Crime and the Night Time Economy

Question 1

Incidents of crime against households and resident adults in UK

Answer 1

Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW)
Estimates 7.1 million incidents of crime against households and resident adults (aged 16 and over) in England and Wales for the year ending June 2014

Question 2

Crime increase/decrease

Answer 2

a 16% decrease compared with the previous year’s survey, and is the lowest estimate since the survey began in 1981 (CSEW)

Question 3

Sexual offences recorded by police

Answer 3

Sexual offences recorded by the police saw a 21% rise from the previous year and continues the pattern seen in recent publications

Question 4

Crime and Identity

Answer 4

Social and cultural norms and assumptions – about ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’
o Age, race, gender
o ‘An officer in the West Midlands was 28 times more likely to stop and search a black person than a white person, in the Greater Manchester force the figure was 21 times, in the Met 11 times, and for British Transport police the figure was 31 times’ (The Guardian, 2012)

Question 5

‘stop and searches’

Answer 5

Hurrel (2013) found that the met police posted a figure of 4.0 for black/white RDR in 2011/12, higher than the latest figure of 3.2. In both years of the study the Met police carried out the most ‘stop and search’ at more than 40%.

Question 6

Measuring Fear

Answer 6

British Crime Survey in the 1980s reported that 43% of women felt unsafe walking alone at night compared to 13% of men

Question 7

Gender and fear of crime

Answer 7

20% of men, but 50% of women were afraid.
Crimes against men as a result of drinking have gone up by 27%.
Men aged 16-24 and single mothers are most likely to be victims of attack (Home Office)

Question 8

Fear Generators

Answer 8

• Multi storey car parks
• Run down housing estates
• Public transport
• Suburbs etc
• City centre at certain times

Question 9

Pain (2000)

Answer 9

People commonly report fear of personal and property crime being heightened when they are in a particular environment - dark, lonely and unattractive places - down to bad design of subways etc.

Question 10

Pain (2000) social policy

Answer 10

Tendency in social policy to spatialize the problems of crime, disorder and fear, locating them within the city centre

Question 11

Pain (2000) exclusion

Answer 11

While fear of crime had furthered the exclusion of certain groups from the shared spaces of social life, strategies which have aimed to draw them back in have sometimes excluded other groups e.g. reassuring female evening leisure seekers in town centres can mean restrictions on access for homeless people or those who drink alcohol

Question 12

Rural fear of crime of women

Answer 12

research carried out in New Zealand and the UK, drawing on work undertaken in four rural communitites and begins to identify the extent and nature of women’s fears and how these relate to their experience of rurality.
Fear was not absent from the rural community though, and this included reports from women claiming to feel afraid in their homes, the village or rural beyond.
Outsiders are frequently seen to threaten the notion of the rural idyll, particularly the social and cultural values that have endured in the ‘timeless’ rural community.
—Little et al (2005)—-

Question 13

The Night time economy

Answer 13

• Urban entertainment industry
• Important site of employment – leisure industry in the UK employs nearly 1.8 million people
• Popular site of consumption – e.g. Nottingham – 20-30,000 people regularly attracted to city centre on weekend evenings

Question 14

Night time economy and gentrification

Answer 14

‘The government is keen to generate an urban renaissance where more people live and work in town and city centres. Evening activities are a fundamental part of the urban renaissance because they extend the vitality of a town or city beyond normal working hours. If the urban renaissance is to be successful, a wider cross-section of people must be attracted into town and city centres in the evening and at night” (ODPM[UKGOV],2003:3-4)

Question 15

Problematic consequences of the night time economy

Answer 15

• Anti-social behavior
• Social Exclusion
• Fear of crime
• ‘The city centre at night is widely perceived as a threatening environment. This presents a formidable barrier for further development particularly since the highest levels of anxiety are expressed for those areas most visited at night’ (Thomas and Bromley, 2000:1425)

Question 16

Geographies of adult entertainment

Answer 16

• Social and geographical imaginations of these activities associated with sexual danger
• Associated with anonymity
• Red light districts
• Less salubrious locations
• Social stigma of commercial sex

Question 17

Sexuality and adult entertainment

Answer 17

• Centrality of sex-related businesses to the leisure industry
• Privileges particular forms of corporate entertainment
• Normalises particular forms of heterosexuality – through visibility in urban landscape, while others remain hidden or marginalized.

Question 18

Spaces of heterosexuality

Answer 18

• Everyday practices and hegemonic sexual values
• Commercialisation of sex
• Sex related businesses – reveal dominant and values

Question 19

Violence in the Night Time Economy

Answer 19

• Peak time for violence offending is weekend nights an the peak location is in and around pubs and clubs
• Violence in the night-time economy typically involves young males who do not know each other well
• Resulting injuries are often facial, some of which are ‘glassings’
• Most incidents involve drinking by the offender, victim or both
• Alcohol contributes to violence in many direct and indirect ways
  Finney (2004)

Question 20

Warrington et al (2001)

Answer 20

• Women experiencing violence may be literally trapped within their homes, or may be spatially restricted, leaving them socially isolated
• The role played by formal agencies in supporting women experiencing domestic violence is changing.
• Many of the women I had spoken to had been helped in their move to a refuge by health visitors of social workers, who clearly played an important role in enabling women to escape violence.
• There is evidence too of a change in attitude of the state towards domestic violence.

Question 21

‘Break the chain’

Answer 21

• In Jan 1999 the government launched ‘Break the Chain’, a campaign aimed at raising public awareness of domestic violence, and measures introduced in the recent Crime and Disorder and Family Law Acts should strengthen police action against cases of domestic violence.

Question 22

Hubbard et al (2008)

Answer 22

• Most towns and cities in the UK and US posses venues offering sexually orientated entertainment in the form of exotic dance, striptease or lap dancing.
• The majority have tended to be in marginal urban spaces.
• Their increasing visibility in more mainstream spaces of urban nighlife raises questions about the sexual and gender geographies that characterize the contemporary city.
• Those visiting the entertainment venues are likely to be stigmatized more.

Question 23

Talbot and Bose (2007)

Answer 23

• This article explores this neglected issue through two case studies, one based in London and one in Manchester, and examines the fate of black cultural forms, venues and licensees in contemporary nightlife.
• It argues that, due to historical criminalization of black youth, music and residential areas, black cultural spaces have been subject to a process of exclusion in the new playgrounds of the night-time economy

Question 24

Talbot and Bose (2007) Gentrification and black communities

Answer 24

• In Moss side, local ‘community spaces’ were neglected in favour of the dominance of the centre and there was a clear inability to find venues where black musical forms could be developed and expressed.
• Both studies point to a contradiction in the interrelationship between gentrification processes and the Afro-Caribbean communities in Southview and Manchester.