; p. 55) point to the facilitating role played by clergy in encouraging participation: ‘their privileged access to individuals within the Church and the parish provides them with opportunities not necessarily available to secular agencies to match skills and needs of worshipers with opportunities for volunteering and participation in projects’. Faith group respondents reported some hostility from local authority policy makers to faith group involvement in governance, which was seen as compromising secular conventions. (There was general scepticism regarding governance opportunities at the regional level – although ‘faith’ representatives do sit on many of the non-elected regional assemblies.) An ODPM respondent linked faith group involvement to the ‘new localism’ in public policy, while a Church of England informant talked about the ‘outgrowing of commitment from the parish to the locality’. In Leicester (like many other cities) there is a ‘faith sector’ representative on the multi-agency LSP, who had recently initiated a series of open meetings with faith groups in recognition of associated communication problems. There had been some difficulty reporting information back to the diverse population of faith groups in the city, and ensuring that faith groups’ issues got onto the agenda of the LSP. Government interviewees pointed to the relative ease with which they could liaise with the Church of England given its existing governance infrastructure (from parish to synod level and via special bodies such as the Church Committee on Criminal Justice). In Leicester, the Bishop and his officers had been urged by other faith groups to use the leverage and resources of the Church of England to represent faith interests in general, in the context of a secular polity. It was argued that the Church of England could provide a ‘gateway to structures’ for all faith groups. Several respondents stressed the importance of understanding the different governance structures of faith groups themselves. It is easy to make assumptions about leadership, representation, accountability and membership that are unlikely to apply across all religions. In this context, an ODPM respondent emphasized the need for faith group involvement in governance to be mediated by the wider voluntary and community sector. Tensions can arise, however, between the particular normative stance of faith groups and the secular, expert/specialist orientation of many voluntary organizations.


Integration: a fourth rationale? The research raised the possibility of an additional ‘integrative’ rationale for faith group involvement in civil renewal. Two separate but linked elements emerged. The first element relates to policies to promote community cohesion, in the wake of riots in several towns in Northern England in 2001, and the subsequent recommendations of the Cantle Report (Home Office, 2001). This policy programme seeks to catalyse inter-faith activity at the local level, as part of a strategy to reduce the distance between the ‘parallel lives’ lived by different communities. The aim is for communities to ‘know each other’ in a way that has not happened in some areas over the last 30 years (see Cantle, 2005 for a review of progress). There is also a ‘diplomatic’ stream of work at the national level, which brings together the leaders of different faiths on a formal basis, via the Inner Cities Religious Council (convened by ODPM) and the Inter-Faith Network (core funded by the Home Office), and through informal dialogue (including high level government involvement). Initiatives in this area range from bringing Jewish and Muslim children together to play football at Arsenal FC, to establishing an informal national network of leading imams and rabbis. It is important that policy makers do not assume the existence of inter-community knowledge or contact, or the skills to undertake a brokerage role in pursuit of cohesion (Angoy, 2005; p. 35). The Home Office has recently announced a £3 million programme to build leadership in faith groups and develop their capacity to encourage dialogue within communities. There is also a commitment to improve the quality of religious teaching and understanding in schools (Home Office, 2005; p. 44). The potential contribution of faith groups to community cohesion not only builds upon the resources and governance rationales (the groups can act as mediating structures), but also encompasses normative elements. The Community Cohesion Panel (2004; p. 32) argues that faith groups can promote the values and virtues that are necessary for cohesive communities, including neighbourliness, care for the weak, civility and mutual respect, and honesty. On the ground, a Leicester youth initiative explicitly seeks to build a ‘network of trust’ by bringing together ‘the faith leaders of the future’. The Local Government Association’s guidance to councils argues that: all major faiths promote equality and respect for others as a fundamental value. In most cases, at a personal and community level, this


translates into good community relations and integrity in public life. Such values can be a real resource in the practical implementation of community cohesion strategies (LGA, 2002; p. 21). It is important to avoid simplistic assumptions of religion as a basis for social cohesion. Whilst some faith groups may be civically minded, others may define themselves in opposition to secular values and to other religions. Religion may also be a source of deep social conflict or a means of social retreat (Farnell et al., 2003; p. 9). Lewis (2001; p. 5) stresses the need for faith groups to work together rather than compete with one another for resources, which may result in creating greater divisions. The second element of the integrative rationale relates to citizenship and ‘Britishness’. Here a role for faith groups is sought in the process of developing a new and more inclusive sense of what it means to be British. Faith groups are seen as making a potential contribution to generating and articulating a set of shared values, in a context that also respects diversity of belief and identity. The Home Office aims to strengthen the capacity of religious leaders to deal with challenges facing their communities, counter divisive and extremist influences and provide role models for young people (Home Office, 2005; pp. 13, 51). New legislation requires ministers of religion applying for entry into the UK to demonstrate acceptable levels of spoken English (Home Office, 2005; p. 52). Faith groups are involved in policy discussions about introducing a Citizenship Day (or some celebration of ‘rites of passage’) to involve all citizens and not just immigrants. The debate on the nature of Britishness is in its early stages and will inevitably be controversial, particularly if it is perceived as constituting a challenge to established principles of multiculturalism (see the contrasting perspectives of Cantle, 2005; Phillips, 2005; Blunkett, 2005; Faulkner, 2004; Kundnani, 2002).

Conclusion: a model of faith group involvement Faith groups themselves are most keen to emphasize the normative rationale. Among policy makers, there is more emphasis on the resources rationale in the ODPM (linked to the regeneration focus) and on the governance rationale in the Home Office (linked to concerns with civil renewal, but also with community cohesion and even public safety). Speeches during the 2005 general election campaign by the main party leaders on the role of faith in politics and public policy


placed different emphasis on the three rationales (Faithworks, 2005). The Conservative Party’s leader, Michael Howard, stressed the normative rationale, with an emphasis on the contribution of faith groups to values and morality. Tony Blair’s speech focused upon the role of faith groups as partners in the modernization of the welfare state, revealing a particular interest in the resources rationale. The Liberal Democrat Party leader, Charles Kennedy, paid more attention to governance, stressing the civic contribution of faith groups in general, and the role of minority faiths in promoting diversity in governance. But can the various rationales be regarded as ‘additive’ (complementary elements of a grand rationale) or as alternative (even competing) theories of change? Our research points to the equal importance of the three rationales but the need to clarify the relationship between them. The three rationales can be linked as a series of stages within the process of involving faith groups in civil renewal. There is scope for government and local authority support to faith groups at each of the different stages, with varying implications for institutional design. The model (summarized in Table 8.1) is based upon three propositions developed from the primary research: (1) The normative rationale relates to the motivation for faith group involvement in civil renewal People may be motivated by their ‘theology’ and faith identity to be active citizens and/or community leaders. The distinctiveness of these motivations lies in the holistic nature of faith-based value systems (they are not limited to single issues) and the embeddedness of faith groups within communities (which are sometimes, but not always, geographically defined). Faith groups express diversity of belief both internally and within inter-faith networks and the wider community. Harnessing and supporting faith-based motivations for engagement can contribute to civil renewal objectives while also expressing the more specific policy goal of re-moralizing public life – asserting the importance of debating and celebrating the values that underpin British society (in their common components and diverse manifestations). Policy makers face the challenge of recognizing and respecting faithbased motivations, among the others that exist within communities. Faith awareness programmes are being used to tackle ‘religious illiteracy’ among policy makers and stimulate an open debate on tensions with the secular tradition. The degree to which faith plays a motivating role differs between, and within, communities. There is a need for civil renewal policies to be adapted accordingly, avoiding blanket assumptions about community identities. Both policy makers and faith leaders

180

Table 8.1

A model of faith group involvement in civil renewal

Rationale for faith group involvement

Normative

Resources

Governance

Elements of rationale in practice

Holistic commitments Embedded identities Expression of diversity

Physical capital Human capital Social capital

Participation Representation Leadership

Contribution to civil renewal objectives

Motivation ‘Active citizenship’

Capacity ‘Strengthened communities’

Outcome ‘Partnership in meeting needs’

Substantive goal

Re-moralizing public life

Building social capital

Community cohesion, ‘Britishness’

Challenges for policy makers

Religious literacy Intersection with secularism Respecting difference Managing conflict

Mapping diverse endowments Flexible funding Specialist capacity building Avoiding exploitation

Identifying leaders Assessing mandates Multi-channel representation Incentivising involvement

Challenges for faith communities

Policy literacy Respecting difference Balancing commitments Clarifying values for faith sector

Stewardship of resources Valuing intangible resources Marketing Renewing resource base

