Safety, surveillance and policing in the night-time economy: a visitor perspective

Abstract

The current doctoral thesis takes particular interest in the city-centre night-time economy (NTE), against a background of literatures that link economic vitality of city-centres, consumption and safety to greater need for surveillance and policing. Increasingly, nightlife is being problematized in the media and public debate as a source of crime, disorder and excessive drinking which is believed to cause experienced lack of safety among visitors to nightlife areas. When it is widely accepted amongst policy makers that consumers are attracted more easily to city centres that are lively and safe, a common response has been increasing surveillance and policing in cities’ NTE’s. It is however not intrinsically clear how these interventions are perceived by nightlife consumers and to what extent they bolster their experiences of safety. From the perspective of the nightlife consumer, this doctoral thesis studies how CCTV surveillance, police officers and private security are perceived by nightlife consumers, and affect their experiences of safety while going out at night. To do so, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods is employed. Results indicate that visitors to the main and central nightlife areas of Utrecht and Rotterdam (The Netherlands) tend to feel safe during their nights out. In those moments that a lack of safety emerges, CCTV cameras are considered largely unable to stimulate safety among nightlife consumers. Besides that nightlife consumers are not always aware about the presence of CCTV surveillance, they don’t have accurate knowledge about how CCTV camera’s work. CCTV surveillance is also not considered capable to act directly in those moments that danger emerges and incidents unfold. Nightlife consumers consider present police and private security much more capable to affect experienced lack of safety because they can soothe tension and aggression and, if needs be, put an end to dangerous situations through active interventions. At the same time, results indicate that their effects are rather complex.The effects of door staff are found to depend on participants’ ethnic background. Present police can both, and at the same time, stimulate experienced safety and work into hand feelings of fear among nightlife consumers. More generally, these results then suggest that surveillance and policing are unlikely to reduce lack of safety in the night-time economy as much as past research, influential policy and media discourses have suggested. They also demonstrate that what is required is a surveillance and policing apparatus in nightlife areas that adapts and is proportional to the particularities of the social situations they are intended to act upon and affect experienced (lack of) safety in. In those situations when nightlife consumers are unconcerned about their safety, we conclude that surveillance and policing best remain in the background. This contrasts popular policing approaches that are more ‘invasive’ in nature and those that give support to zero-tolerance policing philosophy.