Modernisation, scientific rationalism and the Crime Reduction Programme

This article examines the Home Office Crime Reduction Programme, mounted in England and Wales between 1999 and 2002. The programme failed fully to meet the expectations that it would substantially improve the knowledge-base about crime control, and the article considers possible reasons. There were problems of implementation limiting what could be learnt. Underlying this poor implementation was an oversimplified view of order maintenance that was implicit in the design of the programme. Those programme strands that were concerned with policing overemphasized the crime control function and underemphasized other features of policing that preoccupy middle-level police managers, such as organizational legitimacy. As the programme failed to engage with these everyday preoccupations, the projects funded under it tended to receive little priority from those who were in a position to determine their success.