The handbook of knowledge-based policing: current conceptions and future directions

The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing Current Conceptions and Future Directions Edited by Tom Williamson Tom Willi...

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The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing Current Conceptions and Future Directions

Edited by

Tom Williamson

Tom Williamson was formerly a Visiting Professor at The Institute of Criminal Justice Studies University of Portsmouth Portsmouth, England



Edited by

Tom Williamson

Tom Williamson was formerly a Visiting Professor at The Institute of Criminal Justice Studies University of Portsmouth Portsmouth, England

C 2008 Copyright

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England Telephone

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Email (for orders and customer service enquiries): [email protected] Visit our Home Page on www.wiley.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to [email protected], or faxed to (+44) 1243 770620. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The Publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Other Wiley Editorial Offices John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741, USA Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH, Boschstr. 12, D-69469 Weinheim, Germany John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, 42 McDougall Street, Milton, Queensland 4064, Australia John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd, 2 Clementi Loop #02-01, Jin Xing Distripark, Singapore 129809 John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd, 6045 Freemont Blvd, Mississauga, ONT, L5R 4J3, Canada Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The handbook of knowledge based policing : current conceptions and future directions / edited by Tom Williamson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-02899-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Community policing–Cross-cultural studies. 2. Law enforcement–Cross-cultural studies. 3. Police–Cross-cultural studies. I. Williamson, Tom, Dr. HV936.C83H36 2008 363.2068 4–dc22 2007050164 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-470-02899-5 Typeset in 10/12pt Times by Aptara Inc., New Delhi, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestry in which at least two trees are planted for each one used for paper production.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to three forward thinking teams that have informed my understanding of “knowledge-based policing”. First, James Hart and Ian Beckett whose police experience coupled with their systems analysis and psychological knowledge provided the basis for the Neighbourhood Policing Project in the Metropolitan Police, London in the 1980s that turned community policing concepts from theory into practice. Secondly, Pierre Brien, Director General, Service du renseignement criminel, Quebec, and Professors Jean-Paul Brodeur and Benoît Dupont of the International Centre of Comparative Criminology, University of Montreal and their colleagues for organizing the Police and Citizens conference held at the École nationale de Police du Québec, Nicolet, Quebec, Canada from 31 May to 2 June 2005 which provided an opportunity to discuss many of the ideas explored in this book. Thirdly, my colleagues Professor Richard Webber and Dr David Ashby of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London for sharing their understanding of how knowledge-based systems are applied in the commercial sector and how geodemographic knowledge can substantially increase police effectiveness by getting resources to those most needing them and at the same time provide a fairer basis for comparisons of police performance. Finally, my thanks to Jennifer Wood, Australia National University and to Benoît Dupont, University of Montreal for their encouragement and unstinting support throughout this project. Tom Williamson

Contents

About the Editor

ix

Contributors

xiii

Foreword

xix

Preface

xxi

Contributors’ Acknowledgement

xxvii

Introduction to the Handbook

1

Introductory Essay: The Role of Knowledge and Networks in Policing Jean-Paul Brodeur and Benoît Dupont

9

Part 1 Current Conceptions of Community Policing Introduction to Part 1 Chapter 1 An Overview of Community Policing: Origins, Concepts and Implementation Wesley G. Skogan Chapter 2 Community Policing in the Netherlands: Four Generations of Redefinition Maurice Punch, Bob Hoogenboom, and Kees van der Vijver Chapter 3 The Failure of “Ilotage” and “Police de Proximité” Systems to withstand “Law and Order” Rhetoric in Contemporary France Christian Mouhanna

37 43

59

79

Chapter 4 The Development of Community Policing in England: Networks, Knowledge and Neighbourhoods Nick Tilley

95

Chapter 5 Community Policing in Contested Settings: The Patten Report and Police Reform in Northern Ireland Aogán Mulcahy

117

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CONTENTS

Chapter 6 In Search of a Process: Community Policing in Australia Jenny Fleming and Juani O’Reilly Chapter 7 Current Developments Affecting the Japanese Koban System of Community Policing Noriaki Kawamura and Yasuhiro Shirakawa Chapter 8 Japanese Community Policing Under the Microscope Tom Ellis, Chris Lewis, Koichi Hamai, and Tom Williamson

139

157 175

Part 2 Knowledge-Based Policing: Future Directions Introduction to Part 2 Chapter 9 Knowledge Management Challenges in the Development of Intelligence-Led Policing Jerry Ratcliffe Chapter 10 A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Intelligence-Led Policing Frédéric Lemieux

199 205 221

Chapter 11 Reassurance Policing, Community Intelligence and the Co-Production of Neighbourhood Order Martin Innes and Colin Roberts

241

Chapter 12 Generating Youth Safety From Below: Situating Young People at the Centre of Knowledge-Based Policing Monique Marks and Jennifer Wood

263

Chapter 13 Identifying the Neighbourhoods in Neighbourhood Policing: A Geodemographic Example of Knowledge-Based Policing David Ashby and Dr Foster, UK

279

Chapter 14 Community Policing and Prediction Nick Ross and Ken Pease Chapter 15 Rethinking Governance: Conceptualizing Networks and Their Implications for New Mechanisms of Governance Based on Reciprocity Karen Stephenson Chapter 16 Prioritizing Crime Problems in Belgium, According to Strategic Police Planning: Developing the National Police Security Picture for Belgium by Means of a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model Martine Pattyn and Paul Wouters

305

323

341

Part 3 Engaging Communities and Regulating Partnerships Introduction to Part 3 Chapter 17 Neighbourhood Policing and Community Engagement: Police Community Support Officers in the London Metropolitan Police Les Johnston

365 369

CONTENTS

ix

Chapter 18 Integrated Security: Assembling Knowledges and Capacities Julie Berg and Clifford Shearing Conclusion to the Handbook Index

389 405 409

About the Editor

Tom Williamson (1947–2007) was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. He was a chartered forensic psychologist and held a doctorate from the University of Kent for his research into investigative interviewing. He was a former police officer who retired from the post of Deputy Chief Constable of the Nottinghamshire Police in 2001 and was previously a Commander at Scotland Yard.1

1

Sadly, Tom Williamson died before seeing this book through to its final submission to the publisher. I was privileged to have been asked, by Tom, to undertake the few remaining editorial tasks. Characteristically, he had made this job an easy one by leaving everything in impeccable order. I know I speak for all those who contributed to this volume when I say we have lost a much admired and respected friend and colleague whom we remember with much affection. (Les Johnston, Exmouth, Devon, July 2007)

Contributors

David Ashby leads on Local Government projects at “Dr Foster Research” having previously worked at University College London. David’s PhD at UCL explored The Spatial Analysis of Crime and Policing in England and Wales. Co-sponsored by the Police Foundation, and including collaborations with the Audit Commission, the National Reassurance Policing Programme and a variety of police forces, his research has been widely published and has generated much interest from central and local government alike, including the Cabinet Office and the Home Office. His research interests lie in the use of geographic information in developing more efficient and effective public services; particularly, the use of geodemographics and advanced spatial analysis. David also has an MSc in geography from the University of Toronto and a first class honours degree from the University of Nottingham. Julie Berg is a lecturer at the Centre of Criminology in the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town. She is also a doctoral student conducting research on governance innovations in South Africa. Jean-Paul Brodeur is the Director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminology ´ and a full professor at the Ecole de criminologie, University of Montreal. He was a member of several commissions of inquiry on the police and the intelligence services in Canada. He has published several books and articles on Canadian and international policing. His latest book in English is entitled Democracy, Law and Security (with Peter Gill and Dennis Töllborg) (Ashgate Publishing, 2003). Dr Brodeur is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Benoˆıt Dupont is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Montreal. He is Deputy Director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminology and he holds the Canada Research Chair in security, identity and technology. He recently co-directed a book with Jennifer Wood entitled Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security, published by Cambridge University Press in 2006. Tom Ellis was a researcher in the Home Office Research, Development & Statistics Directorate for most of the 1990s, with a spell working for the United Nations in Rome. He is now a Principal Lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. He has published on various research topics, including policing, probation, race and criminal justice, prisons, youth justice and Anglo-Japanese comparative criminal justice. Address for correspondence: Jenny Fleming joined the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies in July 2006. Her role is to facilitate research in the law enforcement and policing research areas. Prior to

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CONTRIBUTORS

joining TILES, Jenny was a Fellow with Security 21 at the Australian National University, Canberra, working primarily with ACT Policing on resource allocation and partnership work in the community. She is a strong supporter of participatory action research with the emphasis on practitioner involvement. Professor Fleming is a member of several boards including: the Alcohol and other Drugs Council Board of Australia, the Australian Council of Women and Police and Crimestoppers Australia. She is also the Tasmanian representative on the Australian Crime Prevention Council. She was recently appointed academic panel adviser to the Criminology Research Council at the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra. Her research expertise includes police management, police–government relations, police–community partnerships and organizational change. She has published widely both nationally and internationally in these areas. Her recent book, (with Jennifer Wood), Fighting Crime Together: The challenges of policing and security networks was published in October 2006 (University of New South Wales Press). Koichi Hamai is a professor in the Graduate Law School of Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan. He has been a probation and prison officer and worked as a researcher for the Japanese Ministry of Justice, during which time he contributed to writing the annual “White Paper” on crime and on carrying out the International Crime Victims Survey. He worked on secondment for the UN in the early 1990s and was one of the authors of Probation around the world (Routledge, 1995). He is currently carrying out research into victimization in Japan, using the same methodology as the British Crime Survey. Address for correspondence: Bob Hoogenboom is Professor of Forensic Business Studies at Nyenrode University in the Netherlands. He has published on policing, private security, economic crime, regulation and intelligence. For 10 years he was a part-time lecturer at the Dutch Police Academy (for senior officers). In 1996 he received the Publication Prize of the Dutch Police Foundation for his published PhD thesis Het Politiecomplex (1994), which dealt with “grey policing” between public and private police. With Maurice Punch he is currently writing The Governance and Policing of Security (Palgrave, 2007) in which a number of boundaries in police and security studies are explored: public–private, physical–digital, policing–intelligence, policing–regulation, civil–military and national–international. The principal aim of the work is to broaden the traditional focus on policing to include a wide range of (semi-)public, private and military actors and to draw attention to the growing interweaving taking place in “policing”. Martin Innes is Professor and Director of the Universities Police Science Institute at Cardiff University. He is author of the books Investigating Murder (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Understanding Social Control (Open University Press, 2003) and a number of scholarly articles on various aspects of policing. He is the serving editor of the journal Policing and Society. Between April 2003 and July 2005 he led the research for the National Reassurance Policing Programme. His current research focuses upon applications of the Signal Crimes Perspective to understanding public reactions to crime and the use of intelligence by police in relation to issues of national and neighbourhood security. Les Johnston is a Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. He has research interests in security governance, public, commercial and citizen-based policing, risk and security management and social and political theory. His books include Marxism, Class Analysis and Socialist Pluralism (Allen & Unwin, 1986);

CONTRIBUTORS

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The Rebirth of Private Policing (Routledge, 1992); Policing Britain: Risk, Security and Governance (Longman, 2000) and (with Professor Clifford Shearing) Governing Security: Explorations in Policing (Routledge, 2003). Noriaki Kawamura is a graduate of Tokyo and Harvard Universities and a senior officer with the Japan National Police Agency. He is currently engaged in negotiating with Hong Kong, Russia and China on mutual legal assistance treaties, and with Brazil on an extradition treaty. These countries have different legal systems from that of Japan, so it is taking time to reach an agreement. Japan is also interested in concluding a treaty with European countries, which is currently hampered by differences such as on the death penalty. Frédéric Lemieux is currently Director of Police Science and Associate Professor of Sociology at George Washington University. He is also a regular researcher at the International Center for Comparative Criminology at the University of Montreal. Frédéric Lemieux’s main research areas are criminal and security intelligence, and crisis management. He has recently published two books, one on police apparatus militarization in 2005 and the second on norms and practices in criminal intelligence (an international comparison). Chris Lewis is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth. For many years he was Assistant Director of Research at the British Home Office, taking a particular interest in crime statistics. He now researches on comparative criminal justice systems, diversity and organized crime, especially gun crime and covert operations. Together with Tom Ellis and Koichi Hamai, he is writing a book comparing the British and Japanese criminal justice systems. Monique Marks is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University. Monique has published in the areas of police organizational change, youth safety, public order policing and police unionism. Her recent book is Transforming the Robocops: Changing Police in South Africa (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005). She holds a doctorate from the University of Natal. Christian Mouhanna has a PhD in sociology and is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France. He has undertaken research on policing and criminal justice issues for the past 15 years. His recent publications include L’urgence comme politique (Paris: PUF, 2007) on the French courts, and Police: des chiffres et des doutes (Paris: Michalon, 2007) on police statistics. Aogán Mulcahy lectures in the School of Sociology at University College Dublin. His main research interests lie in the areas of policing and social change, crime and marginalization and conflict resolution. He is currently involved in research on police–community consultative mechanisms, joy-riding and youth culture, and the relationship between cultural nationalism and the development of policing in Ireland. He is co-author (with Ian Loader) of Policing and the Condition of England (Oxford University Press, 2003) and author of Policing Northern Ireland (Willan Publishing, 2006). Juani O’Reilly is a federal agent with the Australian Federal Police (AFP). She joined the AFP in 1981 and has worked in a number of operational areas within ACT Policing. Juani completed graduate studies in primary health care (Addiction Studies) at Flinders University, which led her to develop the position of Drug and Alcohol Coordinator. In

xvi

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this position she was presented with a number of awards in recognition of her significant achievement in the reduction of alcohol and other drug-related harm. She led and managed the Client Service Team which assists with examining AFP operational priorities based on the expectations of government and the difficulties in balancing competing needs with limited resources. Juani was the inaugural Federal Agent in residence at the Australian National University’s Research School of Social Science and bore primary responsibility for managing the “Governance of Illicit Synthetic Drugs” research project. Juani has coauthored a number of publications including: The Multilateralization of Policing: The Case of Illicit Synthetic Drugs (Police Practice and Research); The chemical generation and plural policing (Platypus: The Journal of the Australian Federal Police); and The governance of illicit synthetic drugs (Monograph Series No. 9, National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund). Martine Pattyn is Head of the Strategic Analysis Department in the Belgian Federal Police. She has a master’s degree in geography and a master’s in urban and regional planning. She started work in 1985 at the former Belgian Gendarmerie where she developed geographical and statistical analysis of crime problems. Gradually this evolved into “strategic analysis” (analysis of security and safety problems) as a support tool for policy development on a strategic level for the Federal Police. Ken Pease OBE is a chartered forensic psychologist and former Professor of Criminology at the University of Manchester and a member of the Parole Board for England and Wales. During the 1980s he worked at the maximum security Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He also acted as Head of the Police Research Group at the Home Office and remains a member of the Home Office Science and Technology Reference Group. Maurice Punch has worked at universities in the UK, USA and the Netherlands where he has lived since 1975. He has researched primarily corporate crime and police corruption: Conduct Unbecoming (Tavistock, 1985); Dirty Business: Exploring Corporate Misconduct (Sage, 1996); and Rethinking Corporate Crime (with Jim Gobert) (Cambridge University Press, 2003). After 18 years at Dutch universities he became an independent researcher and consultant and in 1999 a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Forthcoming publications are on the motives of white collar criminals, the “transfer” of zero tolerance policing to the Netherlands, police accountability and on the experiences of British police officers attending university (Policing by Degrees (Hondsrug Pers, 2006)). He has been guest lecturer in a number of countries, has been involved in numerous conferences including at the Council of Europe and United Nations, gives seminars to senior police officers and corporate managers and contributes regularly to the MA Criminology Programme at King’s College London. Jerry Ratcliffe is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice, Temple University, Philadelphia. Previously he served for 11 years as a police officer with the Metropolitan Police in London (UK) where he worked on patrol, in an intelligence and information unit and with the Diplomatic Protection Group. He completed a BSc (Hons) in geography at the University of Nottingham, but due to an ice-climbing accident left the police and remained in academia. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he has a PhD in spatial and temporal crime analysis techniques (Nottingham). As a lecturer in policing (intelligence) at the New South Wales Police College in Australia, he ran graduate programmes in criminal intelligence, and for a number of years coordinated Australia’s

CONTRIBUTORS

xvii

National Strategic Intelligence Course. Dr Ratcliffe is the creator of “HotSpot Detective”, a crime mapping and analysis program for MapInfo. He has published 40 research articles, three books: Strategic Thinking in Criminal Intelligence (Federation Press, 2004); GIS and Crime Mapping (John Wiley & Sons, 2005) and Policing Illegal Drug Markets (Criminal Justice Press, 2005), and is writing a new book on intelligence-led policing (forthcoming from Willan Publishing). He researches and lectures on environmental criminology, intelligence-led policing and crime reduction. In his spare time, he likes to scuba dive, ski, fly light aircraft and drink single malt whisky (not all at the same time!). Colin Roberts spent 22 years as a police officer, before working for DfID, Amnesty International and the United Nations as policing consultant in sub-Saharan Africa and Timor Leste, formerly East Timor. As part of the research team for the National Reassurance Policing Programme he was instrumental in creating the National Neighbourhood Policing Model and developing tools for capturing signal information. His research interests are focused upon the role of informal social control in violent crime, particularly gun violence. He is currently completing a PhD in criminology and is a consultant for Signal Research Services, based in Guildford, Surrey. Nick Ross is a British broadcast journalist who has worked in the crime field for over 20 years. He has been a member of three government crime committees, an adviser to Victim Support and Crime Concern, and is a trustee of Crimestoppers. He has twice chaired the jury of the Science Book Prize, been a member of the Committee on Public Understanding of Science, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminologists. He coined the term “crime science” and was instrumental in creating the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London. Clifford Shearing holds the Chair of Criminology and the South African Research Chair in African Security and Justice at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town where he directs the Faculty’s Centre of Criminology. His most recent book (co-authored with Jennifer Wood) is Imagining Security (Willan Publishing, 2006). Yasu Shirakawa is Chief of the Criminal Law Instruction Office at the Criminal Investigation Bureau, National Police Agency, Japan. He stayed in Portsmouth as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth researching criminal justice in the UK. Wes Skogan is Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. His research focuses on public encounters with the institutions of justice, including the police, crime prevention projects and communityoriented policing. His most recent books on policing are Police and Community in Chicago (2006), Community Policing: Can It Work? (2004), On the Beat: Police and Community Problem Solving (1999) and Community Policing, Chicago Style (1997). Professor Skogan chaired the National Research Council’s Committee to Review Research on Police Policy and Practices. The Committee’s report Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence was published by the National Academies Press in 2004. Karen Stephenson is President of NetForm, Inc. She is internationally recognized for her pioneering work in detecting, diagnosing and designing human networks to solve a variety of complex problems: (1) engineering tipping points in open markets and communities of practice; (2) remediating acquired organizational deficiencies within large-scale public

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and private enterprises, and (3) developing novel techniques for building and sustaining trusted collaboration in public–private partnerships in the United Kingdom, inter-agency cooperation in the US government and civic awareness in regional and national economies. She received her PhD in anthropology at Harvard University, an MA in anthropology at the University of Utah, and a BA in art & chemistry at Austin College, Texas. Her forthcoming book, The Quantum Theory of Trust is to be published by the Financial Times. Nick Tilley is Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University and Visiting Professor at the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London. He was seconded to the Home Office Research and Development and Statistics Directorate as a research consultant for 11 years from 1993, and is the author of 8 books and more than a hundred reports, book chapters and journal articles. His research interests lie in policing, crime prevention and programme evaluation methodology. Kees van der Vijver attended the Dutch Police Academy for senior officers and also studied Criminal Law and Criminology. He wrote his PhD thesis on the meaning of criminal law for citizens. He began his career in a municipal police force as inspector, worked on secondment as a social scientist on change projects at the Police Directorate of the Ministry of Home Affairs in The Hague and then in the Amsterdam City Police Force in the rank of police commissioner. Subsequently he was Director of the Dutch Police and Society Foundation and is currently Professor of Police Studies at the University of Twente. Jennifer Wood holds a PhD in criminology from the University of Toronto, Canada. She is an associate professor in Criminal Justice at Temple University, Philadelphia, having previously been a Fellow at the Regulatory Institutions Network at the Australian National University. Her research has focused on policing and governance, with an emphasis on new organizational and strategic approaches to the promotion of security and democracy. Her recent publications include Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security (co-edited with Benoˆıt Dupont), Fighting Crime Together: The Challenges of Policing and Security Networks (co-edited with Jenny Fleming) and Imagining Security (co-authored with Clifford Shearing). Paul Wouters is a strategic analyst with the Federal Police, Brussels. He has a master’s degree in business engineering and a master’s degree in quantitative analysis for the social sciences. After his studies he began work as a regional strategic analyst in Genk. In 2001, following a short stay at the national division of vehicle crime, he joined the strategic analysis coordination unit. He is mostly involved in the more quantitative parts of research, training and methodological support to strategic analysis projects.

Foreword Peter Neyroud Chief Constable and Chief Executive National Policing Improvement Agency, UK

This book is a fitting tribute to Tom Williamson, police officer and academic, who died whilst the book was being edited. It is particularly fitting because, like his career, this book seeks to bring the academic world and the professional world of policing together. The subject chosen, community policing, could not, as Tom describes in his introduction, be more timely or important. Tom saw and was directly involved in several attempts in the United Kingdom to introduce community policing, ranging from the Unit Beat policing system in the 1970s to the National Restoring Reassurance Programme of the last few years. The most recent approach is by far the most ambitious and reflects the central importance placed by police leaders, politicians and local communities on “getting it right this time”. However, as the contributors to this book show, getting it right is not easy. Policing is still a relatively new academic discipline. Unlike medicine it does not have an embedded presumption towards research underpinning practice. Far from “evidence-based policing”, there is too much “policing-based evidence”, with facts – usually crime statistics and detection rates – uncritically advanced to support initiatives. Instead of high quality research designs – randomized control trials for example – policing frequently makes do with “implementation” pilots and consultant-based studies. Yet, community policing matters. Where it works, as in some of the trial sites for the National Restoring Reassurance Programme, not just crime and disorder reduce, but people’s perceptions of the safety of their communities can change. With changed perceptions come changed behaviours, reduced anxiety and greater community cohesion. Policing cannot make better communities all by itself, but there is some evidence that it can be a catalyst, just as spiralling crime can be a disabler. Running through this book are the twin themes of knowledge and risk. For those leading policing these are omnipresent. Policing has become an intensely knowledge-based profession, whose investigative practice has been transformed by science and technology. The deployment of these techniques into community policing has been slower. Community policing has laboured under the rather unhelpful soubriquet of “traditional policing”, as if there was nothing that science, technology or research could supply that could add to this well understood “art”. This book provides a very timely and forceful critique of this myth. The policing of communities can be improved just as much as the investigation of serious crime by the application of knowledge-based approaches, whether they be signal crime research, the use of intelligence or the deployment of technology. I hope that those who read this book will be infected with Tom’s passion to develop our understanding of policing. His contribution has been immense, his loss profound.

Preface

Policing is such a wonderfully complex subject that it may profitably be studied from many different perspectives (Newburn, 2003). In this volume we critically analyse it from the perspective of community policing and consider its future direction as technological and social drivers are leading to new knowledge-based paradigms of policing whose purpose is the management of risk. As a police officer for 37 years, of which the first 30 were spent at New Scotland Yard policing the Capital, with the remainder spent as a latter-day Sheriff of Nottingham, I experienced three major paradigm shifts of community policing. In the early 1960s policing in England and Wales was conducted on a very similar basis to the koban system in Japan described by Kawamura and Shirakawa in Chapter 7. Police stations were tiny, very few staff were employed inside them and constables were appointed to patrol the same small beat in three shifts for nine weeks at a time. They were embedded in the community. By the 1960s this system which had existed relatively unchanged since 1829 was deemed to be in need of modernization and was replaced by the Unit Beat policing system, of which there were three important new features. The first two were technological; the introduction of the motorized patrols in “panda” cars (so-called due to their markings), and the arrival of personal radios that meant that contact could be made with patrol officers on an almost instantaneous basis. The third innovation was an early attempt to introduce intelligence-led policing by the creation of the post of collator, a constable who remained in the police station, received and collated intelligence and briefed the other constables going out on patrol about crime trends and people wanted or suspected of crime. It did not take long before the unintended consequences of this paradigm shift began to become apparent. Officers rarely abandoned their panda cars to meet the public and patrol on foot, and this together with the effect of instant radio communication meant that instead, they went from one call for assistance to another thereby meeting the public only in times of conflict and crises. The community basis of this model of policing was quickly replaced by the unintended paradigm of response or “fire brigade” policing. This may well have contributed to the riots in inner city areas in England and Wales, where people from minority ethnic groups were concentrated, that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At this point policing had evolved into a “command and control” activity whose primary concerns were crime and maintaining public order, and as the riots demonstrated it had ceased to respect or value the “community” in community policing. At the time of the inner city riots, it seemed almost as though both sides, the police and the communities they were fighting, had gone to the edge of a precipice, looked over, and not liking what they saw, had began to edge back. It was considered that the solution could be found in a new iteration of community policing.

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In the 1980s two English police inspectors joined forces while on secondment to University to critically appraise the Unit Beat policing system, and from their analyses a series of recommendations intended to promote a concept of neighbourhood policing were developed. Panda cars and police radios were still a feature of the new system, as was the collator, now renamed a local intelligence officer, who was to be relieved of some bureaucratic tasks in order to concentrate on managing intelligence. The main new feature, and as it transpired, the major stumbling block was the idea that a constable would have responsibility for a small geographic area and would remain there on a permanent basis without being abstracted to other tasks. Needless to say, this provided a pool of officers who could be drawn on to support the policing of public order and other events away from their areas. Research conducted at this time showed that the public and the police were poles apart in the model of policing that they wanted. What the public wanted was community policing with a visible and effective policing presence in their communities. What the police wanted to give them was more emergency response policing (Operational Policing Review, 1990). To a great extent this difference in preferred policing paradigms was exacerbated by the influence of New Public Management, fuelled by a punitive law and order political rhetoric which is the dominating ideology in neo-liberal political economies like the United Kingdom (Cavadino & Dignan, 2006). Targets for response times could easily be set and measured; whereas it was more difficult to identify the appropriate metrics with which to gauge the effectiveness, economy or efficiency of community policing. Like the vacant koban situation in contemporary Japan, the neighbourhood beat was frequently empty. It was not that the police were persona non grata so much as persona in absentia. The centralizing tendencies of New Public Management with a National Policing Plan and targets for performance frequently skewed police performance in directions that were far away from policing in and with the community. For example, the introduction of the concept of intelligence-led policing led to officers being absorbed into squads to combat burglary and car crime and other high profile crimes such as street robbery which did improve police performance in the types of crime and geographic areas targeted, but which left large areas virtually unpoliced. This became a hot political topic to which the politicians in the 1990s initially responded by promising more police officers. It became clear that they would never be able to satisfy the demand for police officers and so an auxiliary level of officer, a community support officer, with limited police powers was established through legislation (see Les Johnston in Chapter 17). The fourth, and most ambitious iteration of neighbourhood policing is now underway in England and Wales, with every local political area being allocated one sergeant, two police constables and three community support officers. There is no attempt to allocate resources on an equitable basis since every area is to receive the same. This is a considerable act of faith and time will tell whether even this level of resourcing manages to meet and exceed public expectations and close the reassurance gap that surely exists between public and police. (A more detailed description and critical analysis of events is provided by Nick Tilley in Chapter 4, and Martin Innes and Colin Roberts in Chapter 11.) As we will see from chapters covering the experience of community policing in a number of different countries, the pattern in recent decades has been very similar. In fact, despite the wide differences in political economy with at least four different types of regimes represented in our sample of countries, what is striking compared to the vast differences in penal policy, is not how different community policing is, but how similar, notwithstanding the political context.

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One could therefore conclude that in each of these countries, community policing is a work in progress, and observe that remarkably it has been raised to the level of becoming the new orthodoxy in policing styles in many countries around the world. But questions are rightly raised in terms of its effectiveness, equity and efficiency (Eck & Rosenbaum, 1994, p. 3). Most practitioners and informed commentators would acknowledge a gap between the aspirations of community policing and what actually happens on the ground. Indeed it has been suggested that community policing is largely based on myths about an imagined and idealized urban lifestyle (Robin, 2000, p. 99). Brogden and Nijhar (2005, pp. 47–9) critically analyse 10 myths of community policing: r r r r r r r r r r

The myth of the community The myth of local accountability The myth of professionally-informed enhanced discretion The myth of the universal relevance of community policing The myth of police rhetoric The myths of police history The myth for public support for community policing The myth of linking with informal networks of control The myth of organizational change in community policing The myth of the Anglo-American model and the failure to recognize alternatives.

We should bear these myths in mind as we consider the arguments presented in this volume. Do they indicate that community policing is fundamentally flawed as a theoretical approach; or is the failure one of implementation, indicating that we just need to get smarter at putting the theory into practice? Although we recognize the need to provide an international context through a critical analysis of community policing in a small number of countries with different political economies, we should go beyond that to consider ways in which community policing is evolving and how it should evolve. We need to consider how the “soft” concept of community policing is facing the threat to it from other paradigms which are perceived to have a “harder” edge, such as zero tolerance policing and New Public Management command and control performance regimes. We should also consider the direction in which the concept of intelligence-led policing is taking community policing. We can usefully begin by examining the concept of intelligence and ways in which better use could be made of data and information to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of community policing. Perhaps one of the problems with community policing models is that they have often lacked a knowledge base with which to inform effective local action, and are thus a token presence rather than an effective prophylactic. If the cost of providing a blanket of neighbourhood policing teams across England and Wales is likely to be prohibitive in the long run, then the cost of providing the information and communications technology (ICT) to increase the effectiveness of policing in the 21st Century is also a huge challenge. The gap in ICT spending between the private and public sectors is huge, and the difference this makes in the quality of the service that can be provided becomes more apparent as we all engage as consumers with both sectors. The investment in ICT has enabled the private sector to develop new business models, whereas policing is almost without exception still working with a variation of a 19th Century business model;

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human resource intensive but low in technology and as a consequence low in leveraging knowledge that would increase effectiveness. So how might the technification of policing become a reality? Over a decade ago Nogola (1995) envisaged technology as a power amplifier opening up new possibilities for what the police traditionally did, and identified external driving forces that favour further technification, including the following: r r r r

The general development of technology The increasing desire for more security The growing security industry The industrialization of social control.

However, as Chan observes: The advantage brought about by technology – the capacity for a more responsive and problem-oriented approach to policing – has not been fully exploited. This is because operational police’s ’technological frame’ sees information as relevant only for the purpose of arrest and conviction. While officers are aware of the potential for ’smarter’ policing approaches, the preference is still to focus on collecting evidence for law enforcement than broader analysis for crime prevention. (Chan, 2003, p. 673)

If traditional models of policing used information in a limited and narrow way, ICT opens this up so that what is considered relevant information and knowledge becomes quite broad, including the ability to create new understandings of place and populations, as routinely happens in the commercial sector in order to profile and target consumers. Emerging ICT solutions and networks may make traditional policing geographies irrelevant in that communities of risk (offenders) and those at risk (victims) are being identified and services provided in new ways that rely on digital technology to collect and analyse vast amounts of data and turn it into information, intelligence and knowledge. The ability of ICT to enable people to be identified in new ways that are not based solely on geography will decrease the risk of the unwitting assumption of homogeneity which underpins much government policy. Yet, we know that this assumed homogeneity masks considerable heterogeneity, and hence different needs, at even small levels of geography. How then is policing to embrace new technology and develop new ways of engaging with communities? Will old forms of hierarchical police governance be “fit for purpose” in the 21st Century as people come to terms with living in a networked society with a greater sense and knowledge of risk? The trend towards partnership working means that new ways of regulating the allocations and management of resources will need to be developed, as well as the humility to learn how to engage community members so that policing needs (and the other social ills that partnerships address) is something that is done with the community not for the community. Partnerships and communities will increasingly become “knowledgeable” as information becomes readily accessible to them through being put in the public domain on the Internet and brought to them almost on demand through sophisticated search engines. They will no longer be the dumb and patronized junior partners in the business of policing. ICT and networks have the potential to empower individuals and communities, bringing about a redistribution in the balance of power in favour of consumers of law, order and protective services. ´ The francophone conference on Police and Citizens held at the Ecole Nationale de Police du Québec, Canada from 31 May to 2 June 2005 with delegates from twelve countries

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provided an opportunity to share research findings and raise questions. The purpose of the conference was to stimulate debate. It was right that we should take stock of the status quo of community policing in various countries, but we also wanted to glimpse the future, and it turned out to be a world of knowledge, networks and nodes. In bringing together for this volume experts from different disciplines together with contributions from practitioners from different countries and political economies we hope that we have provided enough information to demonstrate the need to move towards the concept of knowledge-based policing and how to get there. A cautious note is sounded by Jerry Ratcliffe (Chapter 9) when he points to the problems that face such a shift of paradigm, “moving forward with analysis as the dominant knowledge tool for decision making is likely to be a slow process with no guarantee of success”. The challenge for practitioners and policy makers is whether the next iteration of community policing will take it in the direction of a new paradigm of knowledge-based policing, or whether it is to remain a variant of 19th Century conceptions of political geography and mentalities? I take this opportunity to acknowledge my gratitude to speakers at the conference and contributors to this volume for stimulating thinking about the concept of knowledge-based policing. All of us involved in this project hope that the Handbook will be of interest and value to academics in various disciplines, students, policy makers and practitioners, and that as a result it will ultimately benefit and help to empower consumers of policing services. Tom Williamson

REFERENCES Brogden, M. & Nijhar, P. (2005). Community Policing. National and International Models and Approaches. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J. (2006). Penal Systems. A Comparative Approach. London: Sage. Chan, J.B.L. (2003). Police and new technologies. In T. Newburn (ed.), (2003) Handbook of Policing (pp. 655–79). Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Eck, J. & Rosenbaum, D. (1994). The new police order: effectiveness, equity, and efficiency in community policing. In D. Rosenbaum (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing (pp. 3–23). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Newburn, T. (ed.) (2003). Handbook of Policing. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Nogola, D. (1995). The future role of technology in policing. In J-P. Brodeur (ed.), Comparisons in Policing: an International Perspective. Aldershot: Avebury. Operational Police Review (1990). Report by Joint Consultative Committee of Police Staff Associations. Surbiton, England: Joint Consultative Committee. Robin, D. (2000). Community Policing: Origins, Elements, Implementation, Assessment. Lampeter, Dyfyd: Edwin Mellen Press.

Contributors’ Acknowledgement This collection was conceived and contracted by Tom Williamson before his untimely death in February 2007. Tom was an academic’s copper and a copper’s academic. He wanted to improve ethical policing by enhancing its knowledge-base. This volume is part of that project. We were delighted to be part of Tom’s efforts and are much saddened that he is not with us to see this book come out. We are grateful also that Les Johnston took it on himself to bring the volume to fruition, and for the respectful, professional and supportive manner in which he did so. The Contributors December 2007

Introduction to the Handbook KNOWLEDGE, INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY NETWORKS What is knowledge-based policing? Globalization, characterized by the massive international movement of people and goods together with the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) has been changing the world that we inhabit. According to Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web: Today, digital information about nearly every aspect of our lives is being created at an astonishing rate. Hidden amid all of these data is the key to knowledge about how to cure diseases, make more money and govern the world more effectively. Yet the technical tools and social practices that shape the way we manage, share, integrate and analyse this under-used treasure trove are sorely out of date. The good news is that a number of technical innovations (with names like AJAX, XMI, RDF and OWL) along with new social arrangements regarding data are advancing the World Wide Web towards what we call the Semantic Web. Progress towards better data integration will happen using the same basic technology that has made the World Wide Web so successful: the link. The power of the web today, including the ability to find information quickly, derives from the fact that people publish documents in standard formats, and then link them together. The value of the web increases in more than linear fashion with the number of links; this has been called the network effect. (Berners-Lee, 2006).

Traditional models of policing, mostly developed for a 19th Century world are coming under strain as they face up to the challenges of late modernity. A process of transformation appears to be under way as policing begins to adopt ICT for its own use and adapts to new policing structures, involving new actors such as the private sector with a different, knowledge-focused, risk-based paradigm for managing the insecurities of late modernity. It is not that knowledge-based systems have been absent from policing; trace biometrics such as fingerprint identification would be an early example, and more recently, DNA databases (Williams & Johnson, 2007) and automatic number plate recognition technology (Norris, 2006), but the mindset has been narrowly focused on arrest and conviction within a traditional punitive retributive paradigm of justice which falls short of the broader goal of managing risk. The process of adoption of ICT by the public sector may be slower than can be observed in most commercial and manufacturing organizations but it has enormous implications for The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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THE HANDBOOK OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED POLICING

policing in the 21st Century. We will need to add to our understanding of “intelligence” and become more familiar with the concepts of “knowledge”, “networks” (of people as well as technology) and “nodes”. These developments have been described in recent criminological research. In their seminal study Ericson and Haggerty having analysed what the police do, concluded that they were “knowledge workers” (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). Since that time ICT has become more available to workers together with the software that provides analytical tools that help to turn the raw data captured by the networked technology into information, intelligence and knowledge; each stage implying a different level of processing. The technology allows us to see patterns beyond traditional police geographies of beats, patrols, divisions and police force areas and provides new ways to visualize crime patterns, including networks of people as victims and offenders. These ICT networks and the subsequent analysis of the data they accumulate will enable the police to better map the people networks representing those at risk as victims as well as people of risk who represent a threat to society.

STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN THE GOVERNANCE OF POLICING: FROM THE POLICE TO POLICING The structure of policing is also changing as we move from the 19th Century concept of policing as a state function, to policing involving not one but many actors. Estimates suggest that in some countries private security personnel outnumber public police by a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 (Johnston, 2000, p. 124). This larger concept of “policing” has a longer history going back to discussions during the Enlightenment of a police science – meaning the arrangements for maintaining an orderly society (Zedner, 2006; Reiner, 2007). It is therefore likely that the 19th Century arrangements for the governance of the modern police at national and local levels will also have to change as they prove to be no longer fit for purpose in late modernity. Accordingly, the emerging models discussed in this Handbook may have much in common with Enlightenment ideas for maintaining an orderly society. Current arrangements may have been fit for purpose for the governance of “the police” but may no longer be so for the governance of “policing”. In a networked world information and knowledge is no longer confined to the few involved in governing and managing the police but instead it flows along networks, including open networks like the Internet, to reach a far greater number of people who cannot be categorized in traditional hierarchical ways. Each person and group of people represents a node on the network, and each node has the potential to exert influence. Nodal governance is generating new forms of governance with the potential for empowering those people who were previously excluded from decision making. On the other hand, the most recent example of large-scale, networked, governance practice is the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. The coming together of technological networks with networks of people brings closer the prospect and actuality of nodal governance. In a policing context it opens up the possibility of empowering new groups of people and neighbourhoods and generating a plurality of governance nodes.

HIGH AND LOW FORMS OF POLICING This Handbook explores the themes of intelligence, knowledge, networks and nodes of governance as dimensions of knowledge-based policing. Policing has been dichotomized

INTRODUCTION TO THE HANDBOOK

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between “high” and “low” forms of policing (see Brodeur and Dupont’s Introductory Essay).1 Brodeur envisaged high policing as concentrating on the maintenance of the state and reaching beyond criminal intelligence into the realms of economics and politics. Low policing was concerned with the maintenance of order and the general suppression of crime. Both typologies were envisaged as operating within a Weberian conception of the state enjoying the monopoly in the legitimate use of force within a given territory, a position which has changed in the light of new developments in global governance. As there are now private and non-state actors (Johnston & Shearing, 2003), there needs to be a consideration of the role of these private actors within Brodeur’s paradigm. The growth in private security is driven by concerns about risk and insecurity (Beck, 1992; Loader, 2000) and the belief that such risks can be managed. In response to this belief private actors have developed a different paradigm of policing which is knowledge-focused and risk-oriented compared to traditional low policing paradigms (O’Reilly & Ellison, 2006). Corporate security agents have always used preventative methodologies, as have state security agencies. The role of high policing actors has always been defined by the application of proactive preventative methodologies as opposed to retrospective emphasis upon the application of retributive punishment. This raises the question of whether models of community policing can be transformed to be knowledge-focused, risk-oriented and capable of delivering alternative outcomes to retributive punishment? Another development noted by some observers that may facilitate such a transformation into risk-oriented policing is that there has been a merging of the types of intrusive police practice associated with high policing into the area of low policing (Anderson et al., 1995). An example of this in the United Kingdom would be the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 that provides the legitimacy for both high and low policing actors to conduct intrusive surveillance and intelligence gathering including the use and regulation of covert human intelligence sources. This merging process need not render the distinction between high and low policing obsolete and that distinction will be maintained in this volume; and also to draw attention to the dynamic now being added by the private sector. As we will illustrate in the following chapters, knowledge and the management of risk becomes an essential ingredient for uniform patrol and community policing just as much as for higher intelligence and investigation functions. It will apply with equal vigour to both “high” and “low” forms of policing. In this sense knowledge-based policing can be considered to be a unifying paradigm.

OVERVIEW OF THE EMERGING ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE AND NETWORKS IN POLICING In order to set the scene for the discussion and analysis in the Handbook an Introductory Essay on the role of knowledge and networks in policing will be provided by Jean-Paul Brodeur and Benoˆıt Dupont. They argue that there have been at least two significant developments in the theory of policing in the last 10 years. The first is the growing importance of a cluster of concepts that stem from the core notion of information, such as meaning, intelligence, knowledge, information technology, and data mining. Seeing the police as “knowledge workers” is a result of this development (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997), which 1

For a discussion of the high and low policing paradigm, see Brodeur, 2005; Brodeur & Leman-Langlois, 2005. The concept of private high policing was originally articulated by O’Reilly, 2006; see also O’Reilly & Ellison, 2006.

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has been scrutinized by many researchers (De Lint, 2003). A second development, not yet as influential, is the introduction of the idea of network to reflect the fact that policing involves many participants (Johnston & Shearing, 2003). These developments are not, of course, specific to the theory of policing but reflect wider changes within social theory, such as concern about the “knowledge society” (Böhme & Stehr, 1986) and the “network society” (Castells, 1996). They have also generated changes in the practice of policing, such as the creation of intelligence-led policing and the outsourcing of large parts of policing to private partners (“multi lateralization”). The Introductory Essay is divided into five parts. It begins with a theoretical discussion of the concepts of knowledge and of network. This is then followed by an examination of their application to the fields of general policing (e.g. deterrent patrol); criminal investigation; undercover policing and the handling of police informants, and high or political policing, particularly in relation to counter-terrorism. Brodeur and Dupont conclude that classical policing studies, while busy determining what sets policing apart from other social functions, ascertaining the role of coercive force in police work, or charting the new privatized territories, have tended to underestimate the importance of the complex web of institutions that govern and deliver security. In the information society, where time and space are collapsing and uncertainty flourishing (Castells, 1996), knowledge work is irremediably embedded in these networked structures.

Risk The concepts of a “risk society” (Beck, 1992; Ericson & Haggerty, 1997), “knowledge society” (Böhme & Stehr, 1986), “network society” (Castells, 1996) and “surveillance society” (Wood, 2006; Norris, 2006) have received considerable attention from both academics and policy makers. In the last two decades the concept of risk has moved from the periphery to the core of criminological theorizing and crime control practice. Ways of anticipating and forestalling future harms have evolved to incorporate new statistical models and unimagined computational power, the refocusing of the theory and practice of crime control in terms of risk actually serves to reconfigure its objects of attention and intervention, its intellectual and institutional connections with other domains, and its cultural and political salience and sensitivity in potentially fundamental fashion (Loader & Sparks, 2002, p. 92). The rise of risk-based approaches relies on the fact that probabilistic models based on large data samples do provide more efficient guides to intervention than previous methods, and this can be seen across many spheres of activity. Risk becomes a way of thinking about danger in contemporary life. For Beck (1992, p. 21): Risk may be defined as a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself. Risks, as opposed to older dangers, are consequences which relate to the threatening forces of modernization and to its globalization of doubt.

Familiar institutions of criminal justice are in the process of being reconfigured into risk management agencies, such as is illustrated by the creation in England and Wales of the National Offender Management Systems. Such risk-based approaches go far beyond criminal justice, and are spreading to health and welfare systems. Once part of socialdemocratic political economies, these are being changed into risk management models that demand full knowledge of the situation. Personal data are sought in order to know where to direct resources. Networks permit considerable joining-up, insurance companies can


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work with the police, or supermarkets can combine with other data-gatherers to more easily profile customers and their consumption patterns. There is an ambient sense of risk that is a feature of late modernity, what Bauman has called “liquid fear” (Bauman, 2006). Policing in its various forms needs to make the transition towards a risk-based and knowledge-focused paradigm of policing, hence the concept of knowledge-based policing.

Surveillance We already live in a surveillance society. Massive surveillance systems underpin modern existence, from CCTV cameras to the processing of our transactions using bank, credit and loyalty cards. These systems represent a basic, complex infrastructure which assumes that gathering and processing personal data is vital to contemporary living. The surveillance society is the outcome of modern organizational practices, business processes, government and military technology. There are several underlying trends in western societies that lead to the surveillance society and these include risk and security; the role of the military; the political economy of surveillance; and the growing personal information economy (Wood, 2006, p. 11). Surveillance grows just because it is part of being modern. Surveillance in this broader sense, as opposed to the activities of the police and intelligence agencies, occurs where purposeful, routine, systematic and focused attention is paid to personal details, for the sake of control, entitlement, management, influence or protection (Wood, 2006, p. 4). The first reference to the computer-based surveillance society was made by Marx in 1985. In government and commerce large personal information databases are analysed and categorized to define target markets and risky populations. Sophisticated data mining techniques are used to profile customers. Data gathered by surveillance technologies flow around computer networks. We may consent to giving data in one setting, but what happens if those data are then transferred elsewhere? (Wood, 2006, p. 9). Pre-emptive risk profiling shifts surveillance practices toward the screening of the actions and transactions of the general population, screening can then be used to target interventions on people or groups of people who are considered to be at risk or to pose risks for others. Hence collection and analysis of information, including data on identifiable individuals are vital (Wood, 2006, p. 11).

The militarization of surveillance is already a reality with the earth increasingly surrounded by a multitude of military surveillance satellites, and communications systems are interpenetrated by military surveillance systems; for example the Global Positioning System is ultimately controlled by the US military. The Internet started as part of the American military’s distributed communications system. The business sector gathers data by combining publicly available data such as the census with data from promotional contests, warranty information, telephone and shopping surveys and web page traffic. These are connected to postal codes which are profiled. These profiles provide the means for companies to target their marketing to a narrower band of consumers (Harris, Sleight & Webber, 2005). They have only recently been applied to the analysis of police databases (Williamson, Ashby & Webber, 2005). Database development and use represents a step change in public service delivery. For example the UK National Health Service’s Connecting for Health is the largest IT programme

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in Europe intended to create a comprehensive digital database of all personal health records. No equivalent currently exists in the UK criminal justice sector, although there are attempts to bring together a number of disparate national databases. The reality is that most police databases are held locally and do not allow transfer of information or the kind of data mining commonly used in the commercial sector. The risks inherent in not having joined-up technology were highlighted by the Bichard Inquiry into the murders of two girls which identified the non-standardized and localized procedures of intelligence and information handling as hampering inter-force cooperation. The Inquiry recommended that the creation of an IT system capable of allowing police intelligence to be shared nationally should be a priority.2 There is to be a single national police database that would integrate all databases held centrally on the Police National Computer with all those held locally at force level and it is expected to become operational in 2010. Another example of a knowledge-based policing approach is the use of cameras and computers to read automatically the licence plates of passing vehicles and check them against the records held on police and government databases. A National ANPR Data Centre will be established with an operational capacity to process daily 50 million ANPR identifications by 2008 (Norris, 2006, p. 3).

Knowledge-Based Policing Knowledge-based policing is envisaged as responding to technological and social drivers that are leading to an emerging new policing paradigm whose purpose is the management of risk. It is an emerging paradigm as no complete and extant example currently exists anywhere, but trends towards such can be discerned and are likely to provide the technological infrastructure over the next decade (Norris, 2006), assuming, of course, that the huge funding necessary can be found. If the primary object of knowledge-based policing is the management of risk, it is possible that it will do so in ways that do not conform in practice to law and due process. Not only has the locus of regulation been relocated to the state-market nexus through neo-liberal processes (Whyte, 2003, p. 593) but the deliberate obfuscation of both culpability and identity by high policing actors has created a permissive environment for the increased incidence of state-corporate crime. (O’Reilly & Ellison, 2006, p. 656)

A major weakness of this mode of policing is that unlike some other modes of policing it lacks an explicit ethical or rights basis to inform practice, (Alderson, 1998; Crawshaw, Devlin & Williamson, 1998; Neyroud & Beckley, 2001; Crawshaw, Cullen & Williamson, 2007) although it can be delivered within a principled framework where such exists. Wood argues that The idea that policy interventions be ‘intelligence-led’ has taken hold and this, along with the networking and data-matching potentials of today’s digital infrastructures, means that surveillance appears to operate by a logic of its own. (Woods, 2006, p. 9)

Knowledge is capable of being used for evil as well as good, corrupt as well as correct purposes. Knowledge-based policing therefore poses a serious challenge in terms of effective regulation which is likely to go well beyond the 19th Century bureaucratic forms of 2

http://www.bichardinquiry.org.uk


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regulation that currently exist for the governance of police forces. In a networked world where time and space are collapsing, knowledge-based policing represents both a threat and an opportunity. In order to discern the probable trajectory of change we will examine current conceptions and then consider future directions and their implications for the governance of policing. Following Brodeur and Dupont’s Introductory Essay, which examines both the general issues outlined above and discusses recent developments in Canada, the structure of the Handbook will be in three parts: r Part 1: An international perspective where we will consider developments in policing in the USA, France, the Netherlands, England, Northern Ireland, Australia and Japan. r Part 2: Providing examples, from various other jurisdictions, of knowledge-based policing; the technologies involved and the potential role of networks. r Part 3: A consideration of how the new conceptualization of policing will lead to new ways of engaging with communities and to new forms of regulating policing partnerships.

REFERENCES Alderson, J. (1998). Principled Policing. Protecting the Public with Integrity. Winchester: Waterside Press. Anderson, M., Den Boer, M., Cullen, P. et al. (1995). Policing the European Union. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bauman, Z. (2006). Liquid Fear. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Berners-Lee, T. (2006). Welcome to the Semantic Web. In The World in 2007. London: The Economist. Retrieved on 29 July 2007 from: http://www.economist.com/theworldin/science/ displayStory.cfm?story id=8134382&d=2007 Böhme, G. & Stehr, N. (eds) (1986). The Knowledge Society: The Impact of Scientific Knowledge on Social Structures. Dordrecht: Reidel. Brodeur, J.-P. (2005). Cops and Spooks. In T. Newburn (ed.), Policing. Key Readings (pp. 797–812). Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Brodeur, J.-P. & Leman-Langlois, S. (2005). Higher Policing or Surveillance Fiction. In R.V. Ericson & K. Haggerty (eds), The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility (pp. 171–98). Toronto: Toronto University Press. Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Crawshaw, R., Devlin, B. & Williamson, T. (1998). Human Rights and Policing. Standards for Good Behaviour and a Strategy for Change. The Hague: Kluwer Law International. Crawshaw, R., Cullen, S. & Williamson, T. (2007). Human Rights and Policing. Second Revised Edition. Leiden, the Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff. De Lint, W. (2003). Keeping open windows: Police as access brokers. The British Journal of Criminology, 43, 379–397. Ericson, R.V. & Haggerty, K. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Harris, R., Sleight, P. & Webber, R. (2005). Geodemographics, GIS and Neighbourhood Targeting. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Johnston, L. (2000). Policing Britain Risk Security and Governance. Harlow: Longman. Johnston, L. & Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security, London: Routledge. Loader, I. (2000). Plural policing and democratic governance. Social and Legal Studies, 9, 323–45. Loader, I. & Sparks R. (2002). Contemporary landscapes of crime. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan & R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd edn, (pp. 883–111). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marx, G.T. (1985). The surveillance society: the threat of 1984-style techniques. The Futurist, June 21–26.

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Neyroud, P. & Beckley, A. (2001). Policing, Ethics and Human Rights. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Norris, C. (2006). A Report on the Surveillance Society. For the Information Commissioner. Expert Report: Criminal Justice. Surveillance Studies Network. London: Information Commissioner. O’Reilly, C. (2006). Towards State/Corporate Symbiosis: The Role of the Security Consultancy Industry in Transnational Policing. Unpublished PhD, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast. O’Reilly, C. & Ellison, G. (2006). Eye spy private high: Reconceptualising high policing theory. British Journal of Criminology, 46, 641–660. Reiner, R. (2007). Political economy, crime and criminal justice. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan & R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 4th edn (pp. 341–80). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whyte, D. (2003). ‘Lethal regulation: state-corporate crime and the United Kingdom Government’s new mercenaries’, Journal of Law and Society, 30, 575–600. Williams, R. & Johnson, P. (2007). Trace biometrics and criminal investigations. In T. Newburn, T. Williamson & A. Wright (eds), Handbook of Criminal Investigation. (pp. 357–80). Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Williamson, T., Ashby, D.I. & Webber, R. (2005). Young offenders, schools and neighbourhood: A new approach to data-analysis for community policing. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 15, 203–228. Wood, D.M. (2006). A Report on the Surveillance Society. For the Information Commissioner. Surveillance Studies Network. London: Information Commissioner. Zedner, L. (2006). Policing before and after the police: The historical antecedents of contemporary crime control. The British Journal of Criminology, 46, 78–96.

Introductory Essay: The Role of Knowledge and Networks in Policing Jean-Paul Brodeur and Benoˆıt Dupont University of Montreal, Canada

INTRODUCTION There have been at least two significant developments in the theory of policing in the last 10 years. The first is the growing importance of a cluster of concepts that stem from the core notion of information, such as meaning, intelligence, knowledge, information technology and data mining. Seeing the police as “knowledge workers” is a result of this development (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997), which has been scrutinized by many researchers (De Lint, 2003). A second development, not yet as influential, is the introduction of the idea of network to reflect the fact that policing involves many participants (Johnston & Shearing, 2003; see also Bayley & Shearing, 2001). These developments are not, of course, specific to the theory of policing but reflect wider changes within social theory, such as concern about the “knowledge society” (Böhme & Stehr, 1986; Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1987) and the “network society” (Castells, 1996). They have also generated changes in the practice of policing, such as the creation of intelligence-led policing and the outsourcing of large parts of policing to private partners (“lateralisation”). While discussing both these developments, we will focus more on the role of knowledge in policing than on the place of networks. The concepts of knowledge and networks were introduced to the sociology of policing without clear definition of which part of policing they were most applicable to. We discuss the idea of knowledge as the main element in the articulation of a new paradigm for policing – that of “intelligence-led policing” – and assess its role in relation to those aspects of policing that are the most likely to be influenced by this new paradigm. The chapter is thus divided into five parts, followed by conclusions. (1) We begin with a theoretical discussion of the concepts of knowledge and of network. This is followed by an examination of the role of knowledge and networks in the fields of (2) general policing (e.g. deterrent patrol), (3) criminal investigation, (4) undercover policing and the handling of police informants,

The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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and (5) high or political policing, particularly in relation to counterterrorism (for a discussion of high policing, see Brodeur, 1983, 2005b; Brodeur & Leman-Langlois, 2005). Our perspective can be best defined through the brief discussion of one example. Saying “I believe that there are Americans camping on the hidden side of the moon, but I may be wrong” does not involve a contradiction, because one can believe something that is false. As Bertrand Russell stressed a long time ago, belief statements are not truth functional. However, saying “I know that there are Americans camping on the hidden side of the moon, but I may be wrong” entails a contradiction as one cannot claim at the same time to know something and to be in doubt. How do we understand this difference between the expression of belief and of knowledge? There is a tradition stemming from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953) and leading to Searle’s Speech Acts (1969) that implies logic, semantics and, more generally, analytical philosophy. It tries to answer Wittgenstein’s call to resist the “craving for generality” and to distinguish between the different ways language is used. Expressions of belief, information or knowledge are very different speech acts. This chapter focuses on showing how much they differ in the context of criminal and security intelligence. We also show how various forms of the same concept are used in different ways in the analysis of networks.

KNOWLEDGE AND NETWORK The concepts of knowledge and network are brought together in the notion of “knowledge workers”, which is increasingly applied to the field of policing in the wake of the influential work of Ericson and Haggerty (1997). We shall first discuss the concept of knowledge as it is presently used and then review problems raised by its application to the field of policing.

Knowledge The concept of knowledge has been discussed since the dawn of philosophy and is the object of a specialized field called epistemology, which means “the theory of knowledge”. We will stay away from the highly technical debates pursued in epistemology and focus instead on the fairly recent introduction of the concept of knowledge and its variants (information, intelligence, evidence) in policing. The prominent role of intelligence in policing was officially acknowledged in the United Kingdom with the publication of the National Intelligence Model (NIM) (National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), 2000; see also the Bichard Report (United Kingdom, House of Commons, 2004) and National Centre for Police Excellence (NCPE), 2005). Together with the work of various researchers such as Gill (2000), Maguire, John, and several other colleagues (summarized in Maguire & John, 2006), NIM articulated a new police paradigm that is usually referred to as “intelligence-led policing”. Richard Ericson stressed the importance of information for policing in his early work (Ericson, 1981; Ericson & Shearing, 1986) and produced a synthesis of his findings in Policing the Risk Society (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997), which was based on a characterization of the police as “knowledge workers”. However, it is Peter Drucker’s work in business administration that pioneered the expansion of the concepts of “knowledge work” and of “knowledge worker” (Drucker, 1974, 1995). Drucker and Ericson’s work provides important insights into the meaning and implications of intelligence-led policing.

