From Community to Public Safety Governance in Policing and Child Protection‪.‬

IN THE 1990s, PUBLIC POLICING AND child protective agencies oriented their missions to service "communities." For the police, community policing promised to address the root causes of crime through public consultation. For child protective agencies, the empowerment of case workers promised to engender flexibility and community responsibility over child abuse and/or neglect. For the most part, policing and child protection were disparate governmental functions. The police ideally addressed crime and child workers ideally helped children "in need." Moreover, the community orientation of policing and child protection did not engender intraagency or interagency relations (nor was this an issue). Their emphasis upon community service provision engendered atomism. Both public policing (see O'Malley and Palmer 1996) and child protection (see Parton 2008; cf. Rose 1996a) are governmental enterprises that have been highly influenced by broader shifts and trends in liberalism. Among the more recent trends has been the development of community-based governance. Indeed, scholars have generally agreed that there has been a significant transformation from the welfare state (which grew to prominence following World War II) to what writers have commonly referred to as neoliberalism. For example, writing almost two decades ago, Rose and Miller (1992) argued that criticisms against welfare in the 1970s (1) have led to its gradual demise (cf. Rose 1996b). In its place, particularly in the 1990s, the neoliberal state focused on risk management, "in a way that governs communities as participating in the management of these risks, and not relying on the state for any particular form of ... expertise" (Levi 2000:581). Governmental expertise was thus increasingly tied to the community, and by the 1990s, public policing and child protection (along with other governmental institutions) emphasized local service provision through community engagement.