Place, crime and insecurity in everyday life: A contemporary study of an English town

In this project we investigate how people living in one English town talk about and act towards a range of threats that they regard as impinging upon their safety (their personal bodily integrity, their property, their locality, their wider habitat). Such threats include but are somewhat wider than those traditionally coded under such terms as ‘fear of crime’ and include new forms of risk, and risk-consciousness, made possible by communications technologies. When we encounter such problems we often hope to see action on someone’s part to address them (the police, local authorities, schools, central Government, private security providers, parents, for example). What do we expect from one another, and from specific agencies, these days in respect of the sources of our safety?