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The knowledge worker as an applicator of knowledge Peter Drucker taught at various business schools and was an advisor in management to senior executives in government and private enterprise. His work anticipated the rise of the information society and the economy of knowledge and generalized the meaning and use of “knowledge work”. His work spans more than 40 years and cannot be summarized within the limited context of this chapter. Drucker (1995, pp. 233–259) presents a review of the main features of knowledge and the knowledge worker within the context of what he calls the “emerging knowledge society”. We focus here on five characteristics that are intrinsically linked and closely follow Drucker’s own formulations: – Education: The knowledge worker gains access to job and social position through formal education (Drucker, 1995, p. 233). Education is considered the centre of the knowledge society. – Application: In the knowledge society, knowledge basically exists only in application (p. 237) and fundamentally differs in this way from what used to be called a “liberal education”. – Specialization: Knowledge in application is, by definition, highly specialized, as applied knowledge is effective only when specialized. In the knowledge society, the central workforce will consist so much of highly specialized people that referring to generalists will be perceived as a mistake (pp. 238–39). – Organization: Knowledge workers have to have access to an organization. If not employees, at least they have to be affiliated to an organization (p. 240). – Management: Because the knowledge society has to be a society of organizations, its central and distinctive organ is management (p. 249). Although they are admittedly very general, these features are useful to dispel basic misunderstandings. They suggest that there are at least two kinds of knowledge workers. Traditional knowledge workers (e.g. scientists) are producers of knowledge; they are, however, a minority among knowledge workers, only one of the ten categories of knowledge workers identified by Davenport (2005, p. 6). The “new” knowledge workers are users of acquired knowledge (practitioners) – e.g. sci-fi writers, explicitly referred to by Davenport (2005, p. 11). It may seem contradictory to refer to sci-fi writers as knowledge workers, since what they create is fiction (which, according to the standard definition, is not knowledge). This contradiction is easily solved by distinguishing between producers and users of knowledge. Good sci-fi writing is grounded in scientific knowledge, which is used to create stimulating works of the imagination that make no claim to advancing science. Peter Drucker and the writers he influenced in business schools use the word “knowledge” in the plural: There are various kinds of knowledge that can be produced, learned, and applied in different fields. Whether this recognition of the various meanings of knowledge solves the problems related to viewing policing as knowledge work is a question that is still to be addressed.

The knowledge worker as a producer of information In their influential book, Ericson and Haggerty offered “a fundamental reassessment of how we think about the police” (1997, p. 3). They propose that policing be seen as risk

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communication (1997, Chapter 1), the police as “knowledge workers” (1997, p. 19), and community policing as “communications policing” (1997, p. 70). Their work is largely devoted to examining how knowledge is communicated rather than how it is produced, but there is no doubt that they view police knowledge workers as producers of knowledge. Their key notion is that such workers act as knowledge brokers (e.g. for insurance companies), and are thus involved in both the production and dissemination of police knowledge. Ericson and Haggerty do not provide an explicit discussion of the meaning of such key concepts as knowledge, communication, and information (the first two are not even listed in the book’s index). We learn eventually that knowledge is “that which is objectified in institutional representations, a property and resource that provide a capacity for action” and that no distinction is made between information and knowledge (1997, pp. 83–4). Ericson’s emphasis on the role of information/knowledge goes all the way back to his first book (Making Crime, 1981), where he correctly emphasized that the work of detectives is driven by information. He had actually begun to refer to the knowledge society at least 10 years before Policing the Risk Society (1997), in the first book of his trilogy on policing and the media (Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1987, p. 11), where he considered journalistic news to be a kind of knowledge. His view of knowledge (“the belief that something is real” and “the objectivated meanings of institutional activity” – Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1987, p. 11) was taken from the classic work of Berger and Luckmann (1966) on the sociology of knowledge. This latter work is quoted at the beginning of Ericson and Shearing’s paper on the “scientification” of police work (1986) and its influence on Ericson’s thought is obvious. Berger and Luckmann have left their unmistakable imprint on the sociology of knowledge through their emphasis on the idea that the sociology of knowledge must concern itself with everything “that passes for ‘knowledge’ in society” (1966, p. 13, our emphasis, quotation marks in text). The momentous change introduced by their perspective is that knowledge is now defined through a subjective attitude (“the certainty that phenomena are real”) rather than as an external validity, as it is current in science (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 1). The epistemological and methodological problems that were a major concern of the originators of the sociology of knowledge are thus no longer part of the discussion (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 12). Berger and Luckmann have been followed in this by Ericson, who asserts “knowledge is not a matter of true belief but of whatever people take to be knowledge, regardless of validity” (Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1987, p. 11). The idea that knowledge is “any and every set of ideas and acts” that is pertinent to what a social group accepts as real is now firmly ensconced in the field of the sociology of knowledge (McCarthy, 1996, p. 23). There is, however, one caveat to the extension of the use of the word knowledge, explicitly formulated by Berger and Luckmann, which deserves to be quoted. After introducing the key terms “reality” and “knowledge” in their basic theoretical discussions they add: If we were going to be meticulous in the ensuing argument, we would put quotation marks around the two afore-mentioned terms every time we used them, but this would be stylistically awkward. (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 1–2)

The sociology of knowledge was quick to dismiss this caveat and knowledge was substituted for “knowledge” without further explanation. Nevertheless, there is a crucial difference between developing sociology of knowledge and sociology of “knowledge”: the quotation marks indicate that the word knowledge is not to be taken in its current sense of validated information – genuine knowledge as opposed to what passes for it – and that social psychology is being substituted for epistemology (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. v). Explaining this difference would require examination of complex epistemological issues. The definition of

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knowledge offered by Berger and Luckmann conflates faith and knowledge, putting both under the heading of belief in something held to be real, thus contradicting one of the strongest traditions of philosophy. The problem with this definition is epitomized by the fact that it works for astrology, but not for astronomy. When not cynical charlatans, astrologists actually believe that the phenomena they are talking about are real. Astronomers, on the other hand, do not believe that their models of reality are anything but representations that work for a time (Abel, 1980, p. 1). However, we shall avoid these deeper philosophical concerns and limit ourselves to raising four issues that are particularly relevant to a theory of policing.

Oversimplification The title of Berger and Luckmann’s treatise in the sociology of knowledge is The Social Construction of Reality. The defining question for such an undertaking is “how is it possible that human activity should produce a world of things?” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 17). Being a process, knowledge is considered to be the main reality-producing force, superseding the less dynamic notion of information. The sociology of knowledge thus becomes a study of the effect of our certainty that phenomena are real on what we define as factual and on our behaviour in relation to these facts. Berger and Luckmann do not, however, examine the specific ways in which we reach this certainty. How the faithful come to believe in their God, the scientist in his equations, or the police in the guilt of a suspect is taken for granted and seems to stem from some foundation in “everyday life” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, Part 1). This appears to us to oversimplify the issue of certainty and, therefore, the issue of knowledge. What matters for them is not how we reach certainty about what is real but how we act after having reached this (unaccounted for) certainty. As Berger and Luckmann make clear, epistemology is excluded from the sociology of knowledge. A theory of action based on this understanding cannot easily differentiate between descriptions and predictions, as both qualify equally as actionable knowledge. However, treating specific factual statements (“The Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001”) and indeterminate predictions (“A group linked to Al Qaeda is planning a massive strike against the US at some point in the future”) as of equal importance to the field of intelligence would certainly undermine attempts to articulate definite counter-strategies.

Validation Validation is to “objective facticities” what certainty is to “subjective meanings” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 17). Theories of the objective validation of knowledge belong to the fields of epistemology and methodology, which are explicitly excluded from the sociology of knowledge. Is there a problem with allowing the sociology of knowledge to define its perspective as it sees fit and thus to exclude validation, which it seems to consider irrelevant? It depends on what kind of knowledge we focus on. In everyday life, whether we consider some phenomena to be real may have limited consequences. However, what the police consider to be knowledge is used to shape actions that are traditionally focused on coercion and may cause lethal harm. For instance, it may be decided that members of a minority group should be confined in concentration camps because they are believed to be a “clear and present danger” or that a country should be invaded on the basis of intelligence that indicates a threat. Racial prejudice is an overwhelming belief in the reality of racial inferiority.

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According to us, it cannot be referred to as knowledge without demeaning the sense of the word: a theory allowing that racial prejudice be referred to as “knowledge” or what passes for it has got to be flawed. A horse with a hunchback might pass for a camel, but it won’t make it through the desert. Side-stepping the whole issue of validating one’s information by declaring it equivalent to knowledge or failing to question one’s certainties because they seem convincing may lead to grievous consequences and can be considered morally irresponsible. When it is divorced from epistemology, as it is in Berger and Luckmann, the sociology of knowledge is a descriptive undertaking and has little to contribute to the methodology of science per se. Epistemology and methodology have a prescriptive aspect and can be used to increase the validity of knowledge and intelligence used in policing. In a stimulating paper, Innes, Fielding and Cope, (2005, p. 39) rediscovered the relevance of “providing an epistemologically oriented critique of some of the key techniques associated with crime analysis”.

Secrecy It is surprising that this issue has not yet received the attention it deserves: indeed, not all knowledge can be publicly disseminated. Policing requires a certain amount of secrecy. The amount of secrecy required increases drastically as we move from the most visible part of policing – uniformed patrol – to the least conspicuous – criminal investigation, surveillance, and the protection of national security, the latter being almost wholly shrouded in secrecy and kept from public “knowledge”. Furthermore, policing considered as risk communication is extremely vulnerable to political interference, as was seen in the way colours were opportunistically used at times to indicate an increase in the level of the risk of terrorism for the purpose of manipulating public opinion in the US.

Trust Considered subjectively, knowledge is information that can be trusted. It should be said that the subjective side of knowledge is not the cornerstone of its definition, which rests on objective validation (to the extent that it can be achieved).1 However, in certain fields of policing, such as the collection of human intelligence, the issue of whether informants can be trusted forces police handlers to draw hard distinctions between information, disinformation, and potentially genuine knowledge, these distinctions being reflected in police language. Acting on information, evidence, or knowledge are seen as different. Furthermore, equating information and knowledge avoids the whole issue of trust, which is vital in the field of policing (Manning, 2003).

Network The word “network” is used in the field of police studies either metaphorically (usually unintentionally) or, more frequently, as a notion that is based on intuition, not on the stimulating research that is available about networks (Burt, 1992, 2004; Castells, 1996; Morselli, 2001, 2003). Often, little distinction is made between a transnational network of 1

This point is justifiably stressed by Peter Gill (personal communication).

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policing organizations (Bigo, 1996) and a national formal or informal network of police. The latter can take several forms: a cluster, a clique, a hierarchy, or finally a network in its proper sense (see Burt, 1992 and UNCICP, 2000). To these we can add computer networks that support communication within institutional and social structures (Dupont, 2004). Inexact use of the term network evokes notions of highly coordinated assemblages by analogy with communications or transport networks, while the reality is more complex. For example, networks (in the sociological sense of the term) can be identified within groups of people or organizations where there is no explicit awareness of the numerous and indirect links that make up such networks. This confusion between normative networks (coordinated and purposive) and empirical – or real-life – networks (spontaneous, messy, and ambiguous) is largely the result of the theoretical habit of introducing networks as one of the three main forms of social organization. In order to isolate the specific features of networks (as an ideal type), introductory texts often compare them with hierarchies and markets (see, for example, Knoke, 1990; Ouchi, 1980; Powell, 1990; Rhodes, 2006; Watts, 2003). This heuristic approach often implicitly (and sometimes involuntarily) emphasizes the superiority of networks over the rigidity of bureaucracies and the opportunism of markets. A simplistic interpretation of this framework would be that the authoritarian nature of hierarchies and the competitive jungle of markets are no match for the noble trust and reciprocity that sustain networks. What is lost in this clear-cut distinction is the complementarity of the three social morphologies, which often coexist within the same organization or field of activity. For example, in the delivery of security, the public police rely predominantly on a bureaucratic model, while private security operates within the market paradigm. Some of the inefficiencies experienced by both forms of organization are compensated for by resorting to formal and informal networks, which can themselves become a source of disorganization under adverse circumstances. Adjustments to create a more integrated or commodified set of ties are then necessary. While emphasizing differences may be a useful analytical tool for understanding the dominant properties of each mode of organization, it is important to remember that each of these three morphologies relies on and is influenced by the other two (Hay, 1998; Rhodes, 2006).

Networks of Trust Trust is an important component of networks, considered as a mode of organization. It allows linkages and connections to remain stable in space and time in the absence of hierarchical or contractual obligations. Many networks do not need a lot of trust to remain functional, but as stakes and uncertainty increase, trust provides a safeguard against the “malfeasance, mistakes and failures” of members (Tilly, 2005, p. 12). Hence, trust is sometimes defined as a mechanism for complexity reduction (Luhmann, 1979). It allows social actors to form reasonable expectations about the behaviour of their counterparts and facilitates collaborations between them. Trust takes the form of an attitude (as in “people in Canada trust their police more than people in Haiti”) or a relationship (as in “I trust my local police officer, because he was helpful last time I was burglarized”), attitudes being to a certain degree the result of multiple experiences of relationships. In relationships, trust is far from monolithic, and different degrees of trust should be distinguished, ranging from fragile to resilient (Smith Ring, 1996). At the weakest end of the continuum, fragile trust is characterized by its situational focus and is open to frequent rational re-assessments that limit the impact of opportunistic behaviours. At the other end, resilient trust thrives on the goodwill of the parties to the

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relationship rather than on their ability to fulfil their obligations. While fragile trust requires calculations of the risks involved by both parties, and therefore increases transaction costs, resilient trust assumes a commonality of interests and a convergence of beliefs, norms and traditions that considerably increases its chances of survival when faced with an occasional malfeasance, mistake or failure. For example, local security networks that bring together police organizations, private security companies, crime prevention agencies and community groups rely mainly on fragile trust, due to the heterogeneity of their membership. Their operation requires constant negotiations between stronger and weaker members in order to overcome misunderstandings and frictions. Transnational police networks, however, which share the myth of a common foe and a universal occupational culture, use resilient trust to overcome institutional hurdles and evade formal accountability mechanisms while pursuing their objectives (Bigo, 1996; Nadelmann, 1993; Sheptycki, 2002).

Information and Knowledge Networks Trust significantly influences the sustainability of networks by increasing their capacity to acquire, transform, and disseminate information and knowledge. While hierarchies depend on rigid procedures to process information along extended and often redundant chains of communication, networks rely on trust to bypass intermediaries and directly dispatch information to those who request it. However, if networks improve the speed and range of information diffusion, their decentralized architecture can become a liability when sensitive information is at stake. This explains why five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and despite the damning findings of the 9/11 commission report, information sharing among law enforcement agencies remains a problem, even though massive technological investments have been made (Office of the Inspector General, 2006). In this case, the network seems too large to operate on more than fragile trust, which results in information hoarding and informal exchanges based on interpersonal-goodwill trust. In terms of information and knowledge diffusion, networks are also said to be more efficient than markets because tasks such as intake (contributing to the common pool of information and knowledge), filtering (deciding on relevance), accreditation (deciding on credibility), and interpretation (sensemaking) are more distributed and transparent (Benkler, 2006, p. 182). The combination of strong ties (resilient trust), which ensure information consistency and reliability and weak ties (fragile trust), which inject diversity and innovation (Granovetter, 1973), provides a balance that markets cannot match. The concepts of knowledge and, to a lesser extent, networks are laden with history, highly structured, and have an inner complexity that cannot be eliminated by putting them within quotations marks – especially when these marks are later erased. Ignoring these features not only leads to misunderstandings but also hinders exploration of the insight that, in an increasing number of aspects of their work, the police may be operating as information managers.

GENERAL POLICING By general policing we mean policing considered as the focus of an organization considered as a whole and performed by individuals who patrol in uniform (as opposed to plain clothes). Personnel in uniform make up the largest part of police forces. In order to examine the role

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of knowledge in general policing, we will assess the significance and impact on general policing of the five characteristics of knowledge work taken from Drucker (1995). We also identify a type of knowledge that is not discussed by Drucker but which is relevant if we consider policing to be a social function that is highly dependent on the people, places and social problems it must deal with.

Education and Application We combine these traits because they are so closely intertwined. They capture the idea that knowledge workers apply knowledge learned previously through formal education. Looking at these two features of knowledge work in relation to the perspective articulated by Ericson and Haggerty (1997) reveals a fundamental paradox of contemporary policing. With the exception of a few policing forces (e.g. the FBI), police organizations do not have strong formal education requirements for their recruits. Although this situation is changing, the overwhelming majority of police have not been formally educated as knowledge workers. Putting together Ericson’s view of the police as knowledge brokers and Drucker’s insight that knowledge workers are trained appliers of knowledge, we end up with the following paradox: the police are considered to be knowledge producers, but they do not even fulfil the requirement of being knowledge appliers, which is to have a formal education. Unless the requirements for formal education are made much more rigorous, this situation is a prescription for disaster.

Specialization The leitmotiv of Drucker’s and his followers’ work is that applied knowledge must be specific and the notion of “generalist” practitioners makes little sense. This idea is at the same time in line with present developments in policing and at variance with past reforms of policing and with actual police practice. The importance of specialization is apparent in the increased movement toward intelligence-led policing (ILP). ILP is defined by Ratcliffe (2003a) as “the application of criminal intelligence analysis as a rigorous decision-making tool to facilitate crime reduction and prevention through effective police strategies”. This definition of ILP, which encapsulates a common perspective within the ILP paradigm, narrows the scope of policing to criminal law enforcement (for a similar focus on crime, see Gill, 2000, p. 79; NCIS, 2000; NCPE, 2005, p. 12; Ratcliffe, 2003b). ILP doctrine, however, actually goes beyond merely proposing a refocusing of policing on criminal law enforcement: the pith of the model is that the police should target the criminal – particularly the “high-volume” repeat offender – rather than focusing on the crime (Ratcliffe, 2003b, p. 2). Despite Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Zaccardelli’s explicit disavowal of the charge that ILP “reeks of secret service, spy agency work – the capital ‘I’ in ‘Intelligence’ ” (Zaccardelli, 2005), in the United States it has been co-opted and made into one more weapon in the counterterrorism arsenal (COPS, 2005; Peterson, 2005). This refocusing of policing on criminal law enforcement – if not, on counterterrorism – is at odds with all previous policing reforms, from community-oriented policing (COM) all the way to problem-oriented policing (POP) and “reassurance policing” (Innes, 2006b). Moreover, ILP seems to de-emphasize the reduction of the fear of crime, which was one

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of the motivations behind community-oriented policing. Perhaps more importantly, ILP makes short change of Herman Goldstein’s warning against casting the myriad of problems the police are faced with into the mould of criminal law offences (Goldstein, 1990). The impetus behind community- and problem-oriented policing was precisely the recognition that reducing policing to criminal law enforcement was a crippling misconception. The promoters of ILP are now striving to reconcile this law enforcement focus with the latest offspring of COM-POP, British reassurance policing (Maguire & John, 2006). It is to be feared that this policing ecumenism will only generate confusion, as have past attempts to combine programmes that have important strategic differences. Despite Peter Drucker’s dictum that there is no place in the knowledge society for generalists, it may be that the police patrolling our streets cannot be anything but generalists, as according to the standard theory of policing (Bittner, 1990), the possibility of using force to solve widely different problems is the only consistent feature among the varying aspects of police field work.

Organization The claim that knowledge workers cannot operate outside a large organization appears to play in favour of large centralized police forces. Our own empirical research verifies this insight. In smaller police forces, intelligence units, when they exist, tend to be staffed with those officers who are least effective in the field and those who are close to retirement.

Management ILP is consistent with Drucker’s emphasis on the role of management. In contrast with COP-POP, which relies on consultations with the community when determining police priorities, ILP is a top-down process: “It is a model of policing in which intelligence serves as a guide for operations, rather than the reverse” (RCMP, 2006). Maguire and John (2006, p. 78) observe that the “customer led” perspective that is the hallmark of neighbourhood and reassurance policing “[does] not appear to sit very easily with the underlying principles of the NIM”. In ILP, police management proactively determines, on the basis of “objective” analyses conducted within the organization, how resources should be deployed; the intelligence supporting police decision making is produced largely without input by the public. The New York CompStat programme is perceived to be a model of this sort of policing (COPS, 2005, p. 43). This top-down model meets great resistance from police field officers, whose occupational culture has little room for civilian analysts setting priorities from above (Cope, 2004, pp. 197 and 201–02). Its advocates, however, argue that the present competing trends are actually not incompatible and continue to search for some way to combine them (Maguire & John, 2006).

Local Knowledge Drucker’s emphasis on the professional dimension of knowledge downplays the vast, if unstructured, reservoirs of local knowledge that residents and community leaders have about their neighbourhoods. While the ILP doctrine encourages the development of police

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informants who can provide information that is easier to exploit due to the sources’ embeddedness in criminal networks, community intelligence provided by “ordinary” members of the public is also a valuable source of information that allows police to understand the problems experienced by a community and to identify the resources a community has or needs to address them (Innes, 2006a). The Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (Skogan & Hartnett, 1997) and the Zwelethemba model of dispute resolution (Johnston & Shearing, 2003) provide interesting examples of successful attempts to combine the knowledge of professionals with more diffuse community forms of local knowledge. In both cases, trust played an important role. In Chicago, research conducted by the evaluation team indicated that the Latino community was under-represented (as compared to those in the white and black communities) in beat meetings where local problems were discussed with local police officers. This situation was attributed to legal concerns with immigration status, fear of the police and of retaliation from gang members, or the belief that the police did not encourage their participation (Skogan & Steiner, 2004). In South Africa, recognition of the visceral distrust of the police found in shanty towns led the implementing agency initially to avoid formal partnerships with police organizations. The agency thus wanted to publicly demonstrate its independence and to foster a minimal sense of confidence in its action in the fledgling local knowledge networks (Roche, 2002). The adoption of ILP strategies by local police organizations that then abandon community-oriented approaches and embrace targeted surveillance of “suspicious” groups is bound to generate “trust decay” and a disruption in the flow of information and knowledge that circulates from community networks to police networks (Thatcher, 2005).

POLICING AND CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION It is not immediately apparent that general police activity can be considered knowledge work. The most influential definition of policing characterizes it as a mechanism for the distribution of coercive force according to an intuitive grasp of situational exigencies (Bittner, 1990, p. 131).2 This stress on quick thinking in emergency situations suggests that policing is a profession dedicated to action rather than to reflection, an observation reflected in both teaching and in fieldwork. The impressive multiplication of the number of forms that the police have to fill out may at first seem to be indicative of a scientification of police work. When, however, we look at how the forms are actually filled out (with a great many blanks), it indicates instead a stifling bureaucratization of policing – a trend that is acutely resented. In criminal intelligence seminars we have organized, a common complaint by the police who lead such intelligence units is that management tends to staff them with lower performing officers because knowledge work (“shuffling paper”) is little valued and carries no prestige within the organization.3 Even the basic task of creating reports to keep the public informed about police efforts is seen as of very little value, as shown in a study one of us conducted of the unsuccessful efforts of the Quebec department of public security to persuade the province’s 2

3

In a recent interview with Law Enforcement News, Michael Scott, Director of the US Center for Problem-Oriented Policing declared that “the single biggest gap in the whole professionalization of the American police has been this absence of a body of knowledge [on problem solving]. It’s the big missing ingredient” (Simonetti Rosen, 2004b, p. 9). In an interview with Law Enforcement News, the terrorism expert Brian M. Jenkins stated that “domestic intelligence gathering has been an area that local police departments have been very, very wary about” (Simonetti Rosen, 2004c, p. 10).

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police forces to issue an annual report that provided very basic information about their operations (Cayouette & Brodeur, 2004). It would however seem that ILP has found in criminal investigations a haven that is germane to its theoretical underpinnings. The word “investigation” is inescapably associated with knowledge work and can be found in the title of many theoretical works (e.g. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations). One of the early impetuses for the development of the ILP model is found in a 1993 report of the UK Audit Commission entitled Helping with Enquiries: Tackling Crime Effectively (Audit Commission, 1993). Several researchers emphasized that ILP was seen as “the province of intelligence specialists and detectives” (Cope, 2004, p. 197; Maguire & John, 2006, pp. 74 and 83). The investigation of crime would thus seem an ideal field in which to study police knowledge skills at work. One of us (Brodeur) conducted research in the CID files of a major police force in Quebec. A sample of cleared cases where suspects had been prosecuted was collected for the years 1990–2001. Originally 25 cases involving drug trafficking, fraud, sexual assault, robbery and homicide were collected. Records for homicide investigations were, by far, the most extensive and a larger sample of 153 homicide cases involving 191 suspects was collected, coded according to a breakdown of 163 variables and quantitatively analysed. The results of the statistical analyses were used to conduct in-depth interviews with homicide investigators, which provided strong confirmation of the quantitative findings. Among the most general findings were:4 r In 80% of cases, a suspect who will eventually be prosecuted is identified within 24 hours or less (in 53% of cleared cases, the suspects were identified immediately by police answering a 911 call). In 68% of the cases identified suspects were arrested within 24 hours. (In 44% of these cases arrest coincided with identification and was immediate.) r Key factors leading to the identification of suspects charged with homicide were the testimony of an eye witness still present at the crime scene (22.5% of cases), spontaneous confession by the suspect (20.5%) and denunciations by various people (police informant, accomplice, friend, family member or spouse (30%). In other words, in almost all homicide cases the police are able to identify a suspect because someone tells them who he or she is. Investigative work, electronic surveillance, forensics, and intelligence are of marginal importance and were significant in less than 2% of the cases. r Key factors in the arrest of an identified suspect closely parallel the findings for identification: patrolmen and women arrest 23.5% of suspects in flagrante delicto and suspects give themselves up in an additional 20% of cases. Criminal investigation and other factors listed above play a marginal role here as well. r The use of forensics and all types of expertise (DNA, polygraph, hypnosis) were also examined. One of these factors was determinant of the outcome of a case in less than 3% of the cases, with the exception of the polygraph, which essentially serves to eliminate potential suspects. r There was no indication that private security played any role in clearing homicide cases. These results are in line with the research literature. Although his UK sample was limited (20 cases), Martin Innes found that half the cases he examined were “self-solvers” (Innes, 2003, p. 292). Recent research conducted in the US on a sample of 589 cleared homicide cases found that the key determinant for solving a case was information provided by 4

For a more complete account, see Brodeur & Ouellet, 2005.

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eyewitnesses and other informants (60.5% of cases; Wellford & Cronin, 1999, Table 9, p. 27). They also found that half the homicide cases in their sample were solved in less than a week. The importance of police patrols in solving criminal cases was recognized by Richard V. Ericson in his study of general crime investigations (1981, p. 136). He characterized the role of investigators as limited to processing suspects already made available by the patrol officer. One of the implications of these findings for the role of knowledge work in criminal investigation creates a paradox. While homicide enquiry is the area of policing where knowledge work appears to be most valuable, in the great majority of cases murder investigations are resolved too quickly to require any significant amount of knowledge work (many cases are “self-resolving”). In cases where there is sufficient time for knowledge work, there is a strong probability that the investigation will end in failure, as cases are usually cleared quickly or not at all. Perhaps we need to make a distinction between a theory of how murder cases are cleared and a theory of homicide investigation. Only the latter would involve knowledge work understood in more than a minimal sense, the extent of such knowledge work being paradoxically proportional to the degree of its probability to end in failure. This finding vindicates Greenwood’s controversial conclusion that halving the time devoted by investigators to their inquiries would make no difference in clearance rates (Greenwood, Chaiken & Petersilia, 1977).

THE HANDLING OF POLICE INFORMANTS Collecting human intelligence (HUMINT) is vital to policing operations. As the Pentagon realized in its fight against terrorism, signal intelligence (SIGINT) provided by technology is no substitute for HUMINT (Schmitt, 2005). The handling of informants is as much a part of criminal investigation as other forms of investigation. Limiting our discussion to criminal intelligence, we raise three issues with respect to the handling of police informants. In discussing these issues, we draw a distinction between two kinds of police informants, delators and informers. Delators are informants who appear in court to testify for the prosecution (a “protected witness” in the US or a “supergrass” in Northern Ireland). Informers are police sources who do not as a rule appear in court, allowing them to continue to provide the police with information on criminal circles. Following the spectacular success of use of pentiti (repentant terrorist or mafiosi) in Italy, there is now a trend in democratic countries to enshrine the use of delators in law.

Secrecy The identity of police and security services sources is one of the most closely guarded secrets of policing. In Canada, police informers have been granted unconditional protection5 of their identity by two rulings of the Supreme Court (Solicitor General of Ontario v. Royal Commission of Inquiry) [1981] and Bisaillon v. Keable [1983]). This protection is almost limitless, as it extends to whatever might lead to the identification of a police informant. (As information that could be provided only by one informer is a clue to his or her identity, 5

The identity of a police informant can be divulged only when necessary to protect an innocent suspect. This is the traditional common law doctrine formulated in the UK during the 18th Century.

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protection of an informer’s identity covers the content of what he or she told police.) Security services hold to a strict interpretation of informer protection and strongly object to their sources appearing as public witnesses in court proceedings. This is the root of the so-called “wall” between police and security services and the latter’s condemnation of the police “tyranny of the case file”, which dictates that all cases must end in public court proceedings (Shelby, 2002, p. 62). The existence of this wall was also acknowledged in Canada when the two defendants in the RCMP case against the perpetrators of the 1985 Air India bombing (329 victims) were acquitted on March 16th 2005, after a police investigation that lasted for 20 years and cost $130 million. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is on record as having erased electronic surveillance tapes that might have identified a source if produced as evidence in a public trial. Our working hypothesis is that the investigation of any high profile failure involving coordinating between criminal and security intelligence will generally demonstrate the existence of a wall between these two types of intelligence units. The crucial implication of secrecy – of which the protection of sources is only one aspect – is that obstacles to the sharing of information between the various policing organizations (including security services) cannot be seen as the result of police occupational culture alone. Such obstacles are in significant part legal and cannot be eliminated merely by claiming that all police are legally entitled to share all policing information. This point is further discussed in the next part of this chapter.

Trust The issue of trust is best exemplified with respect to delators. Delators (protected witnesses, supergrasses) are paid for the information they provide and, most importantly, for their testimony in court. With police informants, benefits occur as the result of an informal rule. With delators, this rule is made official through detailed contractual agreements. In Quebec, professional delators have created a “syndicate” to represent them because they feel that the Department of Justice does not abide by its commitments to them. The wheeling and dealing that takes place with police delators is well known in Canada and has been extensively reported in the media. The resulting high profile of delators has led lawyers (and the media) to question whether these witnesses should be trusted in court, as they are paid to testify. The courts have grown increasingly distrustful of such testimony and no conviction can be secured by the prosecution on uncorroborated evidence provided by a delator. This distrust now affects all police and security services informers and an elaborate system for grading the trustworthiness of informers and for corroborating HUMINT of various origins has been developed (Canada, House of Commons, 1990, p. 109). To conclude, there is a crucial difference between information, disinformation, and trusted intelligence (knowledge) in the field of HUMINT, with the central concern being the question of validity. These categories have been integrated into official terminology by police agencies and security services and are now used to assess and classify HUMINT.

Compartmentalization When the previous issues of secrecy and trust are combined, they create the problem of intelligence compartmentalization, as shown in the following example. During the October

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Crisis of 1970 – the greatest political crisis generated by terrorism in Canada – the Security Department of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police intercepted a warning from a member of a Quebec police force to one of their prime terrorist suspects.6 This police force was immediately removed from any involvement with operations to resolve the crisis and was no longer given access to sensitive information. There has been much speculation over why the warning was given. One of the most current explanations among government investigators of the Crisis is that the terrorist was a valuable informer for the drug squad of the police force that issued the warning. Few examples as significant as this one ever surface in public inquiries. First, it shows that relationships between policing organizations are decided on the basis of trust. Second, it indicates that the compartmentalization of intelligence affects not only the sharing of information between different policing agencies but also determines the behaviour of various units within the same policing organization. It cannot be assumed that what constitutes success is the same for different units.

COUNTERTERRORISM AND THE ENEMY WITHIN Intelligence-led policing is, to an important extent, an offspring of problem-oriented policing, which emphasizes building a knowledge base for police operations. In past years, adding the qualifier “oriented” to a noun (“community”, “problem”) has been a way to mark the advent of a new police strategy and police executives recently introduced the idea of “terror-oriented policing” to refer to the “new normal” in policing (Simonetti Rosen, 2004a). This new designation brings “intelligence” in “intelligence-led” policing closer to its original meaning in special interest policing and stresses the growing importance of national security, once the stronghold of security services, to policing. In the realm of counterterrorism, the failure to convert information into knowledge can lead to catastrophic outcomes, as the dramatic events of 9/11 and 3/11 have shown. The Greek deity Proteus, who not only knew everything about the past and the present but could also foretell the future, epitomizes the ambition of counterterrorism units and high policing activities in general (L’Heuillet, 2001). However, Homer describes how reluctant Proteus was to share his knowledge, granting this privilege only to those such as Menelaus who captured him through elaborate stratagems (Homer, 800BCE, 1919 edition: Book 4). In this respect police and intelligence organizations are much like Menelaus, although they resort to computer systems rather than seal skins in order to get answers to their queries.

Information Overload The quantity of data the police must deal with is overwhelming. In line with a general trend that sees an exponential growth in the quantity of information created and stored (Lyman & Varian, 2003), and anxious not to miss the details that would allow them to “connect the dots”, analysts are inundated by a flow of data that ultimately interferes with the intelligence process. James Sheptycki’s fieldwork in British criminal intelligence units reveals this very clearly. The situation has led intelligence practitioners to use such powerful metaphors as 6

See Québec (1980). One of us – Brodeur – was member of two bodies created to investigate the activities that surrounded the October Crisis of 1970.

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“drinking from a fire-hose” (Sheptycki, 2004a, p. 317) or “boiling the ocean” (Griffin cited in Singel, 2004). This bleak assessment of the capacity to differentiate “noise” from relevant information is unlikely to change, given current technological circumstances. The website of ARDA (Advanced Research and Development Activity), the research and development programme of the National Security Association (NSA) and associated departments, states that some existing intelligence databases grow at the rate of four petabytes per month.7 And the new US-Visit programme, which will combine existing immigration databases and record personal information on the 54 million non-US residents who cross the border annually in order to screen for potential terrorists, is expected to collect several petabytes of data every year (Singel, 2003). A petabyte is the current largest metric designation of storage capacity in discrete computer systems. In layman’s terms, a petabyte of data is equivalent to half of all the content of US academic research libraries or 50 times the Library of Congress holdings. Private databases maintained by “data aggregators” such as ChoicePoint, Seisint, Lexis-Nexis, or Acxiom, which contain hundreds of millions of customer profiles, contribute a few more petabytes of information as they are gradually made available to intelligence analysts (O’Harrow, 2005). Most of this terrorism-related information, however, remains unusable until it has been processed. For example, telecommunication intercepts often need to be translated. The backlog revealed by the inspector general of the US Department of Justice is quite telling: his most recent audit of the FBI language services section suggests that, as of the first quarter of 2004, more than 123,000 hours of counterterrorism audio intercepts collected since 2002 had not been translated. Material collected by counter-intelligence programmes added more than 500,000 hours to that number. Overall, 30% of potentially highly relevant information were not reviewed and had to be deleted from antiquated computer systems in order to free space for incoming data (Office of the Inspector General, 2004, p. ix). Similarly, no intelligence analyst can possibly make sense of the billions of transactions or travel itineraries that are systematically reported by financial institutions and airlines. This arduous task is instead delegated to data-mining software and computer systems (designed by engineers, not police officers) that constantly monitor flows of data in search of suspicious patterns. This process of brute information management constitutes only the embryonic stage of knowledge work.

Sharing Information There is a significant body of literature on the reluctance of policing organizations to share information and, more generally, on the organizational and technical obstacles to sharing information (Sheptycki, 2004b). After the 9/11 attacks, this topic became the major theme of numerous official reports on the failings of the intelligence community (NCTAUS, 2004; Shelby, 2002). However, the research literature and the official reports failed to fully acknowledge a major hurdle in the sharing of information: the legal impediments to breaching state secrecy. According to the US Information Security Oversight Office, in 1995 there were 21,871 “original” Top Secret designations and 374,244 “derivative” designations. (Some two million government officials, in addition to one million industrial contractors, have “derivative classification” authority (US Congress, 1997: Chairman’s Foreword, p. xxxix).) 7

http://www.ic-arda.org/index.html

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Many of these derivative designations are intended to protect the “sources and methods” of collecting national security intelligence. The classification of documents as secret (including the most mundane of policy papers) is notoriously overused by the current Bush administration. In Canada, as in the UK, official secrets legislation covers the field of “national security,” very broadly defined, and makes it an offence for any person permanently bound to secrecy to communicate or confirm without authority “special operational information” to anyone for whom it is not officially intended.8 The idea that all policing organizations are equally entitled to share classified information on the basis that they are all part of the police apparatus is a myth. The strictures of official secrecy apply as much to the police as to other organizations, particularly with respect to the sharing of information between local and central police agencies (local police, for instance, do not have any security clearance). On the one hand, security intelligence agencies resist the “tyranny of the case file” (Shelby, 2002, p. 62) that compels undercover operatives to testify in public. On the other hand, law enforcement agencies resent the high-handedness of security services with respect to the legal constraints bearing on court proceedings. Police organizations are not academic learned societies designed for the purpose of sharing knowledge but government agencies that disseminate intelligence on the basis of the “need to know” principle” – a principle that is determined as much by organizational and political imperatives as it is by the law. As was shown in a study on air transportation security recently released by the 9/11 Commission, the withholding of information is a process that feeds on itself: agencies justify their failure to transmit intelligence to their partners by claiming that they were ignorant of their partners’ need to receive a particular type of information; however, intelligence agencies do not generally disclose their “knowledge interests” for fear of revealing the targets of their operations (Lichtblau, 2005).

Randomness Relying too heavily on a combination of powerful databases and automated tools to unmask potential terrorists increases the chances that there will be mistakes due to a randomness bias. Not only are records in public and private databases notoriously unreliable but the emphasis placed on decontextualized relational features produces “false positives” and leads to the identification of innocents as terrorists. This lack of context stems partly from the fact that these tools are designed by engineers and computer programmers instead of experienced investigators. For example, on the days following the events of September 11th, the owner of Seisint, an “information service” that sells data to private companies on potential customers, decided to use his expertise to create a program that could profile individuals who appeared to have certain characteristics that might suggest ties to terrorists (these people were allocated a “High Terrorism Quotient”). After weeks of code-writing and data extraction, his company provided federal and local law enforcement agencies with a list of 120,000 people who were held to represent a risk (O’Harrow, 2005, p. 102). One can only wonder how many names on that endless list of suspects provided genuine leads to overworked anti-terrorism investigators, and how many people with unconventional consumption patterns were flagged as potential jihadists. The determinist speculations at 8

See the Security of Information Act (R.S., 1985, c. O-5, s. 1; 2001, c. 41, s. 25), sections 8 and 13.

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the core of data-mining algorithms fail to account for life’s coincidences, which are not governed by the laws of causality. Youssef Karroum, for example, was arrested at the US-Canada border on 27 January 2000 after traces of explosives were detected on the van he was driving. He was kept in detention for a week so that possible links with Ahmed Ressam (the man who tried to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebrations) could be investigated. Karroum was released once it became clear that the vehicle he was driving had been the property of a government agency that used it to transport fertilizer. (The nitrates used in the production of many industrial fertilizers are also an ingredient of choice for bomb-makers.) The precipitating factor in his arrest was the fact that his name had been “red flagged” by the FBI following Ressam’s arrest. Brandon Mayfield was also the victim of slipshod linkage analysis: an Oregon lawyer converted to Islam, his fingerprints were erroneously matched to print fragments found on the site of the Madrid March 11 bombings. It was, however, indirect associations with people suspected of terrorism (a publication in which he advertised his legal services, a charity called by his wife, and an Al Qaeda sympathiser he represented in a child custody case) that led to his arrest, despite early doubts over his guilt expressed by the Spanish authorities (O’Harrow, 2005, p. 174). The “small world” principle and the few degrees of separation that connect us all mean that, theoretically, it is increasingly likely that we will be connected to an Al Qaeda terrorist through our friends and acquaintances (Barabási, 2002; Watts, 2003). This does not mean that we are more likely to participate in terrorist activities since, even if we were interested, the chances that we could reach this person easily are slim at best. Counterterrorism data-mining software does not make such distinctions, and random connections can easily be misinterpreted when projected on aesthetically appealing relational charts that allegedly unveil hidden terrorist networks. SRD, a company recently acquired by IBM,9 has developed a program called NORA (Non Obvious Relationship Awareness) that can identify social ties spanning 30 degrees of separation, more than enough to make everyone a potential suspect by association. This 21st Century phrenology is grounded in a simplistic understanding of the properties of social networks.

Networks As previously stressed, the concept of network is complex and includes at least two different concepts: terms (“nodes”) and their relationships (“links”). Both these components – terms and their relationships – must have a certain degree of determinacy to allow us to speak of networks. This does not seem to be the case at present in special interest policing in the US, where the identity and operation of the various nodes of the intelligence network are becoming increasingly blurred. The military are now involved in the collection of HUMINT, the CIA is increasingly operating within US territory, and the FBI is now recruiting spies to operate outside the country (Johnston & Jehl, 2005). The same trend is apparent in Canada, where the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, a domestic agency, is now beginning to operate abroad. When their identity becomes indeterminate, nodes tend to morph into networks, thus clouding the distinction between nodes and their links and making the use of the notion of network itself problematic. This caveat represents a clear invitation to apply 9

www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2eas

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the principle of parsimony in determining what constitutes a network, until a more thorough mapping of high policing networks can be performed. The creation, conversion, and distribution of knowledge are not isolated acts but are embedded in social and institutional networks, whose function is to both include and exclude. Members of these networks use a particular social structure to collectively and informally produce knowledge. Once constituted, knowledge is hard to “detach” with consistency from the knower, in large part because it possesses a tacit and idiosyncratic dimension that resists organizational hierarchical intermediation processes (Brown & Duguid, 2000; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Polanyi, 1967). As a result, a number of underground strategies relying on the strength of personal ties are used to tap into this reservoir of tacit knowledge. Sociological studies of police occupational cultures systematically highlight the power of narratives to convey meaning, exchange tips, and provide guidance about the unpredictable nature of police work in the areas of both patrol and investigations (Manning, 2004, p. 234; Shearing & Ericson, 1991; Waddington, 1999). Informal advice on difficult cases is also exchanged laterally between colleagues, with little regard for established procedures or thorough documentation for the upper echelons. The 9/11 commission noted, for example, that, prior to the attacks, some FBI field agents and CIA analysts were initiating informal contacts with their counterparts in other offices and agencies to further investigate leads that had been discarded by their superiors (NCTAUS, 2004, pp. 268–275). High policing organizations, fully aware of this social dimension and pressured from all sides to end their compartmentalization, are attempting to harness the power of informal “knowledge networks” through the creation of integrated structures that act as connecting platforms. In the United States, the National Counterterrorism Center (formerly Terrorist Threat Integration Center) and the local Joint Terrorism Task Forces represent the most prominent efforts at integration. Canada has also moved to create Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams that bring together analysts from various law enforcement agencies. Didier Bigo and James Sheptycki have documented similar initiatives in Europe (Bigo, 1996; Sheptycki, 2002). But these hubs of information and knowledge can also function as tools of exclusion in political environments where control over intelligence is seen as a strategic asset. A number of strategies are deployed within institutional networks by nodes that seek to maintain their dominance or unravel the status quo. For instance, a claim for centralization can be made with respect to certain areas of responsibility, forcing nodes to interact through a hub-and-spoke structure. The post-9/11 competition between the FBI and the CIA to coordinate domestic intelligence activities is an example of this trend (Priest, 2005). A second strategy is to form new clusters (or alliances) that shift the power balance within existing networks. The tendency of every major US agency with a role in counterterrorism to launch its own integrated team or centre is not the result of a sudden conversion to the benefits of information sharing. It is undoubtedly more indicative of the uncertainty currently governing the field and an attempt to position nodes in a way that will maintain relevance without losing control. Unfortunately, this proliferation of initiatives, while giving the appearance of genuine intelligence sharing, will probably entail further fragmentation of existing knowledge. Finally, defensive strategies that limit the flow of data in order to protect its integrity – or comply with legal restrictions – must be mentioned. Knowledge in counterterrorism – as in every other area of human enterprise – is as much the product of social and political forces as of accurate information about possible threats.

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CONCLUSIONS There are three conclusions to be drawn from the previous findings and analyses. The first one is obvious: there is a lot of theoretical work to be done before we can declare that we have entered a new era of policing – the third one in some 30 years – and are now thinking within a new paradigm, supported by the concepts of knowledge and of network. Our second conclusion should be as obvious, but it is not. Despite appearances, there is a great deal of practical work that must be done before intelligence-led policing becomes a reality. In the UK, the Bichard report investigating the sharing of information between the British police forces declared that “nationally, the picture is disappointing. Although the need for a national intelligence IT capability has been recognized for at least a decade, I find that very little progress has been made” (United Kingdom, House of Commons, 2004, p. 129, Section 4.15). It would be a grave mistake, however, to assume that the attempt to articulate and to apply such a knowledge-based paradigm is misguided and should be stopped. Our last conclusion is the most important: it is vitally important that the question of validity be addressed. The information the police consider to be knowledge must have some guarantees as to its reliability. It is astonishing that the ACPO’s Guidance on the National Intelligence Model (NCPE, 2005) offers no explicit guidelines and standards for validating intelligence (just about everything else is covered in the manual). As the Bichard report makes clear, validity implies more than just the reliability of information and overlaps with the management of information itself, that is, “the way in which information is recorded (and reviewed, retained or deleted)”. The report goes on to assert that “there is a lack of clear national guidance for the police” in this respect (United Kingdom, House of Commons, 2004, p. 119, Section 3.66). The imperative to include validation as part of policing is also important in relation to networks. In the same way that the validity of statements must be tested, the accuracy of graphs depicting alleged networks must be submitted to systematic assessment. Circling names on a piece of paper and joining the circles by arrows is just a way of formulating hypotheses that must then be verified independently. If, then, there is a still a great deal of work required to articulate and apply the paradigm of policing as knowledge work, why is it that this notion caught on very rapidly and that certain types of research seemed to believe that it had allowed them to immediately strike gold? To try to answer this question, we will tentatively invoke Habermas’ notion of a “knowledge interest” (Habermas, 1972).10 There is a perceptible knowledge interest – indeed, a knowledge profit – in characterizing the police as knowledge (information, intelligence) workers. The prototype of the knowledge worker is the (social) scientist who creates theories about policing. The characterization of the police as knowledge workers closes the gap between the theory of policing and the objects of the theory. The net gain is that there is no longer a fundamental heterogeneity between the police and the social scientist – as there is when the police are defined a` la Bittner as a mechanism for the distribution of coercive force. The social scientist can actually substitute reflexive knowledge for field work, as the police can be seen as to some extent in the same business as academics. Even granting – as we are willing to do, up to a point – that the police are increasingly involved with discourse, we suggest that distinctions should be made between various forms 10

“Fundamental methodological decisions . . . have the singular character of being neither arbitrary nor compelling. They prove appropriate or inappropriate. For their criterion is the metalogical necessity of interests that we can neither prescribe not represent, but with which we must instead come to terms. Therefore my first thesis is this: The achievements of the transcendental subject have their basis in the natural history of the human species” (Habermas, 1972: Appendix, 312, italics in text).

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of discourse. The discussion should begin with broad and theoretically neutral notions, such as linguistic content or signifier. An attempt should then be made to try to distinguish between the various forms of semantic content: fiction, rumours, information, data, intelligence, knowledge and so forth. Not all that is said and believed is knowledge or even information. For instance, the numerous stories in the US National Inquirer about sightings of Elvis Presley after his death would not intuitively qualify as “information” as the word is used with respect to the media (hence the distinction between information and “infotainment”). The equivalent of these statements about Elvis – and about almost any kind of statement – can be found in the police files. Making such distinctions is crucial for the following reason. It may make sense to divorce knowledge from validity for forms of “knowledge” that do not generally entail harmful consequences if acted upon (everyday beliefs about what is “real” or news in the media11 ). This is not, however, the case with actionable information collected by the police or brought to its attention: police action is potentially harmful to individuals and may mean that they are deprived of their freedom. The requirement that police information or intelligence be thoroughly validated before being considered to be knowledge and acted upon is proportional to its potential for harm. This potential cannot be evaded and is in part enshrined in law. The insight that the police are to a significant extent knowledge workers is fruitful only to the extent that it does not rest on a theory of knowledge such as that proposed by Berger and Luckmann (1966) that divorces knowledge from validity. In a similar vein, the current trend in the use of the concept of network should be extended beyond the metaphorical to embrace the methodological advances made in the fields of sociology, ethnology, political science, and physics. This would allow us to start mapping the various nodes and links in the intelligence process. As we stated earlier, the complexity of this endeavour is fraught with challenges: depending on the level of analysis, the boundaries of nodes become fuzzy, links can be found inside nodes, and some of these linked nodes can be analyzed as networks in their own right. Investigative journalists – supported by anonymous sources – are sometimes able to relate dysfunctional episodes and provide factual background to our theoretical hypothesis. Despite the reluctance of high policing organizations to open a window to academic enquiry, the thorough investigation of open sources might lead researchers to emulate the press and provide an informative discussion of the workings of intelligence services. This gap in our knowledge constitutes an opportunity more than a curse, encouraging us to focus as much on the features of knowledge work in policing and those who carry it out as on the complex structures that constrain or enable their daily routines. Classical policing studies, while busy determining what sets policing apart from other social functions, ascertaining the role of coercive force in police work, or charting the new privatized territories, have tended to underestimate the importance of the complex web of institutions that govern and deliver security. In the information society, where time and space are collapsing and uncertainty flourishing (Castells, 1996), knowledge work is irremediably embedded in these networked structures. To borrow a metaphor from the world of physics, what we need now is not a microscope, which allows us to observe the tiny details of “worlds within worlds”, but a particle accelerator that can expose the forces and interactions that keep these worlds together.

11

We are aware that what is published in the media can have grievous consequences for one’s reputation. Media mischief is limited by the possibility of being sued and by the low credibility enjoyed by the media.

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Goldstein, H. (1990). Problem Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-Hill. Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. The American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360–1380. Greenwood, P., Chaiken, M. & Petersilia, J. (1977). The Criminal Investigation Process. Lexington MA: D.C. Heath. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press. Hay, C. (1998). The tangled web we weave: the discourse, strategy and practice of networking. In D. Marsh (ed.), Comparing policy Networks (pp. 33–51). Buckingham: Open University Press. Homer (800BCE & 1919). The Odyssey. London: W. Heinemann. Innes, M. (2003). Investigating Murder. Detective Work and the Police Response to Criminal Homicide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Innes, M. (2006a). Policing uncertainty: countering terror through community intelligence and democratic policing. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 605, 222–241. Innes, M. (2006b). Introduction: Reassurance and the “New” Community Policing. Policing and Society, 16, 95–98. Innes, M., Fielding, N. & Cope, N. (2005). The appliance of science?: The theory and practice of crime intelligence analysis. The British Journal of Criminology, 45, 39–57. Johnston D. & Jehl, D. (2005). F.B.I.’s Recruiting of Spies Causes New Rift With C.I.A. The New York Times, 11 February 2005, p. A 8. Johnston, L. & Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security: Explorations in Policing and Justice. London: Routledge. Knoke, D. (1990). Political Networks: The Structural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. L’Heuillet, H. (2001). Basse Politique, Haute Police: Une Approche Philosophique et Historique. Paris: Fayard. Lichtblau, E. (2005). 9/11 Report Cites Many Warnings About Highjackings. The New York Times, 10 February 2005, p. A1. Luhmann, N. (1979). Trust and Power. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Lyman, P. & Varian, H.R. (2003). How Much Information? School of Information Management and Systems – University of California at Berkeley. Retrieved from: http://www.sims. berkeley.edu/how-much-info-2003 on 23 December 2004. McCarthy, E.D. (1996). Knowledge as Culture. London: Routledge. Maguire, M. & John, T. (2006). Intelligence-led policing, managerialism and community engagement: competing priorities and the role of the National Intelligence Model in the UK. Policing and Society, 16, 67–85. Manning, P.K. (2003). Policing Contingencies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Manning, P.K. (2004). The Narc’s Game: Organizational and Informational Limits on Drug Law Enforcement, 2nd edn. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. Morselli, C. (2001). Structuring Mr Nice: entrepreneurial opportunities and brokerage positioning in the cannabis trade. Crime, Law and Social Change, 35, 203–244. Morselli, C. (2003). Career opportunities and network-based privileges in the Cosa Nostra. Crime, Law and Social Change, 37, 383–418. Nadelmann, E. (1993). Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of US Criminal Law Enforcement. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (NCTAUS) (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. NCIS (2000). The National Intelligence Model. London: National Criminal Intelligence Service. NCPE (2005). Guidance on the National Intelligence Model 2005. Bedford, UK: Centrex (produced for the Association of Chief Police Officers). Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press. Office of the Inspector General (2004). The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Foreign Language Program – Translation of Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Foreign Language Material. Washington DC: Department of Justice. Office of the Inspector General (2006). Homeland Security Information Network Could Support Information Sharing More Effectively. Washington DC: Department of Homeland Security.

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O’Harrow, R. (2005). Nowhere to Hide. New York: Free Press. Ouchi, W. (1980). Markets, bureaucracies and clans. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25, 129–141. Peterson, M. (2005). Intelligence-Led Policing. The New Intelligence Architecture. Washington: Bureau of Justice Assistance, NCJ 210681. Polanyi, M. (1967). The Tacit Dimension. New York: Anchor Books. Powell, W. (1990). Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization, Research in Organizational Behavior, 12, 295–336. Priest, D. (2005). FBI Pushes to Expand Domain into CIA’s Intelligence Gathering. The Washington Post, 6 February 2005, p. A10. Québec (1980). Rapport sur les e´ vénements d’octobre 1970 (rapport Duchaˆıne). Québec: Gouvernement du Québec, Ministère de la Justice. Ratcliffe, J. (2003a). Intelligence-led policing. In Crime Facts Info. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Available on the Web: www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi055.html Ratcliffe, J. (2003b). Intelligence-led policing. In Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Available on the Web: www.aic.gov.au/ publications/cfi/cfi055.html RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) (2006). Intelligence-Led Policing: a Definition, Ottawa. Available on the Web: www.rcmp-grc.ca/crimint/intelligence e.html Rhodes, R. (2006). The sour laws of network governance. In J. Fleming & J. Wood (eds), Fighting Crime Together: the Challenges of Policing & Security Networks (pp. 15–34). Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Roche, D. (2002). Restorative justice and the regulatory state in South African townships, The British Journal of Criminology, 42, 514–533. Schmitt, E. (2005). Pentagon Sends Own Spy Units Into Battlefield. The New York Times, 24 January 2005, p. A1 and A9. Searle, J.R. (1969). Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shearing, C. & Ericson, R. (1991). Culture as Figurative Action. The British Journal of Sociology, 42, 481–506. Shelby, Senator R.C. (2002). Additional Views of Senator Richard C. Shelby, Vice-Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Washington D.C.: US Senate. Sheptycki, J. (2002). In Search of Transnational Policing: Towards a Sociology of Global Policing. Aldershot: Ashgate. Sheptycki, J. (2004a). Review of the Influence of Strategic Intelligence on Organised Crime Policy and Practice. Special Interest Paper 14. London: Home Office. Sheptycki, J. (2004b). Organisational pathologies in police intelligence systems. European Journal of Criminology, 1, 307–332. Simonetti Rosen, M. (2004a). Terror-oriented policing’s big shadow. 2004: A retrospective. Law Enforcement News, December 2004, 1 and 4. Simonetti Rosen, M. (2004b). The LEN interview. Michael Scott, Director of the Center for ProblemOriented Policing. Law Enforcement News, November 2004, 9–14. Simonetti Rosen, M. (2004c). The LEN interview. Brian M. Jenkins, Rand Corporation terrorism expert. Law Enforcement News, September 2004, 9–14. Singel, R. (2003). Immigrant Database Draws Fire. Wired News, 9 December, accessed online at http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,61519,00.html on 29 December 2004. Skogan, W. & Hartnett, S. (1997). Community Policing, Chicago Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skogan, W. & Steiner, L. (2004). Community Policing in Chicago, Year Ten. Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. Smith Ring, P. (1996). Fragile and resilient trust and their roles in economic exchange. Business & Society, 35, 148–175. Thatcher, D. (2005). The local role in homeland security. Law & Society Review, 39, 635–676. Tilly, C. (2005). Trust and Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. United Kingdom, House of Commons (2004). The Bichard Inquiry Report. London: The Stationery Office.