Supporting leaders Building a constituency Establishing accountability Developing inter-faith perspectives

Institutional design

Faith awareness training Informal dialogue/brokerage Symbol and ceremony Conflict resolution

Capacity building not draining Innovative funding frameworks Community value formula Resource sharing/exchange

Leadership training Internal governance support Inter-faith infrastructure Partnerships and informal dialogue


face the challenge of respecting differences between faith groups and of establishing mechanisms for resolving or anticipating conflicts. Symbolic and ceremonial mechanisms are important in this regard (from joint acts of worship to joint press releases in cases of community tension), alongside ongoing dialogue through informal channels as well as formal partnership mechanisms. The value base of inter-faith work requires constant renewal, as faith leaders seek the appropriate balance between religious and community-based commitments. (2) The resources rationale relates to the capacity for faith group involvement Resources are what faith groups need if they are to be involved in civil renewal. Across the board, faith groups are in possession of significant physical, human and social resources, although the resource profile of different communities varies immensely (carrying with it different opportunities and constraints). Faith groups have been described as ‘a cheap way into anywhere’. In many ways such a description is appropriate: faith groups offer their services for no financial reward and pride themselves on their community networks and access. But the flow of resources needs to be mapped. What do faith groups contribute to the wider community? What extra resources do (different) faith groups require to maintain, expand or redirect their work? How can government invest in faith groups as agents of civil renewal without implicating itself in their religious activities? We need to understand the ‘footprint’ of faith in the community, placing a value on intangible as well as physical resources (CULF, 2005). The contribution of faith communities to building social capital, especially within deprived and marginalized communities, is widely acknowledged. The challenge for policy makers and faith leaders is the mobilization of this social capital for the purposes of civil renewal. There is no automatic ‘spill over’ from religious to civic activity; faith may be associated more with bonding than bridging or linking social capital. Getting the structures and processes right is all-important – from specialist capacity building to the support of an inter-faith infrastructure and the design of dialogue opportunities between faith leaders, policy makers and other community activists. (3) The governance rationale relates to the outcome of faith group involvement The goal of faith group involvement in civil renewal is their participation in the co-production of services, in policy consultations, and in decision-making partnerships. Through these mechanisms, faith group involvement helps to plug the ‘governance deficit’ – especially in disadvantaged areas. There are important opportunities for using the ‘faith route’ to enable citizen involvement in local level structures and


(in the longer term) facilitate engagement with national level politics and identities. The policy challenge here concerns negotiating issues of accountability, representation and inclusion – within governance structures that are increasingly characterized by different types of community ‘mandate’. Policy makers have to compare, weigh and judge messages from these proliferating channels of representation, and ensure that decisions (and the reasons behind them) are communicated to citizens. Faith groups themselves are charged with identifying leaders and representatives and building a deliberative constituency (often on an inter-faith basis). Faith groups may need training and support in developing their internal governance and leadership skills, as well as being enabled to participate in community governance structures (like Regional Assemblies, Local Strategic Partnerships, and Crime and Disorder Partnerships). For the purposes of our model, integration is treated as an aspect of the governance rationale. Community cohesion is a specific, substantive (and contested) policy goal, which does not flow in any necessary way from the involvement of faith groups in civil renewal. But the more diverse, inclusive and vibrant governance arrangements that are associated with civil renewal surely offer the best prospects for the pursuit of such a goal.

Note 1. Twenty-seven semi-structured interviews were conducted between February and September 2005, and three meetings were observed. Further details on methodology (including the topic guides) can be found in an appendix to the full research report, which is available at http://www.activecitizen.org.uk/ files/downloads/Reports/DMU%20final%20report.pdf. With its ethnically diverse population and strong inter-faith traditions, Leicester was not selected on the grounds of typicality. Rather the case study acted as a valuable ‘research laboratory’ in which to test conceptual and practical tools regarding faith and civil renewal. Experiences from Leicester are presented in more detail in the research report. The authors would like to thank interviewees for giving up their time. We also acknowledge the contribution of Valeria Guarneros-Meza (De Montfort University) who assisted with the initial literature search.

References Angoy (2005) New Deal for Communities Faith Pilots Project, ODPM, Available at www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/publications.asp?did=1317 Blunkett, D. (2005) A New England: An English Identity within Britain, Speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research, 14th March 2005 (London: IPPR).

Vivien Lowndes and Rachael Chapman 183 Burns, N. et al. (2001) The Private Roots of Public Action (Harvard University Press). Cairns, B. et al. (2005) Faithful Regeneration: The Role and Contribution of Local Parishes in Local Communities in the Diocese of Birmingham (Home Office). Cantle, T. (2005) Community Cohesion: A New Framework for Race and Diversity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Community Cohesion Panel (2004) The End of Parallel Lives? The Chapter of the Community Cohesion Panel (London: Home Office). CULF (2005) ‘Recent surveys/mapping exercises undertaken across the English regions to measure the contribution of faith groups to social action and culture’, Commission for Urban Life and Faith, unpublished paper. Faithworks (2005) The Faithworks Lectures, March, Available at http:// www.faithworks.info/SubSection.asp?id=5849 Farnell et al. (2003) ‘Faith’ in Urban Regeneration: Engaging Faith Communities in Urban Regeneration (Bristol: The Policy Press). Faulkner, D. (2004) Civil Renewal, Diversity and Social Capital in a Multi-Ethnic Britain (London: The Runnymede Trust). Furbey, R. et al. (2006) Faith as Social Capital: Connecting or Dividing? (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Gabriel, O. (1995) ‘Political efficacy and trust’ in The Impact of Values (eds) J. van Deth and E. Scarbrough (OUP). Halman, L. and Petterssen, T. (2001) ‘Religion and Social Capital in Contemporary Europe’, Social Scientific Study of Religion (12) 63–93. Home Office (2001) Community Cohesion: A Chapter of the Independent Review Team (Cantle Report) (London: Home Office). Home Office (2003a) Active Citizens, Strong Communities: Progressing Civil Renewal (London: Home Office). Home Office (2003b) Home Office Citizenship Survey (London: Home Office). Home Office (2005) Improving Opportunity, Strengthening Society: The Government’s Strategy to Increase Race Equality and Community Cohesion, Race, Cohesion, Equality and Faith Directorate (London: Home Office). Home Office (undated) Faith Communities, Available at: http://communities. homeoffice.gov.uk/raceandfaith/faith/ Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2003) Engaging Faith Communities in Urban Regeneration, www.js.org.uk/knowledge/findings/housing/413.asp. Kundnani, A. (2002) The Death of Multiculturalism, IRR News, Available at www.j.org.uk/2002/april/ak000001.html. Leicester City Council (2005) Area Profile for the City of Leicester: Demographic and Cultural – Religion, Available at http://www.leicester.gov.uk/index. asp?pgid=1009#Rel. Leicester City Council (2004) Embracing the Present, Planning the Future (Leicester: LCC). Lewis, J. (2001) Faiths, Hope and Participation: Celebrating Faith Groups’ Role in Neighbourhood Renewal (London: The New Economics Foundation and Church), www.cuf.org.uk. LGA (2002) Faith and Community (London: Local Government Association). London Churches Group (2002) Regenerating London: Faith Communities and Social Action (London: London Churches Group for Social Action).

184 Re-energizing Citizenship Lowndes, V. (2004) ‘Religious Involvement and Social Capital: Incompatible, Invaluable or Irrelevant?’ Proceedings of the Launch Conference of the Manchester Centre for Public Theology, Religious Capital in Regenerating Communities, 10th May 2004. Northwest Development Agency (2003) Faith in England’s Northwest: The Contribution made by Faith Communities to Civil Society in the Region (Warrington: Northwest Development Agency). ONS (2004) Focus on Religion (ONS). Phillips, T. (2005) ‘Sleepwalking to segregation’, speech to Manchester Council for Community Relations, 22 September. Putnam, R. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press). Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Shuster). Reith, T. (2003) Releasing the Resources of the Faith Sector: A Faithworks Chapter (London: Faithworks). Smidt, C. (2003) Religion as Social Capital (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press). Verba et al. (1995) Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).

Conclusion Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker

The task of the conclusion is to bring together the theoretical and policy themes outlined at the beginning of the book, and to draw out the implications of the different kinds of studies reviewed in the intervening chapters. The challenge is to identify the overarching themes that arise from this kind of research, and also to demarcate differences of approach and contrasting underlying assumptions. Taking the wider themes, what follows reviews each chapter as a linked piece of discussion and evidence, suggestive of the wider picture. This summative analysis naturally leads to a discussion of the next steps for researchers, now that the Civil Renewal Research Programme has concluded. As well as arguing for more studies of re-energizing citizenship, the final section makes the case for the application of novel methodologies to the field, namely the use of experiments in civicness. Here the chapter advocates the use of what are called design experiments to evaluate new interventions in a timely way. These are qualitative, real-time experiments designed to tease out the underlying principles behind the design of an intervention and then to use the information collected to continually redesign the intervention until it is implemented effectively. The argument then is to use randomized control trials for longer-term forms of evaluation.

