Samenvatting

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.