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United Nations Centre for International Crime Prevention (UNCICP, 2000). Assessing Transnational Organized Crime: Results of a Pilot Study of 40 Selected Organized Criminal Groups in 16 Countries. United Nations (the report was actually released in 2002). US Congress (1997). Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Security (Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chairman). Washington DC: US Government Printing Office. Waddington, P.A.J. (1999). Police (Canteen) Sub-culture: An Appreciation. The British Journal of Criminology, 39, 287–309. Watts, D. (2003). Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Wellford, C. & Cronin, J. (1999). An Analysis of Variables Affecting the Clearance of Homicides: a Multistate Study. Washington, DC: Justice Research and Statistics Association. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. New York: The Macmillan Co. Zaccardelli, G. (2005). Speaking Notes for a Presentation on Intelligence-Led policing at the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, Ottawa, Ontario, August 23, 2005, RCMP. Available on the Web: www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/speeches/sp cacp 3 e.htm

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PART 1

Current Conceptions of Community Policing

Introduction to Part 1 Part 1, Current Conceptions of Community Policing, provides an international perspective. The selection of countries owes more to serendipity than to any methodological design. The countries in the selection represent a range of political economies. Drawing on a typology recently produced by Cavadino and Dignan we can assign our countries to at least three of the four ideal-type political economies they describe (neo-liberal, conservative corporatist, social democratic corporatist and oriental corporatist) (Cavadino & Dignan 2006, p. 15). Neo-liberal countries espouse a free market and minimal welfare state and their dominant penal ideology is “law and order”. In our sample this would include, USA, Canada, England and Wales, Australia and possibly Northern Ireland. Conservative corporatism is described as status related with a moderately generous welfare state and a penal ideology emphasizing rehabilitation and would include France and the Netherlands. Oriental corporatism, typical of Japan, can be described as private sector-based welfare corporatism, bureaucratic and paternalistic with a penal policy that is apology-based and emphasizes restoration and rehabilitation. Given different political economic systems with different penal ideologies, one might have expected to find significant variation in the application of community policing, such as Cavadino and Dignan found in relation to penal practice and levels of incarceration. On the contrary, what emerges from our sample is similarity rather than difference: different countries responding similarly to the common challenges of social change. The second observation is that, paradoxically, the models described here have not broken free from 19th Century bureaucratic structures to fully embrace new technology and contemporary social change. The officers providing community policing are likely to be doing much the same thing that their predecessors of a hundred years ago were doing. The third observation from our sample is how enduring the concept of community policing has turned out to be in so many different places. Though as Brogden and Nihar point out, community policing has been oversold in the developing world, (Brogden & Nihar 2005, pp. 9–13), for those countries in our sample it has, to varying degrees, remained a policing model of choice. That is not to say it remains unchallenged. For example, the politicization of crime through law and order rhetoric has done much to push police organizations towards harsher forms of crime control, thereby marginalizing community policing. One conclusion we might draw, then, is that community policing, in all three political economies, is under strain. The following chapters describe the evolution that is taking place as each model adapts to respond to social and technological changes that are transforming the policing environment. In Chapter 1 Wes Skogan provides an overview of Community Policing examining its origins, concepts and implementation with particular reference to developments in the The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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United States. He notes that police departments across the United States report that they have adopted community policing, an organizational strategy which supplements traditional crime fighting with problem-solving and prevention-oriented programmes that emphasize new roles for the public. While there are competing models, community policing is one of the most important developments in American policing in the past half-century. It is a model of policing which has been adopted elsewhere, including Canada, Australia and the UK; chapters in this book review parallel movements in other nations as well. The chapter reviews the three core concepts that make up community policing, and describes how these concepts have been turned into concrete programmes. The chapter concludes with questions about the future of community policing. Throughout, it draws heavily on Professor Skogan’s experience evaluating community programmes in a number of cities, as well as on research by others. Underlying long lists of specific “community policing” projects are the three central strategic commitments of community policing: citizen involvement, problem solving and decentralization. These are hard to separate, for in practice these three dimensions turn out to be closely interrelated, and departments that overlook one or more of them will not have a very effective program. All of them have roots in developments in policing that began in the early 1970s. Skogan’s research in Chicago concludes that, after 11 years of community policing, popular views of the police improved by 10–15 percentage points. There were improvements on measures of police effectiveness, responsiveness and the politeness with which they treated neighbourhood residents. Latinos, African-Americans and whites all shared in these improvements (Skogan, 2006). Sociological research indicates that “collective efficacy” (a combination of trust among neighbourhood residents and the expectation that neighbours will intervene when things go wrong) plays an important role in inhibiting urban crime. However, the same work indicates that it is mostly white, home-owning neighbourhoods that currently have it, and researchers have yet to document how neighbourhoods that do not have collective efficacy can generate it for themselves (Sampson, et al., 1997). Among the unanswered questions about community policing in the United States is whether it can survive the withdrawal of federal financial support and attention. Under the 1994 Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act, the federal government spent billions of dollars to support community policing. Federal financial support for community policing certainly is on the wane. Now crime is down, a new political party controls Congress and the Presidency, and federal support for local law enforcement is being redirected to postSeptember 11th concern about terrorism. Even where commitment to community policing is strong, maintaining an effective programme can be difficult in the face of competing demands for resources. There is also pressure from the federal government to involve local police extensively in enforcing immigration laws. A second issue is whether community policing can survive accountability management. The thrust of New York City’s CompStat and similar management initiatives all over the country is that measured accomplishments get attention and unmeasured accomplishments do not. As a result, there is a risk that the focus of departments will shift away from community policing, back to the activities that better fit a re-centralizing management structure driven by data on recorded crime. The final question is whether community policing can live up to its promises? Like many new programmes, its adoption, in many instances, preceded careful evaluation of its consequences. The effectiveness of community policing has been the subject of some research, ranging from its impact on crime to how openly it is embraced by the officers charged with carrying

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it out. However, a recent review of research on policing concluded that there was not enough evidence either way to assess the effectiveness of community policing (Skogan & Frydl, 2004). A movement in policing not addressed earlier – “intelligence-led” policing – strives to identify and utilize the best research on police effectiveness. This “intelligence gathering” should be high on the list of priorities for police research in the 21st Century. In Chapter 2 Maurice Punch, Bob Hoogenboom and Kees Van Der Vijver provide a descriptive but penetrating analysis of community policing in the Netherlands which has important lessons for other countries. They make the point that it is rare for senior police and government officials to think “paradigmatically”. They also note that the strength of the police organization lies in being able to “change colour” opportunistically, but that underneath this apparent change actual police work and a resilient police culture do not really change that much. Continuity, rather than paradigm shift, is the order of the day. In examining community-oriented policing in the Netherlands from the 1960s, they present a matrix with two axes, one running from “repressive” to “preventive” and the other from “central” to “de-central”. They argue that while police agencies may fit predominantly in one segment they also shift back and forth opportunistically. These authors are constructively critical of the concept of community-oriented policing (COP). They trace the process of adaptation of COP in the Netherlands passing through four generations. They note that the adoption of COP was driven by a small number of key figures that were destined to occupy the most senior positions in Dutch policing. But by the beginning of the 21st Century COP had a tarnished legacy and was facing new challenges from the threat of counter-terrorism and globalization including the movement of people raising fears about immigration. The four generations of Dutch COP are described and are strikingly similar to those described by contributors to this volume from other countries. The COP model that emerges at the end of the 20th Century is that of the “crime fighter”, although this crime fighting draws heavily on the previous investment in community policing, especially in the inner city areas with high levels of immigrants. (This stands in stark contrast to the lack of such investment and to the police response to unrest in the banlieues in French cities described by Mouhanna in Chapter 3.) The earlier change efforts tended to be short-lived, poorly managed, under-resourced, rarely evaluated (if evaluated at all), heavily resisted and swiftly abandoned. Innovations in policing require intense effort and once that effort is relaxed, there is a tendency to commence a rapid slide back to the status quo ante. They conclude that “Community policing”, that originally had a radical promise, has largely returned to conventional “policing of the community”, and in keeping with their thesis assume that, “Doubtless with a sigh of relief, cops can revert to the ostensible safety and security of doing ‘real’ police work”. In Chapter 3 Christian Mouhanna describes attempts to introduce forms of community policing in France. A traditional form of localized policing called Ilotage was attempted and this was abandoned in favour of a community policing system known as Police de Proximité. Mouhanna describes the failure of both Ilotage and Police de Proximité systems to withstand the challenge of strongly centralized systems of policing and to overcome the “law and order” rhetoric in contemporary France. In some ways, the French case can be deemed an ideal type (Weber, 1971) of a centralized police force which is deaf to citizens’ demands, and which enjoys increasing levels of autonomy. But, it was not always the case. Mouhanna argues that alternative models are now spreading in less centralized societies and that the central State, through tough policing, is trying to recover the real or symbolic power (Durkheim, 2003) it has lost in economic or social matters. The vicious circle generated

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by this type of strategy is hard to destroy, because its victims are the people outside of the system. And, if they want to be heard, they have to use violent means, which reinforces discourse on the need for state and police protection. In Chapter 4 Nick Tilley argues that although community policing has high surface plausibility, and has been put in place in a variety of ways in Britain, critical weaknesses can be identified in it as a general approach to policing. Notwithstanding this, Tilley proposes that there remain strong arguments for developing and practicing a weak version of community policing. He provides a description of the critical weaknesses in British community policing, as well as describing the variants of community policing to be found there. This discussion is summarized in two useful tables which illustrate the benefits anticipated from the various forms of community policing and those that are anticipated to flow from police community exchanges. Summarizing the weaknesses in British community policing he argues that it can seem that “community policing” is so loose a notion that it becomes all things to all men and women, thereby losing any specific meaning. Drawing on sociological theory regarding weak networks, Tilley describes the strengths of weak forms of community policing. Weak community policing refers to forms which foster weak ties within communities, between the police and community members, and between agencies; and his argument is that this promises to be more practicable, more just and more effective than strong community policing. Tilley argues that if community policing is to be more than a nostalgic effort to reproduce the geographically-based primary groups presumed to characterize the past, it has to reflect the fact of multiple attachments: that is, where weak linkages are forged with different sorts of (policing-relevant) groups possessing different sorts of attachment between members. Problem-oriented policing, the British police national intelligence model (see Ratcliffe, Chapter 9) and reassurance policing (see Innes and Roberts, Chapter 11) all assume a division of knowledge and an ability to act between police and public. Weak community policing would seem to furnish a basis on which this division can be operationalized. He concludes that weak community policing will require good quality officers and that if the temptation to deploy less able officers is not resisted the potential benefits from weak community policing will not be obtained. In Chapter 5 Aogán Mulcahy examines community policing in Northern Ireland in the context of the violent political conflict which dominated the period from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, and of the peace process that followed it. This context is important for two reasons. First, it highlights the difficulties of establishing community policing in a “divided” society where the legitimacy of the state is at issue. Second, it provides an opportunity for the author to consider the role that a nodal conception of governance might play in forging new relations between the police and the public. This second issue was put onto the policing agenda in Northern Ireland by the 1999 Report of the Independent Commission on Policing (the Patten Report) which, first, recognized the limited capacity of the public police to provide effective solutions to problems of crime and insecurity; and, having done so, proposed a multilateral (and potentially “networked”) “policing” (rather than “police”) solution to the provision of security in Northern Ireland. The chapter is in four sections. The first explores the historical context of policing and Northern Ireland and the difficulties of establishing meaningful community policing during times of acute conflict. He then goes on to consider the proposals put forward by the Patten Commission for “policing with the community”, and discusses the constraints that were placed on the full implementation of the Report’s proposals. He then assesses the new landscape given to policing in Northern Ireland by those elements of Patten that were implemented or part-implemented. Finally,

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he considers the Report’s significance in the context of issues of international “policy transfer”. Mulcahy concludes that the political constraints present in Northern Ireland made the implementation of nodal reforms difficult. In particular, he suggests, the very conditions that led to the Patten Report’s recommendations – the profound divisions that existed over policing – were, themselves, responsible for undermining its efforts to promote multilateral solutions to the problem of security governance. Ultimately, he claims, the implementation process stands as an example of “police” rather than “policing” reform. In Chapter 6 Jenny Fleming and Juani O’Reilly review community policing in Australia. They argue that while Australian police jurisdictions are conducting community policing projects at various levels, community policing as an organizing concept has not been taken up in that country with the same enthusiasm as, for example, in the UK and the USA and that despite the proliferation of local “community policing” initiatives across Australian states and territories, organizational and management factors in Australian police organizations are the major constraints to a more developed community policing model. This suggests that unless police organizations adapt more fully to accommodate new ways of doing business, community policing in Australia will remain an add-on to traditional police practice rather than the dominant paradigm it is held to be. The chapter is in two parts. The first part considers community policing in the context of Bayley’s elements of “community policing” (1994). The second part considers the constraints that prevent Australia from adopting a comprehensive community policing model. It is observed that unlike the UK and the USA there are no formal policy parameters or legislation that compel Australian police organizations to undertake a committed “wholistic” approach to working with communities. Other legislation, for example that would enhance the ability of organizations to exchange information and that would arguably progress the functionalism of partnerships, is also absent in Australia, although some jurisdictions actively encourage their senior officers to engage with communities and in some cases attach performance indicators to such requests. In Chapter 7 Noriaki Kawamura and Yasu Shirakawa of the Japan National Police Agency (NPA) trace the development of the koban system of policing and its influence on the famously low rates of criminal victimization in Japan compared to other industrialized countries. They begin by identifying the social changes that are leading to increased levels of crime and fear of crime in Japan. Here crime has become a hot topic and there has been highlevel influence exercised by the NPA and the Prime Minister who chairs a pan-ministerial cabinet committee to restore confidence in Japan as the safest country in the world. These strategic developments are putting the koban system under strain. More officers are now engaged in patrol, leaving the koban, the traditional point of contact between the police and the public, vacant. This has led to a reorganization of the koban system, including introducing a level of auxiliarization through the employment of koban counsellors, who are often retired officers, to maintain a presence at the koban. The NPA has also begun to adopt GPS technology for tracking patrol cars and GIS systems for crime “hot spotting”, and to embark on intelligence-led policing with activities plans based on analysis of crime data at the prefectural and divisional levels. The challenge facing the koban system is therefore to meet the performance challenges set by central government and the National Police Agency whilst retaining sufficient of the traditional iconic system to be able to contribute to social cohesion and reduce the level of fear of crime in neighbourhoods which still suffer crime victimization to a much lower level than any other industrialized country. The koban may be under severe stress but it is far from dead, and almost certainly has a great deal to offer other industrialized countries grappling with much higher levels of crime. It will no doubt

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continue to change as it continues to embrace the technologies of late modernity and the NPA figures out ways of extracting benefit from its use. In Chapter 8 Tom Ellis, Chris Lewis, Tom Williamson and Koichi Hamai argue that a more critical analysis of Japanese policing is needed and that it and Japanese society face pretty much the same kinds of problems as found in other industrialized countries, but at a lower level. They explore evidence on Japan from the International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS) 2000. Amongst other things they note that only two countries among those answering the ICVS 2000 had a lower satisfaction with the police response to the reporting of crimes than Japan; and Japan had the highest proportion of people (32%) who felt the police were impolite when responding to a crime report. The authors go on to deconstruct three inter-related key concepts that distort analyses of Japanese policing and its relationship to low recorded crime rates: the uniquely harmonious operation of the koban/chuzaisho system (manned local police-boxes); the unique values found in Japanese police culture; and the effectiveness of the Japanese legal framework (in so far as it affects police investigations). They conclude that without a continuous research tool in Japan, such as an equivalent of the British Crime survey (BCS), and a continuing research programme which addresses the question as to whether the current Japanese changes to their Community Policing model are working to reduce crime and improve public confidence, there will be no objective measures by which the Japanese authorities can judge the success of their policies.

REFERENCES Bayley, D.H. (1994). International differences in community policing: In D.P. Rosenbaum (ed.) The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises (pp. 278–81). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Brogden, M. & Nihar, P. (2005). Community Policing. National and International Models and Approaches. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J. (2006). Penal Systems. A Comparative Approach. London: Sage. ´ ementaires de la vie Religieuse. Paris: PUF Quadrige. Durkheim, E. (2003). Les Formes El´ Sampson, R., Raudenbush, S. & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and Violent Crime. Science, 277, 918–924. Skogan, W.G. (2006). Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities. New York: Oxford University Press. Skogan, W.G. & Frydl, K. (2004). Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Weber, M. (1971). Economie et Société, tome I, Paris: Plon.

CHAPTER 1

An Overview of Community Policing: Origins, Concepts and Implementation Wesley G. Skogan Northwestern University, US

INTRODUCTION Police departments across the United States report that they have adopted community policing, an organizational strategy which supplements traditional crime fighting with problemsolving and prevention-oriented programs that emphasize new roles for the public. While there are competing models, community policing is surely one of the most important developments in American policing in the past half-century. It is a model of policing which has been adopted elsewhere, including Canada, Australia and the UK; chapters in this book review parallel movements in other nations as well. This chapter focuses on developments in the United States. It first presents a brief history of developments that led up to community policing there. Then it reviews the three core concepts that make up community policing, and describes how these concepts have been turned into concrete programs. The chapter concludes with questions about the future of community policing. Throughout, it draws heavily on my experience in evaluating community programs in a number of cities, as well as on research by others. What is community policing? Some object that the concept is unclear, or that it “means everything to everybody.” Under the rubric of “community policing” police patrol on foot, horses, bicycles and Segways. Departments train civilians at “citizen police academies,” open small neighborhood storefront offices, conduct surveys to measure community satisfaction, canvass door-to-door to identify local problems, publish newsletters, conduct drug education projects, inspect private homes in order to give residents crime prevention advice, and work with municipal agencies to enforce health and safety regulations. In some areas residents participate in their own neighborhood patrols as part of their city’s program, while in others their principal role is to call the police promptly when they see a crime occur. However, these activities do not define community policing. Rather, it is an organizational strategy. What police do when they are “doing community policing” should vary a great


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deal. Communities with different problems and different resources to bring to bear against them should try different things. Projects and tactics should come and go as conditions change. Adopting community policing actually involves changing the structure of organizations and their decision-making processes, so that they manage this flexibility more effectively. Underlying long lists of specific “community policing” projects are the three central strategic commitments of community policing: citizen involvement, problem solving and decentralization. These are hard to separate, for in practice these three dimensions turn out to be closely interrelated, and departments that overlook one or more of them will not have a very effective program. All of them have roots in developments in policing that began in the early 1970s.

THE ORIGINS OF COMMUNITY POLICING Community policing was developed from the bottom up. During the 1970s and early 1980s, grass-roots attempts to improve on the dominant “professional” model of policing sprung up around the United States. There was no master plan behind them, and no systematic theory about why the innovations might be more effective than the dominant model for policing. Instead, cities around the country tried new things that they thought might work for them. In retrospect, the origins of community policing can be found in some of these experiments. Though each had its limitations, together they broadened society’s view of what policing might entail, and by the end of the 1980s they had changed the nature of the discussion of where policing was heading at the end of the 20th Century. Team Policing was the first of this list of innovations. Police departments in New York City, Cincinnati and Los Angeles were among those that tried to foster geographicallybased responsibility by forming permanent teams of officers dedicated to particular areas of the city. For example, in Los Angeles the patrol force was divided among cars that could be dispatched throughout the city and “basic cars” that were to remain in particular neighborhoods. The city was divided into 70 patrol areas, each policed by 3 to 5 basic cars and commanded by a lieutenant. The lieutenants also directed all of the special units working in the area (including specialized gang units and drug squads), and were accountable for conditions there (Sparrow, Moore & Kennedy, 1990). Evaluations of team policing found that the model was popular with the public and sometimes improved neighborhood conditions, including crime rates (Moore, 1992). Several vestiges of team policing, including dispatching rules that keep beat officers in their beats, a team approach to decisions in the field, and decentralizing decision making responsibility down to the small-area level, can be seen in community policing today. Herman Goldstein (quoted in Moore, 1992) described community relations units as among the first innovations that alerted chiefs to the potential value of reaching out to the community for their support. These units dated back at least to the 1950s, but following the hundreds of riots that spread across the face of urban America during the 1960s, they became involved in organizing and supporting public meetings, and forming advisory committees that gave visible roles to community activists. At their best, community relations units opened up two-way channels for communication between police and the community. One shortcoming of the professional model of policing is that it encouraged police to think they would be most effective if they could ignore public opinion and politics, and by the end of the 1950s many American police departments were very insular and even dismissive of the views of the general public. Post-1960, community relations units may have

AN OVERVIEW OF COMMUNITY POLICING

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helped to create a congenial climate for building police–community partnerships with action agendas. However, the idea that the public could be involved in neighborhood security projects awaited the emergence of another innovation, the community crime prevention movement of the 1970s. The community crime prevention movement emphasized collaboration between the police and community organizations. It was built on the observation that, in a democratic society, police cannot effectively deal with crime on their own. At the end of the 1960s, it was widely believed that rising crime could be traced to community disorganization, and reflected a decline in the factors that had shaped peoples’ behavior in the past: jobs, churches, schools, families and traditional values. The solution seemed to be renewing that organization by getting neighborhood residents involved in voluntary, collective efforts to fight crime on their own. This could include marking their property to deter burglars, forming neighborhood watch groups and resident patrols, protecting local businesses against shoplifting and robbery, cleaning up crime-prone spaces open to the public, and challenging the loitering and public drinking that bred simple assaults and petty crimes. Neighborhood groups could battle physical dilapidation through clean-up and fix-up campaigns and by pressuring city bureaucracies for better service. They could involve youths in supervized recreation programs. When playing these roles in securing community safety, residents brought to the table resources and expertise not available to the police. The contributions of community members became known as a “co-production” process for security community safety (Skogan, 1988). Community-based anti-crime programs were extremely popular during the late 1970s. In 1981, 12 per cent of the American population claimed membership in a neighborhood group that was involved in crime prevention (Skogan, 1988). By the early 1990s, the idea that the police alone could not solve community problems had become widely accepted. In truth, evaluations of the effectiveness of these projects were mixed (see the collection presented in Rosenbaum, 1986). However, when it came along, community policing adopted wholesale these crime prevention strategies, the rhetoric of public involvement, and the view that the community shared responsibility for securing neighborhood safety. In parallel, a seminal article on problem-oriented policing by Herman Goldstein (1979) proposed an alternative to the 911-driven model of responding to crime that was dominant at the time. He argued that if police came to understand clusters of crime – he dubbed them “problems” – they could reduce the volume of future calls by resolving their common cause. In this model, policing would become “problem-oriented” rather than “responseoriented.” Goldstein wanted police to analyze problems: to learn more about victims as well as offenders, and to consider carefully why they came together where they did. Then he wanted them to craft responses that went beyond the traditional solution of arresting someone in the hope that they would be deterred in the future. Solutions to problems might, for example, require the help of other city service agencies, or using the civil courts or the health department. Finally, Goldstein wanted police to assess how well they were doing, by systematically asking if it worked. Problem-oriented policing blended easily into community policing when the public became involved in its basic elements: identifying, prioritizing and solving problems, and assessing how effectively the police are doing their job. As I note below, because the public took a very expansive view of what problems they needed help with, the police of necessity began to look for allies in other public agencies and private service organizations as well. Another pre-community policing innovation was the fear reduction projects of the early 1980s. By then, responsibility for reducing communities’ fear of crime had emerged as a

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policing problem in its own right. Police and researchers identified a number of promising strategies for reducing fear, including visible police foot patrols, public outreach and policing disorder. The earliest fear reduction initiatives were tested in Flint, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey, where police there experimented with foot patrols (Pate, 1986; Trojanowicz, 1992). Later, the National Institute of Justice sponsored experiments in Newark and Houston, Texas, that demonstrated that police could reduce fear using such tactics like opening neighborhood substations, going door-to-door to learn about neighborhood problems, distributing informative newsletters and encouraging citizens to form community organizations (Pate et al., 1986; Skogan, 1990). I was involved in labeling the Newark and Houston projects a “fear reduction” program, but if our team (which also included police researchers Larry Sherman, Mary Ann Wycoff and Tony Pate) had by then heard of community policing, that’s what we would have called it. A final contributor to modern community policing is widely known as the “broken windows” theory of crime. This concept stems from the title of a 1982 article by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. They argued that, left uncorrected, signs of physical decay (the metaphorical “broken window”) and social disorder (for example, public drinking) communicates the message that “anything goes” in the community. In response, frightened law-abiding people avoid the area, leaving it to the disorderly and the criminal (for more on this view, see Skogan, 1990). An important strategic question is what can the police do about all of this. In some cities, “broken windows policing” has come to mean aggressive, “zero tolerance” order maintenance policing. However, in others this metaphor became the rationale for a variety of joint police–community efforts to repair signs of physical decay. These range from neighborhood clean-ups and graffiti paint-overs by residents to more focused trash removal by city agencies and a new police focus on health and building code enforcement. Residents also get involved in controlling social disorder, by challenging prostitutes and public drinkers, challenging the liquor licenses of establishments that foster troublemaking, and re-taking control of parks after dark (for descriptions of all of these activities in Chicago, see Skogan, 2006). Disorder is extremely relevant for community policing, for it turns out that when police open themselves to outside input, disorder-related issues are often near the top of the public’s list of concerns. Having an organizational strategy in place that enables police to respond to these concerns is a requirement, if they are going to continue to meaningfully engage the public.

COMMUNITY POLICING AS AN ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY As I noted above, so popular is the concept with politicians, city managers (who run most American cities) and the general public, that few police chiefs want to be caught without something they can point to as their community policing program. By 2000, a national survey found that more than 90 per cent of departments in cities over 250,000 in population reported having full-time, trained community policing officers in the field (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003). Surveys of police agencies can reveal the frequency with which these officers engage in specific activities. However, as I also noted, community policing is a strategy rather than a specific program; it is a process rather than a product. As such, it has three core elements – citizen involvement, problem solving and decentralization – but how these are implemented differs greatly from place to place.


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Community Involvement Community policing is defined in part by police efforts to develop partnerships with community members and civic organizations. Effective community policing requires responsiveness to citizen input concerning both the needs of the community and the best ways by which the police can help meet those needs. It takes seriously the public’s definition of its own problems, which is one reason why how community policing looks in practice should vary considerably from place to place, in response to unique local situations and circumstances. Working with the public can produce new policing priorities. Officers involved in neighborhood policing quickly learn that many residents are deeply concerned about problems that previously were not taken very seriously. The public can be more concerned about casual social disorder and the physical decay of their community than they are about traditionally defined “serious crimes.” They worry about graffiti, public drinking, and the litter and parking problems created by nearby commercial strips (Skogan, 2006). In the past, community residents were unsure if they could rely on the police to help them deal with these problems. Many of these concerns thus do not generate complaints or calls for service, and as a result, the police know surprisingly little about them. The routines of traditional police work ensure that officers will largely interact with citizens who are in distress because they have just been victimized, or with suspects and troublemakers. Accordingly, community policing requires that departments develop new channels for learning about neighborhood problems. And when they learn about them, they have to have systems in place to respond effectively. Community involvement often includes involving the public in some way in efforts to enhance community safety. Community policing promises to strengthen the capacity of communities to fight and prevent crime on their own. The idea that the police and the public are “co-producers” of safety, and that they cannot claim a monopoly over fighting crime, pre-dates the community policing era. As noted earlier, the community crime prevention movement of the 1970s was an important precursor to community policing, for it promoted the idea that crime was not solely the responsibility of the police (Skogan et al., 1999). Now police are being called upon to take responsibility for mobilizing individuals and organizations around crime prevention. These efforts include neighborhood watch, citizen patrols and education programs stressing household target-hardening and the rapid reporting of crime. Residents are asked to assist the police by reporting crimes promptly when they occur and cooperating as witnesses. Community policing often involves increases “transparency” in how departments respond to demands for more information about what they do and how effective they are. Even where efforts to involve the community were already well established, moving them to center stage as part of a larger strategic plan showcases the commitment of the police to community policing. All of this needs to be supported by new organizational structures and training for police officers. Departments need to reorganize in order to provide opportunities for citizens to come into contact with their officers under circumstances that encourage these exchanges. There has to be a significant amount of informal contact between police and residents, so that trust and cooperation can develop between the prospective partners. To accomplish this, many departments hold community meetings and form advisory committees, establish store front offices, survey the public and create informational web sites. Chicago holds about 250 small police–public meetings every month. The police in Chicago began doing so in 1995, and by the end of 2003 residents had shown up on more than 600,000 occasions

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to attend almost 25,000 community meetings (Skogan, 2006). In some places, police share information with residents through educational programs or by enrolling them in citizenpolice academies that give them in-depth knowledge of law enforcement. By 1999, almost 70 per cent of all police departments – and virtually every department serving cities of 50,000 or more – reported regularly holding meetings with citizen groups (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001). What are the benefits of citizen involvement? Community policing aims at recapturing the legitimacy that police have in large measure lost in many of America’s minority communities. Opinion polls show that African-Americans and recent immigrants have dramatically less confidence in the police, and are much more likely to believe that they are brutal and corrupt. They are the only growing part of the population in many American cities, and municipal leaders know that they have to find ways to incorporate them into the system. Community policing might help police to be more effective. It could encourage witnesses and bystanders to step forward in neighborhoods where they too often do not, for example. More indirectly, it might help rebuild the social and organizational fabric of neighborhoods that previously had been given up for lost, enabling residents to contribute to maintaining order in their community (Sampson, Raudenbush & Earls, 1997). Can it work? My own research in Chicago concludes that, after 11 years of community policing, popular views of the police improved by 10–15 percentage points. There were improvements on measures of police effectiveness, responsiveness and the politeness with which they treated neighborhood residents. Latinos, African-Americans and whites all shared in these improvements (Skogan, 2006). Evaluators also should look into the “mobilizing” effects of programs, including the extent to which community policing encourages community self-help efforts and develops leadership capabilities among newly activated residents. Sociological research indicates that “collective efficacy” (a combination of trust among neighborhood residents and the expectation that neighbors will intervene when things go wrong) plays an important role in inhibiting urban crime. However, the same work indicates that it is mostly white, home-owning neighborhoods that currently have it, and researchers have yet to document how neighborhoods that do not have collective efficacy can generate it for themselves (Sampson, Raudenbush & Earls, 1997). Although its effects on collective efficacy are undocumented, the rhetoric of community policing and its accomplishments in turning out residents point in this direction, and this should be an important focus of evaluation in this area. An important implication of involving the public is that the adoption of community policing almost inevitably leads to an expansion of the police mandate. Controlling serious crime by enforcing the criminal law remains the primary job of the police. But instead of seeing the police exclusively in these terms, and viewing activities that depart from direct efforts to deter crime as a distraction from their fundamental mission, advocates of community policing argue that the police have additional functions to perform and different ways to conduct their traditional business. As a practical matter, when police meet with neighborhood residents in park buildings and church basements to discuss neighborhood problems, the civilians present are going to bring up all manner of problems. If the police who are present put them off, or have no way of responding to their concerns, they will not come back next month. Community policing takes seriously the public’s definition of its own problems, and this inevitably includes issues that lie outside the traditional competence of the police. Officers can learn at a public meeting that loose garbage and rats in an alley are big issues for residents, but some other agency is going to have to deliver the solution to


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that problem. When police meet with residents in Chicago, much of the discussion focuses on neighborhood dilapidation (including problems with abandoned buildings and graffiti) and on public drinking, teen loitering, curfew and truancy problems and disorder in schools. There is much more talk about parking and traffic than about personal and property crime, although discussion of drug-related issues comes up quite often (Skogan, 2006). The broad range of issues that concern the public requires in turn that police form partnerships with other public and private agencies that can join them in responding to residents’ priorities. They could include the schools and agencies responsible for health, housing, trash pick-up, car tows and graffiti clean-ups. In practice, community involvement is not easy to achieve. It can be difficult to sustain in areas that need it the most. Research on participation in community crime prevention programs during the 1970s and 1980s found that poor and high crime areas often were not well endowed with an infrastructure of organizations that were ready to get involved, and that turnout for police-sponsored events was higher in places honeycombed with block clubs and community organizations (Skogan, 1988). In high crime areas people tend to be suspicious of their neighbors, and especially of their neighbor’s children. Fear of retaliation by gangs and drug dealers can undermine public involvement as well (Grinc, 1994). In Chicago, a study of hundreds of community meetings found that residents expressed concern about retaliation for attending or working with the police in 22 per cent of the city’s beats (Skogan, 2006). In addition, police and residents may not have a history of getting along in poor neighborhoods. Residents are as likely to think of the police as one of their problems as they are to see them as a solution to their problems. It probably will not be the first instinct of organizations representing the interests of poor communities to cooperate with police. Instead, they are more likely to press for an end to police misconduct. They will call for new resources from the outside to address community problems, for no organization can blame its own constituents for their plight (Skogan, 1988). There may be no reason for residents of crime-ridden neighborhoods to think that community policing will turn out to be anything but another broken promise; they are accustomed to seeing programs come and go, without much effect (Sadd & Grinc, 1994). They certainly will have to be trained in their new roles. Community policing involves a new set of jargon as well as assumptions about the new responsibilities that both police and citizens are to adopt. The 2000 survey of police departments found that “training citizens for community policing” was common in big cities; in cities of more than 500,000, 70 per cent reported doing so (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003). In addition, community policing runs the risk of inequitable outcomes. In an evaluation of one of the very first community policing programs, in Houston, Texas, I found that whites and middle-class residents received most of the benefits of the program. They found it easy to cooperate with the police, and shared with the police a common view of whom the troublemakers were in the community. Blue-collar blacks and Latinos remained uninvolved, on the other hand, and they saw no visible change in their lives (Skogan, 1990). Finally, the investment that police make in community policing is always at risk. Episodes of police misconduct can undermine those efforts. When excessive force or killings by police become a public issue, years of progress in police–community relations can disappear. The same is true when there are revelations of widespread corruption among the police. There may be resistance among the police. Public officials’ and community activists’ enthusiasm for neighborhood-oriented policing encourages its detractors within the police to dismiss it as “just politics,” or another passing civilian fad. Officers who get involved

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can become known as “empty holster guys,” and what they do gets labeled “social work” rather than “real police work.” Police officers prefer to stick to crime fighting. My first survey of Chicago police, conducted before that city’s community policing program began, found that two-thirds of them disavowed any interest in addressing “non-crime problems” on their beat. More than 70 per cent of the 7,500 police officers surveyed thought community policing “would bring a greater burden on police to solve all community problems,” and also “more unreasonable demands on police by community groups” (Skogan & Hartnett, 1997). Police are often skeptical about programs invented by civilians, who they are convinced cannot possibly understand their job. They are particularly hostile to programs that threaten to involve civilians in setting standards or evaluating their performance, and they do not like civilians influencing their operational priorities. Police can easily find ways to justify their aloofness from the community; as one officer told me, “You can’t be the friend of the people and do your job.” On the other hand, some studies point to positive changes in officers’ views once they become involved in community policing. Lurigio and Rosenbaum (1994) summarized 12 studies of this, and found many positive findings with respect to job satisfaction, perceptions of improved relations with the community, and expectations about community involvement in problem solving. Skogan and Hartnett (1997) found growing support for community policing among officers involved in Chicago’s experimental police districts, in comparison to those who continued to work in districts featuring policing as usual.

Problem Solving As I noted earlier, community policing involves a shift from reliance on reactive patrol and investigations toward a problem-solving orientation. Problem-oriented policing is an approach to developing crime reduction strategies. Problem solving involves training officers in methods of identifying and analyzing problems. It highlights the importance of discovering the situations that produce calls for police assistance, identifying the causes which lie behind them, and designing tactics to deal with these causes. Problem solving is a counterpoint to the traditional model of police work, which usually entails responding sequentially to individual events as they are phoned in by victims. Too often this style of policing is reduced to driving quickly to crime scenes in order to fill out pieces of paper reporting what happened. Problem solving, on the other hand, calls for examining patterns of incidents to reveal their causes and to help plan how to deal with them proactively. This is facilitated by the computer analyses of “hot spots” that concentrate large volumes of complaints and calls for service. Problem-oriented policing also recognizes that the solutions to those patterns may involve other agencies and may be “non-police” in character; in traditional departments, this would be cause for ignoring them. The best programs encourage officers to respond creatively to the problems they encounter, or to refer them appropriately to other agencies (Eck, 2004). Problem-solving policing can proceed without a commitment to community policing. A key difference between problem solving and community policing is that the latter stresses civic engagement in identifying and prioritizing a broad range of neighborhood problems, while the former frequently focuses on patterns of traditionally defined crimes that are identified using police data systems. Problem-oriented policing sometimes involves community members or organizations in order to address particular issues, but more often it is conducted


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solely by specialized units within the police department. On the other hand, community policing involves neighborhood residents as an end in itself, and in evaluation terms it is important to count this as a “process success.” The problem with relying on the data that is already in police computers is that when residents are involved they often press for a focus on issues that are not well documented by department information systems, such as graffiti, public drinking and building abandonment. Effective programs must have systems in place to respond to a broad range of problems, through partnerships with other agencies. The 2000 survey found that in cities of more than 250,000 residents, more than 50 per cent of departments reported they had formed problem-solving partnerships with community groups and local agencies (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003). This is not easy to accomplish. It is at least as hard as involving the community, for bureaucracies are involved, and interagency cooperation can easily fail. For a long list of familiar bureaucratic and political reasons, other city and state agencies usually think that community policing is the police department’s program, not theirs. They resist bending their own professional and budget-constrained priorities to accommodate police officers who call on them for help. Making this kind of inter-organizational cooperation work turns out to be one of the most difficult problems facing innovative departments. When the chief in Boston was new, he told me that he could handle things in his department; his biggest fear was that his mayor might not handle the city’s other agencies, and that they would not provide the kind of support that community policing requires. If community policing is the police department’s program, it may fail. Community policing must be the city’s program. It is also hard to involve police officers in problem solving. Cordner and Biebel (2005) did an in-depth study of problem-solving practice in San Diego, California. Although the department was deeply committed to problem solving, they found that street officers typically defined problems very narrowly (for example, at one address, or one suspected repeat offender); their analysis of it consisted of making personal observations from their car; they crafted solutions from their own experience; and two-thirds of the time their proposed solution did not go past arresting someone. The study concluded that, after 15 years of practice, this department still was not doing much problem solving. San Diego is not alone in this; my grading of Chicago’s performance gave the problem-solving aspects of its program the lowest score of all (Skogan, 2006). Even the advocates of problem solving admit that it requires a great deal of training, close supervision, and relentless follow-up evaluation to make it work. Community policing has also revived interest in systematically addressing the task of crime prevention. In the traditional model of policing, crime prevention was deterrencebased. To threaten arrest, police patrol the streets looking for crimes (engaging in random and directed patrol), they respond quickly to emergency crime calls from witnesses and victims, and detectives then take over the task of locating offenders. Concerned residents, on the other hand, do not want the crime that drives these efforts to happen in the first place. Their instinct is to press for early prevention. Problem solving has brought crime prevention theories to the table, leading police to tackle the routine activities of victims and the crucial roles placed by “place managers” such as landlords or shopkeepers, and not just offenders (Braga et al., 1999; Eck & Wartell, 1998). But when communities talk about prevention they mostly talk about their children, and ways of intervening earlier with youths who seem on a trajectory toward serious offending. Much of the work preventing the development of criminal careers lies with agencies besides the police, including family courts, children’s protection agencies, parents, peer networks and schools. To their efforts

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the police add involvement in athletic and after school programs, anti-drug presentations in schools, special efforts to reduce violence in families and initiatives that focus attention on the recruitment of youths into gangs.

Decentralization Decentralization is an organizational strategy that is closely linked to the implementation of community policing. Typically, more responsibility for identifying and responding to chronic crime and disorder problems is delegated to mid-level commanders in charge of the geographical districts that make up a city. Departments have had to experiment with how to structure and manage a decentralization plan that gives mid-level managers real responsibility, and how to hold them accountable for measures of their success. Here community policing intersects with another movement in policing, the emergence of a culture of systematic performance measurement and managerial accountability. This is symbolized by New York City’s CompStat system, although most cities have adopted only parts of that model (Weisburd et al., 2003). Decentralization involves devolving authority and responsibility further down the organizational hierarchy, away from police headquarters and closer to where the work is actually being done. Departments do this in order to encourage the development of local solutions to locally-defined problems, and to facilitate decision making that responds rapidly to local conditions. In this, the police are not independent of the rest of society, where large organizations in both the public and private sectors have learned that decentralization can create flexibility in decision making at the customer contact level. There may be moves to flatten the structure of the organization by compressing the rank structure, and to shed layers of bureaucracy within the police organization to speed communication and decision making. In Chicago, most of the department’s elite units – including detectives, narcotics investigators, special tactical teams and even the organized crime unit – are required to share information and more closely coordinate their work with the geographical districts. The department’s management accountability process calls them on the carpet when they fail to act in support of uniformed patrol officers (Skogan, 2006). To flatten the organization, Chicago abolished the civil service rank of captain, leaving the police department with just three permanent civil service ranks (Skogan & Hartnett, 1997). At the same time, more responsibility for identifying and responding to community problems may be delegated to individual patrol officers and their sergeants, who are in turn encouraged to take the initiative in finding ways to deal with a broad range of problems specific to the communities they serve. Structurally, community policing leads departments to assign officers to fixed geographical areas, and to keep them there during the course of their day. This is known as adopting a “turf orientation.” Decentralization is intended to encourage communication between officers and neighborhood residents, and to build an awareness of local problems among working officers. They are expected to work more autonomously at investigating situations, resolving problems and educating the public. This is also the level at which collaborative projects involving both police and residents can emerge. By 1999, a national survey of police departments found that assigning officers geographically was virtually the norm in cities over 250,000 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001).


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Decentralization is adopted not only so that police can become more proactive and more preventive, but also so that they can respond efficiently to problems of different magnitude and complexity. Under the professional model, orders for the police largely came from two sources: 911 calls from the public concerning their individual problems, and initiatives or programs originating at police headquarters or even City Hall. Every experienced officer can tell stories of the crazy things police have had to do because department managers isolated at headquarters announced a city-wide initiative that was irrelevant for conditions in their particular district. Decentralization, paired with a commitment to consultation and engagement with local communities, also allows the police to respond to local problems that are important to particular communities. Police were not organized to respond to the organized groups and community institutions that make up “civil society.” Now surveys of departments indicate that, as part of a community policing initiative, virtually all larger departments now consult local advisory boards representing specific communities. Decentralization is also very difficult. It is at least as hard as problem solving, and it can be politically risky. Researchers who track trends in police organization are skeptical that there has been much fundamental “flattening” of police hierarchies – which is, after all, about their jobs (Greene, 2004). Resistance to reform does not just come from the bottom of the organization. Junior executives at police headquarters may resist authority taken from them and pushed to lower levels in the organization. Managers at this level are in a position to act as a filter between the chief and operational units, censoring the flow of decisions and information up and down the command hierarchy. This is one reason why special community policing units are often run from the chief’s office, or housed in a special new bureau – it enables the department to get neighborhood officers on the street while bypassing the powerful commanders who dominate key positions at headquarters. Too often they are command-and-control-oriented and feel most comfortable when everything is done by the rule book. Discussions of community policing often feature management buzz words like “empowerment” and “trust,” and this makes them nervous because they also worry about inefficiency and corruption. And, of course, these concerns are real. One of the dilemmas of community policing is that calling for more operational and street-level discretion runs counter to another trend in policing, which is to tighten up management controls and create an increasingly rule-bound environment in order to control police corruption and violence. Ironically, many recent innovations in policing go the other way; they recognize and widen the operational independence of individual officers. Community policing recognizes that problems vary tremendously from place to place, and that their causes and solutions are highly contextual. We expect police to use their best judgment rather than somehow (it’s not possible) “fully enforcing the law.” Decentralizing, reducing hierarchy, granting officers more independence, and trusting in their professionalism are the organizational reforms of choice today, not tightening things up to constrain officer discretion. But police do misuse this discretion, and they do take bribes. It may be difficult to pull off decentralization to the turf level because it takes too many people. To staff Chicago’s community policing program required a 15 per cent increase in the number of police officers in the districts in which it was first developed (Skogan & Hartnett, 1997). Community policing is labor-intensive, and may require more officers. Police managers and city leaders will have to find the officers required to staff the program. Finding the money to hire more officers to staff community policing assignments is hard, so

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departments may try to downsize existing projects. This can bring conflict with powerful unit commanders and allied politicians who support current arrangements. Police departments also face “the 911 problem.” Their commitment to respond to 911 calls as quickly as possible dominates how resources are deployed in every department. Community policing has encountered heavy political resistance when the perception arose (encouraged to be sure by its opponents) that resources previously devoted to responding to emergency calls were being diverted to this “social experiment.” Decentralization is also difficult to manage because evaluation of the effectiveness of many community policing initiatives is difficult. The management environment in policing today stresses “accountability for results” (Weisburd et al., 2003). Units are not to be rewarded for their activities, however well meaning, but for declining crime. However, the public often wants action on things that department information systems do not account for at all. In decentralized departments, residents of different neighborhoods make different demands on police operations. They value the time officers spend meeting with them, and they like to see officers on foot rather than driving past on the way to a crime scene. Reducing fear of crime and increasing confidence in the police are important agenda in many neighborhoods, and better crime reporting may actually cause crime rates to go up. As a result, both individual and unit performance is harder to assess in community policing departments (Mastrofski, 1998).

CONCLUSION In a 1997 survey of police departments conducted by the Police Foundation, 85 per cent reported they had adopted community policing or were in the process of doing so (Skogan, 2004). Bigger cities included in the survey (those with populations greater than 100,000) all claimed to have adopted community policing – half by 1991and the other half between 1992 and 1997. However, among the unanswered questions about community policing in the United States is whether it can survive the withdrawal of federal financial support and attention. Under the 1994 Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act, the federal government spent billions of dollars to support community policing. Federal agencies sponsored demonstration projects designed to spur innovation and promote the effectiveness of community policing, and they promoted it heavily through national conferences and publication. The Act specified that one of the roles of these new officers should be “to foster problem solving and interaction with communities by police officers.” Innovations such as community policing highlight the importance of training for officers, and the 1994 crime act also funded the creation of regional community policing centers around the country. By 1999, 88 per cent of all new recruits and 85 per cent of serving officers worked in departments that were providing some community policing training (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2001). The issue is whether police departments will continue to staff their community policing components. Federal financial support for community policing certainly is on the wane. Now crime is down, a new political party controls Congress and the Presidency, and federal support for local law enforcement is being redirected to post-September 11th concern about terrorism. Even where commitment to community policing is strong, maintaining an effective program can be difficult in the face of competing demands for resources. There is also pressure from the federal government to involve local police extensively in enforcing immigration laws. This is being stoutly resisted by many chiefs of police, who claim that it


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would be a great setback to their community involvement and trust-building projects. We shall see if they can continue to resist. A second issue is whether community policing can survive accountability management. This is another innovation in American policing, and many of its features push in the opposition direction. To a significant extent, in this new management environment what gets measured is what matters. Top managers decide what is a success, and hold mid-level managers to their standards. The accountability process is about harnessing the command hierarchy down to the beat level to achieve top management’s objectives. Their goals are in turn driven by the data they have at hand, and those data say little about community priorities. The thrust of New York City’s CompStat and similar management initiatives all over the country is that measured accomplishments get attention and unmeasured accomplishments do not. As a result, there is a risk that the focus of departments will shift away from community policing, back to the activities that better fit a re-centralizing management structure driven by data on recorded crime (Weisburd et al., 2003). Community policing also stresses the importance of developing the general purpose skills of line officers through education and training, and it frequently features talk about empowering rank-and-file employees and encouraging them to act autonomously. It stresses that workers at the very bottom of the organization are closest to the customer, and are to use their best judgment about how to serve the neighborhoods where they are assigned. However, these are at best low priorities for CompStat-style accountability management. Community policing is an attack on the traditional hierarchical structure of police departments. It calls for the bottom-up definition of problems. Police researchers attribute many of the problems of contemporary policing to the mismatch between the formal hierarchical structure of police organizations and the true nature of their work, which is extremely decentralized, not amenable to standardized solutions, dependent on the skills and motivation of the individual officers handling it, and mostly driven externally by 911 calls rather than management strategies. Perhaps the accountability process has come to the rescue of the traditional hierarchical structure, trying to impose that hierarchy on work that does not fit its demands (Weisburd et al., 2003). Is the accountability process the last refuge of the command and control mentality of the past, and can community policing survive it? The final question is whether community policing can live up to its promises. Like many new programs, its adoption in many instances preceded careful evaluation of its consequences. The effectiveness of community policing has been the subject of some research, ranging from its impact on crime to how openly it is embraced by the officers charged with carrying it out. However, a recent review of research on policing concluded that there was not enough evidence either way to assess the effectiveness of community policing (Skogan & Frydl, 2004). A movement in policing not addressed earlier – “intelligence-led” policing – strives to identify and utilize the best research on police effectiveness. However, most of this research has focused on the effectiveness of variations in traditional policing tactics, including gun interdictions, hot spot policing, targeting repeat offenders and the like, and it has not had much to say about community policing. There have been evaluations of a few specific tactics that might be deployed under the rubric of community policing, including storefront offices and foot patrol, and we also know that real problem solving is difficult to get off the ground. Otherwise, there has been precious little research speaking to the generic effectiveness of community policing at the strategic level, which is the vantage point of political leaders, senior civil servants and the public. This “intelligence gathering” should be high on the list of priorities for police research in the 21st Century.

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REFERENCES Braga, A.A., Weisburd, D.L., Waring, E.J. et al. (1999). Problem-Oriented Policing in Violent Crime Places: A Randomized Controlled Experiment. Criminology, 37, 541–580. Bureau of Justice Statistics (2001). Community Policing in Local Police Departments 1997 and 1999. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics (2003). Local Police Departments 2000. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Department of Justice. Cordner, G. & Biebel, E.P. (2005). Problem-Oriented Policing in Practice. Criminology & Public Policy, 4, 155–180. Eck, J.E. (2004). Why Don’t Problems Get Solved? In Wesley G. Skogan (ed.), Community Policing: Can It Work? (pp. 185–206). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Eck, J.E. & Wartell, J. (1998). Improving the Management of Rental Properties with Drug Problems: A Randomized Experiment. In L.G. Mazerolle & J. Roehl (eds), Crime Prevention Studies, 9, 161–185. Goldstein, H. (1979). Improving Policing: A Problem-Oriented Approach. Crime & Delinquency, 25, 236–58. Greene, J.R. (2004). Community Policing and Police Organization. In Wesley G. Skogan (ed.), Community Policing: Can It Work? (pp. 30–54). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Grinc, R.M. (1994). Angles in Marble: Problems in Stimulating Community Involvement in Community Policing. Crime & Delinquency, 40, 437–468. Lurigio, A. & Rosenbaum, D. (1994). The Impact of Community Policing on Police Personnel. In D.P. Rosenbaum (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises (pp. 147–63). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Mastrofski, S.D. (1998). Community Policing and Police Organization Structure. In J-P. Brodeur (ed.), How to Recognize Good Policing: Problems and Issues (pp. 161–89). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Moore, M.H. (1992). Problem Solving and Community Policing. In M. Tonry & N. Morris (eds), Modern Policing (pp. 99–158). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pate, A.M. (1986). Experimenting with Foot Patrol: The Newark Experience. In D. Rosenbaum (ed.), Community Crime Prevention. (pp. 137–56). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Pate, A.M, Wycoff, M.A., Skogan, W.G. & Sherman, L.W. (1986). Reducing Fear of Crime in Houston and Newark: A Summary Report. Washington, DC: Police Foundation. Rosenbaum, D.P. (1986). Community Crime Prevention: Does it Work? Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Sadd, S. & Grinc, R. (1994). Innovative Neighborhood Oriented Policing: An Evaluation of Community Policing Programs in Eight Cities. In D.P. Rosenbaum (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises (pp. 27–52). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Sampson, R., Raudenbush, S. & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and Violent Crime. Science, 277, 918–924. Skogan, W.G. (1988). Community Organizations and Crime. In M. Tonry & N. Morris (eds), Crime and Justice: An Annual Review (pp. 39–78). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Skogan, W.G. (1990). Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Cities. New York: The Free Press. Skogan, W.G. (2004). Impediments to Community Policing. In L. Fridell & M.A. Wycoff (eds), Community Policing: The Past, Present and Future (pp. 159–68). Washington, DC: The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Police Executive Research Forum. Skogan, W.G. (2006). Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities. New York: Oxford University Press. Skogan, W.G. & Hartnett, S.M. (1997). Community Policing, Chicago Style. New York: Oxford University Press. Skogan, W.G., Hartnett, S.M., DuBois, J. et al. (1999). On the Beat: Police and Community Problem Solving. Boulder, Colorado: Westview. Skogan, W.G. & Frydl, K. (2004). Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.


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Sparrow, M.K., Moore, M.H. & Kennedy, D.M. (1990). Beyond 911: A New Era for Policing. New York: Basic Books. Trojanowicz, R. (1992). Building Support for Community Policing. Law Enforcement Bulletin, 61, 5. Weisburd, D., Mastrofski, S.D., McNally, A.M. et al. (2003). Reforming to Preserve: CompStat and Strategic Problem Solving in American Policing. Criminology and Public Policy, 2, 421–456. Wilson, J.Q. & Kelling, G. (1982). Broken Windows. The Atlantic Monthly, March, 29–38.

CHAPTER 2

Community Policing in the Netherlands: Four Generations of Redefinition Maurice Punch London School of Economics

and Kees van der Vijver University of Twente, The Netherlands

INTRODUCTION The police organization is like a chameleon: it is capable of “changing colour” according to context. As academics with a strong involvement in policing, we have long mulled over this intriguing process and have come up with two observations that are germane to this essay. The first is that the police institution is one of the most vital agencies in contemporary society, yet reflection on it is too often characterized by conceptual poverty. It is rare for people concerned with policing, including government officials and senior officers, to think “paradigmatically”. This does happen occasionally at particular moments when there is a major renewal effort at a time of transition. In Northern Ireland, for example, the Patten Report (1999) did sketch out a fresh blueprint for dramatically altering the philosophy and structure of policing; and a similar process of reflection and reform took place in South Africa (Marks, 2005). But in policing generally there is little fundamental reflection on the “Big Picture”, rather there is recourse to vacuous and elastic concepts that can be stretched to fit all sizes and almost any context (Brogden, 2005). The second is that the strength of the police organization, in our experience, is in operational improvisation, constant adaptation to innovation by bending in the wind and by “changing colour” opportunistically. Police management tends to use an almost limitless supply of strategic and operational concepts, gleaned from other areas such as management or invented by criminal justice gurus, to create and maintain an image of constant institutional innovation and conceptual vigour. The police organization may appear to “change colour” but it could be maintained that both the actual police work and resilient police culture does not really change that much (Chan, 1997). There is far more continuity in policing than the constant introduction of The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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concepts and strategies like “broken windows”, “zero tolerance”, “intelligence-led policing” and “reassurance policing” might seem to imply. Indeed, in some ways “changing colour” can be perceived as an “immunization” strategy used for coping with outside pressure on policing from authorities and the public (in ’t Veld, 2001). It is not quite what Schön (1970) said of organizations: that they are “dynamically conservative”, which means they “fight like mad to stay the same”. Rather it is that police officers have become too smart to fight like mad to stay the same; instead they fight like mad to change minimally. For the sometimes considerable energy expended always seems to result in relatively unsubstantial gains (we trust that the exceptions will forgive us), if not eventual regression to the comfort zone of the previous mode. Police practitioners, in short, regularly shift rhetoric in response to popular pressure from outside yet never seem to stray too far from what they really want to do themselves, or have always done. These are, of course, sweeping generalizations and yet we believe that many people will recognize them from their own experiences. Furthermore, each society and each police system will have its own unique features in relation to change, reform, underlying philosophy and its selection of a specific conceptual vocabulary (Reiner, 2000). The Dutch police, for instance, may not be typical of many other Continental European forces and may, particularly, be seen as structurally and ideologically far removed from much of the conventional policing in the USA (Boine, van der Torre & ’t Hart, 2003). Nevertheless, we shall endeavour to illustrate our two points by examining changes in policing in the Netherlands with special attention to so-called “community-oriented policing” (hereafter COP: Peak & Glensor, 1996; Skogan & Hartnett, 1997).