The agenda on re-energizing citizenship Chapter 1 of this book outlined the intellectual and academic currents behind the re-energizing citizenship agenda. A variety of factors have combined to produce the current interest by policy makers in this powerful topic which unites different parts of the political spectrum. One important contribution has been the wide-ranging set of evidence 185


that links civic involvement with a range of policy outcomes that policy makers care about, such as good health, prosperous economy, lower crime and disorder, and a fully functioning democracy. In an age when policy makers increasingly care about the tools and effectiveness of government, and when the key levers of state action – commands and finance – need to complemented by a whole series of soft incentives and smart ways of achieving public ends, the set of evidence around social capital and public policy outcomes becomes increasingly attractive. By involving citizens, governments may more effectively use and deploy the resources at their disposal. It is a tribute to the power of evidence-based research, and the academic agenda more generally, that such a set of ideas has concentrated the minds of policy makers and has driven them to introduce measures that rely on the voluntary activities of citizens. This is something that they cannot command and control, but can only encourage, hoping that citizens may overcome their habits of disengagement and spend their precious spare time engaging with the practical, messy and difficult world of public policy. Then there is the idea that civic renewal may be good for its own sake, giving benefits to the individual in terms of health and social wellbeing, which again links to the policy outcomes that politicians care about. Naturally, politicians and policy makers were willing to seize on this kind of argument and evidence because they were pre-disposed towards civil renewal, partly because it links with the pre-occupation those in power have with the current state of democracy; such as falling turnout, declining trust in politicians, and disengagement with the political process. It has become even conventional to think that part of the solution of representative democracy lies with recasting the democratic process so that civic involvement is not just confined to elections and group membership, but also involves a direct connection to policy – to the real world of policy making. As Chapter 1 outlined, such a willingness to embrace new methods of civic involvement has much to do with a wider movement of ideas about increasing insecurity, the breakdown of social capital, increasing intensity of work life, a privatized culture of living, the decline of local communities, mobility, the dominance of the media, and globalized pressures on societies and communities. Henry Tam’s chapter, ‘Civil renewal: the agenda for empowering citizens’, is a review of many of the links between these intellectual currents and the wider policy debate, making explicit the need to re-invigorate democracy with current policy initiatives, such as the civic pioneers.


Finally, as is well known from the policy literature, governments try as they go along, and expand the things they like and copy from other practices within government, in local government, and from overseas. From the perspective of policy change, it is no surprise that a new idea is latched onto, expands across government departments, and becomes a norm for policy intervention. The biggest question to answer is whether such ideas are just about fashion, and reflect the accident of the interest of a group of ministers in the Labour Governments since 1997, with the implication that as fashions come, so they go, and as such policy analysts will seek to review the next set of government pre-occupations. That the UK has had such a rapid flowering of policy initiative could be seen as tribute to its style of government, where the short tenure of some ministers and the tendency towards rapid change shapes a continual flow of initiatives. This book aims to show that these new institutional mechanisms and practices are a permanent feature of all modern liberal governments. However, to show that they are requires some justification, and one of the reasons for having the details of case studies presented here. It is also possible to draw attention to the wide range of initiatives across many government departments, in ODPM and the Home Office – on which the research in this book focuses, but extending across the departments of state, such as the Department of Work and Pensions, initiatives by the Treasury, the Department of Health, to name just a few. And such interest is not restricted to the UK or to the English-speaking world, but reflects a world-wide trend that follows from attempts to reform bureaucracy and to make it more responsive to consumers, and from the New Public Management movement of reform (Pollitt and Bouckhart, 2000; John, 2001).

The implementation challenge If the evidence base presents a general argument in favour of more community- and participation-based public management initiatives, it says less about how such initiatives can both effectively mobilize citizens and turn civic involvement into concrete policy outcomes within the sphere of competence. That such an evidence base does not exist is hardly surprising as many of these initiatives are new in character, and their evaluation forms part of more general policy evaluation. More understanding is needed of the precise causal mechanisms that lead from government action to participation and thence to outcomes; a need that arises from any set of policy initiatives that are relatively new


and untested, but appears in particular with civil renewal programmes, largely because there is considerable skepticism about such measures that appeal to the ‘softer’ incentives and to hard-to-define sets of activities. For these and other reasons, there is no doubt that to re-energize citizenship is a tough challenge, both from the citizen’s perspective and from that of the public administrators. Given that so much of the welfare state has depended on the citizens being the passive recipients (although this view is something of a stereotype), it takes something of a massive turnaround in the institutions of the state and the orientations of the bureaucrats that run it to operate in a different way, which means involving citizens directly in decision making, listening to them, and allowing them to shape the implementation of policies. To a certain extent, it requires government to cede power a little, for the sake of more democratic responsiveness and to create the collective action possible to solve governing problems and the wicked issues of the day. One of the questions that lies behind the civil renewal agenda is whether there has been a sea-change in the operation of public bureaucracies, or whether the participation mechanisms are skin-deep, taking place well away from the core of decision making. Such are the familiar criticisms of mechanisms to involve the public. Then there are the practical difficulties of introducing civil renewal, which range from ensuring that the participation is meaningful for the participants, that it does not impose too many costs upon them, and works well for the public administrators and others. Many of these issues are highlighted in Chapter 3 by Sarah Jones with Colin Roberts, ‘Involvement in community involvement: Referral Order volunteers’. The policy they evaluate has all the marks of civil renewal – a concrete policy area where the activity was previously done through public bureaucracies or not at all, where volunteers serve on panels to operate the process of restorative justice. The key contribution of their detailed study of the operation of the scheme is to show the practical difficulties as well as the achievements. These do not come from the lack of enthusiasm of the volunteers, but from their understandings of the process, and skills in engaging young people, for example. There are also a number of difficulties in representing the community through the volunteers, and a number of institutional constraints. The study shows that the basic idea of community involvement is good in theory, but that the system could work a lot better in practice. This suggests that policy makers could learn from the detailed operation of civil renewal and introduce a number of related institutional reforms to ensure its effective implementation.


That the community dimension should become an issue with respect to offending and crime is no surprise. It is one thing to make institutions work, but to make them join up with communities in a meaningful and productive way is one of the biggest challenges of civil renewal. And in the crime field in particular, it has long been known that just relying on the efficiency of policing institutions themselves, rather than the community connection, is a short-sighted and limited perspective. Such has been the reaction against technological policing and the perceived need to have more community-based policing; a concern that goes back to the 1980s. This argument is taken one step further in Chapter 4 by Anthony Bottoms and Andrew Wilson ‘Civil Renewal, Control Signals And Neighbourhood Safety’, which examines the role of control signals in feelings of community safety. What may matter in public outcomes is the perception of safety as well as the direct experience or the community’s experience of actual crime and anti-social behaviour. Whereas earlier research had stressed the importance of the design features of estates, such as street lighting, what is new in this study is the direct link to civil renewal activities. By looking at perceptions on the four estates, they are able to make some conclusions about the impact of civil renewal measures, in particular community involvement with solving local problems. This research implies that the community linkage is an important factor in the perceptions of citizens of the efforts of public authorities to connect with citizens. Although outside the scope of this research, one can only surmise that such triggers have a beneficial effect in raising community confidence by creating a series of virtuous circles of civic involvement, perceptions of that involvement, effective policing, which then feeds back. The next study provides more evidence about the way in which these community interactions link with outcomes on the kinds of estates discussed in Chapter 4. David Prior, Kathryn Farrow, Basia Spalek and Marian Barnes in Chapter 5 ‘Anti-Social Behaviour and Civil Renewal’, also based on four estates, examines the rich detail to get the implementation picture, and one that links to the wider policy agenda on anti-social behaviour. Here the community has a part to play in the partnerships involved and also in the more informal relationships and networks operating in these areas. By taking in the larger set of interactions, rather than just the perceptions, as in the Bottoms and Wilson study, there is naturally a more contingent take on the possibilities and limitations of such interventions. The authors highlight some of the difficulties of getting civil renewal to work on the ground, such as getting an effective level of trust between the various


actors in these communities. The context of existing structures and policies continues to have negative effects, as well as the short-term timescales of recent initiatives. These writers take a more structural and sociological perspective on the success of civil renewal, focusing on the characteristics of deprived communities where these initiatives are expected to bed down, but where poverty and the weak history of civic infrastructure make getting started a tough challenge. Yet in spite these constraints, the authors do think that some institutional reform in local areas is desirable, in particular to increase the flexibility of public agencies in response to local problems.

