Bar Wars: Contesting the Night in Contemporary British Cities (Clarendon Studies in Criminology)

The night-time economy poses one of the biggest crime problems in Britain today. This book highlights precisely how and why this threat developed at the time it did. It charts the rise of a 'night-time high street' and highlights the struggle that is occurring over the way in which such nightlife areas develop. This unique and hard-hitting analysis of social control in bars and clubs, courtroom battles between local communities and the pub trade, and street-level policing gets to the heart of the political debates on binge-drinking and anti-social behavior.

Phil Hadfield is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of York. His main areas of research include nightlife and crime, alcohol policy, workplace violence, policing, urban sociology, and symbolic interactionism. Recent publications include Bouncers: Violence and Governance in the Night-time Economy, (OUP, 2003) and 'Door Lore': The Art and Economics of Intimidation,' British Journal of Criminology, 42/2, 352-370 (winner of the Radzinowicz Memorial Prize 2002), both with Dick Hobbs, Stuart Lister and Simon Winlow.