HARD COP, SOFT COP But before launching into our descriptive analysis of the Dutch situation we wish to say two things. Firstly, we want to suggest a matrix which enables us to place police forces on two dimensions; and secondly, we shall try to unravel the underlying ideas behind COP. If one takes two axes, with one running from “repressive” to “preventive” and the other from “central” to “de-central”, then this gives four quadrants: central-repressive, central-preventive, de-central-repressive and de-central-preventive. We argue that, while police agencies may institutionally fit historically and predominantly into one segment, they also shift back and forth contextually or opportunistically. Probably the dominant, formal paradigm in much western policing has been, and is, of a centrally-led agency geared primarily to public order, law enforcement and crime control (as in the “gendarmerie” model of policing: Reiner, 1997). The Dutch system was traditionally very much like that, certainly until the 1970s, but shifted substantially into the de-central-preventive segment. Part of that shift was taking on board what has become known as “community-oriented policing” (COP). We shall examine how that concept travelled to the Netherlands, became the orthodoxy and how it has changed its shape, or colour, though four generations of “Dutch COP”. Secondly, let us scrutinize the concept of COP itself. This is a notoriously vacuous concept with Manning even referring to it as a “conceptual sponge” (2005; and see Van den Broek & Eliaerts, 2002). In the USA it has virtually lost all meaning because it has become a “container-concept” into which one can drop almost any innovation in policing during the last 20 years. This, in turn, has been fuelled by a veritable COP industry of agencies, seminars, programmes, research and publications. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994) of the Clinton Administration released considerable federal funding for community initiatives (Zhao, Lovrich & Thurman, 1999) (and doubtless some inventive

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police chief in land-bound Wichita has ordered a submarine, and received it, as a vital contribution to local COP). For to date, the US government has invested some $8 billion in COP through the COPS Agency; there are annual conferences that are well attended (including many delegates from abroad) while some departments have become showcases for COP (such as San Diego). For our purposes, the modern COP movement of the last two to three decades can be traced to the USA in the late seventies and early eighties of the last century. It envisaged de-central units with a broad mandate, a problem-solving orientation, a focus on multi-agency cooperation and with officers who became actively involved in the community. Underpinning it was a shift away from the conventional, centralized, “professional” model to units with local autonomy, to officers who set out to solve problems by establishing relations within communities and by exercising contextually bound judgments. Community officers walked the beat and talked to citizens and were visible, approachable and available. Furthermore, taking community needs seriously was a central plank in setting local police policies. This was fairly revolutionary stuff for the time. It also gained legitimacy from the academic backing of experts and think-tanks: Herman Goldstein, in particular, provided COP with a methodology in his influential “problem-oriented” policing approach (or “POP”: Goldstein, 1979). COP and POP became features of what can be called a potentially radical reform movement geared to challenging the traditional hierarchy and specialization, the over-emphasis on crime control, the alienation from the citizen and the neglect of the community. This was especially the case in large American cities where the police were seen almost as an army of occupation and where officers had lost touch with the areas they patrolled. There can be no doubt, then, that COP represented a shift away from the dominant policing paradigm towards the de-central-preventive quadrant (within individual forces). To a degree it was an effort to change fundamentally the structure and culture of policing and to provide an alternative model to the central, crime-control paradigm and of officers tied to the radio, imprisoned in their cars and alienated from the public (Bayley, 1994). It promised to supply neighbourhoods with motivated officers seriously tackling citizens’ needs. But, in brief, COP then became a universal catchphrase (almost a remedial castor oil for every conceivable ailment), was adopted in many forces in many countries and espoused a rhetoric of local engagement, of problem solving and even of community revival (Herbert, 2006). The COP movement also became an export article and was transferred to many countries, including the Netherlands. The Dutch police adopted COP as central to their policing model and did so in what we would argue was a rare example of an internally generated and explicit paradigm shift. But since then there has been virtually conceptual poverty together with constant debate as to the effectiveness of COP and the degree to which it has been implemented. We can also witness opportunism as COP developed through several phases. It is the case that the model has increasingly come under attack in the Netherlands in the face of changes in society, rising crime and increasing pressure on the police (Vlek et al., 2004). The focus here will be on tracing that process of adaptation with “Dutch COP” passing through four generations.

MAJOR CHANGES IN DUTCH POLICING All three of the authors have been involved with the Dutch Police for many years in a variety of capacities including research, teaching and consultancy, while one has also been a serving officer. Reflecting on some 30 years of change in Dutch policing we discern 5 overlapping periods.

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(i) Late Sixties/Early Seventies: Rigidity We would characterize Dutch policing in the second half of the sixties to the mid-seventies as distinctly “old-fashioned”. It was highly reactive, defensive, uninspired (with little sense of direction), and with distant, bureaucratic leadership (Zwart, 2004). Motivation was not high, performance was low while a former senior officer said recently at a seminar that in those days the public was viewed as “the enemy”. There was a strong emphasis on public order but the response to incidents was often crude over-reaction with a low ability to learn from mistakes (Meershoek, 2007). It was probably not much different from conventional forces in many other countries.

(ii) Late Seventies: Radical Reform Yet that style was to alter dramatically. For Dutch society had reacted to the social and cultural turbulence of the 1960s with a sudden, giant leap to the left (Verbij, 2005). Politicians and others became highly progressive and criminal justice policies lenient – notably on drugs and prostitution. A period of turmoil and change had been ushered in by the “Provo” movement of the mid to late sixties; this “provocative” progressivism had a strong antiauthoritarian, egalitarian and at times anarchistic thrust. This societal shift proved traumatic for the police, who were a major target of the Provos. Simply by setting up playful and harmless events in public spaces they were able to elicit a violent response; to a large extent they undermined confidence in the police by making fun of them and revealing their bungling inadequacies under the eye of the then relatively new medium, television. This period graphically exposed a gaping discrepancy between the reactive and rigid style of policing and the rapid change in values and behaviour in society. This “legitimacy gap” was the key to the conceptual leap that the police themselves made. A new generation of critical young officers started to kick from within against the oldstyle, unreflective and stalled bureaucratic system. In particular three of them were given an assignment by the Ministry of the Interior to examine the manpower, strength and organization of the police. These three were in the sub-top of the hierarchy and, from this peripheral position to the establishment, they grasped the opportunity to write a critical and provocative report (POS, 1977: “A Changing Police”). This argued for a more internally democratic police and for a stronger external orientation to societal change (Nordholt & Straver, 1983). The central authorities were not at all pleased with this and tried to restrict publication, while the three angry young men were “banished” in various ways. This was an ideal way to draw attention to the report and all three of the police authors – Nordholt, Wiarda and Straver – later became influential and prominent chiefs (in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Haarlem respectively). This report, and the triumvirate that produced it, are of central significance. The call for reform had come from professionals within the system and was driven by a powerful, internal demand for change. This report acted for many years as a leitmotiv for policing in the Netherlands and gave it a strong “social” character. The ideological thrust was that policing should be geared to societal change, internal democracy and the wishes of the public while, in terms of operational style, it drew strongly on ideas of COP and POP from the USA. “A Changing Police” represents a radical, innovative model for policing and stimulated a genuine paradigm shift in Dutch policing.


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(iii) Late Seventies and Eighties: Long-Haired Enlightenment From that period on the report began to bear fruit through a series of experiments and planned change. And the new-style progressivism manifested itself with beards, sideburns and long hair over the uniform collar and in a nonchalant, laid-back style that turned a tolerant blind eye to many minor offences (Brants, 1999; Hoogenboom & Vlek, 2002). Then in Haarlem, Straver began the first major drive to implement neighbourhood teams as the primary manner to deliver front-line policing. By now these efforts were even being stimulated by the Ministry of the Interior through the Department of Research and Development (R&D). This unit sponsored projects oriented to both internal and external change. Internal efforts were geared to better communication, less hierarchy, decentralization and aimed at problem solving. External efforts were centred on improved relations with the public, adopting a service-oriented mentality and focusing on societal problems. Two academically trained police officers, Broer and van der Vijver, played a crucial role in the department and later helped to implement the ideas generated by action-research when they moved back into policing. The research they sponsored supported a wider process of adapting to change. This was aided by positive results in Haarlem where the public made clear in surveys that they preferred approachable, recognizable, concerned officers who were familiar with the area and who took their problems seriously. And they welcomed neighbourhood policing, felt safer and wanted more police presence in the area through foot or bike patrol (Broer, 1982). A small number of key figures were able to disseminate the gospel through teaching future chiefs at the Police Academy (for senior officers), by setting up action-research projects through the Ministry, by publications and by furthering the philosophy and practice of devolved neighbourhood policing in a growing number of forces, including Amsterdam. Amsterdam is considered the lead force, being the largest force and responsible for policing the capital city, so that its adoption of the Dutch variant of COP was something of a national seal of approval. The police trade unions were also supportive and the Foundation for Society, Safety and Police (SMVP) became an influential stimulator of change. SMVP had been set up in 1986 and it pushed for an emphasis on community safety, on increasing the self-reliance of citizens, on bringing back visible control agents (in trams, schools and on the streets) and on informing the public on safety and prevention. Through conferences, projects, publications and publicity it strongly pushed two themes – the need to focus continually on the relationship between police and society and the importance of an “integrated policy” on safety. In short, there has been continuous innovation since the early eighties, with a few prominent players proving highly influential and with a substantial investment in socially-conscious, service-oriented, externally-focused policing. If we examine the conceptual content of the change then much of it came from the USA and to a lesser extent from the UK. A great deal was based on the concepts of “COP” and “POP”. People also drew on the experimental research experience of the Police Foundation in Washington DC and on the influential activities of PERF (Police Executive Research Forum). Officers and policy makers attended conferences in the United States, visited various agencies and interacted with experts on police change there. Some of these – including Sherman, Bayley, Reiss, Kelling, Wycoff, Manning, Van Maanen and Bittner – were subsequently invited to the Netherlands in 1980 for a conference with European colleagues (Punch, 2003), while several American scholars made repeat visits. But while the key Dutch actors undoubtedly drew from American ideas and techniques, they were

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also giving them a strong Dutch flavour with a large social and democratic component to enhance legitimacy. For Dutch society was quiet unlike American society. In fact, criminal justice in the Netherlands began to be seen as an alternative model to the USA. In his analysis of Dutch penal policy and practice, for instance, Downes (1988) showed that the judicial elite had taken views on rehabilitation on board. Few people were imprisoned compared to the US and UK and most prisons did not have punitive regimes. This alternative, progressive paradigm in criminal justice – the “least inhumane in Europe” according to Herman Bianchi, a leading Dutch criminologist of the seventies – was a genuinely liberal position and was widely shared by practitioners and shaped by collective, professional conviction. Police chiefs, prison governors, prosecutors and even the police trade unions espoused that, for instance, drug use was a social and medical problem, homosexuality a matter of personal choice, euthanasia a humane measure and prostitution a harmless trade. In brief, Dutch society became strongly progressive from the late sixties and early seventies onwards; and this was reflected among criminal justice practitioners who operated with an enlightened and humane paradigm. This inevitably had a considerable impact on the police. For Dutch officers and others developed by themselves, spontaneously and from within, an explicit model of policing based on a social role for the police, embedded in the ideals of a responsive democracy, and primarily implemented though COP. The Dutch Police consciously located itself institutionally and ideologically, then, within the “de-central-preventive” quadrant. It might be worth issuing a word of caution here. Although the evangelism of the progressive paradigm was dominant and resilient, this does not mean that there were no concerns about crime and critical incidents. There were a number of hostage situations involving Moluccans activists in the seventies that ended in bloodshed; there were some large-scale riots including violent confrontations with squatters; there was the gradual rise of domestic “organized crime” with a series of abductions of businessmen or a family member; and there were a number of politically motivated bomb attacks. In scale and scope these may have been minor compared to some other European countries but within Dutch society they had a considerable impact. In retrospect, there already was concern about rising crime by the mid-eighties, penal policy started to shift towards recarceration about the same time and there were pragmatic and piecemeal changes to policing in response to these incidents (Society and Crime, 1985; Downes & van Swaaningen, 2006). Without really challenging the dominant paradigm there was an alternative, and less public, discourse taking place based on professional and operational concerns that began to develop something of an iron fist within the velvet glove. There was a form of creeping conservatism on the “hard” side with the formation of specialized police units, the centralization of a crisis response structure at the national level and an increasing focus on gathering political intelligence. Indeed, as we shall see in the next section, the substantial institutionalization of COP in the eighties was increasingly matched by concerns about its limitations.

(iv) Late Eighties into the Nineties: Orthodoxy and Rumbles of Discontent To a large extent this period saw the Dutch variant of COP – referred to in police jargon as “neighbourhood-related police service” (“GGPZ” or “gebiedsgebonden politiezorg”, 2000) – being adopted as the universal orthodoxy and standard practice. But in a society with


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a strong culture of consultation and consensus, this shift to de-central, preventive, socially engaged policing absorbed a great deal of energy and spawned many a long meeting. But the dominance of the model was enhanced by the fact that the three leading radicals of the seventies were now in top positions and had become influential members of the criminal justice establishment. In retrospect it is easy now to see that the self-confident edifice was already showing cracks and that there were rumbles of discontent. The success of that tolerant model had to a large extent rested on low crime rates, harmonious race relations, a successful economy and little interference from European neighbours. Throughout the nineties there was growing change in several areas. There was concern about rising crime in the Netherlands, including organized crime, and the latter was attracting increasing attention within the EU. Some member states, including influential France, perceived the Netherlands to be the centre of the European drug trade and demanded tougher action. Then, when the Netherlands was chair of the EU, it hosted two conferences, in Maastricht and Amsterdam in 1991 and 1995 respectively, which passed important resolutions in the criminal justice domain. The Dutch, as model EU citizens, could not ignore this pressure. In fact, the focus of policing began to shift slowly towards criminal investigations, financial crimes, organized crime and high-level, intelligence-led policing with the creation of new, specialized units. Indeed, critical attention was drawn to this area by accusations of “creative methods” in investigating serious crime, of misuse of powers and abuse of authority which led to a preliminary and then a full Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (Van Traa Commission, 1966). In some respects the Dutch Police had lost its way with poor control of new units, over-enthusiastic approaches to criminal investigations, pushing the limits of the law – and sometimes beyond – and weak coordination between various agencies (Punch, 1996; Naeyé, 1995). At the same time the Dutch Police went through the largest reorganization in policing since the war and the largest reorganization ever in the public sector (Punch, van der Vijver & van Dijk, 1998; SMVP, 1995). The National Police and 148 municipal police forces were amalgamated into 25 regional forces and one National Police Agency. This absorbed enormous energy and took many years of effort to guide this process; although it seemed to go remarkably smoothly, there are still some negative reverberations going on in a few forces. So while the community-based teams were busily going about their business – and, being Dutch, investing a generous amount of time in “team-building” (preferably abroad) – the criminal justice landscape was changing. The gradual shift was to more attention to crime and especially serious and cross-border crime, new legislation and new units, the teething problems emanating from novel means of investigation and to increasing friction from second generation immigrants. Indeed, a swelling number of voices questioned whether or not Dutch tolerance had not gone too far (Downes & van Swaaningen, 2006). There was a new crisis of legitimacy: the police were again out of touch but now with a society demanding a much tougher approach to crime. Dutch cops, the critics moaned, had become “soft” social workers.

(v) 21st Century: Tarnished Legitimacy and Seeking a New Strategy A number of significant developments at the turn and beginning of the century began to increase the pressure on the police. There was “9/11” and the new global focus on international,

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radical Muslim terrorism; the impact of globalization on the economy with increasing insecurity on the labour market and the dismantling of the welfare state (Storm & Naastepad, 2003); and escalating concern about immigration, asylum seekers and the integration of ethnic and faith minorities (Pakes, 2004). New style populist politicians, like Pim Fortuyn, broke the veil of political correctness and vocally accentuated issues in the media such as immigration, the “Muslim threat” and the involvement of minorities in crime (Wansink, 2004). In particular, the murder of Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim member of the “Hofstad” terrorist group intensified societal concerns on this front (Cramphorn & Punch, 2006). And in a number of cities, notably Rotterdam and The Hague, there was widespread discontent at rising crime rates, particularly in working-class areas where residents complained bitterly about their feelings of insecurity and fear of victimization, about the disturbance caused by street drug dealing and prostitution, about “drug tourism” from across the border (which was sometimes met with aggressive vigilantism) and violent youth gangs. There was a general socio-political shift to the right with a rising tide of criticism of the police. Politicians were becoming irritated and frustrated with the structure, culture and organization of the police and began to pressurize the forces to perform better in crime enforcement and even proposed nationalization of the police in order to exert more control. Some chiefs reacted by flirting with “zero tolerance policing” from the USA (Punch, 2006); and the detective branch and its supporters saw their chance to argue for a substantial enhancement of the investigative capacity of the police. In effect, the police had faced attack in the seventies for being too reactionary and now, ironically, they were being pilloried for being too “progressive” and too slow to act. The police response was to form a commission to develop a new vision for the Dutch Police. The police chief of Amsterdam was in the chair and there were five other chiefs assisted by some staff members and two academics (both co-authors of this paper). The report noted that there had been a turning point and that “repressive enforcement is now in the air”. It continued: “Firstly, the number of regulatory agencies and investigative officials outside the police has increased substantially (horizontal fragmentation). Secondly, the private security industry has entered the public domain, either in collaboration with the police or independently (vertical fragmentation). And, finally, domestic and global developments have led to politicization of the safety domain.” Then it touched on the problems associated with immigration, the threat of terrorism, fear of crime and “the question whether society has become too vulnerable due to lowering its defences is heard more and more frequently” (“The Police in Evolution”, 2006). In essence, the Commission set out to formulate a new strategy yet to a large extent it remained close to the orthodoxy. Several members of the commission were in fact disciples of the pioneering trio of chiefs, who had been their bosses, while it would have been difficult to alter the imbedded apparatus of “GGPZ” (the Dutch concept for COP). Thus, despite an increasing emphasis on technology, forensics, inter-agency agreements and cross-border cooperation, the guiding principle for the Dutch Police was to remain the “community focus”. The report stressed a continued involvement in local policing, with a friendly and problem-solving approach, which is capable of organizing social action to promote safety. It could be argued that the commission proved incapable of shaping a fundamentally new paradigm as happened with “A Changing Police” in 1977. There was a sense of conceptual poverty given the complex changes in society and law enforcement which merely elicited a reshaping of a concept, and a view of policing, that was well over 20 years old.


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Taking this background as our focus, we now turn to what the implementation of COP meant in police practice and how it developed over time. And we wish to distinguish four “generations” of COP in the Netherlands.

THE FOUR GENERATIONS OF DUTCH COP Community Policing – Phase 1: the Community Police Officer (“CBO”) as Loner In a sense this phase is a precursor to fully-fledged COP. From the early seventies onwards the Dutch Police had become socially conscious and began to engage in a range of experiments. Most forces adopted the “three-layered model” of reactive patrol (primarily motorized), preventive patrol (which followed given priorities and was ostensibly geared to “problem solving”) and community beat officers (hereafter CBOs). The latter, referred to as wijkagenten (roughly “neighbourhood cops”), tended to be mature and experienced officers with social skills. They worked on their own and had a broadly defined task that was formally cast in terms of crime prevention, problem solving and passing on information to the CID (Criminal Investigation Department). In practice, they tended to see their main duties as “keeping their beat quiet and safe”, “restoring contacts with citizens” and establishing good links with other agencies. They only worked in their given area, pre-ambulated visibly through the streets on foot or on a bike, would walk into shops and public buildings to talk to people and tried to solve problems brought to them. They were the social face of policing and often they were adopted by residents as “our police officer”. In some ways, the CBOs that Punch (1974) studied in Rotterdam in 1973 were close in style and operation to the Japanese koban model of ministations or kiosks (ironically, the Rotterdam Police, having abolished CBOs, introduced the koban concept as an innovation some twenty years later). The weakness of the CBOs was that they were peripheral to the organization, marginal to the uniform branch, denigrated as “neighbourhood nurses”, “coffee-drinkers” and not “real” police officers and were largely left to their own devices. They were useful for the messy problems no one else wanted to touch. They tended to take their social functions most seriously, became intimately entwined in the community but rarely, and reluctantly, engaged in law enforcement. The CBOs were then marginal, distant from “real” police work (in the eyes of many) and poorly integrated into the organization.

Community Policing – Phase II: The Team-Player Already towards the end of the seventies there were factors pushing for change. CBOs were often roundly criticized by their colleagues and were dubbed “social workers” or the “beat psychiatrist” (van der Torre, 1999). Then research revealed that there were mounting criticisms of how the CBOs actually functioned (Bastiaenen & Vriesema, 1980). The public increasingly realized that they were isolated and even idiosyncratic individuals, particularly when a new officer had to start all over again or deviated greatly from his predecessor. Citizens felt that the CBO was “too soft”, had “too little authority” to solve more than the

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most routine problems and usually had their favourites in the community against whom they would never “do anything nasty” (Bastiaenen & Vriesema, 1980). This groundswell of criticism stimulated the introduction of neighbourhood teams. The CBOs were to disappear and be replaced with teams which would promote greater integration in the policing tasks. Internal integration within the organization between various departments was coupled to “task integration”. Every officer was meant to share in all the facets of daily police work and the teams would tackle “all routine police matters”. This externally focused and problem-oriented approach was aimed at improving both legitimacy and effectiveness at the local level. This was clearly a major institutional restructuring that meant that practically all basic police work would be conducted by territorially-based teams. In effect, team-based, community policing was to become standard, front-line policing. For example, there was one police force that started to implement neighbourhood teams on a city-wide basis at the beginning of the 1980s and that was Haarlem, which had been experimenting with teams for several years. The chief (Straver), one of the authors of “A Changing Police”, was deeply committed to neighbourhood team policing. This change process was extensively evaluated, both internally and externally (with the assistance of the R&D Department at the Ministry). The external results were measured in two ways: by citizen surveys and by interviewing key-persons. These studies aimed to get insights into the efficacy of the change process as far as the external goals were defined. The goals were: reduce the level of victimization; reduce the fear of crime; reduce the problems in the neighbourhoods; improve citizens’ attitudes towards the police and also the contacts between citizens and the police. The Haarlem police force started in 1983 with the implementation of neighbourhood teams in three areas, covering roughly one third of the city. The results of the early studies turned out to be positive; after the first year in two of the areas the level of victimization, the problems and fear of crime had diminished significantly. Citizens’ attitudes towards the police had improved and contacts with the police were evaluated more positively. After two more years, a third external study took place when neighbourhood teams had been implemented throughout the whole city. The results were even more convincing, although there were some striking differences between the various areas (Broer, Schreuder & van der Vijver, 1987). The results of the interviews were in line with the data from the surveys and most interviewees stated that the functioning of the police had improved substantially. Inevitably, there was also some criticism. Some respondents remarked that there had been an improvement, but now even better results were expected and were being demanded by the public. Clearly, high expectations had been raised. Some stated that teams paid too much attention to criminal matters and not enough attention to the “smaller” problems of direct significance to the locals in specific areas. Then people even indicated that in a way they did miss the “old-style” beat constable with whom they could chat on a basis of trust; a team could never quite take his place. A frequent comment was: “why can’t we have both, neighbourhood teams and beat constables?” This result is interesting given that citizens were complaining about the beat constable before and, partly as a result of those complaints, the beat constable had disappeared. But now they were calling for his return (and it was mostly a “he”). The positive results from the evaluation studies in Haarlem had a substantial effect on policing practice in the rest of the Netherlands. Among others, the Amsterdam Police decided to follow suit. Amsterdam is considered to be the leading force in the country and it was “politically” important that it joined the reform movement. The implementation of


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team-based COP was lubricated there by the appointment of Broer and van der Vijver from the R&D Department of the Ministry of the Interior to spearhead change. And a few years after the start of the project, this major change process became led by one of the authors of “A Changing Police” (Nordholt had been appointed Police Commissioner). Again, as with much innovation, this indicates that a handful of key players were vital in launching the team model – either as chiefs (Nordholt, Straver and Wiarda) or as action-researchers from R&D turned internal change consultants in Amsterdam (and as external proselytizers through teaching and publications). This was doubtless aided by the small, consensual nature of Dutch society. For by the beginning of the 1990s nearly all forces had followed this lead and team-based COP, drawing on “A Changing Police”, was the prevalent orthodoxy (although there were considerable differences between the police forces in the way COP was organized). Those differences were mainly related to the level of task integration. In some forces the teams did nearly all police tasks, including reactive patrol and criminal investigation for many kinds of crime, whereas others did not go that far and had a somewhat different division of labour. All things being considered, then, it was quite an accomplishment to establish teambased COP virtually throughout the Netherlands as the standard manner of delivering basic policing. But it is important to stress that this was more than a structural innovation. All the main players emphasize that it was based on a strong philosophy related to the conviction that the police functioned in the middle of society, that officers continually geared their conduct to proportionality with a minimal use of force and that underpinning everything was respect for universal rights and human dignity. This is, then, far more than shrewd, practical professionalism and the crafty willingness to negotiate local outcomes. For the true believers maintained that officers needed to have internalized a genuine professionalism based on the fundamental values of democracy with transparency, respect for the other, engaging in dialogue and granting others “space” (Zwart, 2004). To a large extent this was welding a traditional, Dutch, social-democratic paradigm – centred on democratic values, local responsibility, small-scale enterprises, consultation and compromise, tolerance of differences and an aversion to heavy shows of authority – to imported ideas based on Anglo-Saxon reform of policing. And in a relatively egalitarian society the team structure provided a widely-accepted model among the officers themselves. The Dutch variant of COP, allied to team policing had, then, become the principal professional ideology and institutional practice and it enjoyed widespread support internal and externally. Yet there were rumblings of discontent which escalated by the end of the decade.

Community Policing – Phase III: Doubting Thomas As previously mentioned there was a major reorganization into regional forces in 1994 which absorbed a great deal of energy and distracted senior officers as the newly appointed chiefs had to grapple with new organizations comprised of an amalgamation of diverse units (SMVP, 1995). The scale of forces increased, the detective lobby demanded more personnel and resources within the new regional structure and there was externally a hardening of the political and social climate (Hoogenboom, 2006; Pakes, 2006). These elements combined to challenge COP which was increasingly seen as a model for a predominantly stable and calm social climate. The pressure on COP increased with the interest in zero tolerance policing

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as criminal justice officials were attracted to developments in New York and elsewhere in the USA (Punch, 2006). The third step, then, in the development of community-oriented policing in the Netherlands was the introduction of the new-style community beat officer during the 1990s. This form of community policing was introduced as a “new paradigm”, with a strong emphasis on the differences between the new philosophy and the “traditional” ways of (community) policing. With this new form of community policing it was intended to avoid a number of the shortcomings of the earlier systems. For instance, the teams did not always coordinate well with the rest of the organization and their members were not as well known to the public as the old community police officer. In the new philosophy and practice, the proximity to the public, citizen involvement in dealing with crime and safety problems and police working together with local public and private agencies, were considered even more important than before. The small-scale approach and the orientation towards prevention remained the same. The new element was the extensive cooperation with external partners and the strong involvement of citizens in determining what issues should be the focus of policing in their neighbourhood (Punch, van der Vijver & Zoomer, 2002). But perhaps most important was the shift in responsibility. Whereas the former beat constable was “just an ordinary cop”, intuitively deemed fit for the role and with minimal training and formal skills, the new community officers were held responsible for “organizing security” in their area in a much wider and more permanent sense. They were called “areamanagers” or “neighbourhood-directors” (“buurt-regisseurs”) and if he, or she, needed assistance from colleagues in specialized departments then these were formally obliged to help. With their key place in the community as “the face of the police”, the community officers took a spearhead position. Thanks to this position they were, unlike the former beat constables who usually operated in the margin of the organization, generally well embedded in the organization where they were geared to directing the work of others. Responsibility was thus pushed down to a lower level in the organization; this meant that the traditional top-down approach in setting police priorities was, at least partly, replaced by a bottom-up approach. Community policing became, then, no less than the pivot around which the rest of the force was organized. The lack of a clear definition of this re-styled COP did leave police departments ample opportunity to put the concept of community policing into practice in their own particular way. For, if a central notion of community policing is that it is tuned to the needs of the community, then this implies that the style and content of delivering police services in one area may differ from those needed elsewhere, with the requirement to be “tailor-made”. Therefore, differences between police forces, but also between departments within forces, did still exist, as was shown in a study of four police forces in which community policing had been introduced and which revealed that considerable variety existed (Zoomer, Geurts & van der Vijver, 2002). Community policing had, in practice, become something of a kaleidoscope of local negotiated agreements. This meant that the tasks of the new community officers included building and maintaining networks with externa1partners, such as local government officials and public and voluntary social agencies. The aim was to effectuate an integral approach to local safety problems; to support and encourage citizens to rely on their own ability to do something about security problems they experienced; and to improve the quality of life in their own neighbourhood. “Self-reliant behaviour” became one of the buzzwords


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and it fostered the idea that citizens can, and should, play an active and important role in a multi-layered process of social control. It is exactly involvement in these complex tasks and intricate activities, leading ostensibly to lasting solutions, which distinguished these community officers from the beat constables of the past. They were seen as active agents and skilled negotiators in seeking permanent solutions for recurring problems that are a continuous burden to the police and a constant source of irritation and unrest to the community (Zoomer, 2000). In practice, community policing clearly does not develop according to a single, unidimensional process, and several factors – such as lack of institutional support, changes in leadership, differing management priorities, internal communication problems, shortage of personnel capacity, an abrupt turnover of experienced officers, an emphasis on emergency situations that draw officers away from their beat, etc. – may hamper, or even seriously set back, the development of community policing. Community officers often felt that they had a pivotal and rewarding function in their neighbourhood but, nevertheless, they still sensed themselves as having a somewhat marginal position within the organization. Furthermore, increasingly the discussion on the relation between the police and the community became mostly in terms of effects, under the influence of the growing performance culture, and that tended to mean effects primarily on the crime rates and feelings of security. Increasingly police priorities became based on highly specific characteristics within the local environment. This was especially clear with intelligence-led policing, with the localization of “hot spots” and the targeting of individuals or groups who were causing (or expected to cause), problems. Perhaps most characteristic in the new relationship between the police and the community was the acknowledgement that the police were no longer the sole guardians of public safety. This new notion was strongly put forward by the central government in 1995 when, together with the mayors of the four largest cities, the “major cities policy” was formulated (for Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht: Aronowitz, 1997). With the active involvement of citizens in identifying local problems, the people of the community were to be encouraged to direct the priorities and activities of the police. In some neighbourhoods with serious crime and security problems, or recurring public order disturbances, the “needs” of the community were often expressed in terms of a desire for a much harder line and more repressive action by the police. There were several examples that in such cases not only the citizens, but also the local government (some cities had devolved local government to the “borough” level), demanded a much tougher approach to tackling firmly, and visually diminishing, these problems. Clearly, such demands by the community or local politicians can have a negative effect on the development of the “social” variant of community policing. In short, COP can pull the police in different directions and lead to uncomfortable diversity as the wider context changes. Ironically, the Dutch model of COP was coming to fruition, with some impressive initiatives (Punch, van der Vijver & Zoomer, 2002), just at the moment that that model was coming under increasing scrutiny and mounting criticism.

Community Policing – Phase IV: Crime Fighter In this fourth and final phase the impact of external change had become crucial. There has been a discernable tendency towards centralization, specialization, more assertive

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enforcement and an undoubted shift towards crime control. The police agency has, in effect, been imperceptibly sliding back towards the central-repressive quadrant. There was never a smooth transition from one phase to another because there were constant readjustments with continual change in the environment of policing and heated debate within police circles. Some officers, for example, felt that COP had led to a decade of undervaluing detective work and there was a growing lobby to reinvigorate the investigative branch (although neighbourhood teams invest significantly in criminal investigation and generally perform well: Zoomer, 2006). But then three crucial developments in particular impacted on Dutch policing, and policing elsewhere, and led to a further and significant redefinition of COP. Firstly, there was the arrival of New Public Management (NPM) designed to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of public services (Leishman, Loveday & Savage, 1996). Then, secondly, from America came ideas on “zero tolerance policing” (ZTP) which allegedly had reduced crime dramatically in several cities, but specifically New York. Thirdly, and dramatically, there was “9/11”. But already earlier in the nineties there were forces at work which questioned the dominance of the COP neighbourhood team model. In a nutshell, there was a growing concern with rising crime in the Netherlands, with considerable attention being paid to organized crime and particularly cross-border crime, and with the frictions of an increasingly multicultural society. There was, importantly, a gradual socio-political shift to the right which accelerated with the rise of Pim Fortuyn; he was a right-wing, populist politician who was murdered in 2002 but whose newly-found party made unprecedented gains in parliamentary elections after his death (Wansink, 2004). Some officers started to look for new solutions and turned, as in the past, to North America. ZTP as developed by Giuliani, Bratton and Kelling in New York had three main characteristics – assertive patrol, swift use of information and the “broken windows” concept of a multi-agency approach to community problems. There is considerable debate about ZTP and its impact but it ostensibly promised to tie “hard” and “soft” policing together in a “new paradigm” of COP (Kelling & Coles, 1996). For our purposes it is important to see that, while there was some aversion among Dutch officers to the potentially repressive aspects of ZTP, they tended to take on board more assertive patrolling – which was often initially popular among residents in some areas as it focused on “nuisance” offences that were a constant source of irritation – more intelligent use of ICT and especially the “broken windows” approach. This was because the latter reinforced the existing practice of multi-agency problem solving based on an integrated community safety policy. NMP additionally brought in attention to setting and reaching targets and to more efficient use of personnel. To a certain extent for COP purists these were tendencies threatening the idea of a “social” police engaged in the community. Certainly the district beat “managers” (or “directors”) of the police were already moving towards a stronger involvement in crime fighting as new technology gave them hand-held access to data banks allowing them to be the “eyes and ears” of the police in detecting local crime. Then there were the horrendous terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the USA. This brought with it the potential threat of violent attacks in Europe from external groups of radical Muslim terrorists (as happened in Madrid). Although there was no mass casualty attack in the Netherlands, there was the murder of Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim who was associated with the “Hofstad Group” (Cramphorn & Punch, 2006). The members of this group


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were mostly Dutch citizens of Moroccan origin. And this was true of a second group which has recently been on trial for plans to attack public buildings and politicians. There were, then, a number of tendencies pushing conventional COP towards a sharper, more assertive style. But 9/11, Madrid and other bombings did change the policing world and did bring an emphasis on CT (Counter-Terrorism) to the forefront of law enforcement. In the Netherlands three factors emerged from this threat. Firstly, there is near universal agreement that the district managers performed incredibly well in the aftermath of the murder of Theo van Gogh. The years of investment in community safety, and in relations with the ethnic communities, paid off as the local police reacted instantly with a major cooling-down operation which prevented inter-ethnic unrest (in stark contrast to the banlieues in France). This was COP at its best, as a proactive agency for preventing disturbances and enhancing community peace. Secondly, a major question was raised as to how it could happen that Dutch citizens could radicalize to the extent of planning and carrying out violence without them appearing on the security and police services’ radar (some members of the Hofstad Group had considered attacks on Schiphol Airport, Parliament and on leading politicians). The answer was that the local beat officer had seen the murderer of Theo van Gogh radicalize and had made note of it. But in the grand scheme of things this information did not flow upwards to the security people. Some commentators said that the lesson was that good old-fashioned police work might have prevented the murder and alerted the authorities earlier to this home-grown threat. This, in turn, led directly to the third component. If the threat from within came from second generation immigrants with Dutch citizenship and apparently “integrated”, then the focus had to be on their conduct in the domestic community and not on the outside world. This point was reinforced by the London bombers of “7/7” who were, on the surface, well-integrated, third-generation Britons of Pakistani origin (Cramphorn & Punch, 2006). The response in the Netherlands was to retool the beat officers as the initial identifiers of potentially radical terrorist activity. In Amsterdam the AIVD (Internal Security Service) instructed them on picking up the signals of potential threats. Similarly, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police of London, asserted that NOP (neighbourhood-oriented policing) would be in the forefront of CT activity (Blair, 2005). To a degree, then, community policing can be said to have come full-circle. It began as policing with a social face, and many of its exponents have argued for a socially engaged police force that was on the side of citizens and endeavoured to solve their problems, but has evolved into a primary instrument of social control and law enforcement. The friendly, avuncular beat cop – with an ear for everyone’s problems – is being instructed to move towards becoming the prying and digitally connected eyes not only of criminal intelligence but also of “GWOT” (Global War on Terrorism).

CONCLUSION We have indicated that COP in the Netherlands cannot be divorced from the progressive paradigm in socio-political life, and in criminal justice, that has typified Dutch society in recent decades. The preference for a democratic, small-scale and prominently social police was a reflection of that philosophy. At the same time it should be stressed that this was not

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simply a smooth transition with effortless implementation; indeed, we maintain that COP went through continuous adaptation and here we have identified four “generations”. The change processes which started initially in several forces encountered teething problems and there were difficulties in operationalizing the new proposals. There can be little doubt that the impact and complexity of the change processes were severely underestimated by the chiefs of police in charge of some of the innovative forces. To a large extent, then, those first experiences in the Netherlands are somewhat comparable to those in the USA in the early 1970s; then it proved virtually impossible to fully implement community policing and, even where it was held to have “succeeded”, the external effects when measured were often found to be marginal (Broer, 1982; Broer, Kooy & Kruyswijk, 1980; Slothouwer, 1983). Many early Dutch projects started with considerable enthusiasm only to fail after a “honeymoon” period (and see Chan, 1997). There was usually strong resistance from some of the specialist departments, particularly the Criminal Investigation Department, which in some cases simply refused to cooperate with the neighbourhood teams. In one particu1ar force, research later proved that the quality of the detective work carried out by the “generalists” of the neighbourhood team was no less competent than the work of the CID detectives (de Jong, 1983); but by then the experiment had already foundered. It is also the case that the police chief in the Netherlands serves under a dual system of authority in that she or he is accountable both to the Mayor, who is responsible for public order, and to the Public Prosecutor who directs criminal investigations (Policing in the Netherlands, 2004). A reforming chief would certainly need the mayor on his side but Justice and the Prosecution Service were notoriously conservative and legalistic and were not always supportive of change and of relinquishing any control. This indicates that innovation in policing, and particularly with a strong form of COP which challenged the existing culture and structure of policing, was often slow and painful. In recent years there has been an emphasis on almost constant change within the police organization with far more internal and external expertise on the management of change available. But earlier change efforts tended to be short-lived, poorly managed, under-resourced, rarely evaluated (if evaluated at all), heavily resisted and swiftly abandoned. An early survey of POP in Britain, for example, reveals that it was often a handy but indistinct label for a variety of short-term projects, that some of them had very little to do with the genuine POP methodology of Goldstein, that the projects were not well managed, that personnel on them could be diverted to other operations and that they made little inroads into the dominant model of policing (Leigh, Read & Tilley, 1996). This may sound little different from innovation in organizations in general; after all, the conventional wisdom on change projects is that they are never linear, meet resistance and that many, if not most, fail for a host of institutionally “political” reasons (Balogun & Hope Hailey, 1999). But it does seem to be the case that innovations in policing require intense effort and that once that effort is relaxed then there is a tendency to commence a rapid slide back to the status quo ante. This often has to do with internal and/or external pressure for results in the area of crime control; for many stakeholders consider this the prime criterion for judging police performance (this is the staple of political debate in Britain: Downes & van Swaaningen, 2006; Loveday, 1996). In effect, forces can usually innovate providing they can also show a good record within the dominant paradigm which always remains hovering in the shadow. In an Australian police force, for instance, the reforming chief, specifically brought in from the UK to clear up after a major corruption scandal, was being forced by


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political pressure to talk prematurely of getting back to “business as usual”, despite the fact that the reform campaign had nowhere near run its course (Dixon, 1999). Finally, policing is becoming increasingly complex (Newburn, 2003, 2005; Bayley & Shearing, 2001). It has many functions and which of these is given priority fluctuates over time. At the moment, for instance, the architecture of policing in Britain is altering dramatically with the planned mergers of forces and the creation of new, national agencies. And yet at the same time that there is unprecedented change at the macro level there is also a strong emphasis on “NOP” at the micro level. The “community” concept seems to have been abandoned, perhaps because it suggests a homogeneity which just does not exist in post-modern, multi-ethnic areas. But there does seem to be a major discrepancy here between establishing new national units, arming more officers, the expanding emphasis on CT and the transfer of punitiveness from the USA into the political debate on crime and punishment with the renewed governmental and police emphasis on NOP (Jones & Newburn, 2006). Bowling (2006) identifies a growing “multilaterization” in policing and this emerging layered landscape threatens to dwarf NOP into insignificance. This clearly illustrates the fluctuating “split personality” of policing and the constant and opportunistic oscillation between paradigms and convenient conceptual vocabularies with new “buzzwords”. But the reinvigoration of NOP can be attributed to two main sources. Firstly, NPM introduced the public as clients and consumers who would be consulted on local priorities; having raised those expectations it would be folly to deny them. Some chiefs are establishing covenants with their citizens to guarantee the delivery of local services, the presence of dedicated officers who will not be moved for external events, and serious consultation on police priorities (O’Connor, 2003). And, secondly, policing has to be founded on a basis of legitimacy; and legitimacy does not primarily emerge from distant and faceless agencies. It is generated by face-to-face contacts with citizens because the most visible, accessible and intrusive representative of government is the police officer; and in the name of the state he or she can deprive people of their freedom or, indeed, of their life. In a way COP was a policing philosophy geared to a new and different contractual relationship between police and the public based on policing by consent, problem solving, involvement in the community, legitimacy and local accountability. Now it has been largely reduced to a “tack-on” technique in certain institutional segments while the rest of the organization is encouraged to get on with “business as usual”. The Dutch seriously endeavoured to make COP their main paradigm and practice of policing. But they too seem to be succumbing to the slide into the central-repressive segment (Pakes, 2006). Indeed, Dutch policing is standing at a threshold of structural and cultural change (Hoogenboom, 2006). There is a new political climate with proposals for nationalization, a new generation of police officers entering the service (given the wave of retirements that will take place in the coming years) and with a new cadre of senior officers, some of whom have been recruited from outside the police service, replacing the old guard shaped by the seventies. There is, then, an understandable inability to formulate a coherent and convincing new paradigm, except for a sort of ambiguous and not very convincing “COP Light” (“The Police in Evolution”, 2006). The Dutch police establishment can even be said to be suffering from “paradigm lost” (Hoogenboom, Punch & Williamson, 2005). “Community policing”, that originally had a radical promise, has largely returned to conventional “policing of the community”. Doubtless with a sigh of relief, cops can revert to the ostensible safety and security of doing “real” police work.

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REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING Aronowitz, A. (1997). Progress in community policing. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 5, 94–112. Balogun, J. & Hope Hailey, V. (1999). Exploring Strategic Change. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Ltd. Bastianen, J. & Vriesema, J. (1980). Wijkagent: diender van twee meesters. The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij. Bayley, D.H. (1994). Police for the Future. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bayley, D.H. & Shearing, C.D. (2001). The New Structure of Policing. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. Blair, I. (2003). Leading Towards the Future. Speech at the Future of Policing Conference, London School of Economics, London. Blair, I. (2005). Richard Dimbleby Lecture. London: BBC. Boine, R.A., van der Torre, E.J. & ’t Hart, P. (2003). Blauwe Bazen: Het leiderschap van korpschefs. Zeist: Kerkebosch. Bowling, B. (2006). Bobbies, Bond and Babylon. Inaugural lecture: King’s College London. Brants, C. (1999). The Fine Art of Regulated Tolerance: Prostitution in Amsterdam. Journal of Law and Society, 25, 621–653. Broer, W. (1982). Een wijkteam die moest wijken. Den Haag: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken. Broer, W., Kooy, H.W. & Kruyswijk, A.J. (1980). Team-experiment in het Delftse politiekorps. Den Haag: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken. Broer, W., Schreuder, C.C. & van der Vijver, C.D. (1987). Eindbalans organisatieverandering politie Haarlem. Den Haag: Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken. Brogden, M. (2005). ‘Horses for courses’ and ‘Thin blue lines’: Community policing in transitional society. Police Quarterly, 8, 64–98. Chan, J. (1997). Changing Police Culture: Policing in a Multicultural Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cramphorn, C. & Punch, M. (2006). The Murder of Theo van Gogh, and the Islamic Jihad Division in the Netherlands. Police Research and Management, 6, 11–32. Dixon, D. (ed.) (1999). A Culture of Corruption. Annandale, NSW: Hawkins Press. Downes, D. (1988). Contrasts in Tolerance. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Downes, D. & van Swaaningen, R. (2006). The road to dystopia: Changes in the penal climate of the Netherlands. Unpublished paper, London School of Economics. Gebiedsgebonden politiezorg (GGPZ) (2000). The Hague: Ministry of the Interior. Goldstein, H. (1979). Improving policing: a problem-oriented approach. Crime and Delinquency, April, 236–158. Herbert, C. (2006). Citizens, Cops and Power. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Hoogenboom, B. (2006). Operationele betrokkenheid. Bedrijfsvoering Nederlands Politie 1993– 2005. Zeist: Kerkebosch/Apeldoorn: Politie en Wetenschap. Hoogenboom, B., Punch, M. & Williamson, T. (2005). Paradigm Lost: The Dutch Dilemma. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 38, 268–281. Hoogenboom, B. & Vlek, F. (eds) (2002). Gedoogbeleid: tolerantie en poldermodel: tellen (we) onze zegingen nog? Zeist: Kerkebosch/Apeldoorn: Politie en Wetenschap. Jong, M.L.J. de (1983). Recherche en wijkteam. Master’s Thesis: University of Amsterdam. Jones, T. & Newburn, T. (2006). Policy Transfer and Criminal Justice. Maidenhead, Berks: McGraw Hill. Kelling, G.L. & Coles, C.M. (1996). Fixing Broken Windows. New York: Free Press. Leigh, A., Read, T. & Tilley, N. (1996). Problem-Oriented Policing: Brit Pop. London: Home Office. Leishman, F., Loveday, B. & Savage. S. (eds) (1996). Core Issues in Policing. London: Longman. Loveday, B. (1996). Crime at the Core? In F. Leishman, B. Loveday & S. Savage (eds), Core Issues in Policing (pp. 73–100). London: Longman.


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Manning, P.K. (1997). Police Work, 2nd edn. Prospect Heights, ILL: Waveland Press. Manning, P.K. (2005). The Study of Policing, Police Quarterly, 8, 23–43. Marks, M. (2005). Transforming Robocop. Scottsville, RSA: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Meershoek, G. (2007). De gemeentepolitie in een veranderende samenleving. Amsterdam: Boom. Naeyé, J. (1995). Het politieél vooronderzoek in strafzaken. Arnhem: Gouda Quint. Newburn, T. (ed.) (2003). Handbook of Policing. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Newburn, T. (ed.) (2005). Policing: Key Readings. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Newburn, T. & Sparks, R. (eds) (2004). Criminal Justice and Political Cultures. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Nordholt, E. & Straver, R. (1983). The Changing Police. In M. Punch (ed.), Control in the Police Organization (pp. 36–46). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. O’Connor, D. (2003). Reassurance Policing, speech at the Future of Policing Conference, London School of Economics, London. Pakes, F. (2004). The Politics of Discontent: The Emergence of a New Criminal Justice Discourse. The Howard Journal, 43, 284–298. Pakes, F. (2006). Ebb and flow in Dutch criminal justice. International Journal of Sociology of Law, 34 (June), 141–156. Patten Report (1999). A New Beginning: Policing in Northern Ireland. Report of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland. London: Home Office. Peak, K.J. & Glensor, R.W. (1996). Community Policing and Problem Solving. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Policing in the Netherlands (2004). English language brochure from the Police Department of Ministry of the Interior in The Hague. POS (Projectgroep Organisatie Structuren) (1977). Politie in Verandering. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij. Punch, M. (1974). Area Bobbies: Rotterdam Style. Police, VI, 14–15. Punch, M. (1996). The Dutch Criminal Justice System. Security Journal, 9, 177–184. Punch, M. (2003). Rotten Orchards. Policing and Society, 13, 171–198. Punch, M. (2006). From ‘Anything Goes’ to ‘Zero Tolerance’: Policy Transfer and Policing in the Netherlands. Apeldoorn: Politie en Wetenschap. Punch, M., van der Vijver, K. & van Dijk, N. (1998). Searching for a Future. Dordrecht: SMVP (translation of SMVP (1995) Toekomst Gezocht). Punch, M., van der Vijver, K. & Zoomer, O. (2002). Dutch ‘COP’: developing community policing in The Netherlands. Policing, 25, 60–79. Reiner, R. (1997). Policing and the Police. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan & R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 2nd edn, (pp. 997–1049). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reiner, R. (2000). The Politics of the Police, 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schön, D. (1970). Change and Industrial Society. BBC Reith Lecture. London: BBC Radio. Skogan, W.G. & Hartnett, S.M. (1997). Community Policing, Chicago Style. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Slothouwer, A. (1983). Wijkteampolitie. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij. SMVP (1995). Toekomst Gezocht. Dordrecht: SMVP. Society and Crime (1985). A Policy Plan for the Netherlands. The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij. Storm, S. & Naastepad, R. (2003). The Dutch Distress. New Left Review, March/April, 131–51. The Police in Evolution: Vision on Policing (2006). Project Group Vision on Policing: Board of Chief Commissioners. The Hague: NPI. Van der Torre, E.J. (1999). Politiewerk. Alphen aan de Rijn: Samson. Van den Broek, T. & Eliaerts, C. (eds) (2002). Evaluating Community Policing. Brussels: Politeia. Van Traa Commission (1996). Inzake opsporing. Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers. in ’t Veld, R. (2001). Handboek beleidswetenschap. Meppel: Boom. Verbij, A. (2005). Tien rode jaren. Amsterdam: Ambo. Vlek, F., Bangma, K., Loef, K. & Muller, E. (eds) (2004). Uit balans: politie en bestel in de knel. Zeist: Kerkebosch. Waddington, P.A.J. (1999). Policing Citizens. London: UCL Press. Wansink, H. (2004). De erfenis van Fortuyn. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff.

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Zhao, J., Lovrich, N.P. & Thurman, Q. (1999). The status of community policing in American cities. Policing, 22, 74–92. Zoomer, O.J. (2000). Politiezorg in de Amsterdamse Binnenstad. Enschede: IPIT. Zoomer, O., Geurts, P. & van der Vijver, C.D. (2002). De gebiedsgebonden politiezorg als uitdaging. Ministerie van BZK, Den Haag. Zoomer, O. (2006). De opsporing binnen de gebiedsgebonden politiezorg. Apeldoorn: Politie en Wetenschap. Zwart, C. (2004). Over het wezen van de Nederlandse politie. Leiderdorp: Politie Hollands Midden.

CHAPTER 3

The Failure of “Ilotage” and “Police de Proximité” Systems to withstand “Law and Order” Rhetoric in Contemporary France Christian Mouhanna CNRS, France

INTRODUCTION The riots in the poor suburbs of France in October and November 2005 have generated many and diverse analyses. Many observers have sought to explain the phenomenon by global causes. Social, economic or racial explanations were offered. Others have put the stress on the revival of the extreme left, the development of drug mafias or Islamic networks, in order to find a demiurge behind such a threatening movement of rebellion. In a basic reflex inherited from the counter-revolution era (Girardet, 1986), the government tried to find someone or something on which to blame the large wave of violence.1 Ironically, given the involvement of police forces at the beginning of previous riots of this kind in France,2 relatively little attention has been paid to how police action and the security policy could have been a major factor in starting these movements. This is not to say that economic, social and racial causes should not be evoked to explain the genesis of these events. But, focusing on local interactions, one could ask to what extent the French way of policing is also a part of the problem. Only a few members of the socialist opposition raised the issue of a link between these riots and the end of a policy called police de proximité – proximity policing. But the vast majority of politicians preferred to support the government and the police forces facing what they refused to regard as a protest against tough police 1 2

According to the police, 274 cities of different sizes were affected by riots in November 2005. The better known are Les Minguettes (1981), Vaux en Velin, (October 1990), Sartrouville (March 1991), Mantes-la-Jolie (May 1991), Toulouse (1998), Lille (2000). All of these riots began with a real or supposed incident involving youngsters and police forces.


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policy and practices. It would be an exaggeration to argue that police officers are the only ones to blame for these riots and their consequences, but the role they play in these poor suburbs is largely ignored. I would like to shed some light on the government’s controversial policing policies and on the process by which planned innovation and change in this field are transformed by local practices. In other words, how to explain that the situation is still out of control in these areas, despite a “zero tolerance” strategy? This question should be examined in connection with the failure of all attempts to create a new form of police whose priority would no longer be protection of the state, but the service due to the citizens (Monjardet, 1996). Indeed, first and foremost the French Police Nationale was created and has been used mainly to control the population – not to serve it. This police force has become, alongside schools, the military, the Colbertian-managed economy, to mention but a few, a key element of the structure of the Jacobinic French political system.3 This is the first point that will be reviewed below. Second, I will examine in detail the two major reforms, ˆılotage and police de proximité, which tried to modify the relationships between police officers and the population, especially in the poor districts. Although institutional change may be important, it is not my main concern here. Instead I will put the stress on the actual results of these reforms on police officers’ practices and on the population supposed to benefit from these new types of policing. Paradoxically, one of the unintended results of these reforms, as will be described below, was a growing decay in police openness to society, and finally a return to more traditional policies, far removed from policing by consent. One could argue that institutional reforms failed because of police officers’ corporatism and conservatism. It is also claimed that society, especially young males in poor suburbs, is not ready to function with much understanding of a police force. This has led many politicians, from both left and right, to call for tougher law enforcement. These explanations, police officers’ conservatism and the reluctance of the population to cooperate with police forces seem to be relevant, and to some extent they are. But they are not the only causes. Blaming police officers or the population also serves to avoid the issue of the incompetence of the government and the chiefs of police. It also hides a major goal of the latter players: maintaining control of the police. This will be the third point. The main argument of this chapter is that police practices are determined largely by the organizational system in which they operate (Crozier & Friedberg, 1977). In the French case, they are influenced by both national and centralized policies, and also by local partnerships and demands; but these two orders, the local order and the national order, produce competitive and opposite logics. In this context, the reforms do not result in a police force that is more open to the society, but lead to the opposite: the police are not only far from being interested in the public’s demands, but are also increasingly unable to obtain information from the population. The mixing of French centralization and imported strategies has led to a dead-end or even to a deterioration of the previous situation.

3

Inherited from the French Revolution (1789), the term Jacobinism refers to the debate between the Jacobins – the most radical group of French revolutionaries – and the Girondins. While the latter were in favour of decentralized democracy, with several levels of government and administration (local, departmental, national), the former succeeded in imposing a model based on a direct relation between the central state and the citizen. In the Jacobinic model, in matters of administration, there is no legitimacy for any intermediary, whether religious, ethnic or territory-based, between the state (represented by national civil servants) and the population.

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A TRADITION OF SOCIAL CONTROL Looking at the history of the French police, one could be surprised that the centralized model has not always been the main one. In the past, apart from the police in Paris who were controlled by the state, France lived with a local police system, especially in the cities. In the countryside, there was a national military force, the well known gendarmerie. But, as will be explained further on, even if the gendarmes were part of a centralized organization, they had to take into account the demands of the population more than the national police force that would be set up at a later stage, because they lived among the people they served. This has not been the case for the officers of the Police Nationale. As far as the police are concerned, the centralization process began at the beginning of the 20th Century, and was finalized during the Second World War, when France was under the authoritarian Vichy regime.4 Three important implications followed from this and they would have consequences on the future of policing. First, the French national police force was built during a period characterized by tough control on the population. Even if some police officers were reluctant to be part of this movement and joined the Résistance, the French police were fighting against political opponents and, for example, took part in the deportation of Jews. This type of policing has had an influence on police relations with several sectors of the population, who remained suspicious about the police for a long time. It also put the stress on what is and will continue to be the first priority of the French police: to protect the state. Second, it should be taken into account that the Vichy regime was not just an authoritarian government, but a technocratic one as well. The Ministère de l’Intérieur was especially staffed by polytechniciens,5 who in the 1930s developed theories of governance that excluded citizens from the decision-making process (Bloch-Lainé & Gruson, 1996). Citizens were viewed merely as people who had to be ruled. According to such theories, there is no place for public debate. All decisions have to be taken in a planned and technocratic way, and nothing is organized to hear the public’s demands or take them into account. Third, the police centralization from 1941 entailed not only a change in the conditions of command, but it also resulted in a deep transformation of the recruitment process. Following the classical model of bureaucracy (Weber, 1971), the French national police force adopted a policy of national-scale recruitment. In order to prevent officers from being too close to the people they had to control, young police officers were posted far away from their home cities. As a result, most of them came from small towns but began their careers in the poor suburbs of large cities, without any experience of these areas. This is still the case today. The fall of the Vichy government did not spell the doom of this “new” police. This centralized organization would survive all the regimes that followed: the Libération, the parliamentary Fourth Republic (1946–58) and the presidential Fifth Republic. To keep the long history of the French police during the second half of the 20th Century short, let us jump directly to another period: the Algerian War of Independence (1958–62). Although this war is mainly viewed as a colonial war, it should be kept in mind that many episodes occurred in mainland France. The fear of terrorist bomb attacks led the government

4 5

Law of 23 April 1941. L’Ecole Polytechnique was a high-level school of engineers, from which many senior civil servants came. Today, l’Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) is one of the schools producing the new technocracy, especially inside the Ministère de l’Intérieur, the French equivalent of the British Home Office.

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to reinforce control over people born in the North African territories. To a large extent, this period gave rise to racism against North African people inside the police force. Even long after the last police officer working during this time has left the police, being suspicious of North Africans remains a tradition among many police officers. More than the other components of the population, “Arabs” are unlikely to be regarded as customers or users of the police. In the eyes of the police, they are untrustworthy and must be put under surveillance. A third critical moment which is also important in eliciting the origin of present-day French-style policing is May 1968. Over one month, students rioted in the streets of the larger cities, leading the country into political crisis and entailing many consequences for the police. Since then, successive governments have worried about student rebellions. As a result, police forces are required to pay attention to this type of movement. Even if the development of extreme-left terrorism in France has been limited compared to Italy or Germany, young people and especially those belonging to left-wing parties or trade unions have nevertheless been kept under strict supervision. Like immigrants from North Africa, young people are regarded as dangerous by the police. Another result of the 1968 rebellion was the gap and distrust it created between police forces and scholars (Faget & Wyvekens, 1999; Loubet, 1999). For 20 years, governments and the police chiefs would not accept any research or critical study from sociologists or psychologists, arguing that these scholars were under ideological influence, and that some of them had been the ones throwing stones at police forces some years earlier. It is worth noting that police organizations were not the only ones to blame for the lack of analysis of their actions; as far as academia was concerned, working on the police was regarded as a kind of deviance until the beginning of the 1990s. Trying to understand police officers’ work and policing policies was relatively unaccepted among scholars who favoured analyses placing the stress on police forces as an instrument of domination.

