Crime prevention and community safety

Having been to all intents and purposes 'banished' from the criminal jus tice domain, welfarism made a return in the 1980s through the vehicle of crime prevention, and especially through its 1990s incarnation, com munity safety. This article charts the process of this return and questions the wisdom of welfarist objectives in social policy becoming associated with a new form of crime control. The dangers for welfarism lie in alternative agendas that entwine community safety with a bid for re legitimation, which ties it to the coat tails of a new urban policy and seeks to 'criminalize the discourses of social policy'.