Incentives and costs However, there are other evaluations of the effectiveness of community-based initiatives in the field of anti-social behaviour which do not share the pessimism of Prior and his colleagues. Simon Bastow, Helen Beck, Patrick Dunleavy and Liz Richardson in Chapter 6 ‘Incentive Schemes and Civil Renewal’ deploy insights from a rational actor model of human behaviour and hypothesize that clear incentives and constraints can alter human behaviour. Again they look at four estates (which must be the golden number for anti-social behaviour studies!). Rather than assuming that civic involvement and group action can be conjured from good-will, they look at the role of incentives in community activity through the provision of services for neighbourliness in some areas as against the provision of financial incentives in others. What theory says is that these incentives need not be that great, which may be an important policy-orientated finding, especially as their surveys showed a positive evaluation of the schemes and their research indicated many beneficial knock-on effects. It may be the case that the embedded approach of Prior and his colleagues and the rational actor approach of Bastow et al. may not be quite so opposed as it would first appear, for it is deprived communities which may need more incentives to raise their game. Perhaps through anti-social behaviour, their original levels of collective action have been eroded, and a tipping point of low community cooperation has been reached. Using incentives to tip communities back to more cooperation may just be the smart solution that these communities are looking for. If such a beneficial view of the economics of participation is offered by Bastow et al.’s chapter, some rather more cautious approach is given in Edward Andersson, Diane Warburton and Richard Wilson’s chapter, ‘The True Costs of Public Participation’. This study reminds policy


makers that successful implementation of civil renewal initiatives may not be a sufficient criterion for their overall evaluation because the costs of raising participation need to be assessed, both for the organizations and for the individuals involved, and factored into the policy choices. It must be the efficient use of resources, not participation at any cost, and they highlight the failure of public organizations to know what these costs are. Interestingly, having set up an economic model, they stress the limitation to this way of understanding civil renewal, and cite the work of Frey and Goette (1999), which suggests that highlighting incentives might crowd out civil renewal activities. This may question some of the conclusions reached by Bastow and colleagues. Andersson et al.’s chapter steers a line between using the tools of conventional economic analysis to calculate costs and benefits, and recognizing the wider dimension to participation and the ethical framework within which such acts take place and are understood. These wider normative concerns about understanding participation are also important for identifying what drives people to be involved, and in considering the effectiveness of measures to involve citizens. These concerns appeared in the Prior et al. piece, with their reflections on the different values of ethnic groups; they come to the fore in Vivien Lowndes and Rachel Chapman’s chapter ‘Faith, Hope and Clarity: Faith Group Involvement in Civil Renewal’, which seeks to explore both the theory and practice of faith involvement. And with faith, we appear to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from the economic approach to participation highlighted in two of the earlier chapters. Indeed, writers on social capital emphasize the normative and value pre-occupations of religion as part of the foundations of social capital (Putnam, 2000). On the other hand, the chapter sees the normative aspect of faith as only one part of the rationale; the resources available to churches and their organizations is another aspect of the way in which they mobilize and add value for civil renewal objectives. In that sense, the chapter balances the different motivations behind re-energizing citizenship.

The normative dimension and conceptual challenges Governments wishing to harness the potential for civic engagement may consider the route through faith an obvious one to go down because civic involvement plays a key role in the public activities of all faiths, and one which features in its central teachings. In addition, religious involvement often makes sense because such organizations are


one of the main civic organizations that exist in the places that governments worry about for policy and political reasons; inner cities and some of the very estates that feature in the earlier chapters on antisocial behaviour. For it is urban areas that have some of the social capital resources, through churches and other organizations. The level of organization in civil society is such that governments may wish to harness these resources in ways that are consistent with the self-organizing, non-traditional, non-state centred basis of current activity on citizenship. In addition, faith is how governments may address the civic capacity and integration of different ethnic groups and their religions. While the attraction is there for government to work in this way, Lowndes and Chapman elucidate the complexities of this kind of thinking, particularly the difficult process of linking faith and ethnicity, and the differing perceptions of civil renewal where faith organizations tend to stress normative concerns while governments operate from the instrumental rationality perspective. This book has explored the concept of the civic as it is applied to public policy issues. We started from the excitement of the rediscovery of the civic and active citizenship, and the promise it has for policy maker and academic alike. There are many initiatives where civic ideas have been used to roll out the delivery of services, whether on antisocial behaviour or on referral orders. And there is much research on social capital and participation to suggest that the civic is the way to go, as well as there being good normative reasons for doing so. More involvement yields a wide variety of good social outcomes. While there are links between involvement, and better performance and outcomes, using policy levers to change the outcomes over a reasonably short time frame remains highly difficult to achieve for a whole host of practical reasons, particularly as policy makers find it hard to move ahead on core policy problems, and communities find it hard to trust policy makers. Moreover, the key motivations behind civil renewal are still not clearly understood: whether the costs and benefits are right for both policy maker and citizen, and whether the moral dimension has been engaged with. The complexities involved in engaging people in civic processes and structures, and in deriving the proposed benefits from this, must be recognized and made more explicit if civic renewal is to be anything more than a rhetorical device. Issues surrounding how to get people involved, representativeness, and individual and institutional capacity persist and must be addressed, both in specific processes and more generally. A more fundamental concern is to delineate ‘what


counts’ as active citizenship. Does this refer to specific forms of engagement and exclude others? Is engagement on an individual, self-interested basis constitutive of the civic or are we referring to more collective forms which develop a sense of community and a recognition of civic responsibilities? How can the sustained engagement suggested by civic renewal be achieved when participation is predominantly of an episodic nature. Can civil renewal really be governmentled? How do we ensure that engagement is meaningful to participants so that they feel they have a real input into decision making? How can the likely resistance to changes in the working practices of organizations and challenges to existing power structures and vested interests be negotiated? How can we ensure that the beneficial outcomes claimed for active citizenship are actually obtained? Many of these issues are closely related to the normative uses of general notions of the civic, such as participation, citizenship and community. These are powerful concepts with strong symbolic resonance, explaining their ability to mobilize support from across the political spectrum. Generating civicness is perceived as a panacea for numerous previously intractable social, economic, and political problems: social exclusion; community cohesion; crime; democratic deficit; political apathy and disillusionment; and unresponsive and under-performing public services. Evoking such concepts legitimizes policies and programmes while devolving responsibility to citizens, thereby reducing costs and ensuring ownership which is central to success – or perceived success. Civil renewal can also be viewed as a unifying theme which has been used by the New Labour government to portray a joined-up approach to policy (Kearns, 2004). While these notions may be conceptually powerful, they may be less meaningful in substantive terms. There is little discrimination between the potential benefits for different policy areas and the whole field suffers from a lack of critical analysis – both theoretical and empirical. This relates back to one of the fundamental issues in the civil renewal discourse: the failure to distinguish between means and ends. Civil renewal is treated as both a solution to problems (a means) and as a policy objective (an end in itself) which creates tremendous problems in evaluation. It is often unclear what the objectives of civil renewal policies are which makes it difficult to measure their impact, leading to a focus on process indicators, based on assumed benefits. Also, policy makers find it too easy to settle into routines of involvement that are not entirely appropriate, largely because they inherit certain practices and particular methods of implementation present


themselves. These themes emerge strongly in the findings of the Home Office research programme and will appear again as the research agenda develops. But such findings should not be primarily regarded as an indication of poor performance and weak progress. Just that the first steps towards the transformation of public services are the hardest to make and that mutual learning can in time contribute to better policy outcomes.