ANALYSIS AND REFORMS Things changed in the mid-1970s. Progress was made possible because the government opened the police organization up to a form of evaluation. Central here was a call for more security from the population, and also a fear of the development of self-defence. Vigilante groups were regarded as a threat to law and order, and also to the state. In 1976, a commission, including scholars and politicians, was formed to respond to these concerns (Peyrefitte, 1977). One of the results was the idea to revive ˆılotage, an old-fashioned way of policing inherited from the 19th Century. Instead of posting all police in large stations where they would wait for emergency calls, each police officer would be assigned one area, in order to develop links with the local population. But the rising crime rates and increasingly numerous extreme-left demonstrations against those in power put a stop to such proposals. When he became minister of the interior, Alain Peyrefitte, the former president of the commission, passed legislation insisting on law and order and, as usual, on the protection of the state.6 The second step in the change was the socialist’s victory in the 1981 presidential elections. Some of the members of the new government had themselves been victims of the social control implemented by the police, and they were genuinely concerned about changing the French way of policing. In an attempt to implement their slogan “changing life”, they included ˆılotage in their election platform. Ilotage consists of a pedestrian, proactive and 6

Law “Sécurité et liberté” of 2 February 1981, which expanded police powers, abolished in 1983 (Law of June 1983).


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non-violent police patrol, which always stays in the same area. Its main objective is no longer to control but to develop and maintain ties with the population, in order to restore feelings of safety and public confidence in the police. Police officers must be reachable and open to citizens’ demands (Bonnemaison, 1983). The model here was not only of the old French police officer of the 19th Century, but also of the British Bobby, who is characterized by his or her empathy with the population. It must be noted that the vast majority of police officers, like other civil servants in France, were left-wing-oriented at that time. But, even if they were aware of a need to change their behaviour, they did not accept the reform. The police chiefs were even more reluctant. In the French system, police forces have traditionally been divided into three classes: commissaires, i.e. police chiefs; inspecteurs, i.e. investigators; and police officers in uniform. Graduating from a special school, most commissaires become chiefs without any experience of street-level work. As high-class civil servants, they have been reluctant to abandon the top-down way of commanding for a system in which each police officer would be personally responsible for a specific territory, where priorities would be chosen by the citizens without any intervention from the chiefs. Investigators regarded the ˆılotage as useless and less prestigious than criminal policing. But the majority of the police officers in uniform were also reluctant to accept such a “revolution” as ˆılotage. They were not accustomed to creating a new kind of relationship with the population, based not only on threat and fear, but also on mutual trust. They were not ready to accept a system in which the formal and distant authority of the chiefs, far removed from the field work, would have been replaced by the more effective control implemented by the population. Being responsible for a policy was not part of their professional culture, and they were afraid of assuming full responsibility for all problems, since no means were put at their disposal to address these problems. In addition, officers felt that walking the streets was more dangerous than sitting in cars in which they felt protected. Rarely encouraged by their superiors, most of them preferred not to become part of the new policing. What followed over the next 15 years was a divorce between formal policies and policing practices. Formally, the French police converted to ˆılotage in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, although there were some cities where some police officers decided to dedicate time to introducing the new policing model, most police stations did not implement any meaningful change in their practices. Many ˆılotiers worked at this mission for only some hours in a month, or often changed areas, instead of keeping the same beat in order to develop personal ties with the local people. Other ˆılotiers simply avoided the area that they were in charge of, because they felt insecure. In the police stations, various types of non-combatant ˆılotiers could be found, including injured police officers who could not walk, high-level sportsmen paid by the police, or people working in the police social services. For the majority of police officers, this work was just a politician’s dream while the “real work” remained car patrols and the main objective to put “bad” people under arrest. Whenever the conservatives won power, they did not terminate the new services, because the idea of ˆılotage was still very popular among citizens, but they put the emphasis on tough policing, creating new squads specializing in military-style interventions. And whenever the socialists were elected, they reasserted their confidence in ˆılotage, but refrained from any real form of involvement in implementing it. In addition to the fact that police officers’ habits and prejudices prevent them from becoming involved in building a new kind of policing based on improved relationships with people, little was done in order to encourage them to change. After a decade of

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experimentation, no real strategy emerged behind the term ˆılotage, which was restricted to only one wish: to have more police officers on the streets. Closely related to this point, the police training and evaluation systems were little affected by the official priority. Indeed, a National Directorate for Police Training and a National Institute for Advanced Training and Research (Institut National des Hautes Etudes de la Sécurité Intérieure – IHESI) were created at the beginning of the 1990s, but certainly these came too late to reverse the former order (Monjardet & Ocqueteau, 2005). Training continued to put the stress on authority and tough tactics. And the evaluation policy never took place; in a centralized organization where everyone had to be evaluated under the same rule, statistics remained the main tool used to control a police officer’s work. As a result, tough policing was encouraged, since police officers had to prove their efficiency through the number of arrests, number of clearances and number of tickets. Even the number of contacts with the population had to be registered. But there was nothing to evaluate the quality of an officer’s work and to assess whether this work was adapted to the demand. Police organizations lacked the knowledge and abilities needed in order to support the practice and measure its efficiency. However, the attempt to reform the police was also affected by the structure of the local administration in France. As a national institution, the police were regarded as an intrusion of the central state into the local order. In the places where a real change occurred, things became worse. Those few police officers playing the game of trust with the population were not just called upon to solve problems connected with safety and crime; in poor suburbs, inhabitants complained to the ˆılotier about the ineffectiveness of social services, cleaning departments or housing projects. Some mayors were very irritated by such criticism and denied police officers the right to speak in favour of the inhabitants. Without the help of the local authorities, the ˆılotiers were less likely to provide an answer to these requests (Mouhanna, 1991). Although ˆılotage appeared to be a centralized and planned change with few real improvements considering the service due to the public, it was simultaneously regarded as an argument against any new reform. First extreme-right politicians, then conservative ones, and spokespersons for police corporatism argued that this new type of soft policing had not only failed to stop the rise of crime, but had also encouraged young people to become more violent. Even if there was no evidence to suggest a link between the urban riots of the 1990s and ˆılotage, and even if the young people living in poor districts continued to put the blame on violent policing and control, ˆılotage was said to have weakened police authority. The fact that tough policing was never cut down and replaced with ˆılotage was not even taken into consideration.

FROM ILOTAGE TO POLICE DE PROXIMITE´ Surprisingly coming back to power in 1997, the post-Mitterrand left was bound to take the crime issue into account. Because of the so-called failure of ˆılotage, and because of a mounting wave of law and order discourses, it became impossible to put the emphasis on “soft” and proactive policing. But the 1970s diagnoses remained valid: the gap between the police and the population, especially that of the poor suburbs, persisted (Le Roux, 1997). Faced with these two constraints, expectation for tougher policing and demand for better service, the government came up with the concept of police de proximité, or proximity policing. Whereas previously, ˆılotage had provided the main theme of the new way of


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policing: small groups of policemen were in charge of a small territory, a district. Now, instead of sending two police officers to an area, as under the previous system, the new proximity policing programme planned to build small police stations, occupied by a whole team, including a low-level chief who was a former investigator. And the new mission assigned to police officers was to no longer speak with citizens or organize sporting events with young people. To respond to the concern about crime, the priority became to take special care of the people who came to file a complaint. Police officers’ “social work” was banned. Mayors and the majority of police officers were profoundly relieved. So police de proximité was characterized by a break with the previous system in order to convince police officers that the new reform was not connected to ˆılotage. Instead of taking advantage of their experience, the old ˆılotiers, even the efficient ones, were mostly excluded from the new teams. Many proximity police officers were chosen from among the youngest recruits. However, the crucial principles of the reform were the same in both cases: the purpose was to build proximity from a central point of view, with a centralized organization, and with no discretion and no latitude allowed to the local police officers. Use of the term “community policing” was out of the question, for two reasons. First, it was and is unthinkable for any French government to accept a way of policing based on racial considerations, or on the recognition of communities, whatever they are.7 Second, the high-level civil servants continued to want a police force available to protect the state not one dependent on communities’ demands. In the new police, there was no place for adjustment to the environment: it was a national change, with the same rules for everybody in all areas. Yet, a space for evaluation was allowed. An initial experiment was planned in 5 cities,8 and then a second evaluation was carried out in more than 60 cities.9 Despite the development of knowledge and research in the field of policing and public policies, the evaluation was implemented by police chiefs and senior civil servants from the Ministère de l’Intérieur, and only seven months after the reform was launched. Even this very official commission pointed out many problems: lack of training, police officers’ reluctance and the risks inherent in a policy based on statistics. Some sociological research highlighted the need to build a learning-organization system and to adapt the type of policing to the local environment (Ferret & Ocqueteau, 1998; Mouhanna, 2000, 2002a). But, afraid of a failure during the forthcoming elections and wishing to demonstrate a tough policy on security matters, the government forced the generalization of the reform. Change in political priorities also resulted from the bad crime rates published after one year (Roché, 2005). It must be stressed that the opening of small police stations in suburbs far away from the central precinct encouraged more people to file complaints. Regardless of whether the rise of crime rates was caused by an increase of crime or by a better response to the population’s demands, it produced panic inside the government, and it was used by political opponents to discredit it. In practice, due to this centralized reform, proximity policing mostly resulted in a bureaucratic relationship between police and citizens. Police officers were standing all day long in their office hearing the grievances of victims. Furthermore, judicial logic changed the nature of police work. Since the end of the 1990s, police officers in uniform had been allowed to 7 8 9

See note 3. April 1999. May 1999.

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become investigators.10 Many of them were very keen to quit street-level work and make a career as investigators, a more prestigious and quieter job. And, as mentioned above, the reform put the emphasis on a judicial relationship with the citizens. The combination of individual career interests and the policy, led police officers to adopt a new approach to the problems. Rather than adopting a problem-solving strategy (Goldstein, 1990), or trying to act as mediators between two parties, they gave up common sense in favour of a judicial attitude: every problem, every conflict had to be transformed into a formal case. Unlike Lipsky’s model of street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 1980), there was less and less room for mediation or unofficial settlement. This attitude gave police officers many advantages. First, they could show their superiors that they worked hard since they “produced” a lot of cases. Second, it was simpler for them to give formal answers to demands than to try to find solutions by themselves. Third, this allowed them not to become involved in local life; they remained distant. The result was a growing number of judicial cases, with a justice system unable to deal with them. However, without any quick and clear answer, the population still felt abandoned by the police force. The cases took a long time to be dealt with by the courts, often without satisfactory explanation for the parties. Security was the big topic during the local and presidential elections of 2001 and 2002. Because of the centralization of policing policies, the national government appeared to be responsible for the whole crisis; citizens, especially in the poor suburbs, continued to feel abandoned, and police officers remained unhappy with an obscure policy, which, they thought, used them for political ends. The socialist instigators of the reform lost the two elections. In the presidential vote, the socialist prime minister was distanced by the extremeright leader, whose discourse has been based, for 20 years, on law and order to deal with insecurity and immigration.

BACK TO OLD CUSTOMS Since 2002, the return of the conservative party put an end to innovation. Facing both the police forces’ corporatism and public concern about security, the new government decided to pursue two distinct strategies. Officially proximity policing was maintained, even if the number of police officers assigned to this mission decreased on a daily basis. Nicòlas Sarkozy, former Interior Minister and Winner of the Presidency in 2007, based his campaign on tough actions against crime, doing his own advertising, and also on a decrease in crime rates. Inside the police organization, he adopted the usual strategy of putting the blame for crime on the courts, said to be too soft with crime. He also increased police officers’ wages and gave them more equipment, and passed laws in order to increase the rights of the police. The deal between the new minister and the police unions has been quite clear: he has stopped all innovation as far as the police are concerned, and in return police officers have to find ways for crime rates to decrease. This has led many police officers to refuse to take complaints and even to alter the results of statistics if they appear to be bad (Mouhanna, 2002b). All of these actions and discourses were based on the assumption that law enforcement is the most effective policy for responding to feelings of insecurity, or insecurity itself. In this context, any evaluation or debate about policing is now banned; research is regarded as too

10

Law of 18 November 1998.


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complex and dangerous because it could upset the consensus among politicians regarding the strategies described above. Crime and riots must be interpreted on a black-and-white basis; shades of grey are not the order of the day. Analysis is viewed as weakness. Trial and error experimentations and incremental innovation appear to be ill-adapted to short-term political strategies, and they are deemed to be too costly for police organizations. Giving police officers more power, the new laws strengthen the logic of judicial relationships between the police and the population. To show they are efficient, police officers do not hesitate to make court cases out of petty offences, including people who criticize their action. The courts are also encouraged to prosecute every kind of crime. Therefore, submitted to an imperative of efficiency, the police and the courts focus on obvious and easy ways to solve crimes. As a result, major crimes requiring long-term police work are less and less investigated and punished. As far as the police officers in uniform are concerned, the lack of a personal network inside their territory generates new attitudes creating a vicious circle. The less they are involved in the social life of a territory, the more they prefer to stay in their cars, putting the stress on surveillance, or on paperwork at their desks. Tough identity checks and arrests become the normal way of policing, and simple exchanges with the public, without tension, tend to become rare. Police unions are always asking for more recruitment, more sophisticated weapons, more powers granted by the law. Yet, by losing touch with the population, they lack information about crime and criminals, and also about the atmosphere in the districts. As already mentioned, this gap leads them to treat the most obvious offences only. Lack of informal contacts also prevents them from being informed of the risks of new riots or attacks against police patrols, which are sometimes trapped in carefully planned ambushes. For a proportion of police officers and especially for the chiefs, one of the most popular solutions is the technological illusion. They think that personal ties can be replaced by technologies such as video surveillance and computerized databases. It is amazing to note that ˆılotage was designed precisely to deal with the ill-effects of modernization in the 1960s and 1970s. Back then, innovation was phone calls and cars, which gave rise to the model of reactive policing. As a result, police patrols were said to be “locked” in their cars. Even in pedestrian areas foot patrols were abandoned in favour of car patrols. Today, the same movement is starting all over again. For a critical observer of French policing, this new policy represents an important break, not only because of the choice to favour law enforcement above anything else. After all, law enforcement never ceased during all these years of reforms. The new forms of policing always affected a minority of the police officers only. Law enforcement gained primacy over prevention even inside the ˆılotage or proximity policing strategies, and not solely for political reasons. Interviews with ˆılotiers who believed in their mission and really settled in an area showed that they were using both prevention and law enforcement, because the population required that crimes be punished and because their credibility was at stake. Now, police officers have little room for manoeuvre; they are bound to be enforcers only. Therefore the break emphasizes both the relevance of the 1976 commission and of previous reports which drew attention both to the lack of police commitment to policing as a public service and to the gap between the police and the population. Since this period, the police have always claimed their attachment to improving their relationship with the population, even if this was not put into practice. This issue is no longer anecdotal. Direct ties are increasingly replaced by official communication. But, as underlined above, even criminal policing and public order are weakened by this new type of centralization.

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In this system, no one is allowed to criticize police work. And neither police officers nor their partners are willing to hear the criticisms coming from inhabitants, especially those in the poor suburbs. Since they cannot judge situations through direct ties, police officers return to old prejudices, based on race, age and residence. The French or immigrant dwellers of these areas, those of North-African origins, or those who are black, report negative contact and even mistreatment by the police. Although success and mutual trust could have stemmed from a decentralized, bottom-up and negotiated approach to policing, the topdown, centralized French pattern of proximity has merely reinforced police corporatism and bureaucratic behaviour. “Public service” and “accountability” are just words to the vast majority of police officers who feel only they know what causes the crisis (“lack of authority in modern-day society”) and regard themselves as “the last resort” in resolving it (through more control and tougher actions without negotiation). As a result, police action is perceived as unfair and unavailable. The purpose here is not to ascribe the causes of marginalization and crime to the police. This would be biased. Yet, by refusing to hear and to respond to a social demand emerging from these suburbs, the police assume a defensive attitude vis-à-vis the population. Instead of helping to appease tensions, they contribute to increasing the pressure on inhabitants, unintentionally or not. The riots of November 2005 could be interpreted as the product of the resulting tensions. It must also be noted that this movement of bureaucratization and judiciarization does not only affect the Police Nationale. In the countryside, for various reasons, including a constant yearning to protect their private life, the gendarmes and their families also seek to abandon small stations located in villages and prefer to be positioned in large units in order to be less involved in the local communities. By doing so, they are loosening the traditional contact that they have had with the population.

THE PARTNERSHIP: A POLICE TRAP? Looking at these results, it is hard to be optimistic about the evolution of the policing system. Some analyses (Wacquant, 2006) tend to extrapolate from these situations, arguing that French society is involved in a panoptical movement,11 or in the building of a Big-Brotherlike organization. Even if they are partly right, one should not forget that the police cannot control everything and that police officers are to some extent also victims of the system. They are the ones who have to deal with the aggressiveness of some of the population. They have to face stone-throwing and sometimes ambushes. They are ordered to enforce court decisions but they are not always informed about the sentences handed down by the courts. Despite the increase of databases and other tools, they still lack information. For a young police officer beginning his career in a city where he does not know anybody, it would be a cruel joke to say that he is in control of this territory. If frustration and fear are likely to encourage them to be tougher in some particular situation and to cut themselves off from the population most of the time, it cannot be concluded that the police dominate the population. The call for increased authority is more an admission of weakness than a proof of power. Instead, it seems that police officers and young people are involved in a system where mutual prejudice generates mutual fear. 11

In reference to the well-known notion of panoptic used by Michel Foucault (Foucault, 1974).


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Police officers are playing a game they do not really master. In order to understand how they are the prisoners of their strategies, the question of partnership will be examined. Official partners, including mayors, social services and teachers, are always pleased when a rise in the police presence is announced. During the period of the ˆılotage and proximity policing reforms, the arrival of new police officers met with unanimous acclaim. But after a while, as was stressed above, when they were becoming involved in, and aware of, the social problems of the population, the police officers began to criticize the other institutions in the partnership. As a result, the latter became reluctant to help police officers to solve the problems. Conversely, there were other places where everyone, including police officers, accepted that it was necessary to deal with the problem together, in order to find a common answer. Today, with the return of tough policing, things have changed. Because the police are confined to law enforcement, even in case of minor offences, the partners who have to deal with a problem that they feel unable to solve are sometimes tempted to qualify it as crime and refer it to the police. Discipline in secondary schools or noise in apartment buildings are good illustrations. Instead of looking for a solution inside their own organizations, teachers and caretakers turn to the police. As a result, the police and then the courts have to process more and more cases and, because they are no longer identified with anything else but law enforcement, they cannot legitimately criticize the organizations which refer these problems to them. It is like a “Black Peter” game in which the police always end up with the bad card. The police system cannot control its inputs and is always close to saturation point. From this point of view, one could say that the police, confined to their pattern of law enforcement, are trapped because they are prevented from participating in the upstream regulation of their work. This was not the case in the places where the ˆılotiers were efficient. The police officers who are the most committed to their work have understood both risks. The trend which ordered them to carry out only law enforcement and the lack of ties with the population puts them in a very dangerous and uncontrollable position. Some signs show that discontent is growing among the troops. Police officers are tired of being regarded as a tool of politicians’ strategies and of having to face the consequences of inefficient and demagogic policies. If they used to be happy when reforms were terminated because they were fed up with innovation, at present they are unhappy to have to work in suburbs where they have to act out the government’s provocation against poor young people. The two situations – reforms or tougher law enforcement – are very uncomfortable as far as they are concerned. Looking back at the past experiments, ˆılotage and proximity policing, it is encouraging to note that some police officers were convinced of the interest of the reforms, even if they were few and far between. Although they were acting in spite of quite irritated superiors and colleagues, they did prove the fact that another kind of policing was possible. They succeeded in developing networks among inhabitants, and especially the young. Some of them tried to create occupations for the poorest people. They were able to simultaneously identify the most dangerous criminals and denounce them, separating those that they deemed were redeemable from the rest. These remarks illustrate one point: police discretion can be used in police officers’ own interests as well as for doing “social” work. But discretion is seldom used by officers, because it is not really accepted within the police since it puts the institution in an embarrassing situation vis-à-vis the partners, and because it is less comfortable for their private life. As a result, most police officers who chose to assume “social work” were committed to it, but secretly. It was a kind of vocation. Even if the majority of this dissident

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minority has retired or were eliminated by the chiefs, there are still people who are aware that the current strategy leads to a dead-end and who could be able to promote a new policy after the presidential election. But that would mean more open-minded chiefs of police and administration who could be willing to take the street-level police officer’s experience into account. That is not the trend line of the French administration today (Crozier, 1998). Less optimistic is the assumption of a rebellion among the police forces. I am not referring here to an armed movement involving the police. In French society, there are other means for civil servants to put pressure on the government. By dint of flattering the police and insisting on security as a major political issue, the governments, whether socialist or conservative, are becoming increasingly unable to resist police corporatism. It has to be kept in mind that in October and November 2001, police officers and gendarmes demonstrated in the streets of all the major cities in France to express their opposition to the reforms passed by the socialist government, especially a law reinforcing the power of defence lawyers in criminal procedure. The problem was not only the classical reluctance to enhance defence rights, but also that the new procedure gave police officers more paperwork to do. Today, every Ministre de l’Intérieur, no matter how popular, has to be very cautious about the threat represented by the police organization. The government and the police form an odd couple, each preventing the other from being too innovative. In this system, which favours the status quo, the population pays the price, as they are excluded from negotiations between the political power and the police (Monjardet, 1996).

THE EXAMPLE OF POLICES MUNICIPALES One might imagine that a radical change could generate a new kind of policing. The emergence of local police forces – polices municipales – could appear as a solution. At the beginning of these new organizations, the main guiding principle was to create a municipal police force paid for by the city, with police officers recruited locally and spending their entire career at the same place. When the first local police forces came to light in the 1980s, the government and the national police corps were adamantly opposed to this innovation. At that time, the new police forces were regarded as rivals, and were deemed to be an attempt to reduce the power of national police forces’ corporatism. Looking at the emergence of the local police forces, at first the central state did not agree to this competition with its own services, but it was bound to accept it, because it could no longer finance the recruitment of new national police officers in order to meet the citizens’ demands for more attendance. After a while, a form of cooperation emerged between the national police forces and the local ones. To put it briefly, at the beginning of the 1990s, the idea was shared among local politicians and national police officers that a local police force could take responsibility for proximity and the national one would be in charge of law enforcement and criminal cases. At that time, the mayors thought that proximity policing implemented by their own employees would prevent them from facing the citizens’ complaints for local services, as had been the case with the ˆılotiers. The national police forces were also satisfied, because all of the tasks dealing with proximity, which they disliked, could be assumed by the local forces. But the same causes led to the same consequences. Although, encouraged by mayors, a minority of officers succeeded in developing local networks with people whom they served, the majority was denied the right to speak on behalf of the inhabitants of poor suburbs. In these districts, the mayors and the social services were unwilling to hear the criticisms of


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their work that emerged from closer police–public relations. Furthermore, because the new police officers were paid by the local authorities, it was very uncomfortable for them to voice criticism against the mayor. As a result, at the present time, local police officers are engaged in a movement which is quite similar to their colleagues from the national forces (Malochet, 2006). They have created and joined, in massive numbers, trade unions that reproduce police corporatism. Their main objective is now to develop their professional skills for law enforcement policing and to abandon proximity policing. Because they feel in a position of inferiority regarding the national forces, they demand new weapons, new technology and a new legal status that would prevent them from being assigned to do “social work”. Most of them prefer car patrols to pedestrian ones. Even if the situation varies from one place to another, there is a wave of officers’ withdrawal from “social” issues and from direct contact with the inhabitants in favour of law enforcement-oriented and bureaucratic behaviour. The unions give them increased protection against citizens’ and even mayors’ demands for more service. They argue that they are “professionals” and that nobody but themselves may tell them how to work. In the cities where the mayors have tried to impose a strategy of proximity, those officers who are less committed resist or resign in order to find employment somewhere else. New local police officers have adopted the general professional culture of the French police. They have developed a system of national-scale training schools in which the emphasis is on self-defence, law and authority. Importantly, recruitment is no longer carried out at a local level. When they pass the final term in these policing schools, most of them choose to work in cities that they do not come from. At any rate, they often live far away from the places where they work. And after some years, many of them decide to change from one city to another, in order to be sure that they will not be engaged in too deep a relation with the inhabitants. The result is the emergence of a “national corps of local police officers”. The local police officers have recreated a centralized and bureaucratic way of acting, in which there is no place for citizens’ demands. By adopting the national model at a local level, many mayors have played the sorcerer’s apprentice. They have set up a police force in order to reassure the population. But, to make sure that proximity will not help the inhabitants to claim better services, they have put the emphasis on tough policing. And now the same mayors are faced by an autonomous police force, which uses the crime issue to ask for more equipment and more officers. It is surprising to note that the same game is being played both at a local and a national level, involving three types of actors. First, politicians are not willing to hear the citizens’ demands but are using security as an argument during their campaign (Ferret & Mouhanna, 2005). Second, police officers dislike being involved in “social work” and prefer tough policing strategies. Third, citizens who want to demand something have to express it through concern about crime. In other words, whenever someone wants their problem to be taken into account, they have to insist that the problem is a security matter. As a result, crime concern is increasingly present in public debates and during elections, and the more crime and security is evoked, the more these issues are used by the population as tools in order to enter the public arena. The combined end-result of these non-cooperative and short-term strategies is a vicious circle involving all three types of actors. Although nobody can be blamed entirely for this situation, none are innocent. And others are excluded from the game; the only ones who are heard are the citizens who vote, or at least those who are acknowledged as citizens.

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Poor people, young males, ethnic minorities, residents of “bad districts” that vote against the mayor are not taken into account. And when they are, it is only partially so. These categories of the population are thought of more as perpetrators than as victims. The real difference between genuine proximity policing and tough policing is that in the former, police officers are involved in every type of problem and are bound to solve the problems they are presented with before they become political and judicial issues, whoever the people concerned. By contrast, in the latter, problems first have to become political issues thereby mobilizing the politicians, before police officers will become involved. In this case, people have to be organized in communities or pressure groups in order to be heard. Unfortunately, such organizations are unacceptable for the French political and administrative system.

CONCLUSION Although the French model of proximity policing is formally similar to English or American models of community policing, it is very different in both principle and practice. Following the centralized and Jacobinic paradigm that has guided the French political and administration system for two centuries, politicians and police chiefs have always refused to promote anything that could be construed as collective action in the field of security and crime. Citizens are excluded from all partnerships. The system has historically taken great care of not allowing the emergence of official bodies where citizens would be able to voice their own demands directly. In that sense, the example of polices municipales is interesting, because these police forces reproduce, at the local level, the system as it exists at a national level. Politicians and police chiefs have always been reluctant to abandon their control of police forces, although this control has been essentially formal in nature and has never eliminated police officers’ discretion. But the blame should not be put on politicians and the administration only. It has been shown that all the actors involved in policing policies are partly responsible for the present situation. Police officers, local authorities and national politicians are prisoners of a short-term view, which leads them to refuse to cooperate with the population and to prefer to point accusing fingers at some categories of the population as the cause of increasing crime: young males, ethnic minorities (even if the people are thirdgeneration immigrants), and parents unable to educate their children. As a result, the fear of crime long ago became a major concern in public debate, and successive governments have become increasingly tougher on crime rhetoric and demonizing. The US-inspired “zero tolerance” policy was quickly adopted by French politicians as the solution because it fits neatly with the way policing has been implemented in France for a long time. Similarly but conversely, while the concept of community policing was also imported from outside, even its watered-down, “Frenchified”, version, police de proximité, was rejected, precisely because it would have questioned the whole system. Since the main objective of all actors has been to protect themselves against criticism and against a citizens’ movement claiming accountability, they have refused to let others take part in the decision-making process. In this system, it is obvious that threats such as terrorism, large-scale immigration, and similar types of risk, reinforce the policies which promote the centralized model of policing. That could explain why the government has tried to blame Islamic movements for the riots of November 2005, in spite of all analyses showing that they were not involved. The objective was to elude social or racial causes and dissatisfaction with policing policies.


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This strategy has been successful up until the present day. Despite public dissatisfaction with mounting fear of crime or feelings of insecurity, police organizations are rarely criticized, because they are deemed to be the last protection against all these dangers. Similarly, the Jacobinic French government is also viewed as the last protection against economic and social globalization. In comparative perspective, for all its specificities, it could still be useful for the French system to better understand present developments in other countries. In some ways, the French case can be deemed a Weberian ideal type (Weber, 1971) of a centralized police force which is deaf to citizens’ demands, and which enjoys increasing levels of autonomy. But, as was stressed above, it was not always the case: the French Police Nationale force was created in 1941. One could argue that this model is now spreading in less centralized societies and that the central state, through tough policing, is trying to recover the real or symbolic power (Durkheim, 2003) it has lost in economics or social matters. The vicious circle generated by this type of strategy is hard to destroy, because its victims are the people outside the system. And, if they want to be heard, they have to use violent means, which reinforces the discourse on the need for state and police protection.

REFERENCES Bloch-Lainé, F. & Gruson, C. (1996). Hauts fonctionnaires sous l’occupation. Paris: Odile Jacob. Bonnemaison, G. (1983). Face a` la délinquance: prévention, répression, solidarité. Paris: La documentation fran¸caise. Crozier, M. (1998). La crise de l’intelligence, Essai sur l’impuissance des e´ lites a` se réformer. Paris: Seuil. Crozier, M. & Friedberg E. (1977). L’acteur et le système. Paris: Le Seuil. Durkheim, E. (2003). Les Formes e´ lémentaires de la vie religieuse. Paris: PUF Quadrige. Faget, J. & Wyvekens, A. (1999). Bilan de la recherche sur le crime et la justice en France de 1990 a` 1998. In L. Van Outrive & P. Robert (eds), Crime et justice en Europe depuis 1990, bilan des recherches et e´ valuation (pp. 147–72). Paris: L’Harmattan. Ferret J. & Ocqueteau F. (1998). Evaluer la police de proximité, problèmes, concepts, méthodes. Paris: La documentation fran¸caise. Ferret J. & Mouhanna C. (2005). Peurs sur les villes, vers un populisme punitif a` la française? Paris: PUF. Foucault, M. (1974). La vérité et les formes juridiques. Dits et e´ crits, V1, 1406–1514. Paris: Gallimard. Girardet, R. (1986). Mythes et mythologies politiques. Paris: Le Seuil. Goldstein, H. (1990). Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-Hill. Le Roux, B. (1997). Une politique de sécurité au plus près du citoyen. Rapport au premier ministre, Paris, septembre. Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public services. New York, Basic Books. Loubet del Bayle, J-L. (1999). Jalons pour une histoire de la recherche fran¸caise sur les institutions et les pratiques policières. Les Cahiers de la sécurité intérieure, 37, 55–72. Malochet V. (2006). Les policiers municipaux, les ambivalences d’une profession. Thèse de doctorat, université Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2. Monjardet, D. (1996). Ce que fait la police, sociologie de la force publique. Paris: La Découverte. Monjardet, D. & Ocqueteau, F. (2005). Insupportable et indispensable, la recherche au Ministère de l’Intérieur. In P. Bezes et al., L’Etat a` l’épreuve des sciences sociales (pp. 229–47). Paris: La Découverte. Mouhanna, C. (1991). L’expérience d’ˆılotage a` Roubaix. Paris: IHESI. Mouhanna, C. (2000). Quel service pour quel public? Evaluation de l’image de la police dans la population. Paris: IHESI.

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Mouhanna, C. (2002a). Une police de proximité judiciarisée. Déviance et Société, 22, 163–182. Mouhanna, C. (2002b). Au-delà des controverses stériles. Sociologie du travail, 44, octobre-décembre, 571–9. Peyrefitte, A. (1977). Réponses a` la violence. Paris: La documentation fran¸caise. Roché, S. (2005). Police de proximité, Nos politiques de sécurité. Paris: Le Seuil. Wacquant, L. (2006). Parias urbains, Ghettos-banlieue-Etat. Paris: La découverte. Weber, M. (1971). Economie et société. tome I, Paris: Plon.

CHAPTER 4

The Development of Community Policing in England: Networks, Knowledge and Neighbourhoods1 Nick Tilley Nottingham Trent, University, UK

INTRODUCTION: THE ARGUMENT IN A NUTSHELL Although community policing has high surface plausibility and has been put in place in a variety of ways in Britain, critical weaknesses can be identified in it as a general approach to policing. Notwithstanding this, there remain strong arguments for developing and practicing a weak version of community policing.

THE SURFACE PLAUSIBILITY OF COMMUNITY POLICING Community policing has become persuasive to politicians, many police officers and many citizens. In the United States it has become the orthodoxy. As Greene put it, “Community policing, or variations of it, has become the national mantra of the American Police” (Greene, 2000, p. 301). If community policing has never quite reached that position in Britain, it has nevertheless enjoyed various forms of support, in particular since the early 1980s. What is its rationale? What does it promise? How is it expected to work?2 The public ultimately pay for policing through their taxes. Policing is a public service. In democratic societies public services are supposed to act in the public interest and to be accountable to the public. Both as police paymasters and as citizens the public have a right to determine the policing they receive. Community policing promises grass roots 1 2

Thanks are due to Karen Bullock and Rachel Tuffin for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. For general cases for community policing on which this section is drawn in part, see Home Office (2005); Skogan (2006).


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police accountability. It provides for police attention to community wants and priorities. It also provides for police methods that are sensitive to local community dynamics and that can adapt as needs change. Policing is lined up with the local. What may be wanted and needed, and what methods may be acceptable or effective in one neighbourhood may not be wanted, needed or effective in another. Engagement with the community emphasizes systematic attention to these variations and a means whereby the policy can be called to account for showing that sensitivity. Policing that is not sensitive to specific community culture, preference and need risks ineffectiveness, lack of legitimacy and ultimately in some cases resistance from those ostensibly being served. Communities are also repositories of information about what goes on in local neighbourhoods. The police are incapable of being everywhere all the time. They are unable to observe suspicious behaviour directly. They are not in a position to map links between those who may be engaged in criminal acts. Local citizens have eyes and ears that are close to the action. The police are dependent on the public for much of the information they need to deal with crime and disorder. Community policing provides a means by which members of the public can be mobilized to help the police. A distant or distrusted police service is not one to which members of the public are liable willingly to disclose what they know. Forging strong ties provides for a two-way street wherein the public provide information to the police and the police provide support to the community. In relation to specific problems that may arise within local neighbourhoods, the community may be able to help prioritize issues, analyse them, develop responses, and implement solutions.3 The community knows best its own dynamics and potential. The police can tap into this, use it and contribute to it through community policing. In relation to national security issues, most notably threats from “home-grown terrorists”, those who are socially excluded from the wider community comprise potential recruits.4 By creating networks that aim to bind all sections of the community together, community policing promises to play a part, alongside other efforts to encourage local governance, in reducing the supply of those who may otherwise be open to mobilization for terrorist acts. If, nevertheless, individuals and groups do plan terrorist acts, an attentive community trusting the authorities, which community policing aims to maintain and foster, is more likely to pass on information that may allow those acts to be pre-empted. Most social and developmental crime control is not and cannot be delivered directly by the police.5 Children are brought up within the community. Their dispositions and moral sensibilities are forged through their contacts with family, neighbours, friends and schools. The police are unable directly to affect these though many of the problems they have to address are consequences of failings within the community. Moreover, most control over those who would otherwise misbehave in the community can be effected informally within the community. Communities with high levels of “social capital” and high “collective efficacy” have lower rates of crime than those with less capital and lower levels of collective efficacy. Community policing can help foster social capital and collective efficacy. The criminal justice system can be counterproductive, by labelling, stigmatizing and excluding miscreants. Control within the community that reintegrates malefactors is quicker, 3 4

5

See, for example, Forrest, Myhill & Tilley (2005) for examples of this. See Diamond & Bucqueroux (2006); Innes (2006); and Scheider & Chapman (2003) for discussions of the role of community policing in relation to terrorism and homeland security. The issue of terrorism and the potential role of community policing in relation to it has only arisen, of course, since the attacks of 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London. For discussions about community capacity and social control see, for example, Halpern (2005); and Sampson, Raudenbush & Earls (1997).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ENGLAND

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cheaper, more effective and has fewer negative side-effects than dependence on criminal justice agencies. Community policing provides for methods of mobilizing the community and for police contributions to processes within the community that contribute to the creation of criminal or law-abiding citizens, and to the control of those who still misbehave.6 Where informal social control within communities fails for some reason, the community is critical to the successful use of more formal means. This is most obviously the case in the presentation of evidence in court. Convictions often depend on witnesses giving evidence. If the public is unwilling to present it then securing convictions of offenders becomes much more difficult. In high crime neighbourhoods where levels of intimidation and fear of retribution are high, confidence in the police ability to maintain order and provide protection is important.7 Community policing involves building trust with citizens increasing the likelihood that they will play their part in the delivery of formal systems of social control. The police may also advise about and encourage the adoption of evidence-based situational crime prevention measures of various kinds. These can include target hardening, changes in management practices, and alterations in daily routines. The installation of target hardening clearly normally requires the agreement of as well as expenditure by citizens either individually or collectively. Many measures, such as door and window locks, setting alarms and responding to them, require citizen cooperation. Few measures, if any, are under the exclusive control of the police. Even more so, management and daily routine changes require community cooperation or collaboration. Community policing promises a trusting relationship between police and citizenry increasing the probability that advice will be heeded and acted on in the interests of crime prevention. Finally there is ample evidence that the British public yearn for community policing. More visible and accessible “bobbies on the beat” have been widely demanded.8 Familiar police faces as authority figures, knowing and known to local residents, are wanted both for the reassurance they are expected to provide and for the deterrence their presence is deemed to offer. Community policing delivers in this sense what the public evidently widely expects and wants, instead of the rather distant “professional” policing with officers patrolling in cars, which had separated officers from those they were supposed to serve. Overall community policing promises to maximize the supply of knowledge, information and understanding for policing purposes, to produce legitimacy for the sworn policing function, to mobilize policing-related behaviour amongst those competent to act, and to engage the hearts of those who might otherwise feel so remote from the state and the rest of the community that they behave in criminal, disorderly or terrorist ways.

VARIANTS OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN BRITAIN The moves to introduce community policing to Britain have taken various forms. They have also concentrated on rather different parts of the overall rationale for community policing just given. 6 7 8

One important element in this is “restorative (community) justice”, drawing on principles espoused by Braithwaite (1989). See also Bucqueroux (2004); and Hoyle & Young. See Maynard (1994) on witness intimidation and means of combating it. Surveys consistently find support for visible police officers on foot. See, for example, Ipsos/MORI (2006) which refers to public opinion polls in 2001, 2003 and 2004 all showing around half or more respondents putting officers on the beat as one of their top three crime control measures.

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Though ideas about community policing were already current in Britain, in particular through the writings of John Alderson (1977, 1979), the Brixton riots of 1981 provided the spark that led to it being taken seriously. Prior to that, community policing was widely seen to have little of practical use to offer policing in cities, however relevant it might be to Devon and Cornwall, the largely rural low crime constabulary led by Alderson. The disorder in Brixton following Operation Swamp showed what the consequences of policing which was not sensitive, attentive and responsive to local communities could be. Lord Justice Scarman advocated community policing as a means of bringing the police closer to the community, fostering trust and producing a form of policing that was accountable to those who were to be subject to it (Scarman, 1981). Police Community Consultative Groups (PCCGs) were set up across the country as forums where police and community could meet; where members of the community could explain their priorities and give feedback on the ways their areas were policed. Likewise the police could explain their policing priorities, receive community feedback on them and agree action that could broadly be endorsed by those in local neighbourhoods. The rationale for community policing, post-Scarman, was thus largely to do with legitimizing policing and avoiding disorder as the unintended consequence of forms of policing which did not enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of those subject to it. It provided for forms of local accountability, where the community would play a part in shaping policing and would thereby accept as proper what was done. The first Neighbourhood Watch (NW) Scheme was set up in Mollington, Cheshire in 1982.9 NW thereafter expanded rapidly, as a voluntary movement bringing policy and the community together. The most recent figures indicate that there were 160,000 schemes covering six million households in 2006. Schemes have varied widely in terms of size and form of organization. However, they generally include the following elements. Community watch members act as the “eyes and ears” of the police in local neighbourhoods and provide information about suspicious activities. The police may alert members of NW to crime patterns, in particular increases in levels of crime in general or some specific crime, so that they can become more vigilant both in looking out for suspicious behaviour and in taking measures to reduce their own vulnerability. Where NW is established signs are generally erected showing that NW is in operation. Individual members may have stickers (decals) to put in their windows. The idea is that this will deter offenders who will realize that their risks increase on account of the attention to them being paid by local residents. In many NWs the police have also provided security surveys for residents so that they can know what they need to do to reduce their own risks, most especially of burglary. Finally, by bringing local residents together it has been hoped that NW schemes may foster informal social control. Residents will be able to pick out strangers if they know one another. They will also be able to report on the misbehaviour of youngsters they recognize so that parents can be alerted to what is happening and take appropriate action to keep them in check. Youngsters will also be reluctant to misbehave if they believe they will be recognized or to victimize those to whom they are tied in some way. NW schemes operate through coordinators who act as the conduits through which police and residents communicate with one another. The original Neighbourhood Watch has spawned a multitude of other watch schemes that operate on analogous principles. These include, for example, forecourt watch, shop watch, pub watch, farm watch and business watch. In each case signs, twoway communication between police and membership, cooperation amongst members, and 9

See Laycock & Tilley (1995) for an account of the nature and development of neighbourhood watch in Britain.


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police advice to members play a part as they do with NW, though the focus is obviously on different shared attributes than residence in a given neighbourhood. Moreover, where businesses are involved these watch schemes entail that shared interests in crime control take precedence over commercial competition. Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs), established though the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (CDA), comprise a third vehicle for community policing broadly understood.10 Many analogous partnerships already existed prior to the Act and partnerships in general as a means of crime control had been advocated formally since 1984, when the first interdepartmental circular advocating partnership was issued. Unlike PCCGs and NWs, CDRPs (and their predecessor bodies) involved more than grass-roots members of the community and the police. They also included non-police agencies and organizations from the public, private and voluntary sectors. Of these Local Authorities (LAs) took precedence over the others because of the wide range of local services relevant to crime and disorder over which they have control. The CDA made the police and Local Authorities jointly responsible bodies, though health and probation are also named in the legislation. In addition voluntary bodies such as NW and the private sector, for example through Chambers of Commerce, are also represented. CDRPs are required by the CDA to consult the public every three years both about priorities to be addressed by the partnership and about the proposed strategy to be adopted. Crime reduction partnerships are intended both to draw on relevant expertise across agencies and to mobilize their capacity to address or pre-empt crime and disorder problems. The development of CDRPs acknowledges that the police are neither omniscient nor omnipotent in relation to crime and disorder and their reduction. Within the local authority planning, education, social services, environmental health, waste collection and disposal, highways, and parks departments, for example, process things, people and places that are sources, sites or targets of crime and disorder and whose operations may affect crime levels. LAs have regulatory functions that may allow either direct control over people or provide sources of leverage on those whose behaviour may be criminal or criminogenic. Likewise health, probation, and private and voluntary sector organizations control various processes and services that are liable to affect local crime levels. Moreover line level workers within these agencies and organizations often work closely with community members anxious about crime as well as victims and offenders. CDRPs in particular and the partnership movement more generally comprise a broadening of responsibility for crime and its control beyond the police, where the community and its institutions become involved in prioritization of issues, their understanding and the delivery of responses to them. Neighbourhood policing and reassurance policing are not identical but are often coupled in practice. Reassurance policing comprises a response to the finding that anxiety about crime has not dropped in ways commensurate with the actual falls in volume crime since the mid-1990s in Britain. It is associated with work by Martin Innes suggesting that local fear of crime is a function of signals that are read by residents suggesting that there are high levels of crime and disorder and that crime risks are high (Innes, 2004a; 2004b; 2005). In different areas different signals will be significant. Reducing “crime signals” and increasing “control signals” that are locally relevant comprises a means of reassuring the public by targeting what is acting in local areas to flag crime risk and that which might indicate 10

On the significance of the Crime and Disorder Act for policing more generally, see Newburn (2002).

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that the local area is a controlled and orderly one. In practice the police on their own are unable to identify or manipulate many significant crime and control signals. Members of the community have to be consulted to determine what is producing their concerns and other agencies have to be drawn in to deal with them. Street lighting, litter or graffiti, for example, may function as crime signals though the police are unable directly to deal with them. The police would also not know whether these were significant as signals in a particular neighbourhood. Reassurance policing is being disseminated very widely in Britain. It entails police, community members and front line workers in third party agencies lining up with one another to identify, diagnose and deal with perceived crime and disorder problems undermining the quality of life of many citizens. Neighbourhood policing is rather broader than reassurance policing but normally embraces it (ACPO/Centrex 1005; Home Office 2004, 2005). Neighbourhood policing forms part of a wider movement aimed at stimulating involved local governance within relatively small areas. The key ideas include the notion that local people know best their own problems, wants and needs, that local problems require local solutions rooted in local understanding, that agencies need to be accountable at a very local level for the services they deliver, that many problems can only be solved by local residents either on their own or working closely with local agencies, and that local neighbourhoods need to be stimulated or enabled to play a much more involved part in shaping their own conditions and addressing their own problems. The local attachment and sensitivities of neighbourhood policing are also expected to bring greater trust in the police, greater involvement of communities with public agencies, and a greater sense of collective responsibility for what happens within neighbourhoods. This in turn is expected to better integrate communities that may otherwise feel excluded from or peripheral to British society and institutions and also encourage them to share information on potential sources of disruption, notably terrorism, from within. It is intended that every community will be covered by a neighbourhood policing team that will comprise a sergeant, two constables and four police-community support officers. By 2007 in London every neighbourhood should have its own team and by 2008 every neighbourhood in England and Wales should have one (Home Office, 2004). Positions in these are being promoted as very important to show the seriousness being attached to neighbourhood policing. The fit with reassurance policing is clear. Reassurance policing comprises just that effort to deal systematically and at a very local level with conditions that are worsening citizens’ quality of life by making them think that crime risks are higher than they really are. It should be mentioned finally that community beat officers have been in place in most police services for a long period, at least since the late 1960s according to Bennett (1998). Most British police services have community departments. The responsibilities of these officers have been rather imprecise and variable, but have typically included liaising with residents within a relatively small, beat area. The beat officer may investigate minor crime, act as a visible reassuring uniformed presence, respond to a wide variety of non-urgent calls for service, provide follow-up calls where there is unfinished business once emergency response officers have left, visit the vulnerable and so on. They have, in principle, furnished the friendly, helpful face of policing in local neighbourhoods where officers have the time to talk to residents about their concerns. Table 4.1 shows the main parts of the rationale for community policing drawn on by the different major forms of community policing initiative in Britain. This is not to say that other benefits might be brought about, only that these were the main concerns of each initiative.


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Community beat officers PCCGs Neighbourhood Watch CDRPs Reassurance policing Neighbourhood policing

√ √ √

√ √

√ √ √

√

√

√

√

√ √ √

√ √

Bobby on beat public interest

Reassurance

Crime prevention delivery

Witness co-operation

Social inclusion

Community capital building

Community integration

Collaborative problem-solving

Community intelligence

Police Accountability

Table 4.1 Expected benefits for forms of community policing in Britain

√

√

It is clear that the movement to Neighbourhood Policing that has emerged in the mid2000s represents a more ambitious effort than any made previously. It aims to achieve a wider range of the supposed benefits that might be expected. Previous variants had more specific and more modest aspirations. Table 4.2 shows the types of exchange between police and partners in the main British forms of community policing. This shows what each party might be expected to give and receive from taking part in the forms of community policing that have been developed. It might be objected that none of the types of British community policing initiative described here comprises “real” community policing. None is as comprehensive as at least some of the rhetoric for community policing that can be found in the United States, where agencies are invited to and aspire to implement community policing as an overall operating philosophy and method. Community policing in this strong and all-inclusive sense has been received sceptically in Britain. The following section explains why.

WEAKNESSES IN COMMUNITY POLICING AS A GENERAL PHILOSOPHY FOR BRITISH POLICE SERVICES11 The following discussion highlights some general problems with the concepts used in community policing, some with forging the kinds of change needed for police services, some with the sociological assumptions behind the approach and some with the political context in which policing is undertaken in Britain. Collectively they raise doubts about the practicability of community policing as an underlying approach, especially in the British context. The term community is widely used but notoriously slippery. It is used loosely to refer, for example, to very small geographical neighbourhoods defined by those living within 11

For other generally sceptical accounts of community policing with which that presented here has affinities, see Herbert (2006); Klockars (2005); and Mastrofski (2006).

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Table 4.2 Police community exchanges in British community policing initiatives Police give

Community receive

Community give

Police receive

Community beat officers PCCGs

Presence

Reassurance

Affection

Public support

Cultural sensitivity

Cooperation with police

Legitimacy

Neighbourhood Watch

Information and advice

Opportunity to comment on plans Capacity to reduce risk

Crime-related information

CDRPs

Data and crime expertise

Informed attention to real problems

Improved opportunities for detection Agency support for crime prevention

Reassurance policing

Attention to public concerns Attention to public priorities, visibility

Reassurance

Neighbourhood policing

Focus on their problems, reassurance

Advice on priorities; strategy endorsement Reduced demands on police Collaboration in problem solving

More time for other policing duties Effective solutions to their problems

them, to small administrative areas such as wards or beats, to towns or cities, to nations, to ethnic groups, to religious groups, to interest groups of various sorts such as hunters or students, and to occupational groups such as academics, miners, farmers or fishermen. It sometimes seems to imply some real set of relations between people and sometimes to some property they hold in common. The real relationship deemed to exist between members of a community sometimes seems to imply some shared identity rooted in common interests and mutual concern. The term community sometimes seems to be used in a normative sense to refer to some quality of interpersonal relationships to be aspired to or created by third parties where it is absent, normally of the kind described in the previous sentence. Moreover what is to be delivered as part of community policing is also uncertain. This is suggested in Table 4.1, which indicates the main benefits expected from different forms of community policing introduced in Britain.12 More particularly, for some a broken windows approach is part of community policing whereas for others it is anathema to it.13 For some community policing involves reflecting what the community wants whereas for others it involves engineering sets of relationships that will yield more trust, more confidence and more informal social control. For some it suggests tapping latent potential that will empower, whereas for others it suggests sensitivity to the community as it is. For some it assumes that the community knows best whereas for others it assumes that the police have expertise they can offer to the community. It can seem that “community policing” is so loose a notion that it becomes all things to all men and women, thereby losing any specific meaning. 12 13

For other general discussions on the ambiguities of the term community policing, see contributions to Rosenbaum (1994). See, for example, Dixon (2005); Kelling (2005); and Kelling & Coles (1996) for very different views on this.


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Community policing has tended to enjoy low status within police services. It has not, thus, attracted the most able, energetic and ambitious officers.14 Finding officers who want to serve as community officers has not been easy. Raw recruits to policing do not generally join the police with a view to cultivating close and trusting relationships with citizens in order to help solve their problems or to mobilize them to address their own problems. Incoming officers are apt to join in the expectation of action, excitement, driving cars fast and detecting criminals. The terms used to describe community officers both in the United States and Britain have tended to be disparaging. “Officer Friendly”, “Empty Holster” and “Hobby Bobby”, for example, suggest officers who are not doing proper policing. The relatively low esteem in which community policing has evidently been held does not, of course, invalidate the model but it provides grounds for believing that it will be an uphill struggle to have it implemented well as a policing philosophy. Moreover, as “street level bureaucrats” (Lipsky, 1980), the police have a great deal of discretion in the conduct of their work. This is liable to be exercised in ways reflecting dominant peer views, and insofar as these are unsympathetic to the tenets and methods of community policing it is liable to chronic subversion from within. It is not just the police who reveal reluctance to take part in community policing. Members of the community have not shown themselves to be enthusiastic either, especially in higher crime neighbourhoods.15 PCCGs have generally been attended poorly, sometimes by no one at all from the general public. Whilst NWs have been quite enthusiastically endorsed, especially in low crime areas, they have tended to fade quite quickly. Efforts to establish Community Safety Groups in one large city found little appetite for attendance at meetings with agencies including the police that might address local problems, again especially in higher crime areas Mistry (2006). Residents neither wanted to nor had the skills needed to articulate their concerns or interests in the kinds of setting provided by formal organizations. The police often complain of public apathy in their efforts to mobilize members of the community. Where community members do show up they are often referred to as the “usual suspects” the concerned or public-spirited white, middle class and elderly residents who are not necessarily representative of the community at large. Police attuned to their preoccupations and interests may not meet the needs and wants of other resident groups. A skewed policing would follow from over-attention to their views. In many problematic neighbourhoods the neighbourhoods are problematic precisely because of internal divisions.16 There is no shared identity, set of interests and mission that bind residents together. Rather, mutual antipathy and suspicion, conflicts over the proper use of public space, and differences over what constitute acceptable kinds of behaviour cause fundamental tensions. If community policing is to do with meeting needs and wants the community officer is faced with incompatible preferences that cannot all be fully satisfied simultaneously. Moreover, internal hostilities make it unlikely that all will happily cooperate. Here attention to “usual suspects” may inadvertently fuel suspicions amongst many of the harder-to-reach that the police act prejudicially and neglect their legitimate interests. 14

15

16

For accounts of the relative standing of police officers involved in community affairs as against those engaged in response policing, see Bennett (1998); McConville & Shepherd (1992); and Weatheritt (1986). Reiner (1991) even found lukewarm attitudes amongst chief constables. See Bennett (1998) citing Morgan (1986); and Morgan & Maggs (1985). The tendency for selective participation by unrepresentative, generally middle-class, white and older groups is a recurrent research finding. See, for example, Herbert (2006); Laycock & Tilley (1995); Mistry (2006); and Skogan (2004). For a subtle discussion of issues around this, see Hope (1995).

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Even if community-focused police officers want to concentrate their attention on identified community concerns, this is liable to be thwarted by centrally specified performance measures. If the Home Office is measuring effectiveness and efficiency in terms of some set of issues that are not of primary local concern within a given neighbourhood, those in lead positions within a police service, where performance measures are consequential for them, may be reluctant to devote effort and resources where sets of residents within a local area want them. Resources are, of course, limited. Decisions have to be taken about priorities. Fifty-one per cent of funding for the police is provided by the Home Office. The Home Secretary sets priorities. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and the Police Standards Unit (PSU) scrutinize police service performance in terms of their contribution to the achievement of national priorities. The voice of local neighbourhoods competes with some difficulty for active attention from the police in these circumstances. In this sense British policing is significantly different from policing in the United States where central direction and control is much, much weaker and in practice has been used as much to incentivize attention to local as national issues, though “homeland security” is beginning to draw local police more fully into attention to that as a national issue. The more centralized, Home Office shaped policing in Britain has led it into forms of policing that have compromised hospitality for community policing in some neighbourhoods. The miners’ strike of 1984–85, in particular, led to centrally directed repressive policing that cut across strongly held and widely endorsed interests and preferences (see Newburn, 2003). Whilst much has been tried since to win community confidence in policing in Britain, the constitutional position of policing leaves it open to similar repressive use limiting the degree to which communities can be confident that their views of how they should be policed and in whose interests they should be policed will prevail. On civil liberties grounds there may be unacceptable risks in police subservience to local community preferences for the policing undertaken. A key role of the police is widely believed to include protection of citizen rights, even against the views of the majority.17 The rights of protest, free speech and free movement, for example, may not be respected or accepted by residents in some communities. Moreover, the police may also have to limit the actions of communities of protesters where they threaten to infringe the rights of others to go about their business in lawful ways. Let us suppose that the problems that have so far been identified were resolved satisfactorily, and that a clearly identified participating community could be found where residents’ policing concerns did not threaten other legitimate interests, where the focus was congruent with the preferences of the state and where the police service fully endorsed community policing. In these limited, perhaps relatively rare conditions could we expect community policing to operate effectively? There are some good reasons to suggest that the answer may be “No.” The first problem here relates to community understanding of crime. Widely held folk theories of crime and crime control are often mistaken (Tilley & Laycock, 2000). For example, the ideas that crime is committed only by a small highly deviant minority, that crime can be prevented by random police patrol, that situational prevention measures lead inexorably to displacement, that CCTV is an effective all-purpose crime prevention measure, and that all crime has been going up since the mid-1990s have all been shown to be mistaken. 17

See Goldstein (1977); Neyroud & Beckley (2001); and Neyroud (2003) for discussions emphasizing police obligations in relation to citizen rights.


