ABSTRACT
Within sports and stadium-development industries, recent debates on the manage - ment of football crowds have focused on security – providing technological and structural crowd control systems designed to prevent spectators from undermining crowd control and safety by engaging in violence or disorderly behaviour. Numerous trade magazines, exhibits at sports industry conferences, and private consultancy firms emphasise the need for innovative monitoring and control mechanisms to regulate crowd movement, thereby providing ‘solutions’ to crowd misbehaviour, disorder, and violence. The limited focus of these proposals ties in with the normalisation of crime and disorderly behaviour by neoliberal modes of governance and the move towards preventative rather than reactive approaches to criminal justice (Garland, 2002; Zedner, 2009). However, while we have learnt from the disasters at Heysel, Hillsborough, and Ellis Park that it is vital that football stadiums are fit-for-purpose, a narrow focus on merely reconfiguring stadiums or adding surveillance systems to reduce the opportunity for violence and disorder fails to address the wider issues; there is much more involved when it comes to managing football crowds and reducing the risk of violence and disorder con - nected to the sport.