The future research agenda The research described in the chapters of this book makes a start in questioning some of the assumptions underlying the civil renewal agenda and starts to build up some empirical evidence about potential outcomes. However, further research in this area may need more fine grained analysis of the causal mechanisms. For one of the conclusions of this review of research is that there is still much more knowledge needed on the core problems of how to stimulate civicness and how to evaluate its effects, and both questions require an elucidation of the complex causes and effects. The kinds of data currently available can allow some handle on these questions, and the survey data which is analysed in two of the chapters provides some useful evaluations of current initiatives and their links to outcomes. The comparative case study approach, such as of four estates, is similarly useful in teasing out the links between involvement and the operation of current policy initiatives. And using the views of local residents and stakeholders can act as a corrective bottom-up approach to the rhetoric associated with government policies. But the activity associated with new policies also provides another research opportunity for researchers, that of using experiments to evaluate reforms, and in this way takes forward the research agenda and complements the research studies like those in this volume. In examining the current policy agenda, researchers should follow the advice of Donald Campbell (1979), and see ‘reforms as experiments’. Campbell goes further to suggest that such an approach is especially appropriate where policy makers and practitioners have justified reform ‘on the basis of the importance of the problem, not the certainty of their answer, and are committed to going on to other potential solutions if the first trial fails,’ (Campbell, 1979; p. 109). It may be over-rationalistic and utopian to suggest that policy can be moved forward by sequential trials, but the spirit of Campbell’s commitment to research running alongside reform would seem highly


desirable in the area of civic responsibility where, above all, policy makers are searching for answers and are far from clear about what will work. It is the complexity and uncertainty of what is being done that precisely makes the case for an experimental approach, contrary to those who assert that in those circumstances all we are left with is the option of producing more or less sophisticated narrative accounts. The final sections of this chapter aim to move the research agenda forward by offering an account of design experiments and randomized controlled trials, and defending these methods against the criticisms that are commonly made of them.

Design experiments In the initial exploratory phase in developing and crafting initiatives, the proposal is to use the methodology of design experiments. It is worth just emphasizing the understanding of the exploratory phase implied here. The aim is to actively search for what might work, to look at options, potential improvements and interventions. This is a phase that requires an iterative and sustained relationship between practitioners, policy makers and researchers. ‘Design experimentation’ or ‘design based research’ takes inspiration from an ‘engineering’ understanding of social and political interventions rather than a ‘natural science’ viewpoint. As yet, the approach has focused primarily on educational issues, particularly the design and use of teaching strategies, instruments and curriculum development, but it would appear to have a wider application. As argued earlier, because of the limited number of studies and interventions in this field as a precursor to an experiment, a systematic review is unlikely to deliver comprehensive ‘on the ground’ insights. The nature of the interventions is likely to be so complex and uncertain, and the detail of the causal factors at work so difficult to fathom, that there will be a case for developing pilot schemes as a core part of policy development. This situation is where design experiments come into their own as a form of piloting. There are three main features of a design experiment. First a cycle of interventions is applied to a real world context and detailed records are kept of the process of ‘enactment’. At the end of a cycle, the data is analysed, modifications are made to the design of the intervention, and the process is repeated. The approach is therefore experimental in an everyday sense of the word rather than in the manner of a controlled trial. Researchers intervene in real world settings to assess the impact of


the intervention, adjust the design of the intervention and continue repeatedly until some judgement is made that the intervention is working satisfactorily, or is unlikely to work satisfactorily. Second, because the design of interventions is guided by theory, design experimentation is more than a trial-and-error approach to discovery. It aims to produce models as well as successful interventions. The design of an intervention is based on clear theoretical presuppositions which are placed under scrutiny as the intervention proceeds. The idea that theory development is essential to evaluation is now widely accepted in the evaluation literature (Chen, 1990; Pawson and Tilley, 1997; Cabinet Office, 2003; ch. 1). The overarching aim is to identify the logical sequence through which an intervention or mechanism might produce effects. Such ‘a theory of change’ could be established through interviews with key policy makers and practitioners and through participant observation by the researchers. In addition, as part of a design experiment it might be possible to carry out a simulation exercise with key participants in order to work through a process of change in an artificial setting but one informed by an understanding of the context in which the policy is being developed. Focus groups might offer a similar mechanism for testing out ideas. Finally, there are paper-based exercises to map out connections or even the possibility of computer simulations. Thirdly, theories are evaluated not against some standard of truth value (whether absolute or comparative), but rather on their contribution to the successful design of interventions. Designs (and policies) are evaluated more instrumentally against some measure of utility. The specific design may not apply in another setting because of the specifics of context and circumstances, but the general thinking and underlying theory might. Design experiments are about refining interventions so that they work and also about trying to establish some more general understanding of what underlies the achievement of an effective intervention. The idea of design experimentation is not about a final evaluation but rather a process of exploration that links researchers, practitioners and policy makers. Its claim is to allow for the adaptation and development of interventions and to fine-tune them to meet the objectives and challenges of policy and practice. Depending on the programme being researched, the cycle can last weeks or years. A common characteristic of design experiments is their collaborative nature and the active involvement of practitioners in the design and implementation of research. As such, the approach recognizes that practitioners always have valuable information and insights


that can help the successful development of policy as a whole and that policies rely on this knowledge for their successful application in the variety of different contexts in which they are applied. A key question for design experimenters is how to decide when an adjustment to an intervention goes beyond a critical boundary so that the intervention no longer accords with the underlying theory. There is a tension here for design experimentation. Scientific standards highlight issues of validity and reliability in the assessment of knowledge, from the engineering point of view the critical question concerns catastrophic ‘failure’ and avoiding it. Design experiments are about fixing things and adapting. They lend themselves to exploratory phases in policy development but are not appropriate on their own for other phases. Pitfalls can arise from the collaborative nature of the research, either because of the actions taken in implementing the intervention or because of the way in which data is recorded and analysed. In education research, teachers (and students) who know they are involved in a piece of research may, through enthusiasm for the project, work harder than otherwise (the Hawthorn effect). The teacher or school may select an unrepresentative group of students to participate, altering the chances of an intervention appearing to be successful. Furthermore, because design experiments are a type of action research, researchers find themselves in the roles of both advocate and judge. This can lead to a bias towards positive assessment of an intervention (the Rosenthal effect). The usual procedure for mitigating measurement bias is to ensure that the researcher does not know which group has received the treatment. This is not an option for design experiments because of the intensive and often qualitative nature of the data collection. Design experiments are conducted in complex contexts involving many different variables all interacting with one another. In the absence of the systematic screening provided by randomized control, any attempt at causal inference faces serious problems in disentangling all these factors. Successful interventions may be a result of the additional resources or time put into an activity rather than anything to do with the nature of the intervention itself, or it may be a result of the unrepresentative nature of the group that participated in the intervention. In short, design experiments can provide a useful element in discovering applicable and warrantable knowledge but they will not do the job on their own. Design experiments, as both McCandliss et al. (2003) and Shavelson et al. (2003) argue, can benefit from appropriate collaborations with other research approaches.


It is clear, however, that the design experiment does have something unique to offer. Firstly, in the piloting stage of a policy, the design experiment cycle (theoretically informed design, enactment, systematic assessment, redesign, enactment, assessment), presents an opportunity to illuminate a number of the key trade-offs in policy design. In the context of civic design, experimentation can help distinguish core policy aspects, where policy needs to be prescriptive and uniform in implementation, from the local choice aspects, where variation in local context implies reliance on the local knowledge and experience of the professionals involved in developing programmes on the ground. Design experiments at this early stage may also aid the development of evaluative criteria for a policy that do not lead to perverse incentives and administrative overload. Secondly, design experiments satisfy the impatience of policy makers for something to be done, but they do so in a way that informs and develops effective policy interventions rather than relying on a leap of faith. Design experiments do imply intense data collection and long periods of research activity and of course there are costs associated with these activities. This may be the cost of better policy: by carrying out research and policy adaptation simultaneously, design experiments can provide nearly immediate payback from research activity. The unique benefit of this approach is that it integrates practice with systematic knowledge development. Thirdly, in the dissemination and implementation of policy, design experiments can help professionals to adapt programmes to local needs and can help with a process of continual refinement, improvement and change in the face of changing needs. By linking policy dissemination to the underlying theory that informs the policy, design experimentation has the potential to be a more powerful instrument for improving delivery across the country. It is also likely that design experiments as dissemination can facilitate local ownership of programmes because they assume a more autonomous and proactive professional than the passive consumer of good practice guidance. A final benefit would be an increase in practice informed by research and in practically relevant research. This is not to argue for turning practitioners into researchers; there is still a role for experience and professional judgement in policy implementation. Nor is it to diminish the role of basic research in academia. Rather, it is to argue for a more systematic route between research and real world practice.