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Following community understanding of crime, rather than an evidence-based understanding of crime, risks ineffectiveness and injustice in the responses developed. Acquiescing to community preferences for crime control would often license an empirically unjustifiable populist intolerance and punitiveness. A second problem relates to community dynamics. The issue of fractured communities has already been alluded to. There is more to say. Intimidation, community member transience and mutual indifference will also characterize many communities though seldom all at the same time! In some communities levels of intimidation may mean that otherwise willing participants in community policing will be put off. In some places most of those present may be transient, not comprising a group capable of functioning as any kind of participating community. Extreme cases may be motorway service areas and their users or holiday destinations and the tourists that visit. Slightly less extreme are neighbourhoods which are dominated by students. In some inner city areas, in particular, residents may cherish anonymity and social distance from their neighbours. Many will be busy people whose major concerns lie beyond the neighbourhood. They are and may want to be indifferent to those around them. Such areas again make poor recruitment places for community policing participation. A third problem relates to police responsibilities and demands on police time. In Britain the police have a wide range of responsibilities.18 These include, for example, response to accidents and emergencies, creation of records of crimes, protection of civil liberties, imposition of order if necessary by force, detection of crime at local, national and international levels, preparation of cases for court, assistance for lost or otherwise incapable individuals, prevention of crime, mediation or containment of conflict between subgroups, and maintenance of the smooth movement of traffic. Some of these may resonate with community priorities. But, even where they do not do so the police cannot neglect them. Police responsibilities are wide-ranging and extend far beyond the immediate concerns of local neighbourhoods. These responsibilities limit the time that could be allocated to address many local issues and leave them as residual matters that can be addressed only once inescapable obligations have been met. In hard-pressed forces, with finite resources, those available for community policing may be very limited. In relation to these police responsibilities are corresponding expectations from the public. Thus, in relation to order maintenance the public are expected to accept police authority. In relation to crime detection, the public are expected to provide evidence. In relation to emergencies, members of the public are expected to provide help as requested by the public. In traffic the public are expected to give way when they hear a police siren or see flashing lights. In conflict situations the public are expected to accept police adjudication or resolution at least in the short term. In crime prevention, members of the public are expected to accept that the police have expertise and that they should trust the advice given to them. In more general terms in relation to emergencies the public are expected to accept that the police need to prioritize and that particular citizens’ concerns may have to take second place to other calls on police time. In many ways, therefore, the police relationship to members of the community involves social distance and sets of structured relationships where the public serve the police in the achievement of their priorities as much as the police serve the community in the achievement of its priorities. Moreover for some types of community

18

For discussions of police responsibilities see contributions to Part B of Newburn (2005).

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concern a precondition for the effectiveness of police help is that as a third party their independence and distance from those in dispute is accepted. A fourth problem relates to misallocation of community policing resources. In so far as community policing entails responsiveness to public demands, the articulate relatively low crime suburbs where social capital is already high may compete on unequal terms for attention with areas with low social capital.19 There is a history of public goods intended to benefit the less well off being appropriated more effectively by the better off. It is not difficult to see how this could apply also to community policing. Finally, community policing involves the police working with a range of other agencies and organizations to deliver services that lie beyond the direct control of the police. Research evidence about partnership in Britain before and after the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, has revealed a catalogue of more or less serious and chronic problems.20 These include communication weaknesses, reluctance to share data between organizations, informal practices undermining accountability, ideological differences between agencies, competing performance measures used by differing agencies, incommensurable organizational missions, turf wars over areas of responsibility, variations in operating methods, and reluctance to cede authority or control. The rationale for partnership ways of working to address community issues has been clear enough. It has proved very difficult to yield the promised benefits. There is, though, good evidence of police success in applying leverage to third parties to persuade them to act in specific ways to address particular problems, Scott, (2005).

THE STRENGTHS OF WEAK COMMUNITY POLICING It might reasonably be argued that the foregoing discussion is unduly negative and that it assumes a caricature of community policing. There would be some truth in that charge. There is certainly a baby in the community policing bath water. What the previous section casts doubt on, however, is first the notion that community policing should be the underlying philosophy that drives all policing in Britain and second the notion that all that is needed for community policing is a will to put it in place. There is more to policing than community policing and there is more to community policing than deciding that officers should do it. This chapter turns now to an effort to map out a realistic agenda for what will be referred to as “weak community policing” in Britain. This, as it happens, accords quite well with many of the plans already in place for Neighbourhood Policing. The heading used for this section deliberately echoes the title of a celebrated paper by the sociologist Mark Granovetter which was published in 1973: “The strength of weak ties”. Granovetter shows that strong ties characterize intimate groups. If A is strongly tied to B and C it becomes highly probably that B will be tied to C also. A strong tie is characterized by mutual attraction and high levels of intensity and intimacy. People strongly tied to one another spend a relatively large amount of time together, like one another and confide in one another. Where a person in strongly tied to others those others are also likely to be tied to one another. Where A has weak ties to D and E (low levels of mutual attraction, low levels of intensity, low levels of intimacy), D and E are much less likely to know one another. 19 20

See, for example, Hancock (2001); Skogan & Hartnett (1997). See, for example, 6 et al. (2006); Liddle & Gelsthorpe (1994a, 1994b); Pearson et al. (1992); and Phillips et al. (2002).


B

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C

A Figure 4.1 Strong ties

A E

D Figure 4.2 Weak ties

Insofar as closeness of tie is associated with time spent between members of dyads (pairs) it becomes of course more likely that the time A spends with B will also include time when C is also present, tying B to C. Figure 4.1 shows a strong-tie network and Figure 4.2 a weak-tie one. Solid lines represent strong ties and dashed lines weak ones in the following series of figures. Figure 4.3 shows networks between those with strong and weak ties. A has strong ties with B and C but weak ones with D and E. A acts as a bridge, however, between all three strongly networked ties through his or her weak ties with D and E. Figure 4.4 shows a series of strongly tied networks, with no weak ties between them. Here there is a risk of parallel groups each internally strong but potentially in conflict with others and with no ties to moderate expression of that conflict. Feuding families or sectarian conflicts might be examples where membership of one group entails non-membership of the other, and where one of the sources of strong ties within each group is conflict with the other. B

C

A

D

F

E

G

Figure 4.3 Strong and weak ties interacting

H

I

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B

C

A

D

F

E

H

G

I

Figure 4.4 Disconnected strong ties

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

Figure 4.5 Web of strong and weak affiliations

Figure 4.5 shows a network of strong and weak ties with sets of association shown by ellipses between those directly bound by ties. The 9 members have a potential of 36 dyadic ties, if all were connected to all. In practice there are only 11. The sets comprise networks of strong ties, except where dashed lines indicate weak ties. Let us assume that A–I live in the same neighbourhood and that: r r r r r r

AB play for the Uptown football team BEH are members of a fundamentalist religious sect: the Alphas CFI are members of another religious sect: the Betas FIH play for the Downtown football team GH work at the same place DG are brothers.

Everyone has in this instance some connection to one or more others in the neighbourhood. Let us assume that the Alphas and Betas hate one another. History and doctrine pitch the


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one group against the other, and this is liable to spill over into violence and disorder. In this instance the ties between FI of the Betas and H of the Alphas through the Downtown football team, may help contain conflict that might otherwise take place. FIH and AB are in conflict as members of opposing football teams known for playing dirty, where what happens on the pitch might lead to fights off the pitch. As members of the same (Alpha) sect B and H have strong ties likely to inhibit open warfare between the opposing football teams. H appears to be a core member since there are few steps from H to all other members of the neighbourhood. Moreover his/her multiple group membership provides the potential for some sort of mediating role, as is also the case though to a more limited extent for B. In both cases weak ties are crucial for the role they may play. Georg Simmel’s classic Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations captures the ways in which multiple group affiliations and multiple conflicts within networks might sustain stability and order as those involved are motivated to maintain associations and allegiances that put a brake on fundamental divisions (Simmel, 1955). Ironically, more conflicts might produce more order as they are one of the forces that bind people together and cross-cutting conflicts serve inclusive and conflict-containing functions.21 In practice, of course, no neighbourhood would approach the simplicity of that shown in any of Figures 4.1 to 4.5; many more people would be involved, ties vary on a continuum of strength, and the varying purposes of the ties carry differing normative and affective freight which is not discussed here. Figures 4.1 to 4.5 can, however, be used to draw out some general principles. r r r r

Conflict can often bind groups Multiple conflicts lead to multiple bindings Cross-cutting multiple conflicts lead to multiple cross-cutting group memberships Multiple cross-cutting group memberships help inhibit fundamental divisions within communities r Multiple cross-cutting group memberships can help inhibit the violent expression of conflict r Weak ties are important in bridging groups to create cross-cutting patterns of affiliation and conflict. Moreover, a further implication is that strong mutually bonded groups that are hostile to one another but where weak ties are absent risk uninhibited conflict. Thus to take Figure 4.4, if two or more of the three groups of three are hostile to one another (and mutual hostility may bind groups) there is a risk of relatively uninhibited suspicion, dislike and conflict. Ethnic rivalries, sub-cultural conflicts, and religious hatred all seem to have this characteristic. Weak inter-group ties are few and fragile. There are strong intra-group ties and mutual loathing between groups. The discussion so far has imagined a very small community with no more than nine individual members. It will be useful to look beyond this to examine the police as agents both in relation to the community and in relation to other agencies. Table 4.2 presented a series of essentially dyadic exchanges between the “police” and the “community”. It is clear that this will not quite do. Policing is variegated, communities are far from unitary entities and policing comprises one agency among others acting in relation to a given neighbourhood. Let us turn to what the kind of network mapping sketched in relation to 21

See also Coser (1956) whose work builds on that of Simmel.

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our very small community might have to teach us about police–community relationships and police–agency relationships. “Going native” comprises a situation in which the police have developed strong ties with particular community groups, with risks first of association with one group in conflict with another, second of subordination to an agenda that neglects or takes precedence over wider police responsibilities, and third of attaching privilege to one definition of a community situation at the expense of others that may also exist within a given neighbourhood. Partnership collusion takes place where agency partners develop strong ties with one another, and where decisions are made informally behind closed doors, possibly without due attention to the specific formal responsibilities and accountabilities that apply in the case of publicly funded organizations. Where strong ties exist within each partnership organization but there are few weak ties between them, then mutual suspicion and hostility is risked as with the case of community groups. And interagency conflict and suspicion is well-documented in Britain as indicated earlier in this chapter. Strong community policing for the purposes of this chapter comprises community policing in which there are strong ties between police and community members and where strong ties within the community are valued and attempts are made to build on or foster them. It may also involve strong ties between the police and other agencies and those other agencies and community members. Weak community policing refers to community policing which fosters weak ties within communities and between the police and those within communities, as well as between agencies. The argument, the content of which the smart reader should by now be anticipating, will be that this promises to be more practicable, more just and more effective than strong community policing. It is advocated as a “well-tempered” contribution to a broad British policing agenda. So, what are the benefits of weak community policing as envisaged here?

Helping to keeping the police honest Weak community policing involves engaging with community members but not identifying with them or particular groups within a neighbourhood. It acknowledges that British policing is multi-functional, and that it will sometimes involve ignoring or going against some local community interests and wants in the service of other ends. It also acknowledges that the British police are powerful and have obligations and accountabilities that should prevent them from becoming unduly locked into too close an association with fellow agencies that may compromise the integrity of officers’ behaviour.

Reflecting complex community attachments and relationships Figure 4.5 captures the kinds of multiple strong and weak ties that will characterize most “communities” or, perhaps better, “collectivities” in contemporary Britain. It means that no one could speak on behalf of the whole community. No member would know the whole community. Knowledge is diffused. Interests are diffused, even where there is some way in this case from going from any one member to any other with a small number of steps. If the police are to tap this knowledge and these views, they will need to develop multiple weak ties without undue association with any of the groups.


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Reflecting public indifference to overall community concerns Figure 4.5 communities lack any strong basis for overall interests in whatever formal quality may make members a common set (for example co-residence within a given administrative boundary, the most common basis for defining geographical “communities”). Instead, weak community policing traces salient networks within specific areas of responsibility and forges weak ties with them in relation to their policing interests, to identify police-relevant problems and perceptions amongst the groups and to be open to potential sources of intelligence.

Building on a division of understanding Weak community policing uses what the public knows but does not pretend that the public is omniscient. Whilst understandings of community patterns may be elicited through fostering weak ties this does not invalidate special knowledge that the police may have independently of folk knowledge. Expert police knowledge of crime patterns, methods of crime detection, crime prevention and so on can be added to the specific understandings that may be gleaned from weak community ties, to build effective strategies to deal with problems of crime or perception that may be found amongst groups within the community.

Permitting mediating roles Transparently weak ties across groups permit performance of the role of the stranger, as described by Georg Simmel (1950). The stranger is in but not of a set of social relations. S/he stands apart from the competing associations, interests and perhaps norms of differing groupings that may bring them into conflict with one another. This allows the multiple weakly-linked agent to function as trusted confidant and honest broker, a role that cannot be played by any involved in strong ties which raise suspicions that they may be partis pris. It should be added that the mediating role is not the only one available. There is scope for harm-creation also. In Figure 4.3, A has loose ties to D and E and through them respectively to F and G, and H and I. A has strong ties to B and C. Assume A is a community police officer with strong ties to his or her colleagues B and C. Assume further that DFG and EHI dislike or suspect one another. A, on behalf of BC, can mediate or inflame the relationship between DFG and EHI depending on the orientation taken. The potential for this arises out of the weak ties to D and E.

Avoiding problems of definition The slipperiness of the term “community policing” was emphasized earlier in this chapter. “Slipperiness” was a pejorative way of describing the diverse uses of the word. The multiple strong and weak ties described schematically in Figure 4.5 may, however, help provide a rationale for the way community has come to mean so many seemingly different things. In modern societies most people do have multiple attachments: they have multiple crosscutting commonalities and common interests with differing sets of others in relation to any or all of which they could be deemed to belong to the same community. The slipperiness of the term community reflects thus the diversity of groups and forms of attachment to

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more or less significant others that people have and presumably want to have in complex societies. If community policing is not to be reduced to a nostalgic effort to reproduce something akin to what were presumed to be close geographically-based primary groups of yesteryear but instead to line up with the kinds of attachment that characterize contemporary patterns of social life, it has to reflect the fact of multiple attachment where weak linkages are forged with different sorts of (policing-relevant) groupings with different sorts of attachment between members.

Helping to include marginalized groups Assiduous efforts to forge multiple and indiscriminate weak ties with and across diverse groupings, including in particular the young, criminal, drug-taking, deviant, disadvantaged, dirty and disliked, provides one means of avoiding the unintentional reproduction of processes of exclusion and consequent reluctance amongst marginalized groups to adhere to minimum standards or to be responsive to police calls for information and help in pursuit of their broad agenda. It also provides a means whereby these sections of the citizenry may feed their wants and interests into police and partner prioritization processes.

CONCLUSION This chapter should not be read as a denigration of community policing in general nor as any sort of critique of British community policing initiatives in particular, even if it has noted some of the disappointments experienced. The argument is that not too much can or should be expected from community policing. Moreover, it has been stressed that policing involves a host of responsibilities that extend far beyond those ordinarily associated with community policing. British police have multiple roles and responsibilities in relation to local groups, the state, individuals, small groups and the law. Community policing can never be more than but one part of a wider set of policing functions. Even with Neighbourhood Policing, which represents the most ambitious effort to put in place community policing in Britain to date, it is one element of the police function which is unlikely to take more than 10 per cent of police resources. In the Metropolitan Police Service, if Neighbourhood Policing was to be fully staffed it would account for 6% of active police officers in post as of September 2005: approximately 1,900 officers with an equivalent number of Police Community Safety Officers. Each ward-based team of six (three police officers and three PCSOs) would serve an average population of 11,500 citizens. A crucial difference between policing in Britain and the United States relates to their respective dependencies and responsibilities. In Britain, at 43, there are quite small numbers of relatively large nationally networked territorial police services with strong financial and organizational links back to central government through the Home Office. In the United States, at some 18,000, there are very large numbers of generally small policing agencies with far fewer financial and administrative links back to the federal government and a loose network at best between them. In Britain, national dependencies and responsibilities are far more salient than in the United States. In the US, local dependencies and responsibilities are far more salient than they are in Britain. It may


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be more plausible for many US policing agencies to embrace community policing as an overall working policing philosophy than their counterparts in Britain. Weak community policing is important and not just because of the improvements it may bring specifically to the quality of life of those living in the neighbourhoods where it is operating. Weak community policing is very different from no community policing. Fostering and using weak ties promises multiple benefits as indicated in the previous section. In particular it might be hoped that expectations of what the police can and cannot do are made more realistic, and that the police–public relationship forged is one where there is sufficient trust in the police that the public will be more likely to cooperate in circumstances where the police need to call on public cooperation even when not engaged in community policing. This might include, for example, responsiveness to calls for information in the police enquiries; acceptance of police authority in emergencies; or understanding where the police undertake enforcement actions that may disturb or disrupt or go against the preferences of neighbourhood residents. The overall framework within which weak community policing could most readily fit is probably problem-oriented policing.22 This recognizes the multiple roles and responsibilities of the police but sees the golden thread to be that of identifying relevant problems for the police in relation to their responsibilities, analyzing those problems, developing strategies to address them, having those strategies implemented and assessing the outcomes. Many, though not all, of the problems will be community-related, adopting the loose though realistic conception of community sketched here. Some problems may entail community cooperation in their resolution. Some analyses and tentative solutions may usefully draw on community intelligence. Many responses suggested by strategies will require some level of change or intervention by some other individuals or organizations, and this may be more easily accomplished where there are already weak linkages between them and the police. Problem-oriented policing is itself wider in scope than intelligence-led policing, though they have some parallels. The National Intelligence Model (NIM), as it is evolving, is a potential bridge between them especially as Crime and Disorder partnerships come to adopt NIM processes. What the NIM requires, as does problem-oriented policing, is an ability to make creative and constructive use of accurate information. Some of this relates to initial conditions and some to the effectiveness of measures to address problems. Weak community policing offers one source of information about initial conditions as well as perceived problems. Developments in reassurance policing have shown how such information can be collected, analysed and acted on to deal with public concerns over crime and disorder. Problem-oriented policing, NIM and reassurance policing all assume a division of knowledge and ability to act between police and public. Weak community policing would seem to furnish a basis on which this division can be operationalized. Finally, it would not seem likely that community policing of any sort will comprise the main attraction for rookie members of a force. The action side of policing promises more excitement. Smart, older, more experienced officers with a talent for forging weak ties with members of multiple community groups, for catalyzing weak ties across groups and for acting as a plausible broker between groups would seem more suitable for the kind of work needed. Within the large police services that are found in Britain, it should not be difficult 22

For further details, see Tilley (2003).

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to find and reward officers with the right skills and orientation. This appears to be just what is being tried in efforts to put Neighbourhood Policing in place. What will not do is the allocation of poorer officers who respond only to approaches from “police-friendly” groups with whom they develop strong ties. The temptation to do so, however, may be hard to resist. If it is not resisted the potential benefits from weak community policing will not be obtained.

REFERENCES 6, P., Goodwin, N., Peck, E. & Freeman, T. (2006). Managing Networks of Twenty-First Century Organisations. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ACPO/Centrex (2005). Practice Advice on Professionalising the Business of Neighbourhood Policing. Unpublished. Association of Chief Constables and the National Centre for Policing Excellence. Alderson, J. (1977). Communal Policing. Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. Alderson, J. (1979). Policing Freedom. Plymouth: Macdonald and Evans. Bennett, T. (1998). Police and Public Involvement in the delivery of community policing. In J-P. Brodeur (ed.), How to Recognise Good Policing (pp. 107–22). London: Sage Publications. Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucqueroux, B. (2004). Restorative Community Justice. Mason MI: Policing.com Publishing. Coser, L. (1956). The Functions of Social Conflict. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Diamond, D. & Bucqueroux, B. (2006). Community Policing is Homeland Security, available at: http://www.policing.com/articles/terrorism.html [Accessed 27 August 2006] Dixon, D. (2005). Beyond zero tolerance. In T. Newburn (ed.), Policing: Key Readings (pp. 483–507). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Forrest, S., Myhill, A. & Tilley, N. (2005). Practical Lessons for Involving the Community in Crime and Disorder Problem-solving. Development and Practice Report 43. London: Home Office. Goldstein, H. (1977). Policing in a Free Society. Cambridge, Mass: Ballinger. Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360–80. Greene, J. (2000). Community policing in America: changing the nature, structure and function of the police. In J. Horney (ed.), Criminal Justice 2000: Policies, Processes, and Decisions of the Criminal Justice System (pp. 299–370). Washington: US Department of Justice. Halpern, D. (2005). Social Capital. Cambridge: Polity. Hancock, L. (2001). Community, Crime and Disorder. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Herbert, S. (2006). Citizens, Cops, and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Home Office (2004). White Paper 2004 - Building Communities, Beating Crime – A Better Police Service for the 21st Century. London: Home Office. Home Office (2005). Neighbourhood Policing: Your Police; Your Community; Our Commitment. London: Home Office. Hope, T. (1995). Community crime prevention. In M. Tonry & D. Farrington (eds), Building a Safer Society (pp. 299–370). Crime and Justice Vol. 19. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hoyle, C. & Young, R. (2003). Restorative justice, victims and the police. In T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (pp. 680–706). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Innes, M. (2004a). Signal crimes and signal disorders: notes on deviance and communicative action. British Journal of Sociology 55, 335–355. Innes, M. (2004b). Reinventing tradition? Reassurance, neighbourhood security and policing. Criminal Justice, 4, 151–171. Innes, M. (2005). What’s your problem? Signal crimes and citizen-focused policing. Criminology and Public Policy, 4, 187–200. Innes, M. (2006). Policing uncertainty: countering terror through community intelligence and democratic policing. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 605, 222–241. Ipsos/MORI (2006). Understanding Crime and Justice: Respect and the Neighbourhood – the New Policing Challenges. London: Ipsos/MORI.


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Kelling, G. (2005). Community crime reduction: activating formal and informal social controls. In N. Tilley (ed.), Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety (pp. 107–142). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Kelling, G. & Coles, C. (1996). Fixing Broken Windows. New York: Free Press. Klockars, C. (2005). The rhetoric of community policing. In T. Newburn (ed.), Policing: Key Readings (pp. 442–459). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Laycock, G. & Tilley, N. (1995). Policing and Neighbourhood Watch: Strategic Issues. Crime Detection and Prevention Series Paper 60. London: Home Office. Liddle, M. & Gelsthorpe, L. (1994a). Crime Prevention and Inter-Agency Co-operation. Crime Prevention Unit Paper 53. London: Home Office. Liddle, M. & Gelsthorpe, L. (1994b). Inter-Agency Crime Prevention: Organising Local Delivery. Crime Prevention Unit Paper 52. London: Home Office. Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-Level Bureaucracy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Mastrofski, S. (2006). Community policing: a sceptical view. In D. Weisburd & A. Braga (eds), Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives (pp. 44–73). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maynard, M. (1994). Witness Intimidation: Strategies for Prevention. Crime Prevention and Detection Series Paper No. 55, London: Home Office. McConville, M. & Shepherd, D. (1992). Watching Police, Watching Communities. London: Routledge. Mistry, D. (2006). A Process Evaluation of a Pilot Community Engagement Project. Unpublished report to the Home Office. Morgan, R. (1986). Policing by consent: legitimating the doctrine. In D. Smith & R. Morgan (eds), Coming to Terms with Policing (pp. 217–234). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Morgan, R. & Maggs, C. (1985). Setting the P.A.C.E.: Police Community Consultation Arrangements in England and Wales. Bath: University of Bath, Centre for the Analysis of Social Policy. Newburn, T. (2002). Community safety and policing: some implications of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. In G. Hughes, E. McLaughlin & J. Muncie (eds), Crime Prevention and Community Safety: New Directions (pp. 102–122). London: Sage. Newburn, T. (2003). Policing since 1945. In T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (pp. 85–105). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Newburn, T. (2005). Policing: Key Readings. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Neyroud, P. (2003). Policing and ethics. In T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (pp. 578–602). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Neyroud, P. & Beckley, A. (2001). Policing, Ethics and Human Rights. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Pearson, G., Blagg, H., Smith, D. et al. (1992). Crime, Community and Conflict: The Multi-agency Approach. In D. Downes (ed.), Unravelling Criminal Justice (pp. 46–72). London: Macmillan. Phillips, C., Jacobson, J., Prime, R. et al. (2002). Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships: Round One Progress. Police Research Series Paper 151. London: Home Office. Reiner, R. (1991). Chief Constables. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenbaum, D. (ed.) (1994). The Challenge of Community Policing. London: Sage. Sampson, R.J., Raudenbush, S.W. & Earls, F. (1997). Neighbourhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science 277, 918–924. Scarman, Lord (1981). The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders, 10–12 April 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Scheider, M. & Chapman, R. (2003). Community Policing and Terrorism, available at: http:// www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Scheider-Chapman.html [Accessed 27 August 2006] Scott, M. (2005). Shifting and sharing police responsibility to address public safety problems. In N. Tilley (ed.). Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety (pp. 385–409). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Simmel, G. (1950). The stranger. In K. Wolff (ed.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (pp. 402–408). New York: Free Press. Simmel, G. (1955). Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations. New York: Free Press. Skogan, W. (2004). Representing the community in community policing. In W. Skogan (ed.), Community Policing: Can it Work? (pp. 57–75). Belmont CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Skogan, W. (2006). The promise of community policing. In D. Weisburd & A. Braga (eds), Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives (pp. 27–43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Skogan, W. & Hartnett, S. (1997). Community Policing, Chicago Style. New York: Oxford University Press. Tilley, N. (2003). Community policing, problem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing. In T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (pp. 311–339). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Tilley, N. & Laycock, G. (2000). Joining up research, policy and practice about crime. Policy Studies, 21, 213–27. Weatheritt, M. (1986). Innovations in Policing. London: Croom Helm.

CHAPTER 5

Community Policing in Contested Settings: The Patten Report and Police Reform in Northern Ireland1 Aogán Mulcahy University College Dublin, Ireland

INTRODUCTION “Community policing” (or “community-oriented policing”) has, in a wide range of contexts, been mooted as a remedy for high crime rates and neighbourhood disorder, police unresponsiveness, low police morale, public mistrust of the police, the gradual decay of quality of life in particular neighbourhoods, and so on. Just as it has been promoted as a general elixir for the dangers and tensions of modern living, so too the activities it entails are many and varied. Community policing has been used to describe an organizational ethos, a strategy for the deployment of policing resources, neighbourhood-based police teams and forms of patrolling, structures of police–public contact and problem-oriented styles of policing. The breadth of problems it might address and solutions it might provide highlight two things: that it is a strikingly malleable entity, and that the issue of community continues to resonate as a key dimension of the provision and regulation of safety and security (Brogden & Nijhar, 2005; Crawford 1997, 2003, 2007; Greene & Mastrofski, 1988; Hughes, McLaughlin & Muncie, 2002; Rosenbaum, 1994). Both these issues are fully apparent in the case of Northern Ireland. This chapter considers the issue of community policing in Northern Ireland in light of two phases of its recent history: the violent political conflict that, between the late 1960s and the mid-1990s, caused the deaths of more than 3,600 people; and the peace process that followed. The case of Northern Ireland stands as an important contribution to debates about links between police and public in two main respects. First, it highlights 1

I am immensely grateful to the late Tom Williamson and to Les Johnston for their assistance and encouragement with this chapter. Some of the material presented here develops and extends arguments contained in Mulcahy (2006).


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the difficulties of establishing community policing against a backdrop of political violence and ongoing disputes surrounding state legitimacy. The issue of community policing has a particular significance within the context of “divided” or deeply-fractured societies in which profound cleavages undermine any claims of a social consensus. This is particularly the case in societies where the legitimacy of the state is at issue and the socio-political framework within which notions of community – and consequently “community policing” – are conceived and articulated is itself highly contested. Second, it provides an opportunity to consider the role that a nodal conception of governance can play in forging new and productive relations between police and public, and in providing better solutions to problems of crime and insecurity. The 1999 Report of the Independent Commission on Policing – the Patten Report – based its recommendations in part on insights drawn from a body of work addressing the “governance of security”. This approach recognizes the limited capacity of the public police to provide effective solutions to problems of crime and insecurity, and the related expansion of a myriad of private and public-private hybrid organizations and structures to address these issues (see generally, Johnston & Shearing 2003; Shearing 2005; Wood & Dupont 2006; Wood & Shearing 2006). This blurring of the public-private boundary and the establishment – in place of a single state-centred response – of networks to address crime and security raises significant issues related to equity and democracy and serves as a potent reminder of the social divisions and segregation that might increasingly be manifested through a contraction of the public sphere, and differential access to safety and security in the basis of individuals’ purchasing power (Loader & Walker, 2006). Johnston and Shearing (2003, p. 141) characterize this dystopian vision in stark terms: “public space is privatised, the urban landscape is militarised, video-surveillance is endemic, city life is ‘feral’, vigilantism is rife and those who can afford to do so retreat behind ‘gated’ enclaves, protected by private guards.” However, proponents of “nodal security” challenge the often defensive criminological response to the expansion of private security – “How can we re-impose state police control over policing?” (Johnston & Shearing, 2003, p. 11) – by considering the potential of “nodes” (or key hubs) within security networks to overcome the exclusionary practices of the state and the market, by harnessing local expertise to maximize local capacity and local democracy. This active promotion of a nodal-based framework for the governance of security has been criticized for appearing to downplay or neglect the role of the state, which Loader & Walker (2006, p. 183) argue “remains indispensable to any project concerned with optimizing the human good of security”. Nevertheless, models of nodal governance have been advocated as a means of overcoming the “governance deficit” that is often tied to the material deficit suffered by the poor and the vulnerable (Shearing & Wood, 2003; Wood & Shearing, 2006). The agenda of police reform outlined in the 1999 Patten Report provides an important opportunity to consider the implications of this broad approach. The chapter is structured as follows. First, I outline the historical context of policing in Northern Ireland and the difficulties of establishing community policing in any meaningful way during the conflict. Second, I consider the Report of the Independent Commission on Policing and its recommendations concerning “policing with the community”. Third, I assess the impact that the Patten recommendations have had on the new landscape of policing in Northern Ireland. Finally, I consider the wider implications of these issues for our understanding of community policing more generally.

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POLICE, COMMUNITY AND CONFLICT IN NORTHERN IRELAND History and Context The historical development of policing in Northern Ireland was immutably tied to issues of state.2 Through the 19th Century and up until the partition of Ireland in 1922, the island was policed by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). As momentum in favour of political independence increased, the British Government partitioned Ireland – creating Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State – as a means of addressing the irreconcilable political aspirations between the largely Catholic nationalists/republicans who favoured the reunification of Ireland and the largely Protestant unionists/loyalists who wished to remain part of the United Kingdom. The RIC was duly disbanded, and in Northern Ireland was replaced by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Although the nature and ethos of Northern Ireland was intended to reflect the identity and interests of unionists (who comprised two thirds of the population), the presence of a large and disenchanted minority Catholic population ensured that the character of the state was always marked by a profound sense of political anxiety (Ruane & Todd, 1996). As a result, a correspondingly large emphasis was placed on issues of state security, and from the outset this played a fundamental role in the RUC’s ethos and activities. The RUC was supplemented in this regard by the Ulster Special Constabulary, a locally recruited militia, and by a vast array of legal powers to counter political subversion. From the 1920s through until the 1960s, and in spite of several republican campaigns, Northern Ireland remained a relatively tranquil society. The numerical dominance of unionists translated into an unassailable political majority, reflected in 50 years of one-party rule. Nevertheless, by the 1960s a civil rights campaign emerged in response to the discrimination that marked the state’s attempts to maintain unionist hegemony. Although the initial protests were low-key affairs, the heavy-handed security response greatly increased the momentum of the campaign. Clashes between demonstrators, loyalists and the security forces became more violent, and serious disturbances spread throughout Northern Ireland. Republican paramilitaries – the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in particular – embarked on an extensive campaign and by the early 1970s Northern Ireland was embedded in violence.

Policing During the Conflict Following severe criticism of the RUC for its role in policing the civil rights protests and related events, the Hunt Committee (1969) proposed a series of reforms. It hoped that removing any direct involvement in state security from the RUC could establish it as a civic-oriented force and thereby secure widespread public support for it. However, the escalating violence ensured that its vision of police reform was never fully realized. During the early years of the conflict, the army played a leading role in security matters, but military actions often proved counterproductive, exacerbating rather than ameliorating the situation. With the conflict 2

For extended discussion of policing in Northern Ireland, see Ellison & Smyth (2000); McGarry & O’Leary (1999); Mulcahy (2006); and Weitzer (1995).

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showing no signs of abating, during the mid-1970s the British Government embarked on a different conflict management policy, one that was less reliant on overt “emergency” measures, and instead involved a huge expansion in the scale and capacity of the “ordinary” criminal justice system. Where possible, the army would now play a secondary or supporting role, and instead the police would be to the forefront of security policy generally. The success of this strategy of “police primacy” was dependent on increasing the professionalism of the RUC so that it could play the expanded role now required of it. The RUC expanded considerably in size, and its officers received new training and equipment. Ultimately, the success of this policy would depend not only on whether the RUC could successfully counter paramilitary violence, but also on whether it could secure the support of nationalists and republicans, particularly after the “fateful split” (Scarman Tribunal, 1972, p. 15) that developed between Catholics and the police at the start of the conflict. Within this broad strategy to enhance police professionalization and secure police legitimacy, the issue of community policing featured prominently. Much of this occurred at a purely symbolic level, and was a persistent feature of political efforts to normalize policing in Northern Ireland (and it was an especially prominent feature of official depictions of Northern Irish society; see Miller, 1994). In terms of specific policing activities and structures, several measures were implemented – particularly in terms of neighbourhood policing and local consultative structures – but the wider political conflict impacted forcefully on the nature of these activities. First, the security situation brought a sharp dynamic to these issues. In republican (or other “high-risk”) areas, the danger of attack meant that when community police officers went on patrol, the reinforcements this required resembled more “an armed convoy” than the reassuring sight of police officers integrated into the community. Brewer and Magee (1990, p. 115) provide a striking description of the surreal qualities of “community policing” in those circumstances: two neighbourhood men walking their beat are accompanied by at least sixteen soldiers, sometimes also by another squad of soldiers providing cover for those who are protecting the police, by two or more Land Rovers from the British Army and the RUC, and an Army helicopter.

Community policing activities were also susceptible to being undermined in various ways, whether by security policing operations that provoked widespread criticism, or by being viewed as little more than low-level intelligence gathering operations or public relations exercises (Ellison & Smyth, 2000; Weitzer, 1995). Second, the institutions established to improve police–community relations were also undermined by the wider political and security context. The Police Authority of Northern Ireland (PANI) operated largely as bursar to the police rather than as a robust oversight body, and was generally reluctant to engage with controversial issues that might damage the public image of the police. At a more local level, PANI established a system of Community and Police Liaison Committees to serve as consultative fora. From the outset, however, nationalists viewed them as largely symbolic entities, and the main nationalist parties boycotted them. In terms of their overall impact, they appeared to achieve little, and their discussions were largely confined to minor uncontroversial issues (Weitzer, 1995). Third, the difficulties of maintaining a routine police presence in many communities meant that a policing vacuum developed, one that was partly filled by a system of “alternative justice” established by various paramilitary organizations. The low levels of police


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legitimacy in republican areas in particular ensured that members of those communities were often reluctant to engage with the police. The security risks involved in policing those communities also ensured that the RUC’s ability to provide a civic policing service – most notably in terms of crime prevention and detection activities – was limited. Even if some residents in a republican area were supportive of the RUC, they still may not have been in a position to use the police freely; the reputation of their area ensured that poor response times still applied (Brewer, Lockhart & Rodgers, 1997). Fear of intimidation increased public reluctance to involve the RUC. Alternative justice generally comprised a system of punishments – beatings, shootings and expulsions in particular – that members of paramilitary organizations meted out to those suspected of infractions of various kinds (Feenan, 2002; McEvoy & Mika 2001, 2002). Despite the similar punishments used by rival paramilitary organizations, the dynamics of alternative justice within republican and loyalist communities were quite different. Within republican circles, paramilitary punishments were generally viewed as a form of policing – albeit one that many considered both ineffective and unconscionable. Among loyalists, however, paramilitary punishments were more closely related to the pursuit of organizational or personal interests, than to the claim of providing a broader policing service. The difficulties facing the police in loyalist areas were often acute, but there simply was not a corresponding niche in the policing market into which loyalist paramilitaries could embed themselves, and their looser organizational structure also ensured greater problems with internal discipline. Even in staunchly republican and loyalist communities, paramilitary punishments provoked enormous criticism and controversy and were the subject of bitter and protracted debate (Kennedy, 1995). Against this backdrop, the issue of community policing remained highly contentious. Increased police professionalism did appear to attract and sustain nationalist support for the RUC’s “ordinary” policing activities, but once aspects of security policing entered the equation levels of support began to diminish and the differences between Catholics’ and Protestants’ attitudes became extended and often extreme (Mulcahy, 2006, pp. 66–9). Whyte (1990, p. 88) found that Protestants and Catholics disagreed more on security policy than on constitutional questions. Security issues were, as he put it, “an unhealed sore”. In August 1994 the IRA announced a ceasefire, followed six weeks later by loyalist paramilitaries. Although the peace process this yielded was marked by uncertainty and setbacks – political deadlock ensured that the devolved Northern Ireland assembly was suspended on several occasions, and in 1996 the IRA ended its ceasefire by bombing Canary Wharf in London, returning to a ceasefire-status in July 1997 – a decisive corner had been turned. Throughout the conflict, policing was the single most emotive and divisive aspect of public policy. It would be no less so during the peace process. The remainder of this chapter considers how the issue of forging better police–community relations would unfold in light of the debate on police reform that developed surrounding the 1999 Patten Report.

POLICE REFORM AND POLITICAL TRANSITION The Patten Report After nearly three decades of sustained political violence in Northern Ireland, the 1998 Belfast Agreement (also known as the Good Friday Agreement) outlined the basis for a

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comprehensive political settlement. While other aspects of the Agreement (such as the release of paramilitary prisoners) proved contentious, this was especially the case for policing and the issue was deferred for consideration by an Independent Commission on Policing, chaired by Chris Patten, with the broad remit of making proposals for policing arrangements that would attract the support of all sections of the community. The Commission’s Report, known generally as the Patten Report (Independent Commission on Policing, 1999) outlined a broad agenda of change that laid the template for police reform in Northern Ireland. Recognizing that concerns over partisanship had been one of the key fault-lines surrounding policing, the Patten Commission explicitly sought to overcome such concerns by embedding its recommendations within two overarching themes. First, it situated “the protection and vindication of the human rights of everybody” at the heart of its recommendations. The centrality of human rights to the new landscape of policing was reflected in a number of accountability measures, most visibly the establishment of a fully independent Police Ombudsman that would investigate allegations of misconduct against police officers and would also have the power to conduct investigations into matters of public concern. Second, and inspired in large part by commission member Clifford Shearing’s writings on the governance of security, it sought to generate an institutional framework organized around the concept of “policing with the community”. While the focus on human rights involved significant changes to traditional structures of accountability, the emphasis on “policing with the community” raised a different set of concerns, ones that strayed far beyond the question of how to “fix” policing in Northern Ireland. In effect, it outlined the basis for a new framework of institutions and relationships that focused on “policing” rather than the “police”, and envisaged a far greater role for community involvement than hitherto had existed. Here it is important to note the Commission’s approach to policing encompassed two sets of recommendations that addressed, respectively, the police and policing. One the one hand, it addressed the structure, delivery and regulation of traditional policing activities: most notably in terms of how a public police organization might be structured and managed to an optimal degree and in line with established international best practice. Second, it raised these issues within a broader frame of reference that extended beyond the traditional confines of the police organization and that sought to establish an institutional framework that would reshape the framework for the provision and regulation of policing services more generally. Although much of the public debate surrounding the Report’s recommendations centred on the former issue – of which those relating to the name and symbolism of the force were especially controversial – the focus on policing with the community was in many respects its most compelling aspect. As one former Commission member stated: “50 years from now, if people look at our report it won’t be because of our recommendations on the RUC’s name or the flag, it will be because of that shift from police to policing” (personal communication). In focusing on the activity rather than the state institution, Shearing argued that the “golden thread” (2000, p. 388) of the Patten Report was the manner in which it sought to outline a model for policing and its regulation that recognized the state’s limited capacity in terms of security provision, and that maximized local involvement and capacity in terms of the delivery and governance of security. It was further argued (Shearing, 2000, 2001; Kempa & Shearing, 2002) that the Report’s most significant contribution was not those measures which dominated debate in Northern Ireland – many of which were specific to that local context or else were simply the application of principles and strategies routinely employed in other


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jurisdictions – but rather the template it provided for a “nodal conception of governance”. As such, the Report proposed the establishment of a series of nodes (discussed further below) that would facilitate and regulate policing services, of which the public police would form only one part. The vision of “policing with the community” was embodied in these institutional measures to enhance and regulate public capacity to contribute to the provision of security that communities received (or co-generated).

“Policing with the Community” In articulating its vision of “policing with the community”, the Patten Commission recognized the evident benefits of a modernized, high-efficiency policing service, but its primary goal in making its recommendations was to establish the basis for a “genuine” partnership between police and community. As the Report noted: “it is not so much that the police need support and consent, but rather that policing is a matter for the whole community, not something that the community leaves to the police to do. Policing should be a collective community responsibility: a partnership for community safety” (p. 8). Insofar as operational policing was concerned, the Report stated that “policing with the community should be the core function of the police service and the core function of every police station” (p. 43). It recommended that policing should be devolved to the maximum degree possible, and that an ethos of problem solving rather than reactive deployment should drive the manner in which policing was delivered in local settings. It envisaged an enhanced role for District Police Commanders who would have “fully devolved authority over the deployment of personnel within their command, devolved budgets, authority to purchase a range of goods and services, and to finance local policing initiatives” (pp. 58–9). Every neighbourhood would have “a dedicated policing team” that was “empowered to determine their own local priorities and set their own objectives, within the overall Annual Policing Plan and in consultation with community representatives” (p. 43). The emphasis would be on foot patrol and problem-solving techniques (p. 45). Police training was to be overhauled to inculcate this new emphasis on policing with the community, and a large programme of civilianization would be initiated to secure greater availability of police officers. While the above recommendations related to the delivery of operational policing, some of the Commission’s most significant proposals concerned the development of an institutional framework to structure and regulate policing services generally. These institutions were important dimensions of the accountability measures it proposed, but they also were seen as pivotal measures to secure public confidence in the police and to provide recognition of the diversity of agencies and institutions involved in security and safety provision. First, the Report called for a “Policing Board” to replace the Police Authority for Northern Ireland (PANI), the primary function of which would be “to hold the Chief Constable and the police service publicly to account” (p. 28). Unlike PANI whose membership was entirely appointed by the Secretary of State, the Board would comprise ten elected members and a further nine non-elected “independent” members drawn from a variety of fields with a view to being representative of the community as a whole. The thrust of the Commission’s approach was evident in its “deliberate” choice of “policing” rather than “police” in the Board’s title: “We see the role of the new body going beyond supervision of the police service itself, extending to the wider issues of policing and the contributions that people

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and organizations other than the police can make towards public safety” (p. 29). Accordingly, the Board was envisaged as playing a key role in regulating all actors and agencies involved in the provision of public safety, not just the public police. The Report was sharply critical of the police authority’s historical role, characterizing its relationship with the police as “that between executive collaborators rather than one between a service provider and a regulator” (p. 24). The Commission noted the limited powers available to PANI and the failure of government and the Chief Constable to take it seriously.3 Against this background, the Commission was adamant that the Board should play a significant role in the delivery and regulation of policing. Accordingly, it recommended that the Board should be able to set medium-term objectives and priorities (over a 3 to 5 year basis), that these should be adopted in a policing strategy over a similar time frame, and that it should also adopt an Annual Policing Plan on the basis of these. The Board would negotiate the annual budget with government, allocate it to the Chief Constable, and then monitor police performance against the agreed plan. Importantly, the Board would be able “to require the Chief Constable to report on any issue pertaining to the performance of his functions or those of the police service” (an obligation that “should extend to explaining operational decisions”), and to initiate an inquiry into “any aspect of the police service or police conduct” (p. 33). The second main recommendation concerning a new institutional environment for the delivery and regulation of policing services was that, in each local authority area, District Policing Partnership Boards (DPPBs) should be established to provide a measure of local accountability. It also recommended that Belfast have four DPPBs, corresponding to its four electoral constituencies. The membership of DPPBs would follow the same principle as the Policing Board, involving a combination of local elected representatives and “independent” members. The Patten Commission proposed that DPPBs’ powers should reflect their role in helping shape the provision of community safety in local contexts, and recommended that they should be able to impose a local tax of up to three per cent to purchase additional services, whether from the police or other agencies. The DPPBs were considered crucial to the “policing” vision of the Patten Report, as these would play a pivotal role in the governance of policing and security more generally in local contexts.

The Implementation Process The publication of the Patten Report in September 1999 generated unprecedented debate. While the British Government accepted the Report “in principle”, some of the recommendations caused considerable unease in official circles. Opposition from unionists as well as from within the police and security forces helped ensure that the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 was a very watered-down version of the Report’s recommendations. One former Commission member protested that it had been “undermined everywhere. The district policing partnership boards that are so vital to the Patten Commission’s vision have been diluted . . . The Patten Report has not been cherry-picked, it has been gutted” (Guardian, 14 November 2000). 3

One former Chairperson of PANI noted that during his first meeting with Hugh Annesley, the RUC Chief Constable, Annesley informed him that he disagreed with the very principle of having a police authority (Interview). He also described PANI as “a well-intentioned bunch of amateurs” and stated that “he would pay as much attention to a letter to the Irish News [newspaper]. . .as he would to the police authority” (cited in Mulcahy, 2006, p. 99).


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Under the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, DPPBs became District Policing Partnerships (DPPs) rather than “boards”, reflecting a shift away from an executive role towards a purely consultative one. Belfast would have one DPP, rather than the four recommended by Patten. The recommendation that they should be able to impose a local tax of up to three per cent to purchase additional policing services caused great alarm among unionists and the British Government. For them, it raised the prospect of the police being potentially supplanted by “service providers” drawn from paramilitary organizations. Although in illustrating this provision Commission members had given examples of installing security cameras, funding youth club schemes, and cleaning up graffiti, the British Government considered this level of autonomy deeply problematic and deferred any decision on this until the Criminal Justice Review (CJR) reported, given that it also was considering the issue of community safety. The CJR’s subsequent report recommended the establishment of a system of Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) which would play the role that the Patten Report had envisaged for DPPs (CJR 2000, p. 273). It also recommended that CSPs should have the power to fund community safety initiatives through the three per cent tax proposed by the Patten Report (p. 277). The government did establish CSPs, but declined to grant them that tax-raising power. Instead a Community Safety Unit was established within the Northern Ireland Office to which CSPs could submit funding bids for specific initiatives. In effect, the local expertise and capacity that the Commission hoped would be harnessed by DPPs and expressed in their ability to purchase the policing services they desired, was instead transferred to institutions that fell more directly under state control. After further political negotiations, an updated implementation plan was issued and amending legislation was agreed, resulting in the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003. The 2003 Act included a stronger statement of the importance attached to “policing with the community”. It required police officers to carry out their functions with the aim “(a) of securing the support of the local community, and (b) of acting in cooperation with the local community” (31A.1). When setting long-term policing objectives, the Secretary of State was required not simply to “consult” with the Policing Board, but to do so “with a view to obtaining its agreement to the proposed objectives” (1.2). The Policing Board’s powers to commission reports and initiate inquiries were extended. On the basis of these and other changes, the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) took up its seats on the Policing Board when this was established in November 2001, and on the DPPs when these were eventually established in 2003. Sinn Féin, the main republican party, initially refused to endorse or participate in the new institutions, protesting that the Belfast Agreement was not being fully implemented. However, following further rounds of negotiations, in January 2007 Sinn Féin formally declared its support for the PSNI and it duly took up its seats on the Policing Board in May 2007. Sinn Féin representatives were also scheduled to take their seats on DPPs once these were reconstituted to facilitate this.

ASSESSING THE NEW LANDSCAPE OF POLICING IN NORTHERN IRELAND The processes of reform (or “change”) initiated by the Patten Report did yield specific and visible changes in policing (see generally, Mulcahy, 2006, p. 168–88). The Report had, for instance, outlined measures to downsize the force from approximately 13,000 officers to

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7,500, while simultaneously seeking to increase Catholic recruitment. A large severance package was proposed to facilitate this, and approximately 2,790 officers had left under this scheme by 2007. The Patten Report had also recommended that for a period of 10 years the PSNI should recruit on the basis of a 50:50 ratio of Catholics and “other” applicants, and implementation of this policy changed the force’s composition considerably. In 2001, Catholics comprised 8.3 per cent of the regular force, but by April 2007 this had risen to 21 per cent (and was expected to reach 30 per cent by 2010/11). Female officers comprised 20 per cent of the force in 2007. The immediate impact of the “policing with the community” model did not, however, meet public expectations of what a “normal” or “reformed” police force might achieve. If one goal of the severance package was to provide an exit strategy for officers unwilling to countenance the new structures of policing, it also ensured that considerable expertise was lost to the force. Personnel shortages were widely blamed for a decline in the number of routine patrols and crime prevention activities. In 2001–02 Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary found that “the Service, as a whole, was largely failing to deliver the community policing service articulated within the Patten Report and expected by the public” (HMIC, 2002, p. 1). The clearance rate for recorded crime dropped from 30.2 per cent in 1999/00, to 20.1 per cent in 2001/02. By 2005/06 it had climbed back to 30.6 per cent, although this fell to 23.6 per cent in 2006/07, largely due to a change in the classification of cases in which no prosecutions resulted. This situation was not helped by the fact that, as the Inspector of Constabulary noted, the public’s expectations of the PSNI were “very high, and in many cases, wholly unrealistic”, and the force’s failure to meet these demands often led to “robust” criticism of the police (HMIC, 2002: 19, 2). One police commander recalled instances in which local politicians and community representatives who met with him would point to specific passages of “their bible” – the Patten Report – which they had brought with them, to inform him how they believed policing in the area should be conducted: “But Patten says you have do this” (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 181). In terms of the new institutional framework, while the Policing Board experienced its own difficulties, often mirroring wider political debates, it nevertheless was a more robust and transparent entity than its predecessor, the Police Authority. However, because of their greater potential impact on operational policing, debate about the new institutional environment often focused on District Policing Partnerships. Within a short time of their eventual establishment in March 2003, they were acclaimed as a major success story of the new policing arrangements in Northern Ireland. In evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (NIAC), the vice-chairman of the Policing Board stated that DPPs had “helped to transform the culture of policing in Northern Ireland” and that “the reintegration of police . . . into the normal community is actually being led by district policing partnerships” (NIAC, 2005, Ev. 27). This optimistic assessment was echoed within the police, where the PSNI Deputy Chief Constable described them as “one of the biggest steps forward in policing in a long time” (NIAC, 2005, Ev. 39). Public opinion on DPPs was rather more ambivalent. A Policing Board survey in March 2004 found that 67 per cent of respondents had heard of DPPs, and of these 34 per cent expressed confidence that their local DPP was helping to address local problems while 58 per cent expressed a lack of confidence. A further survey in 2006 found broadly similar findings: 53 per cent of respondents who had heard of DPPs were not confident that DPPs were helping to address local policing problems (NIPB, 2006). When respondents were asked if they thought their local DPP was doing a good job, only 17 per cent and


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15 per cent of respondents (in 2004 and 2006 respectively) agreed that they were. In the first three years of their operation, approximately 90 per cent of DPP meetings attracted fewer than 20 members of the public. The experiences of DPP members also suggest a more nuanced account of these new structures than those offered by the Policing Board and others. At a conference on DPPs held in Belfast in June 2004, DPP members were deeply critical of a number of aspects of their structure and organization (CAJ, 2005). Some felt “abandoned” by the Policing Board for failing to provide them with support (especially training) and even basic information. The formality of many DPP meetings also inhibited its ability to function as a responsive consultation forum, particularly the requirements that questions from the public be submitted in advance “in order to have a written answer prepared by the police read to them at the public meeting” (p. 17). This situation was exacerbated by the failure even to allow followup questions in many instances, a fact that led one delegate to describe DPP meetings as “talking shops stage-managed to avoid controversy” (p. 17). Even a member of the muchcriticized CPLCs stated that he declined an offer to join a DPP on the basis that “It stood for everything that I had worked against as a community activist: it was dis-empowering people. I just thought it was awful that a member of the public has to submit a question in writing and wait fourteen days before receiving an answer” (p. 57). District Policing Partnerships were further undermined by the establishment of Community Safety Partnerships under the auspices of the Northern Ireland Office. The creation of a two-tier system with considerable overlap was characterized by the Policing Board vicechairman as “wasteful”, “burdensome”, “expensive”, “confusing” and “bad on the ground level” (NIAC, 2005, Ev. 29), criticisms that were shared by the PSNI Deputy Chief Constable and the Inspector of Constabulary (NIAC, 2005, Ev. 40, 46; HMIC, 2004, p. 47), and by the Oversight Commissioner who criticized the “role confusion” arising from this (2007, p. 15). In some local authorities, measures were introduced to tighten links between DPPs and CSPs, such as the sharing of support services (although the Northern Ireland Office rejected proposals to establish common secretariats across the sector), but a “wide variation in practice” (Oversight Commissioner, 2007, p. 15) exists across Northern Ireland, and in other local authority areas relations were more distant (in one instance a CSP refused to allow DPP members to join it (CAJ, 2005, p. 23)). The creation of separate structures for policing on the one hand, and community safety on the other was widely viewed, in the words of one member of the Patten Commission, interviewed by the author, as an effort “to ensure that the DPPs wither on the vine”. Limiting DPPs to the role of consulting with the police – while providing CSPs with the capacity to finance local community safety initiatives from government funds – was, in effect, the reinsertion of the state into a space that the Commission believed properly belonged to local communities. A further factor that cast doubt on the long-term effectiveness of DPPs was the manner in which they reflected wider conflicts over policing. Once the “updated implementation plan” was published in August 2001, the SDLP began formally participating in DPPs while Sinn Féin did not. This generated considerable tension between councillors of different parties, and it also undermined DPPs’ effectiveness. The consequences of Sinn Féin’s unwillingness to participate in DPPs were most evident in Belfast. The Belfast DPP had sub-groups corresponding to the electoral districts of the city (the Patten Report had recommended that each area should have its own DPP). The West Belfast sub-group – covering an area in which Sinn Féin holds a strong electoral majority – was composed of “one SDLP councillor – with the remaining political members being unionist – and four independent Catholics,

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none of whom lived in the area . . . On security grounds the sub-group does not meet in the area” (CAJ, 2005, p. 18). This context is, however, a fluid one, and developments continue to unfold that will shape the framework within which DPPs operate. Following the St Andrews Agreement, Sinn Féin declared its support for the PSNI in early 2007, and it was agreed that DPPs would be reconstituted by March 2008 to facilitate the inclusion of Sinn Féin members. A review of public administration in Northern Ireland also was under way, and as a result of a proposed reorganization of local authority areas, it appears likely that the number of DPPs will reduce from 26 to 7.

THE PATTEN REPORT: AN INTERNATIONAL TEMPLATE FOR POLICE REFORM? In recent years, criminologists have become increasingly attentive to the issue of policy “flow” or “transfer” between jurisdictions (Jones & Newburn, 2007; Newburn & Sparks, 2004). Spreading democratic policing – often expressed in terms of community-oriented policing (Ellison, 2007) – now constitutes a major dimension of international diplomacy (Bayley, 2005; Goldsmith & Sheptycki, 2007), and is often linked to wider issues of development aid. The agenda outlined in the Patten Report has placed the context of Northern Ireland centre-stage in such debates, particularly in relation to issues of police accountability and the community’s role in frameworks of security provision.4 The Patten Commission noted the opportunity that their analyses afforded: How can professional policing become a genuine partnership for peace on the streets with those who live, work and walk on those streets? These questions affect recruitment, training, management, structures, accountability, funding, attitude and style . . . We have discussed them with police professionals in Europe, North America and elsewhere. There is no perfect model for us, no example of a country that, to quote one European police officer, ‘has yet finalized the total transformation from force to service’. The commitment to a fresh start gives Northern Ireland the opportunity to take best practice from elsewhere and to lead the way in overcoming some of the toughest challenges of modern policing. (1999, p. 3)

The concrete impact of the reforms implemented was, as noted above, rather more delicate and nuanced than might be evident from the often unqualified praise the Patten Report received. Certainly, it is clear that the Patten Report constitutes one of the most imaginative responses to the issue of police legitimacy and police–community relations ever to emerge onto the political agenda. The Patten Commission had itself recognized the “unique opportunity” the peace process offered “to deliver truly effective locally-based policing in a way that would put Northern Ireland at the leading edge of such developments in the United Kingdom, Ireland and internationally” (1999, p. 43). It was quickly hailed as an example of best practice in as far as its impact on policing in Northern Ireland was concerned; but it also was acclaimed as a template for police reform generally. As the Oversight Commissioner (2003, p. 1) noted: “The recommendations of the Patten Commission and the success of the Police Service of Northern Ireland in implementing them are now being seen as models for many police forces around the world.” Publicity material for a major international conference in 2007 on policing developments in Northern Ireland 4

For a critical review of how the Northern Ireland policing “model” has been used in various conflict situations, see Ellison and O’Reilly’s unpublished paper “From Empire to Iraq”.


