ABSTRACT
In this chapter we turn our attention towards accounting for the rise to prominence of crime prevention in the 1980s and 1990s, from a position of relative obscurity and unpopularity in the 1950s. Of course, in so doing we are operating with a particular notion of crime prevention, for clearly if we were to consider all policies and practices that have been justified, at one time or another, in such terms then this book would have to be considerably more weighty than it is, taking in the combined efforts of at least the entire contribution from social policy and criminal justice policy domains. However, any attempt to provide a clear distinction between the kinds of crime prevention included in this chapter, and those excluded, would be doomed to failure, for ultimately the distinction is arbitrary, with such arbitrariness being facilitated by the flexibility of the concept, its political usage, and a collective amnesia that seemingly allows us to forget that existing practices were once considered crime preventive, thus allowing us, from time to time, to re-invent the wheel. Such issues have already been touched upon in Chapter 1.
