How can Communities be Policed in an Age of Austerity: Vigilantism?

Abstract

Although It has been argued that the political responses to crime have effectively become indistinguishable over the last twenty years or so as New Labour had sought to occupy the territory normally associated with the Conservative party{Downes and Morgan 2007], the new coalition government has, in its strategy to reduce the national deficit, made some notable changes in the direction of criminal justice policy. One significant example, following the Comprehensive Spending Review on the 20th October 2010, is the intention to reduce the prison population by 3000 and promote a ‘rehabilitation revolution’[ Travis and Hirsch 2010]. However judging by the new Home Secretary’s first interview in spring this year, it maybe possible to identify an equally significant but relatively less well noted development: the promotion of a law which could be a vigilante’s charter