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(“Policing the Future”) also characterized the PSNI as “a blueprint for democratic policing anywhere in the world”, and “the most scrutinized and accountable police service probably anywhere in the world today”. Academic assessments of the Patten Report further depicted it as “a model for reform in the future” (Newburn, 2003, p. 99; see also Mulcahy, 2006, p. 191). Here it must be noted that the single institutional development that has attracted the most international attention to date is probably the Police Ombudsman (itself the subject of an earlier major international conference held in Belfast in 2003), and the establishment of that office was first proposed not in the Patten Report, but in a Report by Maurice Hayes (1997) that pre-dated the Patten Commission (of which Hayes was a member). Moreover, the distinct features of Hayes’ recommendations – that a fully independent body should be established to investigate complaints against the police, and that it should have the added power to investigate police policies and practices even when these did not give rise to specific complaints – were not new. In calling for such a body, he was merely repeating demands that first emerged at the very start of the conflict (these had been noted, but rejected, by the 1969 Hunt Committee), and what human rights organizations persistently lobbied for throughout the conflict. Hayes even claimed that “if the government had spent £3.50 to buy the CAJ [a Northern Ireland-based human rights group] publication on the issue, they could have saved themselves a lot of time and money” (cited in O’Rawe, 2003, p. 1058). Nevertheless, the Patten Report and the new landscape of policing it heralded became the success story of the Northern Ireland peace process, and it achieved near-mythic status as a place of pilgrimage for officials from around the world anxious to learn its lessons for their own specific policing problems. As the Policing Board chairperson noted: “Each year police officers, diplomats and public representatives come to Northern Ireland to be briefed on developments in policing and, in their words, to see first-hand what an accountable, modern 21st Century police service looks like” (DPP News, 2006, p. 3). In spite of the Patten Report’s apparent universal relevance, the process of policy transfer is complex and uncertain and researchers have cautioned against the “na¨ıve emulation” of policies developed in other locations (Stenson & Edwards, 2004). The unique political context associated with the development of any policy, as well as the cultural specificity of local contexts, inevitably “filter” and/or block to some extent the policy being transferred (Melossi, 2004; Wood, 2006). In the remainder of this section, I consider two examples that highlight the difficulties of applying new policy initiatives, even those as apparently compelling as the Patten agenda for police reform: recent legislative changes concerning policing in the Irish Republic; and, in Northern Ireland, the failure to implement several aspects of the vision of policing articulated in the Patten Report.

International but not Cross-Border? The designation of the Patten Report as a statement of international best practice gave considerable momentum to cross-border police cooperation between the RUC and An Garda S´ıochána (the Irish Republic’s police force). Following the establishment of the PSNI, greater coordination occurred in relation to anti-racism and diversity training programmes, as well as responses to organized crime, provisions for personnel exchange and other areas of common concern. However, despite the fact that the Irish Government gave a positive response to the Patten Report when it was published and strongly urged all parties to

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support it (and the British Government to implement it in full), the Patten recommendations made only a rather oblique appearance in An Garda S´ıochána Act 2005, legislation which contained the most far-reaching changes to policing in Ireland since the foundation of the state in 1922. Perhaps the most significant divergence from the Patten agenda was the manner in which the Irish Government approached the regulatory framework proposed by the Patten Commission. While the establishment of institutions to facilitate and regulate the various agencies involved in the provision of community safety was perhaps the most significant proposal in the Patten Report, it was also perhaps the one to which the Irish Government paid least interest. The Garda Act did establish an independent Ombudsman’s office to investigate police complaints, although its powers were notably weaker and its resources considerably less than those available to its Northern counterpart. When it came to other aspects of the Patten Report, similar gaps emerged between what the Irish Government promoted in Northern Ireland and what it was willing to implement itself. For instance, the Minister for Justice rejected suggestions to establish an oversight body akin to the Policing Board on the grounds that it would undermine the Dáil’s (the Irish parliament) role in monitoring the police. Despite the Dáil’s glaringly deficient history in this regard (Walsh, 1998), the Minister for Justice maintained that: “What is good for Northern Ireland is not necessarily good for a sovereign state” (Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women’s Rights, 2005, p. 28). While An Garda S´ıochána Act 2005 did include measures to address crime and disorder in local communities, these provisions also were a considerable departure from the Patten Commission’s recommendations. In the Irish Republic, the ensuing measures revolved around the requirement for each local authority to establish a Joint Policing Committee (JPC) with the stated function of serving as “a forum for consultations, discussions and recommendations on matters affecting the policing of the local authority’s administrative area” (36.2). The Garda Act specifies that JPCs are obliged to keep under review the “levels and patterns of crime, disorder and antisocial behaviour in the area” and “the factors underlying and contributing to” these; and to “advise the local authority concerned and the Garda S´ıochána on how they might best perform their functions having regard to the need to do everything feasible to improve the safety and quality of life and to prevent crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour within the area”. The Act also notes that JPCs may, in consultation with the local Garda Superintendent, establish local policing fora within specific neighbourhoods in the area, and coordinate the activities of such fora. While the network of JPCs currently being established in Ireland serves as a structured means of police–public consultation, itself a significant departure from the tradition of informalism within Irish policing (Mulcahy, 2007), the Act left most of the details on their structure, operation and activities to be outlined in Ministerial guidelines that were published in 2006. However, as these indicate, the focus of JPCs remains firmly on consultation; there is no requirement that the relevant authorities act on the recommendations of the JPC, nor is there any provision for a budget to facilitate JPCs establishing their own initiatives. The guidelines recommend that procedures should be as “informal” as possible (a point made no fewer than four times in the guidelines), and that two meetings per annum should prove adequate for most JPCs, reflecting a rather minimalist understanding of police–public involvement, one in which these structures merely serve as public conduits for communicating with the police, rather than providing a means by which the public could participate as real partners in the production of public safety and security. In effect,


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despite the availability and prominence of the Patten Commission recommendations, the Garda S´ıochána Act 2005 has more in common with Britain’s 1998 Crime and Disorder Act (Crawford, 2007; Hughes, McLaughlin & Muncie, 2002) in terms of its provisions concerning the role of local authorities and communities in crime prevention activities. This minimalist transfer of the core principles of the Patten Report reflects the dominant traditions within Irish policing: the informalism that characterized the field of police– community relations generally (Mulcahy, 2007), and the centralism that reflected how issues of state security permeated An Garda S´ıochána and its relationship with government (Mulcahy, 2005; Walsh, 1998). Transferring the policies advanced in the Patten Report became less likely the more its recommendations clashed with or undermined these traditions. As Jones & Newburn (2007, p. 161) note, “it is significantly easier for symbols to be exported and imported than it is for matters of substance to be transferred”. While states may be keen to accrue the political capital associated with a particular vocabulary and symbolism that has gained widespread currency, borrowing concrete proposals that challenges or undermines the political structures and relationships prevailing in that jurisdiction raises a different set of concerns. In such circumstances, the difficulties of implementing even the most innovative of ideas are readily apparent, and their “non-transfer” should not come as a surprise.

International but not Local? As noted earlier, the Patten Report addressed its recommendations towards two key concerns: to improve what the police did and how they did it, and to reconfigure the institutional framework of policing in light of the wide array of agencies involved in the provision of community safety and security. Despite the controversy surrounding some specific recommendations, the “police” reforms were nevertheless the ones that were most closely reflected in the enacting legislation. The recommendations concerning “policing”, on the other hand, were largely ignored. The Policing Board has remained focused on the police, and the potential of DPPs was undermined by the failure to grant them tax-raising powers and by their overlap with Community Safety Partnerships. This was largely because of the difficulties noted above in relation to processes of policy transfer; quite simply, and with no small irony, the Patten Report did not fully “translate” into the socio-political context of Northern Ireland. As Dupont (2006, p. 108) notes: “the selective implementation of the policing board recommendations, which abandoned the broader security mandate in favour of a more traditional form of police supervision, makes clear the normative challenges posed by nodal regulation. In the absence of an existing working model, old patterns represent a force of attraction that is hard to resist”. Policing, then, is not only about the nuts and bolts of operational policing; it is also about how a society understands and imagines itself, and the structures and practices that underpin and enact this imagined relationship (Loader, 2006; Loader & Mulcahy, 2003). In this respect, policing is a cultural enterprise in the widest sense, and when we consider processes of police reform, we must also consider how the proposed changes relate to the prevalent sensibilities regarding policing and social control more generally. In Northern Ireland, the issue of policing was super-saturated with meaning. It was the single most controversial aspect of public policy throughout the conflict, and delays in its full resolution haunted the peace process from the outset. Frank Wright noted that: “in national conflicts, law, order and justice are not issues that happen to arise from other causes.

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National conflicts, once they are fully developed, revolve around these issues” (cited in McGarry & O’Leary, 1999, p. 3) and, as previously stated, Whyte (1990, p. 86) found that Catholics and Protestants disagreed more over policing and security measures than over constitutional issues. Throughout the history of Northern Ireland, the police and other criminal justice organizations played a key role in mediating the relationship between communities and the state. Identities were developed, maintained, challenged and occasionally celebrated through the specific relationship that particular communities enjoyed with the police. Ironically, even police drives towards greater impartiality reinforced community identities that were themselves deemed problematic, as it involved characterizing the police as the impartial umpire between two belligerent, sectarian and immature communities (Mulcahy, 2006, p. 125). The dynamics of police reform vary considerably according to whether the legitimacy of the state is in question. Reform programmes may improve the quality of police structures and activities by providing better training, enhancing oversight mechanisms, and so on, but if the police are tasked with enforcing the laws of a state which is overtly challenged, then police actions will inevitably be directed against those who dispute the state’s legitimacy. However, when the issue of state is – on a day-to-day basis, at least – settled, new possibilities emerge for how policing may be structured. Such was the case with the Patten Report. Its proposals were not ones directed against conditions of widespread political violence, but ones which sought to establish a framework for a “new beginning” in Northern Ireland in which policing would no longer be a source of conflict. While the scale of conflict in Northern Ireland did not match that found in many other conflict zones around the world where police reform remains a key issue (Bayley, 2005), policing was nevertheless viewed as a litmus test of the direction of the peace process generally. Debate on this topic was characterized by enormous antagonism, and the requisite level of trust to secure political progress on police reform (Goldsmith, 2005) was notably absent. Survey findings confirmed this lack of trust. Although a majority both of Catholics and Protestants generally express satisfaction with how the PSNI treat the public as a whole, the differences in their assessments of policing are striking. One omnibus survey conducted in April 2006 found that Protestant respondents are considerably more likely than Catholics to rate the police as treating everyone fairly (74 and 55 per cent respectively) and equally (70 and 51 per cent respectively). Findings from a more recent survey – conducted in April 2007 after Sinn Féin declared its support for the PSNI – indicate continuing differences between the attitudes of Catholics and Protestants, although these appear to be diminishing. While it found that Protestants’ attitudes remained relatively stable, the proportion of Catholics who believe that the PSNI treat members of the public in Northern Ireland fairly and equally increased to 61 and 60 per cent respectively (Northern Ireland Policing Board, 2007, pp. 4–5).5 This mistrust was particularly evident in relation to two concepts central to any understanding of policing: state and community. Nationalists and republicans viewed the state not as an independent mediator between warring factions, but rather as one of the main protagonists to the conflict. While various state policies may have been controversial, the issue of collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries epitomized this mistrust. Allegations of collusion were a feature of the conflict, and this had been confirmed 5

For further evidence that Catholics’ support for the PSNI has increased following Sinn Féin’s declaration of support for the PSNI, see MORI (2007).


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in a series of reports by John Stevens (2003), a senior British police officer. In January 2007 the Police Ombudsman published the findings of a more recent investigation into collusion between members of the RUC’s special Branch and members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (a loyalist paramilitary organization). She reported that collusion had occurred, including the protection of serial murders and the destruction of evidence, and noted that “some informants were able to continue to engage in terrorist activities including murders without the Criminal Investigation Department having the ability to deal with them for some of those offences” (Police Ombudsman, 2007, p. 143). She expressed concern at the stated belief of some special branch officers that “they had no function beyond intelligence gathering” (p. 145), and noted that a “culture of subservience to Special Branch developed within the RUC” such that it “acquired domination over the rest of the organization” (p. 144). The fact that the events in question occurred during the late 1990s while the peace process was fully under way, rather than at the height of the conflict, confirmed that issues of state were entirely central to policing in Northern Ireland. This mistrust of the state was fully evident in the negotiations between Sinn Féin and the British Government, but it also filtered down to local level. As part of a wider strategy to develop acceptable alternatives to the system of paramilitary punishments that operated in Northern Ireland, a system of community-based restorative justice schemes was established in several republican and loyalist areas. Republican schemes generated considerable controversy by refusing to cooperate with the police, although they did work with other relevant statutory agencies. In that context, the “private governments” that Shearing (2006) notes have always been involved in security provision were not abstract entities as far as many observers in Northern Ireland were concerned. Rather such entities were embodied in the history of paramilitary punishments, and in the prospect of organizations involved in the policing and security remaining closely allied with specific political parties. Although these “Community Restorative Justice” initiatives were specifically established in light of the joint failings of state policing and paramilitary punishments, the Northern Ireland Office refused to fund institutions that failed to cooperate with the PSNI, and parallel systems of restorative justice developed, one which was sponsored by government and the police, and one which was explicitly community-oriented (in January 2007 the Northern Ireland Office published a Protocol for Community-Based Restorative Justice Schemes to establish guidelines for their operation).

CONCLUSION The case of Northern Ireland demonstrates the significance of police reform in processes of conflict resolution. It highlights the difficulties of implementing community policing in any meaningful way during conflict situations, and it also provides an important opportunity to consider the broader implications of “nodal governance” for the context of the provision and regulation of security. As Dupont noted, the Patten Report is “probably the closest attempt to date to design . . . a regulatory framework” consistent with the principles of a nodal framework (2006, p. 107). Nevertheless, any effort to assess the implications of the Patten Report is undermined by the failure to implement the vision of nodal governance outlined in the Report. In that respect, it is important to note the specificity of particular contexts, and state apprehension towards nodal governance in the context of policing in Northern Ireland may simply reflect the particular difficulties of governance against a backdrop of

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political violence and state conflict. The track record of government there certainly reveals a longstanding suspicion of “community” involvement in justice issues (McEvoy, Gormally & Mika, 2002). The “governance of security” approach also raises broader questions for the manner in which it de-centres the state. Loader and Walker (2004, 2006), in particular, have criticized this model’s shift away from a state-centred framework of policing, and questioned whether the proposed alternatives can fulfil the “solidarity-nourishing role” (2004, p. 227) of the public police and other state agencies. Here, it must be recognized that proponents of nodal governance do not reject state involvement; rather what they propose is a strategy to overcome the exclusionary practices of the state, one that is firmly founded on the principle of increased democratization of security provision, rather than the reverse (Shearing & Wood, 2003; Wood & Shearing, 2006). Nevertheless, while Loader and Walker recognize the dramatic changes taking place worldwide in relation to policing, they remain sceptical that the market-model advanced by Shearing and others can adequately address the “social” nature of security. They question whether it is more likely to contribute to civic disengagement than to “civic solidarity”, which they view as a prerequisite for the effective, equitable and democratic provision of security (pp. 226–7). In a similar vein, Marks and Goldsmith (2006, p. 164) recognize the diverse and competing demands that individuals – with vastly unequal levels of resources – may make in relation to security provision, and they argue that an overarching democratic framework is necessary to “mediate disagreement, to help build ties and to facilitate participation, as well as to provide space for the positive expression of individualism”. Accordingly, Loader (2006, p. 218) identifies the need “to engage citizens in public dialogue about policing in ways that enable them to see that the security and political freedom of each and all is more likely to be nurtured and protected through their participation with others in forms of common deliberation”. This involves a reordering of state provision of security, rather than the erosion of its authority through an expanded network of security providers. One of the difficulties the context of Northern Ireland poses for efforts to create such a forum for public dialogue is that the peace process itself was predicated on a specific restructuring and repositioning of the state, based upon power-sharing and other measures – both symbolic and structural – that reflected the different political communities existing within the state. Although recognition of this diversity (albeit primarily within a twocommunity model) was an important feature of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, such measures would only come into play to the fullest extent once the various factions agreed to the central spine of the Agreement: to agree on state arrangements. That agreement has been absent for much of the peace process to date, and only in May 2007 was the Northern Ireland Assembly devolved government finally established on what looked like a firm footing. In such contexts, until issues of state are resolved, the political possibilities of facilitating an expanded role for non-state actors – or, for that matter, for effecting a radical reordering of state provision of security – are correspondingly diminished. Although nodal governance has been proposed as a means of addressing problems related to police illegitimacy and ineffectiveness in “weak and failing states” (Dupont, Grabosky & Shearing, 2003), the political constraints evident there during processes of conflict resolution are likely to make the implementation of such measures more difficult. Ultimately, the very conditions that led to the establishment of the Patten Commission – the profound divisions that existed over policing – were themselves the very conditions that undermined its efforts to promote a more multilateral approach to the governance of security. The Patten Report


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may well represent an international template for reform, but to date its implementation in Northern Ireland stands as an example of “police” rather than “policing” reform.

REFERENCES Bayley, D. (2005). Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Policing Abroad. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brewer, J., Lockhart, B. & Rodgers, P. (1997). Crime in Ireland 1945-95. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brewer, J. & Magee, K. (1990). Inside the RUC. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brogden, M. & Nijhar, P. (2005). Community Policing. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. [CAJ] Committee on the Administration of Justice (2005). Commentary on District Policing Partnerships. Belfast: CAJ. Crawford, A. (1997). The Local Governance of Crime. Oxford: Clarendon. Crawford, A. (2003). The pattern of policing in the UK: policing beyond the police. In T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (pp. 136–68). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Crawford, A. (2007). Crime prevention and community safety. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan & R. Reiner (eds), Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 4th edn, (pp. 866–909). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Criminal Justice Review (2000). Review of the Criminal Justice System in Northern Ireland. Belfast: The Stationery Office. DPP News (2006). “Major international conference set for Belfast in new year.” Winter, p. 3. Dupont, B. (2006). Power struggles in the field of security: implications for democratic transformation. In J. Wood & B. Dupont (eds), Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security (pp. 86–110). Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Dupont, B., Grabosky, P. & Shearing, C. (2003). The governance of security in weak and failing states. Criminal Justice, 3, 331–49. Ellison, G. (2007). Fostering a dependency culture: the commodification of community policing in a global marketplace. In A. Goldsmith & J. Sheptycki (eds), Crafting Transnational Policing (pp. 203–42). Oxford: Hart Publishing. Ellison, G. & O’Reilly, C. (Unpublished paper). From Empire to Iraq: the transplantation and commodification of the Northern Irish Policing experience. Ellison, G. & Smyth, J. (2000). The Crowned Harp: Policing Northern Ireland. London: Pluto. Feenan, D. (2002). Community justice in conflict: paramilitary punishments in Northern Ireland. In D. Feenan (ed.), Informal Justice (pp. 41–60). Aldershot: Ashgate. Goldsmith, A. (2005). Police reform and the problem of trust. Theoretical Criminology, 9, 443–70. Goldsmith, A. & Sheptycki, J. (eds) (2007). Crafting Transnational Policing. Oxford: Hart. Greene, J. & Mastrofski S. (eds) (1998). Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality? New York: Praeger. Hayes, M. (1997). A Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland? Belfast: The Stationery Office. [HMIC] Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (2002). Inspection of the Police Service of Northern Ireland for 2001–02. London: The Stationery Office. [HMIC] Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (2004). Baseline Inspection of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. London: The Stationery Office. Hughes, G., McLaughlin, E. & Muncie, J. (eds) (2002). Crime Prevention and Community Safety. London: Sage. Hunt Committee (1969). Report of the Advisory Committee on Policing in Northern Ireland (Cmnd. 535). London: HMSO. Independent Commission on Policing (1999). A New Beginning: Policing in Northern Ireland (The Patten Report). Belfast: The Stationery Office. Johnston, L. & Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security: Explorations in Policing and Justice. London: Routledge. Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women’s Rights (2005). Report on Community Policing. Dublin: The Stationery Office. Jones, T. & Newburn, T. (2007). Policy Transfer and Criminal Justice. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

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Kempa, M. & Shearing, C. (2002). Microscopic and macroscopic responses to inequalities in the governance of security: respective experiments in South Africa and Northern Ireland. Transformation, 49, 25–54. Kennedy, L. (ed.) (1995). Crime and Punishment in West Belfast. Belfast: West Belfast Summer School. Loader, I. (2006). Policing, recognition and belonging. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 605, 202–21. Loader, I. & Mulcahy, A. (2003). Policing and the Condition of England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loader, I. & Walker, N. (2004). State of denial: rethinking the governance of security. Punishment and Society 6, 221–8. Loader, I. & Walker, N. (2006). Necessary virtues: the necessary place of the state in the production of security. In J. Wood & B. Dupont (eds), Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security (pp. 165–95). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McEvoy, K., Gormally, B. & Mika, H. (2002). Conflict, crime control and the ‘re-construction’ of state–community relations in Northern Ireland. In G. Hughes, E. McLaughlin & J. Muncie (eds), Crime Prevention and Community Safety (pp. 182–212). London: Sage. McEvoy, K. & Mika, H. (2001). Punishment, policing and praxis: restorative justice and non-violent alternatives to paramilitary punishments in Northern Ireland. Policing and Society, 11, 359–82. McEvoy, K. & Mika, H. (2002). Restorative justice and the critique of informalism in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Criminology, 42, 534–562. McGarry, J. & O’Leary, B. (1999). Policing Northern Ireland. Belfast: Blackstaff Press. Marks, M. & Goldsmith, A. (2006). The state, the people, and democratic policing: the case of South Africa. In J. Wood & B. Dupont (eds), Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security (pp. 139–64). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melossi, D. (2004). The cultural embeddedness of social control: reflections on a comparison of Italian and North American cultures concerning punishment. In T. Newburn & R. Sparks (eds), Criminal Justice and Political Cultures (pp. 80–103). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Miller, D. (1994). Don’t Mention the War: Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media. London: Pluto Press. MORI (2007). Research into Recent Crime Trends in Northern Ireland. Belfast: PSNI/Northern Ireland Policing Board. Mulcahy, A. (2005). The ‘other’ lessons from Ireland: policing, political violence and policy transfer. European Journal of Criminology, 2, 185–209. Mulcahy, A. (2006). Policing Northern Ireland: Conflict, Legitimacy and Reform. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Mulcahy, A. (2007). Policing, ‘community’ and social change in Ireland. In J. Shapland (ed.) Justice, Community and Civil Society (pp. 190–208). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Newburn, T. (2003). Policing Since 1945. In T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (pp. 84–105). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Newburn, T. & Sparks, R. (eds) (2004). Criminal Justice and Political Cultures. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. [NIAC] Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (2005). The Functions of the Northern Ireland Policing Board (HC 108). London: The Stationery Office. Northern Ireland Office (2007). Protocol for Community-Based Restorative Justice Schemes. Belfast: Northern Ireland Office. [NIPB] Northern Ireland Policing Board (2006). District Policing Partnership Public Consultation Survey May 2006. Belfast: Northern Ireland Policing Board. [NIPB] Northern Ireland Policing Board (2007). Public Perceptions of the Police, DPPs and the Northern Ireland Policing Board (April 2007 Omnibus Survey). Belfast: NIPB. O’Rawe, M. (2003). Transitional policing arrangements in Northern Ireland: the can’t and the won’t of the change dialectic. Fordham International Law Journal, 26, 1015–73. Oversight Commissioner (2003). Overseeing the Proposed Revisions to the Policing Services of Northern Ireland – Report 9. Belfast: Office of the Oversight Commissioner. Oversight Commissioner (2007). Overseeing the Proposed Revisions to the Policing Services of Northern Ireland – Report 19. Belfast: Office of the Oversight Commissioner.


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Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (2007). Statement by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland on her investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Raymond McCord Jnr and Related Matters. Belfast: Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. Rosenbaum, D. (ed.) (1994). The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises. London: Sage. Ruane, J. & Todd, J. (1996). The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scarman Tribunal (1972). Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland in 1969: Report of a Tribunal of Inquiry (Cmnd. 566). London: HMSO. Shearing, C. (2000). ‘A new beginning’ for policing. Journal of Law and Society, 27, 386–93. Shearing, C. (2001). A nodal conception of governance: thoughts on a policing commission. Policing and Society, 11, 259–72. Shearing, C. (2005). Nodal security. Police Quarterly, 8, 57–63. Shearing, C. (2006). Reflections on the refusal to acknowledge private governments. In J. Wood & B. Dupont (eds), Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security (pp. 1–32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shearing, C. & Wood, J. (2003). Nodal governance, democracy, and the new ‘denizens’. Journal of Law and Society, 30, 400–19. Stenson, K. & Edwards, A. (2004). Policy transfer in local crime control: beyond na¨ıve emulation. In T. Newburn & R. Sparks (eds), Criminal Justice and Political Cultures (pp. 209–33). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Stevens, Sir John. (2003). Stevens Enquiry 3: Overview and Recommendations. [URL: http://www. cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/collusion/stevens3/stevens3summary.pdf] Walsh, D. (1998). The Irish Police. Dublin: Round Hall/Sweet and Maxwell. Weitzer, R. (1995). Policing Under Fire: Ethnic Conflict and Police–Community Relations in Northern Ireland. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Whyte, J. (1990). Interpreting Northern Ireland. Oxford: Clarendon. Wood, J. (2006). Research and innovation in the field of security: a nodal governance view. In J. Wood & B. Dupont (eds), Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security (pp. 217–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wood, J. & Dupont, B. (eds) (2006). Democracy, Society and the Governance of Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wood, J. & Shearing, C. (2006). Imagining Security. Cullompton, Devon: Willan.

CHAPTER 6

In Search of a Process: Community Policing in Australia Jenny Fleming Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies, Australia

and Juani O’Reilly Australian Federal Police, Australia

INTRODUCTION Community policing has been hailed by police organizations and academics alike as a major paradigm shift from the “professional” model of policing – with its emphasis on expertise and a centralized, bureaucratic command structure – to an inclusive philosophy based on encouraging partnerships between the police and communities1 in a collaborative effort to solve crime and disorder (Edwards, 2005, p. 79ff). Such a shift in thinking comes as observers of policing worldwide now recognize that the “traditional” police, like many other domains of public service, are increasingly unable to meet the demands of the public given the limited capacity of government in late modern society. Rising crime rates and increased public demand for police services generally have encouraged many countries, including Australia to embrace the concept of community policing. Where there has been corruption and dysfunctional policing and where there are local crime crises, “community policing has been heralded as the antidote, the ‘band aid’ solution to a plethora of policing problems” (Brogden & Nijhar, 2005, p. 13). This chapter examines community policing in Australia.2 It suggests that while Australian police jurisdictions are conducting community policing projects at various levels, community policing as an organizing concept has not been taken up in this country with the same 1

2

We are mindful of the debate surrounding the concept of ‘the community’ (Brogden & Nijhar, 2004, pp. 50–52) and the assumption that community implies non-government input. In this paper we have accepted there are many communities and have considered community policing and partnerships to not only include individuals, NGOs and general members of the public but also to include the participation of other government agencies. Parts of this paper are drawn from, Fleming & O’Reilly (2007).


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enthusiasm as, for example, in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). This chapter argues that despite the proliferation of local “community policing” initiatives across Australian states and territories, organizational and management factors in Australian police organizations are the major constraints to a more developed community policing model. It suggests that unless police organizations adapt more fully to accommodate new ways of doing business, community policing in Australia will remain an add-on to traditional police practice rather than the dominant paradigm it is held to be. The chapter is in two parts. The first part considers community policing in the context of Bayley’s elements of “community policing” (1994). The second part considers the constraints that prevent Australia from adopting a comprehensive community policing model. Our argument is of course not new. The organizational and managerial constraints that have hindered the move to community policing have been discussed frequently in the US and the UK (for example, Fielding, 1994; Vito, Walsh & Kunselman, 2005; Rosenbaum 1994; to cite just a few). In Australia, with few exceptions this discussion has not taken place with any vigour (Fleming, 2006a; Fleming & Rhodes, 2005; Sarre, 1996). In part this is because of the structural nature of Australia’s police organizations and the lack of formal evaluation that would inform such discussion. General appraisal of community policing in Australia has been inhibited by eight separate police jurisdictions all practicing their own form of community policing. As such, it is difficult to make sweeping claims about what constitutes Australian “community policing”. This chapter takes a broad view of Australian policing and its various organizations’ managerial and organizational practices. It acknowledges that there will be significant operational differences across the jurisdictions and that what we offer here is a broad overview of specific aspects of Australian policing practice. Before we proceed with such discussions however we comment briefly on the issues of definition and evaluation.

COMMUNITY POLICING INITIATIVES IN AUSTRALIA Definition and Evaluation Defining community policing has generated much conceptual confusion and in spite of the term’s popularity, there remains no agreed and consistently applied definition of the concept (Seagrave, 1996, p. 6). Despite its elusiveness, there are consistent themes that emerge in the community policing literature. Community policing is generally regarded as representing a major philosophy of organizational change (Goldstein, 1987) accompanied by a range of programs and partnerships to increase interaction between the police and citizenry (Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990). Most commentators agree community policing is about leadership, partnerships, consultation and building trust in the community. It involves police interaction with the public to identify and implement strategies aimed at ameliorating community distress, crime and disorder and providing reassurance (Seagrave, 1996). It is not necessarily a one-to-one link between the police and the public, but often involves a web of linkages between the police, various organizations and the public. Observant readers will have noticed that these definitions have hailed from outside of Australia. One Australian definition comes from an academic/police officer. Beyer identifies three approaches to community policing in Australia. First, where community policing is “seen as just one pattern or unit” within the police organization; second, the term community policing is allocated to “small-scale initiatives, usually local, which are designed to bring police into non-confrontational contact with the community in some way”. The third approach

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is what Beyer refers to as the “wholistic” (sic) approach. An approach that would see “community policing affecting every aspect of the police organization”: (Beyer, 1991, p. 89) . . . being organized in such a way that it could be demonstrably effective and responsive in its service and peacekeeping tasks and in its prevention of crime and disorder.

As this chapter will show, the “small-scale initiative” is the most prevalent form of community policing in Australia. The constraints around “wholistic” community policing are discussed in the second part of the chapter. The issue of evaluation has compounded problems with definition. The lack of evaluation of community policing initiatives and network and partnership arrangements in Australia reflects a general problem with evaluation of such initiatives elsewhere. For many, “it is an unmanageable focus for meaningful operational evaluation” (Bayley, 1994, p. 281). In their study of police research, Beckman et al. (2005) show that the substantive focus of research is police practice and specifically, community policing. Less than 20 per cent of this research empirically analyses specific outcomes and there is little discussion of the quality and effectiveness of community policing. Researchers have found such initiatives notoriously difficult to both evaluate empirically and confirm specific outcomes (Bayley, 1994; see also Eck & Rosenbaum, 1994). Despite the absence of “academically approved” formal reporting mechanisms and scientific assessments of what works and what doesn’t, there are many individual programs and small-scale initiatives across Australia. These initiatives have largely been crime prevention department projects or multi-agency initiatives that in most cases have finite time lines. Some of them have been “successful” in winning awards and receiving national recognition.3 Some have been formally evaluated by “in-house” review and evaluation units. Unfortunately, and especially where these evaluations have been conducted in a way that would meet academic standards, much of this material does not get into the public arena. Constraints around police organizations sharing information about specific initiatives with the public (particularly those that involve specific expenditure) often serve to inhibit the successful circulation of ideas and outcomes. We may never know whether or not in the long term these initiatives will be “successful” and/or sustainable. The following section provides some context for Australian policing generally. It is followed by a brief look at examples of Australia’s “community policing” initiatives.

Australian Police Australia is a federation of six states: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia; and for the purposes of policing, two territories: Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the Northern Territory. Each state and territory has its own government-administered police agency. Law and order is a highly contested policy area and as such Australian police organizations operate within a highly politicized environment (Fleming, 2004). The Australian Federal Police is Australia’s federal law enforcement agency. It also provides a community policing service to the ACT government. The eight police forces range in size from New South Wales with almost 15,000 officers to the Northern Territory with 1,000 and the ACT with approximately 550; a national total of approximately 52,000 officers. 3

See the Australian Institute of Criminology’s website for a complete list of projects and programs that have been highly commended or awarded for their initiatives: http://www.aic.gov.au/

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Funding for policing is a matter for jurisdictional budgets and in 2004–05 real recurrent expenditure (less revenue from own sources and payroll tax) was approximately AU$5.5 billion across Australia (Productivity Commission, 2006). There is no national legislation concerning policing standards, methods or strategies, nor is there any federal control of state police (Edwards, 2005, pp. 31–33) although there are a number of national forums in which Police Commissioners, Police Ministers and others come together to discuss policing and security issues of national importance. To what extent their ideas and conclusions are adapted at a jurisdictional level is largely a function of state and territory responsiveness. Policing in Australia is distinctive. A single jurisdiction will police the diverse needs of capital cities, towns, rural communities and remote bush communities. In addition some jurisdictions have indigenous communities and vast geographical areas. To illustrate this last point, the Western Australia Police is responsible for policing the largest single jurisdiction in Australia, covering a geographical area of 2,526,789 square kilometres (Geoscience Australia, 2005) and providing a policing service to a population of two million (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005). Community policing initiatives take a variety of forms and reflect differences in organizational structures, leadership styles, existing governance structures, resource availability and geographical scope (Gianakis & Davis, 1998). Such variety is particular pertinent in Australia. It would be impossible to identify the varied range of programs, projects and community policing initiatives that have sprung up in recent decades in Australian police jurisdictions. As each jurisdiction has its own priorities and local context, the initiatives, and indeed the general activities defy comparison on any level and we do not seek to do that here. As David Moore noted (1994, p. 202) in his discussion with Australian police managers about community policing: The most significant differences between these responses appear to be not the individual differences of senior police but the differences between different jurisdictions. The differences can thus probably be accounted for by organizational differences between police services and, even more importantly, by differences in state politics.

In the next section we give the reader unfamiliar with Australian policing some examples of community policing initiatives that have been the focus of police organizations in this country. We have used Bayley’s elements of community policing to provide structure to the discussion. Bayley’s (1989) working description of community policing, has four elements: the pursuit of community-based crime prevention activities; the deployment of police personnel in the community to further non-emergency interaction with the public; actively encouraging the public to identify community problems; and creating specific mechanisms so the community can provide meaningful feedback to the police.

Community-Based Crime Prevention Community-based crime prevention is considered a priority of Australian police organizations. It involves encouraging and facilitating efforts by the public to take protective measures on their own behalf. Neighbourhood Watch, Safety House and Crime Stoppers are the most prominent examples, with Neighbourhood Watch probably the best known. The extent of police involvement in these programs varies considerably (Fleming, 2005). The majority of police community crime prevention programs fall within the activities of police crime prevention units. However, in recent times Australian police services have


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recognized the need to engage with intermediaries, such as other public agencies and private sector bodies in order to deliver preferred levels of public safety with the limited resources available. Working with other agencies has become a core activity for some police jurisdictions. Despite the problems associated with multi-agency work in policing (Fleming, 2006a) police in many jurisdictions have become more involved in preventative problem solving and have implemented a number of programs in an attempt to reduce crime and address social disorder issues. Many states and territories in Australia have implemented community-based crime prevention programs to address drug and alcohol issues. In an attempt to reduce alcohol-related violence and crime in and around licensed premises some Australian states have introduced Licensing Accords. These Accords are voluntary agreements between licensees, police, health departments, local governments and community organizations that include establishing responsible serving practices in a local area. There is some evidence to suggest that Licensing Accords can reduce alcohol-related harms. The Surfers Paradise Accord in Queensland reduced alcohol-related violence in the short term. However, the evaluation of the Geelong Accord in Victoria did not demonstrate attributable reductions in violence (Homel et al., 1994; Felson et al., 1997). An evaluation of the Fremantle Police–Licensee Accord in Western Australia did not demonstrate that Fremantle had become a safer place, but there were slight improvements in refusal of service to intoxicated individuals (Hawks et al., 1998). These licensing accords were effective in facilitating cooperation between the police and the community and were an attempt to enhance self-regulation and improve public safety. The focus on crime prevention and community policing in Australia is built around partnerships with communities and other organizations. The national government provides funding (AU$64 million since 2004) for grass-roots projects designed to enhance community safety and crime prevention through partnerships and community policing initiatives. Each year up to AU$500,000 a project is expended for community partnership initiatives. The annual Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards are sponsored by the Heads of Australian Governments as a joint Commonwealth, state and territory initiative. The awards are designed to reward the most outstanding projects for the prevention or reduction of violence in Australia, to encourage public initiatives and to assist governments in identifying and developing practical projects that will reduce violence in the community. Almost all of these awards are initiatives in which police and other members of the community have come together to identify a problem and work together to resolve it (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2005). Individual jurisdictions also offer funding and award opportunities for local initiatives. Unfortunately, not all of these “award winners” have been subject to rigorous evaluation, before or after their recognition. However, some of them have been formally assessed and a more detailed discussion of one such initiative will serve to underline the importance of such evaluation.

Homelands Partnership Initiative Initiated in February 2004, the Homelands Partnership4 is a multi-agency program comprising police, government agencies, community organizations and businesses to develop 4

The authors appreciate the support of Superintendent Mike Keating and the Queensland Police Service (2006) for providing us with the documentation and evaluation of the Homelands Project. The discussion about the Homelands Project is drawn from this documentation.

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collectively strategies that address homelessness in Cairns and associated social and economic impacts. The identified homeless were predominantly indigenous persons from Cape communities who became displaced from communities after arriving in Cairns, North Queensland for reasons including medical treatment or release from custody and then found they no longer had means, or motivation to return home. From a community perspective these itinerant homeless were noted for public drunkenness and incidents of anti-social behaviour which created certain public perceptions about lack of safety in the Cairns business district. In a city that is recognized as a major international tourist destination and in which tourism represents 47 per cent of the entire gross domestic product for the region, such incidents were less than welcome. The program offers itinerants the voluntary choice of returning home (with support mechanisms when they arrive home), access to alternate housing or the option of undertaking rehabilitation programs. The program includes various strategies and smaller initiatives (such as saturation foot patrol at specific times) and promotes associated project development to address homelessness as the core problem of alcohol abuse. Apart from the central objectives of returning displaced people to their homes and the provision of housing and/or rehabilitation, objectives of the project include: a reduction in anti-social behaviour and incidents of violence; reduced levels of crime; and improved perceptions of safety in the community. This project has been formally evaluated ‘in-house’ (February 2004 – November 2005) and is the recipient of a number of awards. While the project has not been without its problems (for example, the maintenance of partnerships, information sharing across agencies and succession planning, see Fleming, 2006a), the level of success has been significant. Regression analysis has established that substantial numbers of adults and children have been assisted to either return to their home, to secure housing or to access alcohol rehabilitation programs. The impact of the Homelands Program in the context of policing and community concerns about safety has been impressive: r A significant decrease in public drunkenness and public nuisance offences committed from 2001 to 2005 for Cairns as a whole and for the subset of Homelands’ clients; r A significant decrease in the percentage of arrests for public drunkenness occurring between 12 p.m. and 7.59 p.m., and a significant increase between 12 a.m. and 7.59 a.m. reflecting the impact of regular Friday night/Saturday morning saturation foot patrols and legislative initiatives; and r A significant decrease in the percentage of arrests for public drunkenness occurring between 12 p.m. and 7.59 p.m., and a significant increase between 12 a.m. and 3.59 a.m. – again reflecting the impact of regular Friday night/Saturday morning saturation foot patrols and legislative initiatives. The delaying of public drunkenness and public nuisance offences until later in the evening has gone a long way to alleviating Cairns residents’ fears about safety issues (demonstrated through data showing reduction in police calls for service) and business concerns about the viability of attracting business and opportunity to the Cairns business district. Visible evidence of social dysfunction such as litter, graffiti and itinerant “park people” loitering and begging has been curtailed, which has contributed to making Cairns a better and perceptively safer environment for residents, businesses and tourists. The partnership participants have confirmed the relative success of the Homelands Program. Recognition of the success of the Program has also contributed to the financial commitment by the Queensland state government in the 2005/2006 budget of AU$1.86 m


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over four years, which includes renewal of existing funding for Police Liaison Community Patrol Officers in Cairns and for newly appointed officers in other major cities in the state. The project has evoked interest from other jurisdictions around Australia and become a “benchmark program” for those who wish to address similar issues in their areas. The formal evaluation meant continuing funding and Australia-wide recognition of the project.

Patrol Deployment for Non-Emergency Interaction with the Public If community-based crime prevention is about police–community partnerships, nonemergency patrol deployment emphasizes the importance of police creating relationships with the public that will facilitate such activity. There have been, and are numerous programs in Australia in which general duties police officers are deployed for non-emergency interaction with the public. Examples include bicycle patrols (South Australia), shop fronts (Taylor & Charlton, 2005) and country town policing (Halstead, 1994). An evaluated example is the Toowoomba Beat Policing project undertaken in Queensland in 1993. Beat policing gives individual officers responsibility for approximately 4,500 residents on a longterm basis. Targeted foot patrol is encouraged and officers use accumulated knowledge to engage in problem solving to address local problems. In the evaluation, researchers found that one officer spent up to 26 per cent of his time in problem solving, in stark contrast to those officers in the region not involved in the project. Residents in the patrolled area were found to have increased levels of satisfaction with the police. Researchers also found that certain types of crime were contained and in some cases reduced. However, the beat patrol had little effect on residents’ feelings of safety (Mazerolle et al., 2003). Other examples of officer deployment for non-emergency interaction with the public include the T.A.G (Truancy and Graffiti) program in Mareeba, Queensland5 aimed at reducing the instances of petty crime and substance abuse amongst truant young people in Mareeba and the Tangentyere Night Patrol in the Northern Territory (Walker & Forrester, 2002). Police in Schools or Adopt-a-Cop programs have been a central feature of most police organizations at one time or other.

Expansion of Servicing In the past some jurisdictions have provided officers to talk to local community groups on issues of concern such as the provision of information and or educational sessions to schools or community groups on drinking, driving and drugs. In recent times some organizations have sought to delegate such tasks to other agencies. For example, in some jurisdictions the Red Cross are encouraged to speak to school groups about the health issues associated with drug use. In Tasmania, Neighbourhood Watch members have been trained to liaise with residents to discuss security concerns and safety strategies. Despite this delegation, many Police and Community Youth Clubs (PCYC) in Australia conduct programs where police interact with young people either through community groups or other relevant public agencies. Many of these programs have won awards for innovative design and practice. Examples include the C.O.O.L (Combined Outreach Ongoing Living) 5

See: http://www.getinvolved.qld.gov.au/share your knowledge/keyinitiatives/showcase ce/police/tagproject.html

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Program in New South Wales (NSW). COOL is a one week program that is conducted by the Glebe/Leichhardt PCYC during school hours of the school term. The program consists of an education session followed by a sport/recreation session. The education sessions comprise crime prevention, life skills, budgeting, resumés, career and job information, drug and alcohol awareness and healthy lifestyles. Sport and recreation sessions include sports clinics with local sporting clubs. In rural New South Wales the Singleton PCYC conducts the Jackaroo/Jillaroo Program. This program is a six-week residential program funded by the NSW Department of Sport and Recreation. It incorporates crime prevention, alcohol and other drug education, life skills and self esteem. Participants are provided with information about courses available at educational institutions for rural employment.6 Police interaction with young people and local schools is primarily about reducing crime and enhancing police relationships with youth. Yet as Edwards has pointed out, parents whose children are part of these initiatives can also be useful intelligence contacts (Edwards, 2005, p. 104).

Creation of Mechanisms for “Grass-Roots” Feedback from the Community Australian police services have implemented a number of programs and initiatives to facilitate “grass-roots” feedback from the community. Police Community Liaison Officer Programs have been in existence in every state and territory in Australia since the 1980s. Examples include the introduction of Multicultural Liaison Officers in Tasmania; Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Liaison Officers in Queensland; Aboriginal Liaison Officers in Western Australia; Youth Liaison Officers in New South Wales; and Business Liaison Officers in the ACT. Police Ethnic Advisory Groups and “community policing branches” have been implemented in most Australian police jurisdictions. They provide feedback to police services on numerous issues including strategies for effective communication in culturally diverse communities. The difficulties are numerous. Edwards points to the example in Perth, Western Australia where a scheme to appoint a community policing liaison officer in 1995 identified “over 20 immigrant groups with a significant number of members, few of whom were native speakers” (2005, p. 105). Good community–police relations are essential for the exchange of information. In small towns, rural and remote communities this is relatively easy. It is, however, much more difficult in large towns and cities where a station may police a population of 100,000 spread over vast geographical areas (Edwards, 2005, p. 60). Local-level community consultation is not a strong tradition in Australia and is largely dependent on internal management policies (Casey & Mitchell, 2007, pp. 218–30). In Australia, where police often operate at some distance from the communities they serve, police themselves largely initiate consultation with communities; compared to the UK and the US, it “lacks a tradition of local community access to police decisions” (Bayley, 1989, p. 76; Moir, 1990). Most Australian police jurisdictions have developed consultative mechanisms particularly in Victoria and New South Wales. In those states evaluations have demonstrated that while there are issues relating to funding, information exchange and achieving sustained effective 6

For details of these and other projects see: http://www.aic.gov.au/acvpa/2004contacts.pdf


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consultation within the organizations’ operational structure, the police agencies have made significant strides in the move to incorporate community consultation as an institutional commitment (Casey & Mitchell, 2007, p. 229). We have shown that Australian police organizations in varying degrees meet Bayley’s working description of community policing. The extent to which these elements are embedded in police management and organizational practice is the focus of the next section.

IN SEARCH OF A PROCESS We have demonstrated that Beyer’s “small-scale initiative” probably best summarizes Australia’s experience of community policing. The spatial dispersion and cultural diversity of many Australian communities militates against a “one-size-fits-all” solution. The rhetoric that surrounds the concept however, both in police annual reports, strategic plans and general media interaction suggests that a more “wholistic” approach is in place. Most crime prevention departments, for example, will suggest that they “seek to actively involve the community in preventing and reducing crime”. Others are more specific and talk about “engaging the community and establishing partnerships to assist in identifying and addressing the causes of the crime and disorder problems that are of concern to the community”.7 The commitments are made in good faith but such activities are invariably small scale or confined to a particular area or community. There is no evidence that a “wholistic” approach to community policing, whereby such a philosophy affects all aspects of police organizational practice, is taking place in Australia. As Bayley argued 15 years ago, community policing in Australia was a secondary policing activity rather than part of core police business, and that community policing was principally an add-on crime prevention program (Bayley, 1990). In many ways this is still the case. As Alpert and Moore observed in the US context in 1993, “community policing remains a concept and philosophy in search of a process” (1993, p. 109). The theory of community policing and the distinct implications it has for the way police organizations are structured and the way in which officers negotiate their business presents Australian police organizations with a number of dilemmas. These dilemmas have been explored elsewhere. For example, the cultural and organizational difficulties of transplanting police theories from one continent to the next regardless of different police styles and conventions has been noted by Brogden and Nijhar (2005, pp. 60–73). Others have examined police officer resistance (Smith & Natalier, 2005, p. 100) and police culture (Chan, 1996). O’Malley (1997) has pointed to the politically risk adverse nature of police organizations. These observations are all valid. All have resonance in Australia. All contribute to the overall difficulties of fully implementing the community policing ethos in Australia. Here we focus on the organizational and policy mandates that restrict the likelihood of community policing becoming the preferred strategy in Australian police practice. These constraints include the absence of structural and organizational properties that encourage such practice; the lack of any sustained state or territory government legislative or policy support for such initiatives; and a high performance culture that has not been structured around the philosophy or indeed the practice of community policing. These organizational deficits are not exhaustive but represent the main barriers to implementing a “wholistic” 7

These quotes are taken from various State and Territory annual reports. The wording may differ but the intent remains the same.

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approach to community policing in Australia. Until these dilemmas are addressed successfully the search for an effective process will continue.

Organizational Issues Australian police organizations articulate their commitment to community policing and working “together with the community in partnership” through their annual reports and strategic plans (APMC, 2005). As we have seen most jurisdictions have initiatives and show some support for working in partnership with the community. However, for the most part these initiatives, programs and projects are established on an ad hoc basis – a “pilot project” where funds and in kind support are provided for a single initiative. However successful these initiatives might be, ongoing funding for such projects is rarely forthcoming. What we don’t see is a level of institutional support that embraces community policing as a way of “doing business” on a regular basis. In the late 1980s, Australian police services embraced a corporate culture that flattened management structures, devolved managerial responsibility for budgetary and strategic planning to “line managers”, adopted high performance management techniques and encouraged local accountability. All the organizations, however, retain strong elements of hierarchical bureaucracies, featuring command and control management systems and are still largely regulated through strict organizational rules and legislation. This observation is not intended as a criticism. In crisis-driven organizations such as police services, centralized, command and control responses are an accepted part of the working environment regardless of reform or moves to more devolved governing structures (Fleming & Rhodes, 2005). Indeed from the point of view of the public, the reactionary command and control response to calls for service is an expected and desired response (Edwards, 2005, pp. 123–125). This is not to say that Australian police organizations have not actively sought to incorporate other governing structures into their organizations. Organizational reform has been driven by managerialist concerns about effectiveness, efficiency and accountability. Despite resistance from some police personnel there has been a determined move to use contracts to deliver police services. For example, governments hold contracts with police services with objectives such as, creating a safe and more secure locality. Forensic and other technological expertise is often contracted out to professional bodies (Bayley, 1994, pp. 130–132). As noted, community policing and working with communities has been a stated commitment of all Australian police organizations. The presence of these various governing structures has led Fleming and Rhodes to suggest that bureaucracy, contracting out and community policing ideals have unintended consequences for police organizations. The limitations and incompatibility of these governing structures start to impact on organizational objectives and constrain reform efforts. The point is not lost on police officers working in this environment (Fleming & Rhodes, 2005). For community policing to be recognized as a way of doing business a number of characteristics need to be present. An organization would need to embrace a non-authoritarian and flatter management structure than is associated with the hierarchical model. It would require a strong participatory management style, one that would empower the rank and file and a stronger decentralized system that would further concentrate decision making at the pointy end of police business. Recent research suggests that the hierarchical top-down


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management style is still alive and well, with the rank and file feeling excluded from discussion and compelled to work within policy guidelines (Fleming & Rhodes, 2005). Vito and his colleagues attest to the same issue in the US (Vito, Walsh & Kunselman, 2005, pp. 500–502). Recruitment and training curricula would need to be redefined and performance management strategies substantially altered (Roberg, 1994, pp. 250–1). Additionally resources (not only financial) would have to be made available on a sustainable basis – community policing is not cheap (Edwards, 2005, p. 121). To date Australian police organizations have not attempted such reform, either operationally or administratively, to accommodate the organizational requirements of “wholistic” community policing. Organizational performance review is a case in point.

Performance Management Australian police organizations are essentially committed to corporate governance and the culture of managerialism, they are output-focused and their operational practice relies on hierarchies of objectives, targets and a high performance culture. There is a preoccupation with measurement for both individuals and the organization. In an organization with a high performance culture, what gets measured gets done. Issues that are deemed peripheral to the “main game” are often discarded in favour of those activities that organizations will be held publicly accountable for (Rhodes, 1996). Such an arrangement undermines the ability of officers and organizations to focus on developing those attributes that will further the “wholistic” approach. Professionally, a demonstrated commitment to community policing is useful when applying for promotion.8 Community policing is about long-term strategies, developing relationships with the community based on trust and reciprocity and proactive policing. A high performance culture poses challenges for those committed to community projects and in its traditional form is unlikely to encourage activity and innovative practice (Scott, 1998). If community policing and proactive problem-solving activity is not an integral part of an organization’s performance structure, then tensions will arise over resource allocation and commitment to an activity that has no intrinsic measurement value (Fleming, 2006a). Two examples illustrate the point. In Australia, one of the ways police organizations are assessed externally is by a rolling telephone survey across the nation. The survey asks questions largely relating to satisfaction with police services. Notwithstanding the different measuring systems in each jurisdiction, these satisfaction levels are detailed publicly via the Productivity Commission’s annual report on government services (Productivity Commission, 2006). Each police organization has developed a measuring device around such figures in an attempt to increase customer satisfaction with their services and appear efficient in the eyes of their state counterparts. In the ACT for example, over 35 per cent of the police organization’s performance criteria for government accountability purposes concern levels of community satisfaction. If we understand that communities are primarily concerned with police response times and the prompt resolution of crime and disorder we can assume that the bulk of available resources will be put into these tasks. 8

Various personal emails from officers in South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT.

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One of the major trends in performance management in Australia was adopting statisticsdriven management approaches (usually referred to as CompStat) in the 1990s (Mazerolle, Rombouts & McBroom, 2006). Imported from the US, CompStat focuses on “mission clarification, internal accountability, geographic organization of command, data driven problem identification and innovative problem solving” (cited in Mazerolle, Rombouts & McBroom, 2006). The problem-solving activities are then measured at a divisional level and on a regular basis. The focus is on “performance and results” (Henry, 2003, p. 18). While such forums appear to encourage the development of strategies to work with the community and reduce crime, invariably time constraints are imposed on such strategies. So, the proactive (and often long-term) activity essential to the success of community policing is weakened because measurement invariably focuses on short-term gains. This chapter is not the place to discuss the relative merits or otherwise of CompStat, either in Australia or elsewhere (see Chilvers & Weatherburn, 2004; Henry, 2003; Kelling & Sousa, 2001; Mazerolle, Rombouts & McBroom, 2006). The important point is that such practices illustrate that measurement undermines community policing. As Edwards notes (2005, p. 310): The CompStat process is antithetical to any long-term approach to police planning . . . if police agencies adopt the approach of working with the community and building partnerships to reduce crime, as police agencies in Britain do, then this can only take place if short-term variations in the crime rate are ignored.

Clearly such rigorous oversight of police practice acts as a constraint against a full commitment to community policing. As Fleming has argued, if police organizations are serious about their public commitment to community policing and associated practices then a “more sympathetic set of [performance] measures than exist at present” are required. “It makes no sense to articulate one set of standards and develop policy for another” (2006a, p. 109).

Funding and Policy In the US and the UK, specific legislation and government funding promote the concept of community policing and consultation. Working with the community is a principal component of police reform. In the UK, policing through networks and managing multi-agencies in crime prevention work are formally encouraged through policy initiatives and legislation. In 1998, the Crime and Disorder Act made working through partnership a statutory requirement for police and local authorities. Police in the UK are required to collaborate with public agencies and other bodies to establish and promote community safety strategies. Importantly, the legislation allows police and local authorities to share information with other agencies (previously restricted under the Data Protection Act) in the interests of such partnerships (Fleming, 2006a). No funding source or policy imperative will necessarily ensure the success of community policing, nor mandate the organizational changes that would be required for such success. However, some formal resource commitment would encourage the application of community policing principles on a more serious basis than small-scale initiatives primarily driven by individuals or crime prevention departments. Perhaps even more importantly, such support would allay the fears of middle management who feel resource and policy issues are a constraint on sustainable community policing initiatives (Fleming, 2006a; Vito,


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Walsh & Kunselman, 2005). Community-based crime prevention is labour intensive and costly compared, for example, to hot-spot policing and targeting serious repeat offenders (Edwards, 2005, p. 121). In Australia, it is generally recognized that without continuing government support it is difficult to sustain reform initiatives. Unfortunately while state and territory police organizations and all levels of government support the underlying principles behind such concepts, significant structural, resource and legislative support is largely absent for such schemes. As a result, there is no formal policy framework within which strategic community policing practice occurs. There is no official mandate in Australia for police to work through partnerships. There is no extra funding for such activity and where organizations have sought to work through networks and partnerships they have done so within existing funding arrangements (Fleming, 2006a). Community policing initiatives are invariably conducted within these parameters. It is clear that a “wholistic” approach to community policing in Beyer’s terms, is not taking place.

CONCLUSION This chapter has suggested that a “wholistic approach” to community policing in Australia is largely constrained by organizational and management factors. In Beyer’s typology, Australia can be said to engage in local, relatively “small-scale” initiatives, “which are designed to bring police into non-confrontational contact with the community”. In Gianakis and Davis’ terms, Australia can be categorized as a “minimal implementer” – one that adopts a philosophy but provides minimal resources to their existing service delivery structure (1998, p. 494). However, there are a number of factors that constrain Australia from becoming a “maximum implementer” (one that seeks to restructure an organization with a view to institutionalizing community policing as the dominant policing paradigm) (1998, p. 494). In his discussion of early community policing efforts in the US, Henry (2003, p. 110) points out that they were largely unsuccessful because they were instituted “within an organizational culture that otherwise remained relatively unchanged”: They were unsuccessful because managers and executives played with them as they might play with pet projects, but there was no organization-wide commitment to them and there were no adequate systems in place to effectively measure their results.

In 2007, Australia is struggling with the “organization-wide commitment”. Australian police jurisdictions are primarily concerned with its reactive emergency response function (in all its forms). Community policing on any scale in Australia will need “to find its place within the hierarchical military model that has traditionally housed this reactive function” (Gianakis & Davis, 1998, p. 486). Conflictual governing structures (such as the bureaucratic processes and administrative systems that potentially conflict with the values of decentralization and the enhancement of rank and file autonomy), an emphasis on performance management in a highly politicized environment and the expectations and opinions of a community whose support is imperative to the legitimacy of the police institution are the primary constraining factors. In an unpredictable environment, the efficient use and allocation of resources is essential. To add community policing to law enforcement duties, conflict resolution and general service, would expand an organization’s functions considerably. As Gianakis and Davis (1998, p. 486) have noted, the “maintenance of a dual proactive/reactive

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patrol capacity would certainly strain the resources of most agencies”. It would not be an option in Australia. The above observations should not be seen as criticisms. Police organizations have always struggled to be all things to all people. Community policing has been criticized for the same reasons and has largely been misunderstood and “oversold”. Community expectations about what police should be doing are clear (Edwards, 2005, pp. 123–125). What they understand by community policing is not clear. A recent national talk-back radio program on community policing in Australia suggested that community policing was about “making police more visible on the streets”. Listeners appeared to agree with this claim.9 Any change to these expectations would require a significant educational campaign. Such a campaign may well suggest to the public that “its structure is inconsistent with its work requirements” and thus potentially sabotage its legitimacy (Meyer & Rowan, 1983, p. 39). Conversely, as Brogden has suggested, such a campaign may raise unrealistic expectations about service delivery and equity (Brogden, 1999, pp. 167–173). The political high profile of police organizations is unlikely to risk such a strategy. Community expectations about police and community policing, and their own role in such activity, have yet to be explored fully in Australia. The whole notion of community policing may not appeal to the average member of the community used to relying on the police to solve crime and keep order. As Waring (1991, p. 21) has noted in the Australian context: The idea that there is a consenting and enthusiastic community waiting to be discovered and that the police are best placed to discover it and to give practical expression to it raises complex implementation questions which require clarification by the police and the relevant communities.

