Public safety governance has been characterised in many ways. Literature mentions traditional sanctions for purposes of repression, policy programs aiming for prevention, as well as cooperation of public, private and hybrid organizations in addressing public safety problems. Very recently, a so called culture of precaution, in which problems of public safety are to be addressed at a very early – premature – stage, would have entered the scene. This potential culture of precaution is topic of this article. The article aims to indicate the empirical manifestations of a culture of precaution, as mentioned in literature, in contemporary public safety governance. The central question is as follows: to what extent and in what way is contemporary public safety governance on municipality level characterised by the precautionary principle? Five municipalities within the police region of Utrecht, varying in size from 40.000 to 300.000 citizens, have been studied; Amersfoort, Bunschoten, Utrecht, Woerden and Zeist. In total 153 measures addressing problems of public safety have been analyzed for characteristics of precaution. In order to do so, a model has been developed which locates precaution next to traditional strategies for addressing public safety. It will be demonstrated that a culture of precaution is not empirically present in public safety governance on municipality level. However, contemporary public safety governance does appear to posses some minor characteristics of the precaution paradigm.

A part in Dutch penal law defines money laundering as ‘any person who acquires an object, possesses it, hands it over or sells it or makes use of an object, knowing that the object originates – directly or indirectly – from an offense’. Under object is meant any goods and any property rights. With this in mind, the author argues that whoever knows that money (the object) is derived from crime, but spends the money anyway, is committing a money laundering offense. Taking the argument one step further, it is therefore a reasonable hypothesis that a large number of wives or girlfriends of criminals, have been prosecuted for money laundering. That is, if the women knew that the money they spent was obtained through crime. To test the hypothesis, 62 cases dealing with organized crime were selected and analyzed. These cases largely focus on male perpetrators of drug crimes, money laundering, human smuggling and human trafficking. It turns out that the women often knew their male friends or husbands were involved in crime. The women also profited of these crimes because they used their friends’ expensive cars, lived in large mansions and often went shopping for luxury items. Still, hardly anyone was prosecuted for money laundering offenses. Several explanations were found, ranging from pity of officers, an overload of work, absence of direct proof or simply male chauvinist bias. Only if the women were actively involved in other crimes, would they find themselves prosecuted with (among others) money laundering offenses.

This article explores the links between the concepts of security and community, questioning the conventional use and meaning of both. To begin with, it addresses the taken-for-grantedness of the thought that communities foster feelings of security, and that contemporary processes of migration, intensified worldwide communication, and ‘heterogeneization’ of habitats stimulate feelings of insecurity and nostalgia for ‘old-fashioned’ tight kinship. Subsequently, it criticizes the too lop-sided focus on insecurity in current debates, and asks attention for – community-based – positive feelings of security. In the next paragraphs, however, the problematic aspects of the idea of ‘community’ are discussed: its inadequacy in capturing current individualized ways-of-life, its exclusionary tendencies, its potentially exaggerated focus on social control, and its rejection of, and fear for, the outside world. Therefore, we assess the possibility to construe (‘strong’) community qualities in a situation of multiple, overlapping and porous populations of varied identity-relevance within overarching institutional arrangements of rule of law and of shared codes of conduct (as ‘weak’ ties). Finally, the argument is translated in suggestions for empirical research to be able to determine the fecundity of the ideas presented.