Dangers lurking in the deep

The crime audit has become a major technology of local crime prevention and community safety. While most interest has been shown in its technical capacity and merits, this article focuses upon the impact of the crime audit as a governmental practice and political strategy. Like other forms of audit, the crime audit constitutes its subject and in so doing affords opportunities for its transformation, by colonizing the values and operating procedures of local practice. A case study of such colonization is explored in the encounters of local drug outreach agencies with the crime auditing process; the pressure exerted upon them to ‘make practice auditable’, and the implications that this holds for their future engagement with drug misusers.