Protection and Prevention in the Governance of Crime: Historical Perspectives from Sweden and Britain

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

This panel seeks to interrogate the utility of ‘protection’ and ‘prevention’ as conceptual aids in understanding major developments in policing and crime control in the modern era. Recent years have seen growing interest in security, protection and prevention among historians of crime and historical criminologists. New studies have both supplemented long-established perspectives from police history and posed new problematics and interpretive opportunities for historical research on policing. The papers in this panel draw on and extend these new perspectives and insights. They open up new areas of investigation in the historical study of crime and responses to crime, and reassess the character of major historical shifts in this field (including the development of modern policing and the ‘preventative turn’ in contemporary crime control). Furthermore, the panel places these issues in comparative perspective, juxtaposing studies of Britain and Sweden to invite fresh insights and novel perspectives on developing lines of research in each specific context.

The papers in this panel share several common points of emphasis. These include a concern with: continuity and change across supposed historical ruptures; the significance of material and technical specificity in preventative and protective interventions; the relation between public and private in social responses to crime; and with the significance of logics of prevention and protection for the authority and legitimacy of the police and criminal justice state. Combining case studies with broader surveys of macro-historical shifts, the papers collectively illuminate the analytical purchase of prevention and protection in specific historical contexts and their relevance for understanding the contemporary landscape of security, crime prevention, policing and public safety.

Subtopic

• Topic 7: Comparative and Historical Perspectives / Historical Comparisons of Crime

Chair

• David Churchill, Leeds University

Individual Presentations

• The Politics of Protection in British Policing - Francis Martin Dodsworth, Kingston University London

• Two Faces of Private Protection: Contrasting Responses to Intruder Alarms and Security Guards in Britain, 1920s-1960s - David Churchill, Leeds University

• Tear Gas, Alarms, and Bulletproof Windows: Taxi Violence and Situational Crime Prevention in Post-war Sweden - Anders Pedersson, University of Gothenburg

• The Preventive Turn: The Case of Sweden - Robert Anderson, Linnæus University; Paula Wahlgren, Linnæus University