Crime and the home

The main function of a private home is to offer shelter, and this function includes the protection of households from a range of harms, including risks of violence or burglary that may be rooted in contexts outside the home. However, the idea of the home as a place of protection requires critical appraisal, not least because many sources of harm and crime occur inside the home, especially forms of gendered violence and abuse. Other harms related to the home include their places as sites of expulsion (through demolition and household displacement) and exclusion. This range of harms and links to crime implies that our understanding of the home must at its core be capable of differentiating between the desire and capacity to repel harms from outside, and the enduring problems of abuse and violence within the home. In this chapter we critically analyse this dual position of the home. We begin by describing the relationship of the home to external risks, namely burglary, relating these to issues of crime through the concept of security and tenurial control. We then turn to those harms that emanate from within the life of the household in terms of abuse and family violence. Lastly, we offer a reflection around how the ‘home’ mediates a much broader range of harms that raise questions for criminology and housing studies in relation to gender, power and housing tenure.