From reassurance to co-production – a case study

The opening years of the 21st Century have witnessed rising levels of concern about and fear of crime amongst the United Kingdom’s general populace, despite a continued fall in aggregate recorded crime figures nationwide. The apparent mis-match between public perceptions of neighbourhood security and actual victimisation risk, the so-called ‘Reassurance Gap’, gave rise to the National Reassurance Policing Programme and subsequently to a new model for community policing based on a co-production ‘hub’. This paper outlines the development of the Neighbourhood Policing Model and describes how one UK police force have successfully moved from community engagement aimed at reassurance, to citizen-driven local policing priorities. Drawing on empirical data, the paper goes on to illustrate how the development of working partnerships with local communities can redress the balance between formal and informal social control within neighbourhoods