Is social crime prevention disappearing?

The paper investigates some radical changes occurred in definition and practices of social crime prevention in the last decades, with a special focus on the Italian context. Starting from an analysis of the process defined as criminalization of social problems and of urban disorder, these main points will be discussed: 1) how the development of new forms of local governance of crime affected more traditional practices of social crime prevention, with a focus on the use of administrative orders or anti-social behaviours orders in managing crime, disorder or crime - related problems; 2) Is social crime prevention disappearing or it is becoming more and more “invisible”? And, if so, which are the reasons that could explain the increasing invisibility of these practices form the arena of crime prevention in general; 3) How the content of social crime prevention has been affected by the dominance of different crime prevention strategies and particularly by situational crime prevention.