Randomized control trials The exploratory phase can reveal many powerful insights and enable interventions that work to be better understood. Ultimately the goal of evaluation should be to show that some interventions have made a positive difference greater than could be achieved by alternatives. To answer the ‘what works’ question means being able to demonstrate the impact of an intervention, what effect was achieved and how that effect was achieved. Again, a variety of evaluation methods are available, but particular attention is paid here to the prospects of understanding cause and effect and establishing net impact effects using definitive randomized controlled trials (RCTs). At the stage of long-term evaluation, the intervention will need to be held as a steady and particular mechanism if it is to be assessed in a way that avoids complications. The defining feature of a controlled experiment is the establishment of two or more comparison groups that are similar in all respects which may affect the outcome of the process being studied (Gomm, 2004; ch. 2). Importantly, in true experiments it is the random allocation of research subjects (be they people, groups or institutions) to one or other group that is used to ensure that the groups are similar in ways relevant to the research questions. These groups are then treated the same in all ways except those that are the focus of the research. Finally, observations are made on key variables for each member of the two groups both prior to and after the intervention. ‘Pre’ and ‘post’ intervention measurements are the minimum required. In practice, many research projects with an experimental design also monitor the implementation of the policy action using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods. The strength of random allocation to different groups is that it can control for the influence of factors that are known to affect the outcome and the influence of factors that may affect the outcome of the trial but are unknown to researchers. Given the complexity of the civic agenda as a research area, it is likely that in many instances there will be unknown factors, or as importantly, factors that cannot be measured, which will affect the outcome of interest. But the major caveat here is that randomization will only work to produce similar groups if the number of subjects being randomized is large enough. This may be a particular problem for the civic where the unit of analysis is often at an aggregate level, such as a community or neighbourhood. In short, where there are many possible factors (other than the intervention or policy) that can have an effect on outcomes of interest, then randomization needs a


large sample, but where outcomes are thought to act at a community level there may be fewer subjects available to randomize. The Medical Research Council has developed guidance notes for cluster trials where randomization occurs at a level of aggregation higher than the individual. Cluster randomized trials (CRTs) are used to evaluate group interventions and individual interventions where there are group level effects (MRC, 2002). In CRTs, social groups rather than individuals are randomly allocated to intervention and control, although in medical research the outcomes of the intervention are still normally measured at an individual level. This strategy is appropriate in a number of circumstances. It can be used where interventions are delivered to a group and affect the group as a whole; where an intervention is aimed at a professional or an administrative unit and the interest is in the impact on the community served; and where there are spillover effects – for example when an intervention given to one individual affects others in a group (ibid; p. 3–4). This last condition is particularly relevant for the civic agenda, where spillover through social networks is likely to be an important factor. Some technical problems with this type of design have been identified (ibid) but they can be addressed with the correct statistical procedures. Another concern is that the two stage recruitment process may lead to bias in the selection of the cohorts. If there are too few subjects available for study, complete randomization cannot lead to powerful results and some form of stratification is likely to be used to try to ensure that intervention and control groups are similar in known characteristics. The research then moves into quasi-experimental strategies such as matched pair designs. When there are few subjects, the unavoidable trade-off is the deliberate controlling of ‘knowns’ and the random controlling for ‘unknowns’. The strength of controlled experiments is in identifying causal relations between intervention and outcome at work in the cases studied. They can produce results with strong ‘internal validity’, but policy makers and practitioners also need to know how widely the results and the policy can be generalized. If the experiment is large enough, sub-group comparisons can be drawn on to infer whether an intervention works better depending on gender, location, class or a variety of characteristics. But there is no easy answer to ‘where and when it works’ other than to continually refine research questions and carry out more research, some of it using controlled experimentation and some of it using other methods. The key goal for researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike must be to ensure that the results of this research are cumulative.


The key strength of RCTs is that if the conditions of internal validity are sustained, then the question of the impact of an intervention can receive a definitive answer. By random allocation of units to be affected by the treatment, and by comparing the impact of groups that have been treated with control groups that have not, and if all other things have been kept equal between the treated and non-treated groups, we can see whether the intervention has worked. This is the core logic of experiment. The difficulty lies in maintaining the conditions for effective implementation and internal validity. As Jowell (2003; p. 16) notes, RCTs have been widely used in Britain in medical research and have recently been carried out in a few cases in applied social interventions, mostly in the employment and training field. He goes on to note: ‘It is fair to report that most of these pilots were bedevilled by practical problems of implementation,’ (Jowell, 2003; p. 17). The problems were, in part, explained by the inadequate training and support given to the staff involved, and to the relative novelty of the approach, it is claimed. Conducted well, RCTs are capable of producing the highest quality of warrantable knowledge. Practical difficulties affect RCTs, as they do all other research methods, even in circumstances where there is considerable experience of implementation. Greenberg et al. (2003) review the long history of RCTs in the United States in the social field and provide examples of where trials have had to be aborted or modified because of administrative and other problems. Particular problems can be caused, for example, by attrition between participants from different programmes, although the study shows that problems can also be overcome in most instances. Another review of US experience (Moffit, 2004) in welfare programmes argues that although challenging issues relating to the internal validity of experiments can generally be overcome, there are greater challenges in establishing external validity. Controls over the treatment and the groups in the trial can be established to a sufficient standard to show that the effects found in the particular trial are valid. The bigger set of difficulties revolves around establishing the external validity of the findings. Will the intervention work in the same way elsewhere? There are a number of commonly raised problems that would have to be considered in the context of work on the civic. Estimating the effects of system-wide reform can be particularly problematic using randomized trials because of contamination effects. Feedback mechanisms (such as networking between people and media coverage), perhaps caused by the intervention,


may in turn make it difficult to maintain the purity of the trial. If a scheme is being rolled out nationally it is very hard to ensure that the control groups are not in some way affected by the intervention. If the scheme is kept very local and specific there may be particular site or place effects that are difficult to control, and there is always the danger of unplanned and uncontrolled treatment variation. If the intervention is complex in its potential causal factors, then knowing what is going on inside the ‘black box’ can be difficult. The design of an experiment with enough variation built into it to allow for the testing of a range of sub-factors in an overall framework of causality is a considerable technical challenge in terms of policy design and with respect to maintaining its legitimacy and acceptance. None of these difficulties are insurmountable but their existence needs to be taken into account in the design of experiments and in deciding the balance between experimental and nonexperimental forms of evaluation. Pawson and Tilley (1997; ch. 2) present a critique of the underlying model of social causation that, they argue, underwrites the experimental method. They argue that experiments rely on a ‘successionist’ theory of causation: that causation is established by following the connection between cause and effect. The aim of the experiment is to clear the extraneous noise out of the way so that a clear connection can be drawn between an intervention (cause) and an outcome (effect). Pawson and Tilley draw on a generative theory of causation to argue that the real challenge is to view social interventions internally and understand how and why social programmes have the potential to cause change. Change is a product of human action and the role of the evaluator is to understand the conditions under which change can occur. We would counter that experiments could contribute to an understanding of causation as favoured by Pawson and Tilley and are not dependent on a ‘successionist’ logic (Bennett, 1996). In short, understanding causes could be integrated into the experimental method without great difficulty. A range of other doubts have been raised about the ethical and political viability of RCTs. Jowell (2003; p. 17) notes significant political concern in the UK over the random allocation of individuals to treatment or non-treatment in respect to some of the employment and training pilots. In short, is it fair that some people should receive help and others not? The reply is, of course, that it is only fair if we are not sure whether the intervention will work. Then it can be argued on


utilitarian grounds, to do with the greater good, that experimentation to find out what works is ultimately of benefit to all. Notwithstanding this riposte, the legitimacy of any RCTs will have to be sustained by careful communication and explanation and by showing how they are part of a wider programme. There are also wider issues about whether RCTs are really suited to the UK parliamentary system and process of policy development (Hogwood, 2000). The relatively widespread use of social experiments in the United States, it is argued, reflects the ‘natural’ focus of states as sites for experimentation. The long-standing tenure of many senior legislators at both federal and state level means they can wait for results, and the generally decentralized focus of policy making in turn means that policy does not have to be right because the real issue is the competition between different mandates and options. The UK in contrast has politicians who tend, because of their ministerial careers, to focus on the short term. They operate in a system that is relatively centralized (notwithstanding devolution) and adversarial in style, so that policy options, once adopted, tend to be defended and cannot so easily be subject to trial. Moffit (2004), however, suggests that the decentralized structures of the United States make experimentation more difficult as individual states or local jurisdictions go their own way on trials and do not follow national guidelines or protocols. It may be that the more centralized systems of the UK would suit experimentation if the issue of short-term pressures to deliver could be kept in check. The final challenge that RCTs face is whether they will deliver enough in order to justify the scale of investment that might be required. Although some are sceptical about how much the tradition of experimentation has delivered in terms of definitive results (Pawson and Tilley, 1997), others are more positive. A detailed review of the experience in the United States of social experiments (Greenberg et al., 2003) shows that the impact of the research in part depends on its quality but also on its timeliness, effective communication and wide applicability and relevance to the concerns of policy making. This indicates that where the technical, practical and other difficulties can be overcome, RCTs can make an effective contribution to policy. The judgement of Jowell (2003; p. 19) is that while RCTs are not the be-all and end-all in methodological terms they are ‘seriously underused in Britain in circumstances where the technical advantages would seem to outweigh their other potential difficulties.’


