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heart of government social policy . Under the New Deal for Communities
Programme 15 the most deprived neighbourhoods were identified and transformed in
relation to crime, community, housing, education, health, and employment. As part

of a partnership response involving all community stakeholders, Neighbourhood
Policing is the vanguard of the policing contribution, imbedding the service within the
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micro-narratives of local communities whose priorities become those of the service .
They are no longer straightforward. Rather they are as diverse and as relative as the

communities that propose them. Within the terms of post-modernism policing has
truly moved from the universal to the local context.

This return to community policing was first outlined in a government white paper
Building Communities: Beating Crime. Here the values of post-modernism that have

come to dominate our public services are made explicit:

The world in which the police service operates today has changed beyond all
recognition. Technology has removed borders and barriers; changes in
society have opened up new opportunities and challenges; increasing
investment in public services and a growing consumer culture has led to rising
expectations of customer service (Home Office 2004:7).

Two very important themes affecting policing are hereby touched upon, and these

reflect the first two features of post-modernism that we have outlined. Firstly the rise
of new challenges hints at the complexity of the post-911 world, in which significant

threats including international terrorism and serious and organised crime have
emerged (2004:41-42). These global risks contrast with the priorities identified within
local neighbourhoods, and the national and local levels find themselves in tension. A

curious divergence in roles is demanded at the frontline so that the police officer who

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Although the precise details are yet to be disseminated the focus on communities is set to continue under the
current Conservative-Liberal alliance with David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ at the forefront of government policy. A
clear economic principle lies at the heart of the policy which also seeks to redistribute power “from elites in
Whitehall to the man and woman on the street” (www.bbc.co.uk/news 19/07/10).
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The New Deal for Communities Programme (NDC) was launched in 1998 as a ten year project. Thirty nine
neighbourhoods were identified and collectively have spent £1.7bn on community based projects and initiatives. A
key feature of the NDC is multi-agency collaboration with local authorities, health services, police forces, and
education authorities working in partnership together, but more importantly with the communities themselves
(www.communities.gov.uk).
16 Under the Partners and Communities Together (PACT) initiative, local residents are asked to join partner
agencies in identifying local priorities. The means by which policing problems are identified are increasingly
sophisticated and include community meetings, ‘customer’ surveys, neighbourhood profiling, surgeries, postcard
and electronic mailing. The central principle is that what the government or the police service anticipates as a
policing priority may not be shared with a particular neighbourhood. PACT therefore allows the community itself to
name these priorities (neighbourhood policing.devon-cornwall.police.uk).