Criminology has come under the spell of thinking negatively about safety and security. It’s focus merely lies on themes such as control, punishment and exclusion. Much interest therefore goes to public policing, private security, CCTV camera’s, anti-social behaviour orders, gated communities and prisons. Of course, this definition of security and security governance as the protection of citizens against crime and disorder must not be rejected out of hand. Without a minimum level of security, society would fall apart in chaos and despair. At the same time, however, we feel increasingly uncomfortable about the dominance of current negative – control and risk-oriented – approaches to (in)security as they overlook positive interpretations associated with trust, community and care. This introduction therefore provides an overview of academic literature that nuance, counter or resist hegemonic and negative meanings of security. In so doing, our aim is to introduce a positive turn in criminology’s interests and concerns regarding crime and disorder problems.

This paper presents the results of a study on Street Pastors in Cardiff, capital city of Wales. Street Pastors are Christian volunteers who look after (intoxicated) people in the nightlife district. In so doing, they provide security through empathy and care. The motives of Street Pastors to engage with partygoers are multi-layered, but their personal faith appears as a key explanation. A certain kind of orthodox ‘certitude’ of being safe (and saved) in a Higher Power gives the pastors their strength to go out on the street, face the unknown and feel compassion for their fellow citizens.

From a geographical perspective, this article explores positive images of safety in the context of nightlife areas. It also considers the ways by which nightlife visitors’ experienced safety might be nurtured, as an alternative to how experienced lack of safety might be ‘prevented’. From our interviews, we find safety to emerge from interactions between many (im)material elements, and the nightlife consumers themselves. We argue that positive safety can be understood as something that envelopes and at the same time is reworked by individuals, but that does not necessarily require a conscious understanding. From this finding, we offer a different logic and rhetoric regarding safety in nightlife spaces.

The article is an ethnographical study of Rotterdam’s experience with a program called ‘Community Governs’ (Buurt Bestuurt). Community Governs, a Dutch version of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS), is a community-based program which goal is to solve neighbourhood crime and disorder problems. Community commitment and involvement are a main component of this program. The article emphasizes the effects that this program had on three levels of trust (performances, intentions and skills) of the residents in police officers and municipal service agencies as partners in the fight against crime and disorder. The results indicate that a ‘positive exercise’ of liberty through political participation of civilians is difficult to realise in poor, inner city, neighbourhoods.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) within Dutch civil society provide material and immaterial assistance to unauthorized migrants in the Netherlands. Based on long-term qualitative fieldwork in the life worlds of unauthorized migrants, the authors describe how the migrants experience these NGOs as a safe haven where they feel at home and secure for the risks of apprehension and deportation. We argue that these safe havens are also beneficial for the society at large. These NGOs contribute to preventing unauthorized migrants from sleeping in public places and employing illegitimate survival strategies. In addition, the NGOs’ empowerment of these migrants is advantageous for their willingness to access healthcare and employ legal rights. Recent attempts of the Dutch government to restrict the number of these NGOs, lead amongst other things to NGOs who are increasingly focusing on the unauthorized migrants’ return. We argue that these governmental efforts of controlling unauthorized migration through NGOs, will result in unauthorized migrants loosing trust in these safe havens. Ultimately, this governmental control through NGOs will have a negative impact on feelings of security in the society at large as it fundamentally diminishes the significance of these NGOs in civil society for unauthorized migrants without offering an alternative.

Jacqueline de Savornin Lohman is a ‘positive criminologist’ avant la lettre. In this interview, she tells about her belief in personal people’s willingness and ability to deal with problems (such as the reception of refugees), the discouraging role of government in this respect, her internment in a Japanese camp in the Netherlands’ Indies during WW II, the persons who have inspired her most (e.g. Louk Hulsman) and her initial disbelief in the idea of a ‘glass ceiling’ for women in a male-dominated academia. She would, however, be confronted with some stunning examples of everyday sexism – such as reactions that she did not need a tenured position at the university, because she does not have to maintain a family. Being active in the women’s movement, also led her to engage in critical victimological studies – mainly on sexual violence. The main part of the interview deals with the practical consequences she has drawn from her critical action-theory on criminal justice ‘Allowed evil?’ (Kwaad dat mag?) from 1975, such as her role in the establishment of the Dutch liberal democrat party D’66, her involvement in the Coornhert League for Penal Reform, her attempts to establish a platform for various practical, critical social work initiatives in the penal field and indeed the establishment of one of the first mediation projects in the Netherlands – which she saw boycotted by the Ministry of Justice, that, in the late 1980s, instrumentalised the victim’s voice for a stiffening of the penal system.

How could positive security policies take shape? On what kind of empirical research should these policies be based? And what sort of concepts would we need for this development? If the starting point is to understand safety as a positive notion, it seems wise to avoid the terms of war that are prevailing in current policy programs on security and public safety (fighting, frontline and city-marines). On the other hand some type of decisive jargon might be unavoidable when one sets out to have an actual impact on youth crime policies and policy makers. Is it possible to keep using some type of military terminology in research benefitting the development of positive security policies and still emphasize a positive composition? This dilemma has arisen in recent research activities on positive, street-oriented role models in response to Dutch problematic youth groups and youth at risk. De Jong argues that with the sensitizing concept of the ‘liaison officer’ it might be possible to encourage a positive change through applied social science.

Positive security is a very promising development in criminology. The ‘movement’ reconnects the current debate on crime with the origins of ancient Greek thinking on the positive nature of politeia, policy and policing. Securitas - providing safety and security for the common good - has a long and rich tradition. Good governance is about many things, but foremost about providing security in society. Polizeiwissenschaft in 18th and 19th century Prussia made a distinction between Wohlfahrt- and Sicherheitspolizei.
The latter is outright dangerous because security becomes equated with negative connotations: the other, the enemies of the state, the drug war and more recently the war in terror. In times like these the positive qualities of securitas become inflated. Human rights, privacy and the rule of law are no longer viewed in positive terms. Therefore I advocate the positive security movement. But the author is worried about two things. Firstly, the current Zeitgeist which is charged with xenophobia and war like languages. And, secondly the fact that the ‘movement’ is limited to a few rebels with a cause. The mainstream of criminology is not really interested in reconnecting with the philosophical positive roots of securitas. Mainstream criminology fosters the status quo and is financially too depended on the state to actually follow the new heroes of positivity. The only way out is to develop a following but this requires academics to actually take a stand.

Positive criminology criticizes punitive measures, repression, crime control and the ‘politics of fear’, and re-values positive concepts as trust, solidarity, well-being and ‘ontological security’. In this book-review it is argued that many of these positive terms are beyond the scope of criminology and that peace and peace-making are more appropriate terms that can be used within a criminological context. Peacemaking criminology provides a basis for constructive approaches to conflicts and disorder; it may also outline the contours of the peace-making function of the law and the peacekeeping tasks of judges and police officers.