Conclusions The chapters in this book, and the research agenda – using both design experiments and randomized control trials – outlined here, show the challenge and potential of investigations into re-energizing citizenship. The book has set out the achievements of the research that was commissioned under the Home Office Civil Renewal Research Programme. It has also shown the gaps in knowledge. This might seem the usual cry of ‘more research’, but some special features of the topic appear here. In part this is a question of the quantity of the research commissioned and how much it can cover the ground. No matter how useful the studies in this book are, they focus on some elements of the policy agenda while neglecting others. The other reason for the lack of knowledge is the need for methodological innovation in how civil renewal is studied. The review of design experiments and randomized control trials aims to be a challenge for policy makers and researchers alike. Getting a handle on what causes civicness and how governments may use it to promote public ends offers a massive payoff for both practitioners and academics. The hope is that the research reported in this volume is the beginning of a long series of influential studies.

References Bennett, T. (1996) ‘What’s new in evaluation research: A note on the Pawson and Tilley article’ British Journal of Criminology (36:4) 567–573. Cabinet Office (2003) The Magenta Book: Guidance Notes on Policy Evaluation and Analysis (London: Cabinet Office). Campbell, D. (1979) ‘Reforms as experiments’ in Social Research: Principles and Procedures (eds) J. Bynner and K. Stribley (London: Longman). Chen, H. (1990) Theory-Driven Evaluations (Newbury Park, CA: Sage). Frey, B. and Goette, L. (1999) Does Pay Motivate Volunteers? (Zurich: University of Zurich) (Working Paper No. 15). Gomm, R. (2004) Social Research Methodology: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Greenberg, D., Linkz, D. and Mandell, M. (2003) Social Experimentation and Public Policy Making (Washington DC: The Urban Institute Press). Hogwood, B. (2000) ‘The consideration of social experiments in the UK: Policy, political, ethical and other concerns’ Paper to ESRC conference on Social Experiments, 9–10 November. John, P. (2001) Local Governance in Western Europe (London: Sage). Jowell, R. (2003) Trying it out: The Role of ‘Pilots’ in Policy-Making (London: Cabinet Office). Kearns, A. (2004) Social Capital, Regeneration and Urban Policy, CNR Paper 15, ESRC Centre for Neighbourhood Research.

Tessa Brannan, Peter John and Gerry Stoker 205 McCandliss, B., Kalchman, M. and Bryant, P. (2003) ‘Design experiments and laboratory approaches to learning: steps toward collaborative exchange’ Educational Researcher (21:1) 14–16. Medical Research Council (MRC) (2002) Cluster Randomised Trials: Methodological and Ethical Considerations (mimeo). Moffit, R. (2004) ‘The role of randomised field trials in social science research: A perspective from evaluations of reforms of social welfare programs’ American Behavioural Scientist (47) 506–540. Pawson, R. and Tilley, N. (1997) Realistic Evaluation (London: Sage). Pollitt, C. and Bouckhart, G. (2000) Public Management Reform. A Comparative Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster). Shavelson, R., Philips, D., Towne, L. and Feuer, M. (2003) ‘On the science of education design studies’ Educational Researcher (21:1) 25–28.

Index active citizenship, see citizenship, re-energization of ‘Active Learning for Active Citizenship’ initiative, 38 Andersson, Edward, 6, see also citizen participation, cost analysis of Anglo-American political thinking, 29 anti-social behaviour, 17, 91, 98, 192 change strategies capacity building, 107–8 community engagement, 106–7 power enforcement, 105–6 and civil renewal, contexts and issues cultural context, 100–1 deprivation context, 100 impact and challenges, of renewal formal and informal capacity, 102–3 impact of policies and services, 104–5 trust and distrust, 103–4 incentive schemes, role of, see incentive schemes and civil renewal and multi-agency action plans, 99 Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, 92 Anti-Social Behaviour Order, 92 Barnardos Wales project, 151 Barnes, Marian, see anti-social behaviour; civil renewal, and antisocial behaviour Bastow, Simon, 5, see also civil renewal, and incentive schemes, case study approach Beacon Councils, 21 Beck, Helen, see civil renewal, and incentive schemes, case study approach ‘best practice’ case studies, 22 Best Value scheme, 21 black Christians, 6, 166

Blackthorn Good Neighbours Project, 121–2 Blunkett, David, 9, 27, 164 Bottoms, Anthony, 4, see also civil renewal, control signals and neighbourhood safety Brannan, Tessa, see citizenship, re-energization of Brown, Gordon, 9 budgeting practices, 139–40 Camden Council, 149–50 CBHOs, see Community-Based Housing Organizations CDRPs, see Crime and Disorder Partnerships Chapman, Rachael, 6, see also civil renewal, and faith groups Chicago neighbourhoods, 63 childcare services, 19 Children and Young People’s Area Parliament, 33 christianity, 165 Church of England, 6, 172, 174, 176 citizen empowerment citizen power renewal, 26–9 citizenship development, 37–8 civil infrastructure development, 34–5 public space provisions, 35–6 recovering progressive ethos of, 29–31 re-orientation of public institutions, 31–4 subsidiarity-based decision making, 36–7 UK service user involvement, 145 citizen participation confidence level in intervening, 120 cost analysis of, see also referral order volunteers community involvement, case study of 206

Index 207 case against measurement, 141–4 case for measurement, 139–41 challenges in, 142–3 cost of conflict in the environmental sector, 145–6 direct democracy and happiness, 146 ethical objections in, 143–4 forward agenda, 156–7 future research, 158–9 implications, 153–4 issues, 138–9 limitations in methods, 154–6 participatory agricultural research in, 145 recommendations, 157–8 research analysis, 146–53 World Bank, role of, 145 enforcement group, barriers in reporting to, 119 in health service, 19–20 mainstreaming of, 21 principle of, 21 in YOT forums, 57–8 citizenship, re-energization of, 3 agenda on, 185–7 anti-social behavior, control of, 17–18 areas of policy initiatives and crime, 16–17 democracy, 16 and education, 19 employment, 16 and health, 19–20 conservative insights, 9 intrinsic benefits in participation, 14 local government, role of, 20–2 and market-based globalization, 13 meaning of, 10–15 policy agenda, aim of, 8 promotion of, 15–16 regeneration and housing issues, 18–19 use of social science indicators, 22–3 citizenship and ‘Britishness’, 178 citizenship day, 178 citizenship education, 19

‘citizens’ juries, 38 civic agenda, 14 civic pioneers, 27 civil renewal, see also citizen empowerment agenda of, 26 and antisocial behaviour, 189–90 change strategies in, 102–5 community engagement in, 93–6 crime and disorder, 98 governance, 93–6, 98 impact and challenges in renewal strategy, 102–5 profile of Greenhill district, 96–8 related issues in, 100–1 service delivery in, 98–100 social capital in, 93–6 campaigners of, 29 control signals and neighbourhood safety, 189 empirical study, see control signals and neighbourhood safety, empirical research government-citizen partnerships, 86–7 subareas, 81–6 and faith groups diversity, 170–1 embedded identities, 169–70 holistic commitments, 169 human capital, 173 integrative rationale, 177–8 model for, 180 physical capital, 174–5 rationales for faith group involvement, 164–7 representation and leadership, 175–6 resources rationale, 171–3 social capital, 173–4 values added, 167–9 future research agenda, 194–5 and incentive schemes, a case study approach, 187–8, 190–1 problems with adults, 116–17 problems with youngsters, 115–16 public authority, role of, 117–21 resident evaluation of, 121–4

