ABSTRACT
The preventive turn in England and Wales and across its diverse localities has had a longer institutional history and been the subject of more empirical research and conceptual social scientific debate than is the case for most European countries. Furthermore, and more contentiously, the preventive turn and its institutionalisation as community safety partnerships (in Wales) and crime and disorder reduction partnerships (in England), is at a more ‘advanced’ stage than the relative latecomers over the Channel in much of mainland Europe. Such developments in England and Wales in the past three decades point to both intense (even frenzied) bouts of ‘political inventiveness’ and consequences which may be termed ‘governmental instabilities’ (Clarke 2004; Hughes 2007).
