Policing the crisis revisited: The state,masculinity,fear of crime and racism

Abstract

E. P. Thompson once said, I forget where, that the most difficult part of writing was the opening sentence since that set the tone, or the `voice', for the whole piece. I think of his words almost every time I start a new piece, reminding myself that a morning spent playing with openings is not wasted, although it may feel so at the time. The problem of a starting point seems even more difficult when being asked to revisit something (co)written over 30 years ago, a time that has seen enormous changes in the theoretical landscape, in the state of the world, and, inevitably, in my own personal life. Given all this, I feel that the best I can manage is to tell the story, heavily edited of course and with the broadest of broad brushes, of how it was then and of how (with appropriate nods to serendipity, contingency and chance) I got from there to here. This will entail sticking with those elements of my work — namely, policing, masculinity, fear of crime and racism — that most resonate with the themes of Policing the Crisis (PTC) (Hall et al., 1978).