208 Index civil renewal, see also citizen empowerment – continued resident perceptions, of alternative approaches, 124–7 responses about neighbourhoods, 114–15 social control, 115 study areas, 112–14 theories on individual incentives, 128–35 issues relating to indices of production of the ‘good community’, 76–7 membership of social and political groups, 77 perception of policing and crime prevention activities, 77–9 UK Government action plan, 27 civil society definition of, 2 dual nature of, 2 malaise of, 2 cluster randomized trials, 200 community-based housing organizations, 18 community capacity building, 107–8 community cohesion, 177 community engagement, 94, 106–7 ‘Community Gold’ schemes, 113 community involvement, see referral order volunteers community leader, 21 community or estate agreements, see good neighbour declarations community safety, 16–17 community sentencing, 17 community value formula, 172 community wardens, 17 ‘Community Working Together’ (CWT) Scale, 76–7, 80, 83 composite community safety index, 98 control signal, 64–6, see also control signals and neighbourhood safety, empirical research control signals and neighbourhood safety, empirical research multiple regression analysis, 80, 88 police recorded crimes, 67–9 qualitative survey, 69

research areas, 66–7 result analysis issues of civil renewal, 76–9 multivariate analysis, 79–81 resident perceptions of neighbourhoods, 72–5 sample characteristics, 70–1 victimization, 71–2 co-operative behaviour, 133 Crime and Disorder Act 1998, 43 Crime and Disorder Partnerships, 17 Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, 5, 91 crime management, governance and service delivery arrangements in at district level, 98–9 at neighbourhood level, 99 at ward level, 99 criminalization, 95 criminal justice system, 4, 41, 57 notion of contracts in, 52–3 critical friends, 172 cross-cultural differences, 170–1 CRT, see cluster randomized trials custodial sentences, alternatives to, 17 data gathering, 156–7 democratic experiment, 17 democratic mechanisms, 21 as inclusive mechanism, 28 design experiments, 7 benefits to research activity, 198 common characteristic of, 196–7 in dissemination and implementation of policy, 198 features of, 195–6 and piloting stage of policy, 198 use in real world practice, 198 dispersal orders, 105 distrust, 103–4 doctor–patient relationship, 20 Dunleavy, Patrick, see civil renewal, and incentive schemes, case study approach economic models, for evaluating citizen participation, see citizen participation, case study approach to cost analysis of

Index 209 embedded identities, 169–70 embodied creatures, 65 empowerment, see citizen empowerment ‘enactment’, process of, 195 engagement fatigue, 140 enlightenment campaign, 31 environmental economics, 138 ESRC-funded research, 140 ethical consumerist boycotts, 28 evidence-based policy making, 22 expected utility, 132 extended schools, 19, 33 faith groups, see civil renewal Farrow, Kathryn, see anti-social behaviour; civil renewal, and antisocial behaviour feedback mechanisms, 201–2 Feldstein, Lewis , 2 flexible employment, 14 formal capacity, 102–3 foundation hospitals, 20 Giddens, Anthony, 29 globalization, 26–7, 29 gold service schemes, 113, 121–2 good neighbour declarations, 18, 121 ‘Good Neighbour Declaration’ scheme, 113 governance, 13 rationale, 167, 175–7 government–citizens partnerships, see civil renewal, control signals and neighourhood safety Gray, John, see relativism, concept of Greenhill district, profile of, 99, 106–7 crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour, 98 deprivation and disadvantage, 97–8 diversity and difference, 96–7 group dynamics, 65 Guide Neighbourhoods Programme, 38 Hackney area, 114–18 Hawthorn effect, 197 health support service, 151 Healthy Communities Collaborative, 34 healthy living, 20

Hindus, 166 holistic commitments, 169 Home Office Citizenship Survey, 166 home office initiative, 22 home office statements, 63, 73, 86–7, 164, 168, 172, 175 home zone, 33 human capital, 173 Huntington, Samuel, see relativism, concept of Hyde Park/Kenwood areas, 65–6 incentive schemes and civil renewal behaviour of payoffs, in collective choice situations, 129–33 adding selective incentives, 133–4 public authorities, role of, 117–21 resident evaluation of, 121–4 resident perceptions, of alternative approaches, 124–7 theories on individual schemes, 128–35 value of, 135–7 index of multiple deprivation, 97 Index of Overall Neighbourhood Satisfaction, 73–4, 84, 88 informal capacity, 102–3 internet-based criticisms, 28 Irwell Valley Gold Service, 122 Islamophobia, 101 John, Peter, see citizenship, re-energization of Jones, Sarah, 4, see also referral order volunteers community involvement, case study of Juvenile Offenders Unit, 41 Learning and Skills Council, 173 liberal democracy model, 29 Local Government Act 2000, 20 local regeneration project, 148 local strategic partnerships, 21 London Civic Forum, 153 Lowndes, Vivien, 6, see also civil renewal, and faith groups managerialist paradigm, 31 managerialist politics, 32 market-based globalization, 13

210 Index matched pair designs, 200 maximizing net benefits, 128 Medical Research Council, 200 Middlesbrough area, 115–16 Miliband, David, 9 Morgan, Professor Rod, 48–9 Morningside area, 114, 118 multi-cultural communities, 164 Muslims, 166 National Health Service, 19 National Offender Management Service, 41 National Reassurance Policing Programme, 64 nature conservation project, 149, 152 negative family experience, 100 neighbourhood policing, 33 neighbourhood renewal fund, 99 neighbourhoods, regeneration projects on, 18 neighbourhood safety, 64–5, see civil renewal change indicators, 75 primary indicators, 72–5 neighbourhood watch, 17 New Deal for Communities and Housing Market Renewal, 19, 21, 26 NOMS, see National Offender Management Service normative rationale, 166–9 Northampton area, 117–18 North Sheffield Youth Forum, 33 NRPP, see National Reassurance Policing Programme opinion leaders, 8 panel meetings, see referral order volunteers community services, case study of parental involvement, 19, 100 PCTs, see Primary Care Trusts physical capital, 174–5 plutocratic individualism, 27, 30 policy makers, 8, 186 political literacy, 19 polluter pays principle, 139

Primary Care Trusts, 20 Prior, David, see antisocial behaviour; civil renewal, and antisocial behaviour probation boards, 46 problems in neighbourhoods caused by adults, 116–17 caused by youngsters, 115–16 professional autonomy, 20 progressive state action, 31 public deliberations, 35–6 Public Health White Paper, 20 public involvement, see citizenship, re-energization of Putnam, Bob, 11 Putnam, Robert, 2 quality of local services scale, 76–7 random allocations, of research subjects, 199 randomized controlled trials, 7, 199–203 rationales, in civil renewal, see civil renewal, and faith groups RCT, see randomized controlled trials reactive engagement, 145 referral orders, 50, see also referral order volunteers community services, case study of regulations, 61 theoretical ideas of, 51–2 use of jargons, 53–4 referral order volunteers community services, case study of, 188 background of, 43–8 case study area, 48–51 change implementation contracts, 55–6 reparation, 56 skills for running panels, 54–5 skills in engaging young people, 55 youth offending teams, 56–7 implication for future practise, 57–60 panel meetings, 51–4 process flow chart, 45 regeneration, 18–19

Index 211 Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, 44 reintegration, 50 relativism, concept of, 30 reparation, 44, 46–7, 50, 56 resources rationale, 166 respect, notion of, 15 restorative justice, 17 principles of, 44 Richardson, Liz, see civil renewal, and incentive schemes, case study approach Roberts, Colin, 4, see also referral order volunteers community involvement, case study of Rosenthal effect, 197 safe public space, 65 Salford area, 114, 116–17 Salford Gold Service, 122 satisfactory solution, notion of, 33, 156 school governors, 19 scientific standards, 197 Scottish Children’s justice system, 44 selective incentives, 133 self interested individualism, 9 signal crime, 64 signal disorder, 64 sign-off panels, 56–7 social action, 169 social capital, 10–11, 14, 84, 94, 96, 101, 134, 154, 157, 165, 173–4, 192 social cohesion, 128–35, 178 social control, 17, 115, 129, 133 social exclusion, 10–11, 18 risk factors of, 17 social experiments, 203 social groups, 77 young people as, 95 social integration, 19 social science indicators, 22–3 social stability, 129 South Asian Muslim communities, 97, 100–2, 107 Spalek, Basia, see anti-social behaviour; civil renewal, and antisocial behaviour

spent conviction, 54 St Edmundsbury Borough Council, 27 St Matthews Project, in Leicester, 34 Stoker, Gerry, see citizenship, re-energization of subsidiarity-based decision making, see citizen empowerment ‘successionist’ theory of causation, 202 symbolic interactionism, theory of, 64 Tam, Henry, 3, see also citizen empowerment tenant involvement, 18 Tenant Participation Compacts and Housing Cooperatives, 18 Theories of Change evaluation methodology, 93 third sector, 34 time bank, idea of, 1–2 ‘together we can’ plan, 27, 33 ‘top-down’ policies, 174 trust, 103–4, 134 utilitarian reform movement, 31 value for money, 140 Vermont Reparative Probation Board, 44, 59 victimization, 71–2, 88 voluntarism, 34–5 Warburton, Diane, see citizen participation, cost analysis of wellbeing, 146 white paper, 20, 43 Wilson, Andrew, 4, see also civil renewal, control signals and neighbourhood safety Wilson, Richard, see citizen participation, cost analysis of world, structural forms of, 2 World Bank, 145 YJB, see youth justice board YOT, see youth offending teams youth justice board, 43 notion of contracts in, 52–3 youth offending teams, 43, 48, 50–1

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