Zero Tolerance or Community Tolerance? Police and Community Talk about Crime in High-Crime Areas

Abstract

This paper emanates from a recently completed two-and-a-half-year study of two high-crime communities in Greater Manchester. Using data obtained from focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, attendance at police community consultative forums, and command and control data, it will explore the similarities and differences in the way in which the police construct their images of, and their activities in, these two similarly structured and geographically close areas. The discussion and analysis of this data will be informed by the extent to which locally constructed understandings of risk and safety underpin the key question of what kind of policing might work in high-crime areas.