Local Policing in the Global City: Community Safety Development in Tokyo

In large Global Cities, the ‘command centres’ of the global economy, most aspects of everyday life are subject to surveillance. Forms of Neoliberal urbanism have spread public space video surveillance, homogenized theme-park malls, gated private appartment blocks suburbs and exclusionary policies towards urban others: the homeless, undocumented migrants and so on. I have labeled this as a globalizing form of technocratic surveillance, however in previous work on Tokyo, one of the preeminent global cities, I have argued that in the Japanese capital, particular social forms of mutual human surveillance are still undergoing an uncertain transition in the encounter with global neoliberal capitalism.

Since 2002, under the last Governor of Tokyo, crime prevention has been managed through the Anzen Anshin Machizukuri Jourei (or Community Safety Development Ordinance) which decentralized responsibility for crime prevention to communities, supported by local (ward) government. However, both National and Metropolitan Police Authorities have also initiated their own schemes, including public space video surveillance, crime mapping and so on. This paper reports on empirical research from five case study areas in Tokyo with very different characteristics: a central district partly dependent on the night economy and associated disorder, a wealthy central residential ward, a working class neighbourhood with a large traditional outcaste population, and two middle-class suburban areas. It analyzes the different community-based initiaties that have emerged in each area, their compatibility with and connections to central police initiatives, and considers what combination of local or global forces are the predominant drivers in emerging crime prevention policies and practices.