Funding Success!

UPSI secures three grants from the Economic and Social Research Council. In one of these grants UPSI will be conducting work on "Community Networks and Mobilisation in Delivering Neighbourhood Security: Exploring Concepts of 'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' Co-Production." This research will help to develop thinking about how the big society agenda can be applied to community safety and policing. 

Community Networks and Mobilisation in Delivering Neighbourhood Security: Exploring Concepts of ‘Horizontal’ and ‘Vertical’ Co-Production

Grant Reference: RES-193-25-0007

ABSTRACT

This project will undertake a preliminary investigation of the capacity of communities to become involved in work to improve neighbourhood security. The proposal is designed around three components:

• Preparing two backing papers to inform and frame an expert seminar discussion;
• An expert seminar on the topic of ‘mobilising communities for social control’ to be held at Cardiff University;

The concept of co-production is central to current debates around ‘the Big Society’ and attends to how communities and individuals connect and collaborate with public service providers to design and deliver solutions to social problems. This proposal seeks to develop conceptual resources that might help to better frame understandings of how and why citizens are involved in the provision of local social control, and what factors facilitate or impede such participation. This work will be informed by previous empirical studies by the applicants looking at the interface between police and communities in Neighbourhood Policing. In adopting this focus, it also speaks to wider debates about the intersections between formal and informal modes of social control, and the extent to which effective policing is needed to catalyse community mobilisation.[1]

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[1] The concept of ‘community mobilisation’ and its relations to social cohesion and collective efficacy are discussed in Cooper, H. and M. Innes (2009) The Causes and Consequences of Community Cohesion in Wales: A Report to the Welsh Assembly Government. Cardiff University.