ABSTRACT
Modernity is characterized by large centralized bureaucracies, organizations and institutions. Modern medicine, for example has spawned a flora of specialities claiming they need to be based together in the same institution and under a monolithic administration. This, it is claimed, will provide more effective, more efficient and more economical services to population. The same trend can be found in all public services. Increasing centralization is to be found in social services and policing. People, who, by circumstances in life, have suffered more than most others, must be offered compassion and understanding when they encounter those vested with the power to deliver pain. Progressive penal policy strategies appears to be necessary to re-establish forms of social organization so that people will relearn to know each other as full social beings and to exercise reciprocal forms of socialization and social control. With crime prevention in mind, neighbourhoods ought to be strengthened and democratized to become places where local people engage and participate.
