The multi-scalar nature of urban security and public safety: Crime prevention from local policy to policing in Lisbon (Portugal) and Memphis (the United States)

The article contributes to recent discussions on convergence/divergence of local policies for urban security and public safety amid globalization, exploring comparatively local approaches to crime prevention and explaining differences/similarities through multilevel connections. I analyze situational prevention, social policy and proximity/community policing in two “not-so-global” metropolises: Lisbon, where security is the goal of a wide set of policies in many fields; and Memphis, where social problems have become security issues and policing the only game in town. Differing approaches are explained on the grounds of political traditions, neoliberalization of policy and multilevel relations among polities. I discuss implications for the relation between policy and policing: police attempts at social outreach amid coupling/decoupling of security with/from urban policy; and the “mission creep” of policing when it is expected to lead prevention. Conclusions advocate that policy reform is necessary at many levels to deal with the intersection of crime, retrenching welfare and aggressive policing in US cities such as Memphis.This research was supported by the Fundação para a Ciència e Tecnologia (Grants SFRH/BPD/86394/2012 and UID/SOC/50013/2013), a Fulbright Visiting Scholar grant (U.S.–Italy Commission) sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change (University of Memphis).