Research in the US and the UK suggests that few people have the sense of community required for successful community initiatives and as many scholars have noted the areas that would benefit most from community policing strategies rarely think of themselves as “communities” (Brogden & Nijhar, 2005, pp. 50–52). A recent survey in the ACT asking residents about safety and security, community involvement and policing suggested that while over 80 per cent of people saw safety and security as their responsibility and over 50 per cent embraced the notion of community involvement, most argued “they were too busy to participate” (Fleming, 2006b). The apparent absence of an obvious “relationship” between the police and various communities in crime prevention and related matters does not mean that community satisfaction levels are diminished. Violent clashes between police and the public, though well publicized, are rare and are not evidence of a negative attitude to police generally. Indeed, the Productivity Commission’s statistics that measure satisfaction levels in the context of police services suggest that people are generally satisfied with Australian police10 (Productivity Commission, 2006). As this chapter has shown, Australian police jurisdictions engage in a number of aspects of community policing. Numerous initiatives in all states and territories are delivered through a range of programs. Significant among the strategic approaches of these programs is a commitment to close community involvement and participation. The ability of police to form networks across professional groups, other public sector agencies and a variety of communities to address common issues, the obvious expansion of servicing particularly in 9 10

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/atb 20060828.mp3 [Accessed 28 August 2006] Full statistical references can be found at: http://www.pc.gov.au/gsp/reports/rogs/2006/justice/index.html


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rural and indigenous areas, coupled with the creation of mechanisms to ensure feedback opportunities from communities and other interested parties suggests that community policing regardless of its flaws, in “fact, logic and judgement” (Klockars, 1988, p. 256) has led to a more proactive understanding of the role of communities in police practice. What Australia cannot boast is a commitment to a philosophy of policing that would imply a “wholistic” approach to community policing. Some of the organizational constraints that prohibit such a move forward have been discussed. Over the past 30 years Australian police organizations have been committed to a series of reforms that have involved a shift from command and control bureaucracy, through contracts to working with the community with, and through networks. Each governing structure is alive and well in each organization. The limitations and incompatibility of such governing structures constrain the wholescale reform that would be required if police organizations were to fully embrace a “wholistic” approach to community policing. Despite the various commitments to working and engaging with communities in pursuit of reduced crime and enhanced relationship objectives, unlike the UK and the US there are no formal policy parameters or legislation that compel Australian police organizations to undertake a committed “wholistic” approach to working with communities. Other legislation, for example, that would enhance the ability of organizations to exchange information and that would arguably progress the functionalism of partnerships is also absent in Australia. Some jurisdictions actively encourage their senior officers to engage with communities and in some cases attach performance indicators to such requests. However, as this chapter has suggested, performance measurement in Australian police organizations is very much situated in the context of Australian policing. While the community and its opinions feature heavily in an organization’s performance mandate, a community’s expectations of its police will also feature strongly in what resources are allocated to which areas. As David Moore’s discussions with senior police officers suggest (1994, p. 202), for community policing to become an organization’s priority, it would require: . . . the public and their parliaments [to] confer full authorization on police for achieving outcomes beyond those traditional outcomes of arresting offenders . . . [until that time, community policing] is not seen as a strategy for the police organization per se.

“That time” has not yet arrived. Until communities are convinced that it is their responsibility to interact with police and actively pursue strategies that will reduce crime and disorder, Australian police organizations will have no choice but to pursue small-scale community policing initiatives leaving them sufficient resources to pursue the more reactive calls for service approach the community has come to expect. The vision of a “wholistic” approach to community policing whereby such an approach becomes “the necessary future direction for policing in Australia” (Beattie, 1991, p. 244) is unlikely to be realized in the near future.

REFERENCES Alpert, G.P. & Moore, M.H (1993). Measuring police performance in the new paradigm of policing. Performance Measures for the Criminal Justice System, Discussion papers from the Bureau Justice Studies-Princeton Project. US Department of Justice, NCJ-143505, 109–142. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2005). Australian Demographic Statistics June 2005: http://www.abs. gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/ProductsbyCatalogue/6949409DC8B8FB92CA256BC60001B3D1? OpenDocument [Accessed 11 September 2006].

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Australian Institute of Criminology (2005). Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards. Located at: http://www.aic.gov.au/ acvpa/previous.html [Accessed 11 September 2006] APMC (2005). Directions in Australasian Policing: 2005–2008, Australian Police Minister’s Council, November, Canberra: http://www.acpr. gov.au/pdf/Directions05-08.pdf [Accessed 11 September 2006] Bayley, D.H. (1989). Community policing in Australia: an appraisal. In D. Chappell & P. Wilson (eds), Australian Policing Contemporary Issues (pp. 63–82). Melbourne: Butterworths. Bayley, D.H. (1990). Towards Policing 2000: Final Report. Report Series No 103. Australasian Centre for Policing Research: http://www.acpr.gov.au/pdf/ACPR103.pdf [Accessed 11 September 2006] Bayley, D.H. (1994). International differences in community policing. In D.P. Rosenbaum (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises (pp. 278–81). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Beattie, P. (1991). The police and the community in the 1990s – Overview. An address to the Australian Institute of Criminology. In J. Vernon & S. McKillop (eds), The Police and the Community (pp. 239–244). Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Beckman, K., Gibbs, J., Beatty, P. & Canigiani, M .(2005). Trends in police research: a cross-sectional analysis of the 2002 literature. Police Practice and Research, 6, July, 295–320. Beyer, L. (1991). The logic and the possibilities of ‘wholistic’ community policing. In J. Vernon & S. McKillop (eds), The Police and the Community (pp. 89–106). Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Brogden, M. (1999). Community policing as cherry pie. In R.I. Mawby (ed.), Policing Across the World: Issues for the Twenty-First Century (pp. 167–186). London: UCL Press. Brogden, M. & Nijhar, P. (2005). Community Policing: National and International Models and Approaches. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Casey J. & Mitchell, M. (2007). Police–community consultation in Australia: working with a conundrum. In J. Ruiz & D. Hummer (eds), The Handbook of Police Administration. Boca Raton: CRS Press, Taylor & Francis. Chan, J. (1996). Changing police culture. British Journal of Criminology, 36, 109–133. Chilvers, M. & Weatherburn, D. (2004). The New South Wales ‘CompStat’ process: its impact on crime. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 37, April, 22–48. Eck, J.E. & Rosenbaum, D.P. (1994). The new police order: effectiveness, equity and efficiency in community policing. In D.P. Rosenbaum (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises (pp. 3–26). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Edwards, C. (2005). Changing Policing Theories for 21st Century Societies, 2nd edn. Australia: Federation Press. Felson, M., Berends, R., Richardson, B. & Veno, A. (1997). Reducing pub hopping and related crime. In R. Homel (ed.), Policing for Prevention: Reducing Crime, Public Intoxication and Injury (pp. 115–132). New York: Criminal Justice Press. Fielding, N. (1994). The organisational and occupational troubles of community police. Policing and Society 4, 305–322. Fleming, J. (2004). Les liaisons dangereuses: relations between police commissioners and their political masters. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 63, September, 60–74. Fleming, J. (2005). ‘Working together’: neighbourhood watch, reassurance policing and the potential of partnerships. Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, No. 303, September. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Fleming, J. (2006a). Working through networks: the challenge of partnership policing. In J. Fleming & J. Wood (eds), Fighting Crime Together: the Challenges of Policing and Security Networks (pp. 87–115). Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Fleming, J. (2006b). Locking themselves in: fear and security in the ACT. For the Community Crime Prevention: Connections and Disconnections Panel. Isolation, Disconnection and Seclusion Conference, University of Tasmania, December. Fleming, J. & O’Reilly, J. (2007). The ‘small-scale’ initiative: the rhetoric and the reality of community policing in Australia. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 1, August, 1–8. Fleming, J. & Rhodes R.A.W. (2005). Bureaucracy, contracts and networks: the unholy trinity and the police. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 38, 192–205.


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Geoscience Australia (2005). Area of Australia, State and Territories at: http://www.ga.gov.au/ education/facts/dimensions/areadime.htm [Accessed on 12 February 2006] Gianakis, A.G. & Davis, G.J. (1998). Reinventing or repackaging public services? The case of community-orientated policing. Public Administration Review, November/December, 58, 485– 498. Goldstein, H. (1987). Towards community-orientated policing. Crime and Delinquency, 33, 6–30. Halstead, B. (1994). Country town policing – a community policing initiative: literature review. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Hawks D., Rydon P., Stockwell T. et al. (1998). The Fremantle police–licensee accord: impact on serving practices, harm and the wider community. In T. Stockwell (ed.), Drug Trials and Tribulations: Lessons for Australian Drug Policy: Proceedings of an International Symposium (pp. 53–68). National Centre for Research into the Prevention of Drug Abuse, Perth. Henry, V.E. (2003). The CompStat Paradigm. Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Publications. Homel, R., Hauritz, M., Wortley, R. & Clark, J. (1994). The Impact of the Surfers Paradise Safety Action Project: Key Findings of the Evaluation. Centre for Crime Policy and Public Safety, School of Justice Administration, Griffith University, Brisbane. Keating, M. & Kennedy, O. (2006). Homelands partnership project. Paper presented at the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime Sixth Annual Colloquium. Communities in Action for Crime Prevention, 14–15 September 2006, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia. Kelling, G.L. & Sousa W.J. (2001) Do Police Matter? An Analysis of the Impact of New York City’s Police Reforms. New York, NY: Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute. Klockars, C.B. (1988). The Rhetoric of Community Policing. In J.R. Greene & S.D. Mastrofski (eds), Community Policing Rhetoric or Reality (pp. 239–58). New York: Praeger. Mazerolle, P., Adams, K., Budz, D. et al. (2003). On the Beat: An Evaluation of Beat Policing in Queensland. Crime and Misconduct Commission Research Report (pp. 1–151). Brisbane: Crime and Misconduct Commission. Mazerolle, L., Rombouts, S. & McBroom, J. (2006) The impact of operational performance reviews on reported crime in Queensland. Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice No. 313, May. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Meyer, J.W. & Rowan, B. (1983). Institutionalised organisations: formal structure as myth and ceremony. In J.W. Meyer & W.R. Scott (eds), Organisational Environments: Ritual and Rationality (pp. 21–44). Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Moir, P. (1990). Community policing: questioning some basic assumptions. In J. Vernon & S. McKillop (eds), The Police and the Community (pp. 59–68). Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Moore, D. (1994). Views at the top, down under: Australian police managers on Australian policing. Policing and Society, 4, 191–217. O’Malley, P. (1997). Policing, politics and postmodernity. Social & Legal Studies, 6, 363–381. Productivity Commission (2006). Report on Government Services 2006. Steering Committee Report. http://www.pc.gov.au/gsp/reports/rogs/2006/index.html [Accessed 9 January 2007] Rhodes R.A.W. (1996). The new governance: governing without government. Political Studies, 44, 652–667. Roberg, R.R. (1994). Can today’s police organisations effectively implement community policing? In D.P. Rosenbaum (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises (pp. 249–57). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Rosenbaum, D.P. (1994). The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Sarre. R. (1996). The state of community-based policing in Australia: some emerging themes. In D. Chappel & P. Wilson (eds), Australian Policing, Contemporary Issues, 2nd edn, (pp. 26–41). Australia: Butterworths. Scott, J. (1998). Performance culture: The return of reactive policing. Policing and Society, 8, 269–288. Seagrave, J. (1996). Defining community policing. American Journal of Police, 15, 1–22. Smith, P. & Natalier, K. (2005). Understanding Criminal Justice: Sociological Perspectives. London: Sage Publications. Taylor, N. & Charlton, K. (2005). Police shopfronts and reporting to police by retailers. Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice No. 295, March. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.

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Trojanowicz, R. & Bucqueroux, B. (1990). Community Policing: A Contemporary Perspective. Cincinnati, US: Anderson Publishing. Vito, G.F., Walsh, W.F. & Kunselman, J. (2005). Community policing: the middle manager’s perspective. Police Quarterly, 8, 490–511. Walker, J. & Forrester, S. (2002). Tangentyere remote area night patrol. Paper presented at: Crime Prevention Conference Hilton Hotel, Sydney 12–13 September. http://www.aic.gov.au/ conferences/crimpre/walker.pdf [Accessed 11 September 2006] Waring, G. (1991). Overview of Community policing. In J. Vernon, & S. McKillop (eds), The Police and the Community (pp. 17–26). Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.

CHAPTER 7

Current Developments Affecting the Japanese Koban System of Community Policing Noriaki Kawamura and Yasuhiro Shirakawa Japan National Police Agency, Japan

INTRODUCTION Policing in Japan was influenced in the 19th Century by continental European models, and there was a sweeping change after the Second World War to establish independent local police forces (around 1,600) in cities and towns along with the national police in rural areas. This was soon replaced by 47 prefectural police forces. It can fairly be said that the Japanese koban, despite its considerable antiquity, was more recently “discovered” by Anglo-American criminologists (Bayley, 1976, 1991) who brought it to the attention of academics and practitioners in North America and Europe. The koban has many similarities with the system of police boxes and highly localized police stations that operated in England and Wales until they were gradually replaced by the concept of Unit Beat Policing in the 1960s as a result of a Home Office initiative to modernize policing following the Police Act 1964. The traditional koban system is now also facing similar pressures to modernize although no one doubts that it will be maintained in the future because it is widely recognized that this system has been one of the columns holding up the low crime rate and high sense of security with which it is associated. We will describe the traditional koban in terms of its physical structure and then go on to describe how it functions as a system of policing. We will conclude by describing how the structure and system is changing to accommodate intended, and some unintended, changes as a result of social and technological developments. There are two meanings ascribed to the koban. The first is a narrow meaning relating to the physical structure of the police box system, and the second is the system of policing that this structure represents, as an internationally recognized icon of Japanese policing. We describe the koban as a policing system because it represents much more than a geographical distribution of contact points where the public can engage with police officers, it is a The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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paradigm of policing that can be seen as representing a set of governance values that are shared by the majority of the Japanese population (Bayley, 1991). We begin by describing the physical structures. There are two categories of koban (in the physical sense). The first are located mainly in urban areas and comprise small police facilities (often less than 100 m2 of workspace) where some uniformed police officers are stationed in shifts around the clock. The second (chuzaisho) are found in rural areas where a police officer is stationed and usually lives with his family. Together they amount to around 14,000 facilities that are maintained throughout the whole of Japan and are the bedrock of community policing (Leishman, 1999). The Japanese people and the Japanese police are justifiably proud of the country’s reputation as being one of the safest among the industrialized countries and although there have been recent increases in reported crime it is considered that its comparative advantage as the safest country will remain. Crime data from other industrialized countries indicate that Japan enjoys a remarkably low level of crime, and although it is believed that the koban system has played an important role in creating the legend of Japan’s high level of security, we identify other factors that should be taken into consideration and which point to ways in which the system is adapting and modernizing. One challenge to the traditional system comes from Japan’s worsening crime situation over the last decade; this caused fear of crime to rise among the Japanese population which is reflected in newspaper1 and other media coverage (see Ellis et al., Chapter 8). In response to these comparatively recent concerns, the Japanese National Police Agency launched a new strategy, the Comprehensive Measures to Prevent the Occurrence of Street Crimes and Break-in Crimes in 2002.2 This recognized that the conventional way of policing might not be working as well as it used to. The koban system as a symbol of historical success now faces a heavy challenge because koban and chuzaisho are expected to make a large contribution to this new strategy. The situation is exacerbated by relatively new issues such as a problem of empty koban (i.e. aki koban, in Japanese), where due to increased responses to incidents and accidents, many of the koban are now left unmanned (see Yoshida & Leishman, 2006). In the light of these new social and policy developments, the future of the koban as the centre point of community policing in Japan will be considered. This chapter is in four parts: r First, we will provide a detailed account to illustrate the koban as both a structure and system of community policing; r Second, we will critically examine the problems and challenges that the koban system is currently addressing; r Third, we will examine Japan’s recent crime trends which have become a hot political issue; r Finally, we will consider the future for koban-style community policing.

THE KOBAN STRUCTURE AND THE JAPANESE COMMUNITY POLICING SYSTEM Overview of the Japanese Community Police Division In Japan there are 47 prefectural police forces with a total of around 250,000 police officers. On the basis of the Police Law (1954), each police force is established as an organization 1 2

See, for example, www.japantimes.co.jp, the leading English-language Japanese daily newspaper. National Police Agency Japan, White Paper on Police 2004, Chapter 2.

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which is part of a prefecture, the regional level of government, and for which self-government of community matters is to a certain extent constitutionally guaranteed. The size of the police force varies in accordance with that of the prefecture; from the smallest (Tottori Prefectural Police) with around 1,200 police officers to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) with around 42,000. In each prefecture there is a public safety commission, whose structure is comparable to police authorities in the United Kingdom, which supervises the police force. At the national level, the National Public Safety Commission and the National Police Agency (NPA) constitute the police organization. The NPA is given administrative supervision by the National Safety Commission, and it in turn supervises and controls prefectural police forces through the power it holds for planning and research on police systems, national police budget, review of national policies on policing, measures to combat transprefectural organized crime and other policing matters that involve action above the level of the individual prefecture. The NPA has in principle no law enforcement powers but has a substantial decisive influence on policing policy adopted all over the country (Leishman, 1999). The organization of prefectural police forces typically consists of several departments at headquarters, slightly different from each other, but would include a General Affairs Department, Police Administrative Department, Community Safety Department, Community Police Affairs Department, Criminal Investigation Department, Traffic Department and Security Department. At the next level, under the direction of headquarters, police stations are divided according to police districts each one of which will have several departmental functions corresponding to the departments at the headquarters, one of which is the community safety affairs section. The number of police divisions is around 1,200 for the whole of Japan (NPA, 2004). The community safety affairs section in police stations is composed of police officers working at koban or chuzaisho, together with those in radio-equipped patrol cars. A small number of police officers are assigned to work in a police station on station-based police activities. Koban are principally located in urban areas, and are operated by community police officers through a shift rotation system. Chuzaisho are mainly set up outside urban areas, and are operated by community officers who work and live in them. The prefectural police headquarters will probably also have a railway police unit, a communication command centre, police vessels and police aircraft, including helicopters. These also belong to the community safety affairs sector. The number of police officers working in community safety affairs is 88,000, making up 35% of all police officers, and most of these are stationed at either koban or chuzaisho (NPA, 2004b). The major objectives of the community safety affairs police are: r to become a part of the local community and engage in activities that are closely related to safety and the daily lives of residents; r to make community residents aware of the presence of police officers and to carry out crime prevention activities such as patrols; r to be the first to respond to emergencies in the local community. Community police officers performing activities such as standing on watch at high profile locations, patrolling and carrying out routine home visits, maintain close contact with the community, as well as responding to incidents and accidents from the koban and chuzaisho. Their actions ensure the safety and peace of community life by preventing crimes, apprehending criminal suspects, controlling traffic, offering juvenile guidance, protecting lost

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children and inebriates and counselling citizens in trouble. Community police officers at koban and chuzaisho have become national and international icons and are seen as having a dual role being both tough crime-fighters and friendly protectors of community residents. The koban system plays a major role in keeping local communities safe and peaceful. The existence of community police officers at koban and chuzaisho provides a visible presence that gives a great sense of security. Ideally, since community police officers at koban and chuzaisho are always visible on the street, community residents feel free to visit them often. Frequent communication with local residents enables community police officers to understand and respond to the needs of community residents with care and consideration. In addition to giving a sense of security, police activities such as patrol and home visits inform community police officers at koban and chuzaisho about crime situations and the needs of community residents. By immediately responding to all police incidents, koban-style policing serves to dispel the unease of local communities.

History of the Koban System3 After the end of governance by the Shogun in 1867, the Japanese political system was drastically changed through what is called the Meiji Revolution. More political power was centralized by the new government, and it created many modern western institutions and introduced technologies into various areas. It was under these circumstances that Japan began its march towards becoming a modern nation state, and introduced the modern police system. As part of this process, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was established in 1874 to protect public order in the capital. In that year, kobansho were established at major intersections and other important locations in Tokyo. Although kobansho became koban later on, kobansho were the designated places from which patrol officers were to conduct their duties (similar police box systems were in use in urban parts of Britain at this time). At kobansho, patrol officers carried out watch duties in shifts along with other activities. In 1881, the Tokyo MPD changed the name of kobansho to hashutsujo (police box), which was the beginning of today’s koban system. This system was adopted later by other prefectures. 330 police boxes were set up, manned by 2,042 officers. In 1886, when the Local Civil Service System was created by imperial decree, a “one police station for one county or city” system was established. In 1888, the Ministry of the Interior issued an administrative ordinance to all prefectures, except for Tokyo, requiring them to set up “chuzaisho (residential police boxes)” in every town and village, based on this principle. Before this ordinance, police forces had been concentrated in urban areas. After this ordinance police officers were permanently deployed throughout Japan. Since each chuzaisho was manned by only one police officer, the nationwide deployment of police officers was possible without a huge staff increase. In 1897, there were 1,255 police boxes and 11,047 residential police boxes. The police officers working through the shift rotation system based at hashutsujo and the police officers working while residing at chuzaisho served to ensure the safety of the local community, creating the prototype of the local police today who make up the core of koban and chuzaisho. 3

Source: http://www.npa.go.jp/english/seisaku1/JapaneseCommunityPolice.pdf


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Although Aldous and Leishman (2000) suggest that the koban can be seen primarily as an agency of surveillance, rather than one concerned more with social service, the authors concede that the koban system has continued to be developed from the viewpoint of keeping local communities safe. After the Second World War, in some areas koban were abolished, and police forces were centralized at police stations based on a suggestion by US researchers, who were invited to Japan by the occupying US forces. However, this system did not survive long and the original koban system was soon resumed. We argue that this shows that the koban has been the critical structure and system for keeping communities safe rather than a means of surveillance by government. This is because under the post-war circumstances where the occupying US forces strongly promoted Japanese modernization and restructuring in favour of democracy, the restoration of koban would have been difficult had it been nothing but an institution for surveillance of citizens by the state. As an alternative explanation it would be more natural to see the koban system as a functional development, not dissimilar to that in other industrialized modern societies, providing a system of community policing that is widely accepted by citizens. Of approximately 250,000 police officers nationwide, about 88,000 (35%) are assigned to community affairs police activities. In Japan, police officers are divided into nine ranks: superintendent general, superintendent supervisor, chief superintendent, senior superintendent, superintendent, police inspector, assistant police inspector, police sergeant and police officer. The MPD Superintendent General is the only officer to hold the highest rank of “superintendent general.” Generally, the chief of a prefectural police headquarters department is ranked as superintendent supervisor, whereas the chief of a small prefectural police headquarters department is ranked as chief superintendent. In order to integrate and coordinate the prefectural police, prefectural police officers who hold the rank of senior superintendent or above are national government employees. Community police officers at koban and chuzaisho are ranked Assistant Police Inspector or below. Their age varies, but all new recruit officers start their police work at koban after initial training. There is a police academy for each prefecture where the core curriculum prepares recruits for working at koban. Koban chiefs, who usually hold Assistant Police Inspector rank, command their subordinates as well as engaging in the same type of duties if necessary (Leishman, 1999; NPA, 2004b). In 1970 a three-shift system replacing the traditional two-shift system was adopted across the country. The only exception was the MPD, which introduced a four-shift system in 1972, with overnight duty every four days. In 1974, the formal name also became koban, and the word began to be displayed in the Roman alphabet above the entrance to help foreign visitors recognize a police box. It can be observed that the koban system has a history of more than 100 years, during which time koban have become fixed in the lifestyle of community residents as the bases of community police activity.

Operation Units Responding to “Dial 110” (hyakutoban) Radio-equipped patrol cars are deployed at each prefectural police headquarters and divisional police station. Community police officers use them for routine patrols, arresting and conveying offenders, and rushing to the scene of crimes, accidents and other emergencies. Usually these mobile patrol officers perform their duties in pairs, with one officer driving the car, while the other officer engages in radio communication and observation. These cars

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remain in constant radio contact with their police station and the communication command centre of each prefectural police headquarters. As of April 2005, 41 prefectural police departments have introduced a “patrol car location system,” which enables communication command centres to pinpoint the current location of patrol cars using a global positioning system (GPS). This system makes it easier for the communication command centre to find the nearest patrol cars to a scene and to order the correct number of patrol cars to deal with incidents. If members of the public are in need of immediate police assistance such as when they are victims of crimes or involved in accidents, they can call “Dial 110”. All prefectural police headquarters have a communication command centre in order to respond to emergency “Dial 110” calls. When a serious crime occurs, a communication command centre issues an emergency deployment order. Police officers, regardless of their duty, are ordered to conduct searches, interviews and carry out securing evidence. The number of “Dial 110” calls has increased annually. In 2004, the police received about 9.5 million calls nationwide, about 1.8 times more calls than a decade previously. This drastic increase can be explained by the expansion of cellular phone usage.

Koban Duties In this section we provide a detailed description of policing activities at the koban as this is often of interest to practitioners and policy makers who wish to adopt elements of the koban system into their community policing models. In the second part of the chapter we critically appraise the general effectiveness of this paradigm of policing and how it is responding to new challenges.

Vigilance at koban Community police officers maintain vigilance by standing watch in front of the koban or sitting watch inside, which enables police officers to respond immediately to any incidents. Since many koban are located in busy areas such as in front of railway stations or in shopping streets, the fact that police officers are in sight of citizens is a significant source of reassurance. While they should maintain constant watch from the koban, in reality they deal with countless routine tasks such as giving directions, handling lost and found articles, counselling citizens in trouble and receiving crime reports.

Patrols Patrols on foot and by bicycle are the most important duty for community police officers in that the visible presence of police officers in their uniforms prevents crimes and gives a sense of security to community residents. Through patrols, community police officers gain a precise knowledge of the community such as its topography and crime hot spots. On patrol they question suspicious-looking persons, provide traffic guidance and enforce-


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ment, instruct juveniles, warn citizens of imminent dangers and protect lost children and inebriates. In response to the worsening crime situation, the National Police Agency has encouraged all prefectural police departments to prioritize crime prevention activities on the streets. Most police departments have given top priority to patrols and to increasing patrol hours by extending patrol car operating hours and setting up new units for foot patrols. A second new challenge, that of protecting children, especially in school and on the way to and from school, is now a great concern since a shocking and dreadful case in Osaka in 2001, when seven school children were stabbed to death in school by an intruder. Police patrols are often conducted near schools in the mornings. The police will react to the wish of citizens worrying about their security. For example, for those who consult the police about alleged stalking, the police will, if necessary, patrol the area around the house and put a note in their mail box to confirm that they have checked the area and found nothing suspicious, or they will offer some other advice or police action if something suspicious has been noticed.

Routine visits to home and workplace From a non-Japanese perspective the fact that community police officers periodically make routine visits to homes and offices when patrolling areas they are in charge of can appear to be both controversial and intrusive, and may contribute to the comments by Aldous and Leishman regarding the koban as a system of state surveillance. The way the system operates is that during these visits, community police officers give advice on crime prevention as well as listening to opinions and requests for improvement of police services. When an officer visits homes or workplaces, he asks the people he speaks with to fill out a “door-todoor visit card”, which requires details to be provided of family or employee composition and emergency contact information in case they have to be contacted because of a crime, accident, or other emergency (Aldous & Leishman, 2000).

First response to crime and accidents When an accident or incident occurs within their jurisdiction, community police officers at the koban and chuzaisho immediately go to the scene and take measures such as arresting criminals, preventing danger and maintaining the crime scene. After receiving a “Dial 110” call, a communication command centre at the prefectural police department reports it to the relevant police station. The police station dispatches officers from the nearest koban or sends radio-equipped patrol cars to the scenes. If certain serious crimes occur and the suspects are at large, community police officers within some distance of the scene are deployed immediately. They may set up checkpoints to find suspects. When community police officers arrive at the scene, they are expected to gather evidence, preserve the scene, arrest suspects and protect citizens. If further investigation is necessary, community police officers hand the case over to specialized police officers such as detectives or traffic officers.

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Clearance of crimes Community police officers play an important role in clearing-up crimes. In 2004, 323,615 Penal Code offence suspects were detected by community police officers, which accounts for 83.2% of all detected offenders. They also cleared about 6.3 million traffic law violations, which accounts for 53% of all. Approximately 47% of Penal Code offences cleared by community police officers started with the questioning of suspicious persons (NPA, 2004a).

Information transmission activities The koban also serves as a community intelligence centre. Community police officers act as a channel for conveying information about local issues such as circumstances concerning incidents and accidents within their jurisdiction and crime prevention measures to community residents through their various activities. One of the main methods used to inform residents is newsletters, which are designed to be passed around or distributed to households within the jurisdiction of the koban. In the newsletters koban officers report local events or incidents and accidents, and recommend crime preventive methods. For example, the newsletters may inform community residents where purse-snatches have been occurring or may provide details of suspicious persons. These newsletters play an important role in promoting friendly relations between the police and the community.

Koban (Chuzaisho) Liaison Councils As part of local police governance there are about 13,500 koban (chuzaisho) Liaison Councils, where community police officers and community residents discuss local security. Council members are selected by the police from community residents who are well known and are aware of the actual situation of the locality. Consideration is given to the occupation, age, sex etc. of council members to ensure that they are representative of the community. Council members express opinions, make requests and study community issues to promote community safety activities. Community police officers at koban or chuzaisho lead the councils and encourage members to hold meetings and facilitate discussions. The Councils hold meetings periodically and more frequently when crimes, accidents or incidents occur consecutively in the locality, causing unease amongst community residents.

Counselling services for citizens Community police officers provide counselling on juvenile issues, consumer victimization, drug abuse, incidents involving Yakuza (members of Japanese crime organizations), extortion and debt collecting, intervention in civil affairs and traffic accidents. Other activities include joint patrols with local residents, protection of children on school roads and removal of illegally parked bicycles etc.


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CURRENT PROBLEMS FACING THE KOBAN SYSTEM The Problem of Unmanned Koban (aki koban) An unmanned koban arises when no police officer is present when people visit and this is currently a big problem. As of April 2004, approximately 38% of koban have less than two officers per shift, which means that they often tend to be empty. Ideally, in order to respond to residents in the community, police officers should always be available at the koban, but at the same time they also need to go out on patrol and provide an emergency response when crimes or accidents happen. As the total of 110 calls has drastically increased, community police officers can no longer spend enough hours simply waiting at the koban in the traditional way. In 2004, the NPA asked 3,000 people their opinion about koban and chuzaisho and 2,148 responded. Although about 85% knew the location of the koban and chuzaisho nearest to their home, 56% had experienced no police officer being present when they visited and 65% wanted the empty koban situation to be resolved. The worsening crime situation has become a hot political issue, and the responsible Cabinet member in the national government started to discuss countermeasures against crime in 2003. At the Cabinet council, it was decided that the government should solve the empty koban problem. The survey asked respondents how they wished to remedy this situation: 58% simply wanted technology to be installed at the koban allowing them to communicate with the central police station when no police officers were present; 20% wanted koban and chuzaisho to have rooms for counselling and meetings with local residents; and 19% wanted koban and chuzaisho to have parking lots to improve accessibility for motorists. To solve the problem, the Japanese Government has increased the number of police officers every year since 2001, which is an exceptional measure in the current difficult economic circumstances where personnel costs in the public sector are now being stringently cut. There also seems to be a problem where a koban should have ceased to exist as a result of city development, but remains on account of strong opposition to its removal by community residents. These koban are to be reorganized. In the summer of 2004, all prefectural police headquarters drew up their own plans and have been implementing them, reallocating koban and chuzaisho to eliminate the unmanned koban problem by 2007. In addition, equipment enabling visitors to communicate with police stations by TV is being deployed. Hiring police koban counsellors, who are usually retired police officers, is also one of the solutions. They are deployed at koban and assist the activities of community police officers, which has led to a strengthening of police patrols by community police officers while keeping staff available at kobans at all times. The deployment of these counsellors makes it easier for officers to go on the beat without leaving the koban unmanned. In 2004, the number of koban counsellors was about 3,000 across the country (see discussion in Yoshida & Leishman, 2006).

Decline in Chuzaisho Operations The number of chuzaisho has been decreasing over the past 10 years. Because the number of crimes has drastically increased, especially in urban areas and at night-time, chuzaisho

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are increasingly being replaced by koban. In addition, community police officers are often reluctant to work at chuzaisho because their families sometimes have to respond to visitors when police officers are out. This lack of clear distinction between duty and private lives places a great burden on family members although a small allowance is paid as compensation. Now the number of community police officers who live with their family at chuzaisho has decreased, though it is still the preferred option whenever possible. There have been attempts to set up chuzaisho in urban areas to rebuild community solidarity and deter crime. This attempt is expected to bring together the local community and engage them in police activities. But the number of such chuzaisho is very limited and they still remain experimental. Police officers at these chuzaisho make efforts to create an atmosphere where people are willing to visit. This type of chuzaisho is equipped with a “community room” where local residents can get together for meetings and volunteer for crime prevention activities. Police officers play important roles in rebuilding a sense of “community” in urban areas, where residents tend to act more individually.

New Difficulties in Routine Visits to Homes and Workplaces Increasing urbanization and the trend towards more individualized lifestyles means that for community police officers it is getting more difficult to conduct routine visits to homes and workplaces. Responding to the increase in crimes and accidents reduces the time officers have available for such visits. Current urban lifestyles often mean that people are out during the daytime, when visits to houses are carried out, because both couples work outside the home. Even though police officers still visit homes, many residents are unavailable and some are even unwilling to cooperate with the police. To resolve this issue, some prefectural police headquarters departments have assigned older and experienced officers at koban to make routine visits to homes and workplaces. In addition, these older police officers participate in various community gatherings to establish strong lines of communication with community residents. These difficulties and challenges to the traditional koban system must be seen in the context of changes to Japan’s crime rate.

JAPAN’S CURRENT CRIME SITUATION Japan has a population in excess of 120 million, twice the population of the United Kingdom. The number of crimes reported to the police in Japan in 2002 reached the highest record in the post-war period. In that year 2,853,739 Penal Code offences were reported to the police and this continued a trend of high and increasing crime levels that had been observed over a continuous period of seven consecutive years. When considering that the same data from 10 years previously (in 1993) was 1,801,150, this 63% increase was highly significant for the Japanese people. The rising levels of recorded crime inevitably also led to a considerable fall in the detection rate, and to questions about the effectiveness of the Japanese police, in spite of the supposedly far worse situation in other western industrial countries. However, since 2002, the recorded crime trends have begun to reverse. In 2005, the number of Penal Code offences reported to the police was 2,269,293, which was a substantial fall, continuing a decreasing trend for the three consecutive years since 2003. On the other hand, the number of clearances was 649,503, which had fallen from 2004. The detection rate in 2005, reflecting a rising trend since 2002, was 29%.

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Source:

The Police White Paper (2005).

Reported offences 1,782,944 1,812,119 1,899,564 2,033,546 2,165,626 2,443,470 2,735,612 2,853,739 2,790,136 2,562,767 Detected offences 753,174 735,881 759,609 772,282 731,284 576,771 542,115 592,359 648,319 667,620 Detected offenders 293,252 295,584 313,573 324,263 315,355 309,649 325,292 347,558 379,602 389,027 Detection rate 42.2 40.6 40.0 38.0 33.8 23.6 19.8 20.8 23.2 26.1

1995

Table 7.1 Penal Code Offences: Trend in 1995–2004

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THE HANDBOOK OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED POLICING Table 7.2 Serious crimes 2005

Reported number Detected number Detected offender

murder

robbery

rape

abduction & kidnapping

indecent assault

1,419 1,342 1,391

7,295 3,666 4,154

2,176 1,403 1,107

320 232 187

9,184 3,656 2,225

Table 7.3 Serious theft crimes 2005 burglary Reported number 290,595 Detected number 104,816 Detected offender 13,548

car theft purse-snatching pick-pocketing 58,737 13,765 3,823

39,399 13,561 2,259

19,198 3,791 970

In 2005, serious offences (murder, robbery, rape, abduction and kidnapping, and indecent assault)4 and violent offences (unlawful assembly with dangerous weapons, assault, bodily injury, intimidation and extortion) reported to the police fell, continuing a downward trend from the previous year. The number of incidents of murder, robbery, arson, rape, abduction and indecent assault in 2005 is shown in Table 7.2 above. The number of theft offences reported to the police in 2005, was 1,725,072, a sharp fall continuing a downward trend since 2003. The number of intellectual-type offences such as fraud and forgery in 2005 was 97,500, which had risen from 2004. Concerning the number of clearances in 2005, violent offences and intellectual offences rose, though that for serious and theft offences fell. Unfortunately, the method of using crime victim surveys to ascertain actual levels of victimization has not been adopted by the Japan National Police Agency. But the Justice Ministry does participate in the International Crime Victims Surveys (ICVS) and this will be described in Chapter 8. Although this methodology is not well accepted and established in Japan, we can at least confirm from these international comparisons that the crime situation in Japan is not worse than in the other countries that took part in the ICVS. The effect of rising crime rates on the public psyche, politicians and police leaders cannot be underestimated. This represented a crisis in Japanese policing and for the koban system in particular. How can the recent rapid increases in the number of recorded crimes best be explained? One possibility is that victims’ behaviour concerning whether they will report a crime to the police or not, has changed rapidly; the recognition that crime levels had been constantly increasing and had reached boiling point may have led people to report less serious crimes to the police. In this regard it appears to the authors that Japanese citizens may have moved into the large dark field of unreported relatively minor crimes because the rising fear of crime has driven them to report crimes to the police in the hope that the police will strengthen countermeasures. It would, however, not be correct to claim that the crime situation has not deteriorated in Japan at all. Two types of offences that should be mentioned here as explicit evidence of the real growth of crime are vehicle thefts and 4

These offences are statistically counted as “serious crimes” in Japan.


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break-in robberies (aggravated burglaries). These are both considered to be offences which victims are more likely to report to the police mainly because the former is an insurance matter and because of the seriousness of the latter. The reported number of vehicle thefts was 58,737 in 2004 in compared with 35,730 ten years ago (in 1995). Break-in robberies amounted to 1,458 in 2004 compared with 1,032 in 1995. Among these, 954 were robberies involving breaking into a dwelling (around 2.8 times as many as in 1995) and 680 were robberies involving breaking into convenience stores (5.9 times more). Homicide offences do not show much increase and in any case should not be adopted as a measurement of rising crime. The reason being that although even one case can have a sensational impact on fear of crime, the fact that in more than 80 % of homicide cases in Japan the victims are family members or near acquaintances of suspects means that they are not an appropriate barometer of the Japanese public’s sense of security. Overall, these numbers might seem to be very small for a country of over 120 million people, especially when comparing similar data in western industrialized countries. It could give the correct impression that Japan is still a safe country but the incorrect impression of complacency that the crime situation is not being taken seriously at all. However, it would not be sensible to attempt to reassure the citizens of Japan by pointing out that there are still lots of places abroad where crime is raging more seriously. For this reason it is vitally important for Japanese policing to tackle both the psychology of the fear of crime among the Japanese people as well as to crack down on the increasing levels of recorded crimes. Strategies are being developed to support these two objectives which we discuss below. Since 2003, the NPA has taken measures against street crimes and break-in crimes. The driver of this action is the increase in major street crimes, especially extortion on the street (robbery), vehicle load theft, vending machine theft, motor vehicle theft, street robbery, purse-snatching and motorcycle abduction, as well as the growth in break-in crimes such as robberies, burglaries and intrusions into dwellings. Two causes of these crimes are thought to be organized crime gangsters and juvenile criminals.

THE FUTURE OF KOBAN Changing Strategy As described above, Japanese society is currently facing, for the time being, a serious crisis with regard to the threat of crime. Although there is evidence of a recent decrease in crime, it would be too optimistic to expect that this trend will continue and consequently enable a return to the very low crime levels that the Japanese people used to enjoy in the past, without sweeping countermeasures being taken. Such measures are now being introduced. To demonstrate the seriousness with which this situation is viewed in Japan, in 2003 the Japanese Government created a committee which consists of all Cabinet members with the Prime Minister as its chairman, in order to foster countermeasures against crime and coordinate the activities of all ministries involved, with the aim of restoring Japan’s reputation as “the safest country in the world”. This august committee published the Action Programme for the Realization of a Society Resistant to Crime. With such high level strategic involvement, crime countermeasures have now become a high-profile political issue. This programme proposed a wide range of ideas to deal with problems which the police should tackle in partnership with other administrative organizations. Most of the strategies coincide

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with the Comprehensive Measures to Prevent the Occurrence of Street Crimes and Breakin Crimes, introduced by the NPA in 2004. These strategic documents represent a new epoch in that it has been strongly recognized that the safety of society can no longer be achieved by relying only on police investigation activities. In other words, so long as the number of crimes was small, the Japanese police managed to maintain security by putting emphasis on detecting as many cases as possible. But now the number of crimes reported to the police seems to have exceeded the limit of police investigation to dispose of them effectively. This has led to the need to directly pursue strategies for the prevention of crime which has recently been recognized and given a higher priority than before, and the need for partnerships among various institutions such as local authorities and volunteer groups which are now being strengthened. Another key aspect of the Comprehensive Measures by the police has been establishing new public management practices through a process which is called the management cycle. This idea had been relatively unfamiliar in the Japanese police, who had been inclined to believe that managerialism is not suitable for police work. Police forces, especially police stations, are now trying to analyse the crime situation in their jurisdictions and are setting up action plans taking the opinions of community residents into consideration. When working out plans, modern technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) for mapping crime are also used. A national GIS system was introduced in 2005. In some areas police performance information and recorded crime data in an anonymized format is made available to the public through internet facilities. Kyoto Prefectural Police has a well-developed and highly acclaimed website which receives considerable attention.5 An attempt is being made to measure the performance of actions, and discussions are being held to identify the appropriate outcomes and these judgments and decisions should be available when the next police action plan is set up.

Changes to the Traditional Role of Koban If, as we have emphasized, thorough and effective police investigation has sustained a relatively crime-free society over many decades, it may seem that Japanese community policing, which flourished with the koban system at its centre, is no longer functional. Ironically, some might argue that the koban system is important because the majority of less serious crimes are dealt with by the police officers in koban and chuzaisho. Yet, the koban’s contribution to crime investigation is not the only way to measure its importance, the koban system having functioned as an iconic symbol of community policing. It is quite difficult to measure its preventative performance, for example, the number of crimes the koban system has prevented each year. It can be said that preventive activities like patrolling, along with enhancing solidarity in communities, has made committing crimes more difficult, especially by local criminal juveniles, and this has contributed to crime reduction. Further, looking at the historical development of public opinion towards koban and chuzaisho, it can be said that at least the koban system had significant meaning for the Japanese people which did reduce fear of crime and provide public reassurance. Today, when fear of crime is one of the most important issues for the police to tackle, the expectations of the koban 5

http://www.pref.kyoto.jp/fukei/hanjou/index.html (Japanese language only). Also see www.hyogoken.gov.jp


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system have become enormous. On the other hand, according to the Police White Paper in 2004, over 80% of residents questioned about koban and chuzaisho in their neighbourhood answered that they did not know their community police officer, either by name or by sight.6 One interpretation is that the communities may have changed more than the Japanese police tend to believe, leaving koban isolated. If this seems contradictory to the earlier idealized description of the koban system, it demonstrates the growing acceptance that the koban will need to adapt and modernize.

Koban: Future Directions Now is the time to think of how the koban system should work in the future. Two approaches deserve to be mentioned here. The first one is the role of koban and chuzaisho, with regard to the Comprehensive Measures to Prevent the Occurrence of Street Crimes and Break-in Crimes. Analysing the crime situation in each area is now being done routinely, and this activity is being followed by setting up an action plan to achieve crime reduction. In more and more police forces information technology networks and equipment are becoming available at koban and chuzaisho, which enable the station police officers to access the crime data held on the host computer at police headquarters. One immediate problem is that the current level of analysis is usually conducted at a geographic level consistent with that required by the framework of the Comprehensive Measures which covers the whole jurisdiction of the police station, although frequently the area includes several police stations. This means that the jurisdiction covered by each koban or chuzaisho will probably be considered to be too small an analysis to develop into a promising action plan. This fact means that each community police officer gets an order directly from the police station or the headquarters. Another relevant technological development is that today almost all police vehicles are equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) via which the communication command centre at headquarter is able to track their location and give a quick order to respond to events. Furthermore, it is being considered that community police officers working at koban should also carry similar GPS (man-locator) technology. Such modern techniques would be very useful, especially in order to deploy police resources effectively in capturing suspects running away from the crime scene. But there exists a danger that this trend towards a strong command and control policing model will deprive koban officers of the discretion to pursue their original community policing activities. If effectiveness is pursued excessively, it might be easy to overlook important things, which are recognized only at the front line. The real challenge for the koban structure and system is to evolve to achieve the real performance improvements required for the new crime reduction directives whilst, at the same time, retaining sufficient of the traditional model to help a society that is becoming increasingly individualized to retain a sense of community cohesion that in turn will contribute to reducing levels of fear of crime. In tackling these challenges modern technologies may be just as important as the traditional door to door visits. In the future koban communities are just as likely to be virtual as geographic. The second issue is based on the concept that the presence of police officers on the streets should be given priority, which is backed up by repeatedly expressed public opinion. The 6

Regarding chuzaisho, this figure falls to around 60%.

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Japanese police are trying to solve the empty koban problem by increasing the number of police officers, employing police koban counsellors and reorganizing the koban and chuzaisho structure. But this, together with recruiting more police officers in particular, requires a considerable increase in public expenditure and it has its limits. When coping with fear of crime, it is fundamental to find out the reason why community residents are fearful and what the police should do in response to this, but it is not easy. The dilemma was identified in the Police White Paper 2004. One survey reported that around 63% of people who were dissatisfied with the activities of the koban said it was because they did not see police officers patrolling on the street. On the other hand around 39% said their dissatisfaction was because the koban was unmanned. Certainly, the more patrolling is done, the more likely the koban will be empty. This shows how difficult it is to tackle problems in accordance with the opinions of the community residents, these opinions sometimes being discrepant.

CONCLUSION The Japanese koban structure and system appears to have served the country well and to have contributed to the enviably low rates of crime victimization and fear of crime that Japan has enjoyed for many decades. However, in the last decade and a half this picture has begun to change with levels of crime growing rapidly, and people becoming more fearful of crime. This partly reflects social changes, including more individualized, as opposed to traditional collectivized, lifestyles and more property being left empty as couples go out to work. Crime is now a high priority topic in Japan and this has led to political action at the highest level with the Prime Minister chairing a pan-ministerial committee to restore confidence in Japan as the safest country in the world. The National Police Agency and prefectural police forces are only just beginning to benefit from the introduction of new information and communication technology. GPS technology could drive Japanese policing in the direction of a command and control model of policing. The recent arrival of GIS software for the analysis of crime hot spots is helping to develop an intelligence-led approach to policing, with police resources being assigned according to an action plan. Both these developments may put additional stress on the traditional koban system, as more officers will be deployed on patrol, leaving the koban, the traditional point of contact with the public, unmanned. The task facing the koban system is therefore to meet the performance challenges set by central government and the National Police Agency whilst retaining sufficient of the traditional iconic system to be able to contribute to social cohesion and reduce the level of fear of crime in their neighbourhoods, which still suffer crime victimization at a much lower level than any other industrialized country. Notwithstanding this low level of recorded and actual crime, the crime situation in Japan will remain a major public and political concern. Fear of crime is an unavoidable issue in the 21st Century as is the need to genuinely reduce crime, and to achieve these objectives a modernized koban system is expected to have as great a contribution in the future as it had in the past. The koban may be under severe stress but it is far from dead, and almost certainly has a great deal to offer other industrialized countries grappling with much higher levels of crime. It will no doubt continue to change as it embraces the technologies of late modernity.


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REFERENCES Aldous, C. & Leishman, F. (2000). Enigma variations: reassessing the Koban. Nissan Occasional Paper No. 31. Oxford: Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. Bayley, D. (1976). Forces of Order: Police Behaviour in Japan and the United States. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bayley, D. (1991). Forces of Order: Policing Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Leishman, F. (1999). Policing in Japan: East Asian archetype? In R.I. Mawby (ed.), Policing across the World: Issues for the 21st Century (pp. 109–29). London: UCL Press. National Police Agency (NPA) (2004a). White Paper on Police. Tokyo: NPA. National Police Agency (NPA) (2004b). Police of Japan. Tokyo: NPA. Police Policy Research Centre (2005). Japanese Community Police and Police Box System. Tokyo: NPA. Police Policy Research Centre (2005). Crimes in Japan. Tokyo: NPA. Yoshida, N. & Leishman, F. (2006). Japan. In T. Jones & T. Newburn (eds), Plural Policing. A Comparative Perspective (pp. 222–38). London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 8

Japanese Community Policing Under the Microscope Tom Ellis, Chris Lewis University of Portsmouth, UK

Koichi Hamai Graduate Low School of Ryukoku University, Japan

and Tom Williamson Lately University of Portsmouth, UK

INTRODUCTION In Chapter 7 Kawamura and Shirakawa describe the current system of koban and chuzaisho policing, detail recent developments, and look to the future of these as being the centre point of community policing in Japan. In this chapter we take a more critical look at the koban system. We conclude that the real nature of Japanese community policing has been somewhat misunderstood by western commentators and that Japanese police face pretty much the same types of problems as the police in other industrialized countries, albeit, at a lower level. In particular, there is a lack of trust and confidence in the police in Japan that is reflected in a changing public profile. This challenges the felicitous perception of the koban system that has previously existed in the West and, to a large extent, is still the prevailing view. As Kawamura and Shirakawa have stated, Japan’s crime situation has worsened in the last decade and this has caused the fear of crime to grow among the Japanese population. We would go further than that and say that, while the rise in crime is more apparent than real (Hamai & Ellis, 2006; 2008), the Japanese public, and, in particular the Japanese press have lost confidence in the country’s criminal justice system. During the 1990s, a specific series of “police scandals” (which were focused on basic competency) in Japan fundamentally changed the way that the press reported the effectiveness of the police. These changes provoked public reaction that ensured that more “trivial” offences were reported to the police, boosting overall crime figures. The resulting “myth of the collapse


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of secure society” appears in turn to have contributed to increasingly punitive public views about offenders and sentencing in Japan. These points are covered in detail in a recent article by two of the authors of this chapter (see Hamai & Ellis, 2006; 2008). What we examine here, is the current state of the koban/chuzaisho system in the context of evidence from the International Crime Victims Survey for Japan on fear of crime and confidence in the police. We also contextualize this with evidence from other research and commentary from scholars outside Japan, but perhaps more importantly from Japanese scholars themselves.

DATA FOR JAPAN FROM THE INTERNATIONAL CRIME VICTIMS SURVEY Kawamura and Shirakawa are correct in that the Japanese do not have an equivalent of the British Crime Survey (BCS) which would give an alternative measure to the level and trends in crime. In this they echo Aldous and Leishman, who noted in 2000 that: Regrettably, Japan does not conduct systematic victimisation surveys on the scale or with the regularity of other jurisdictions and there is thus little objective evidence with which to compare and contrast the official crime count with patterns of public reporting and policed recording behaviour. (Aldous & Leishman, 2000, p. 10)

Now, however, through the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS), Japan has developed, to some extent, an alternative measure of crime, roughly akin to the British Crime Survey (BCS), though on a much smaller scale. ICVS was developed in 1989 as a measure of crime to compare crime victimization rates in different countries. They have now been carried out in 24 countries and Japan took part in all but the 1996 survey. The most recent survey was in 2004, but at the point of writing, only limited figures have been made available for Japan, and these are cited here. One of the authors, Koichi Hamai, was in charge of conducting the 2000 ICVS in Japan. The mean sample size for the countries1 included in the 2000 ICVS was 2,000, with an overall response rate of 66%. The Japanese sample was rather higher at 3,000, with a 73% response rate. The analysis for this paper has used published survey results data (van Kesteren, Mayhew & Nieuwbeerta, 2000).2

Victimization Rate In general, the survey shows that Japanese crime victimization rates are still lower than most other comparable countries. For burglary, including attempts, the Japanese victimization rate (1.8 per 100,000) is the second lowest after Finland, while Australia had the highest incidence (6.6 per 100,000). More importantly, for violent crimes (robbery, sexual assault and assault with force), Japan has the lowest reported victimization rates of all the ICVS 2000 countries at just 0.4 per 100,000, compared to Australia which again produced the highest incidence at 4.1 per 100,000. These results suggest that, in a comparative sense at least, there is little justification for increased fear of crime given the low level of risk. 1

2

17 countries in total participated in the 2000 ICVS, although not all questions were answered for every country. In this paper we have chosen the following 13 countries as comparators with Japan: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England & Wales, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA. ICVS 2000 was carried out using the same methodology in Japan as in other countries, with the exception of computer-assisted telephone interviewing, not yet established as a reliable method in Japan.

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Table 8.1 Victimization and reporting rates (%) to the police in the Japanese ICVS 1989

Car theft Theft from car Car vandalism Motorcycle theft Bicycle theft Burglary Attempted burglary Robbery Personal theft Sexual incidents Assault & threat

2000

2004

Victim

Reporting

Victim

Reporting

Victim

Reporting

0.8 2.6 5.0 1.7 9.0 2.2 0.6 – 0.8 1.8 0.6

81.3 40.0 20.6 87.5 52.5 80.8 71.4 – 68.4 9.1 21.4

0.7 5.7 16.8 4.0 22.1 4.1 2.6 0.6 2.7 2.7 2.1

61.5 41.7 20.9 72.7 36.1 61.1 36.2 30.8 43.3 9.7 21.3

0.7 7.1 15.5 2.9 18.6 3.9 2.7 0.3 2.2 2.5 1.1

100.0 64.3 21.5 75.0 48.1 64.2 19.3 28.6 33.3 14.8 50.0

Source: van Kesteran, J.N., Mayhew, P. & Nieuwbeerta, P. (2000). Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries: Key Findings from the 2000 International Crime Victims Survey. The Hague, Ministry of Justice, WODC. Reproduced with permission.

Further, from the limited data released about Japan in ICVS 20043 it is clear that for most crimes, the victimization rates between 2000 and 2004 have actually dropped for violent crimes (robbery and assault and threats), while reporting rates went up, in some cases dramatically (see Table 8.1). The overall rises in victimization between the first ICVS in 1989 and the 2004 sweep were relatively small, especially the changes between 2000 and 2004, and do not justify the strong media emphasis on the “massive rise” in crime and the collapse of a secure society that has characterized 21st Century Japan (see Hamai & Ellis, 2006; 2008).

Fear of Crime Despite the relatively small increase in crime and the low levels of victimization, it appears that the media portrayal of concern about crime has prevailed. ICVS 2000 respondents were asked three questions about fear of crime (Table 8.2). The results show that fear of burglary (being at home alone after dark) and fear while out alone in Japan were among the highest rates within the ICVS countries, despite the low level of actual victimization noted above. r Only Poland (15%), Australia and Portugal (both 10%) had higher levels of fear than Japan (9%) about “being at home alone after dark” (range 4–15%); r Only Australia (35%), Poland (34%), Portugal (27%) and England and Wales (26%) had higher levels of fear than Japan (23%) when “walking alone after dark” (range 15–34%); r Compared to Japan (45%), only Portugal (58%), and Australia (46%) had higher levels of fear for “home broken into” (range 13–58%). This illustrates a large gap between risk and reality and appears to repeat, on a comparative level, the consistent findings of the various British Crime Surveys: that those least likely to be victims of crime are the most fearful of it, although as Sparks (1992) notes, this is not necessarily irrational. More recently, a 2004 survey of public attitudes by the Public Relations Office of the Japanese Cabinet (Cabinet Office, 2004) (see Figure 8.1), showed that the proportion of 3

(

) (White Paper on Crime, 2004, Part 3, Ch.1, section 2 (2))

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Table 8.2 ICVS (2000) questions about fear of crime Country

Fear of ‘being at home alone after dark’

Fear of ‘walking alone after dark’

Fear of ‘home broken into’

10% 9% 4% 3% 6% 4% 7% 9% 5% 15% 10% 5% N/a 4%

35% 21% 16% 18% 26% 18% 22% 23% 18% 34% 27% 14% 22% 14%

46% 45% 30% 20% 33% 14% 44% 45% 18% 25% 58% 16% 27% 16%

Australia Belgium Canada Denmark England & Wales Finland France Japan Netherlands Poland Portugal Sweden Switzerland USA


the public who thought crime was getting worse had increased from 19% in 1998 to 40% in 2004. Furthermore, according to ICVS 2004, 75.5% of the people think that Japan has recently become a more dangerous society in terms of crime (see White Paper, 2004).

Satisfaction with the Police The most striking finding of ICVS 2000, and essential to our argument, was the Japanese public’s very low level of satisfaction and confidence in their police. In 1977, Gurr had been able to assert that American recorded crime statistics were likely to be less reliable than those of Japan, partly because of the level of suspicion the American public had about their police. This view received little challenge from western scholars, but as Cao, Stack and Sun (1998, p. 280) argue: “whether the image of benign neighborhood-level police officers working in a culturally supportive environment will survive a rigorous test is an empirical issue that begs to be resolved only by quantitative analysis”. ICVS 2000 results support (%) 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1998

2000

2002

2004

2005

Figure 8.1 Public opinion: “crime situation is getting worse”. Source: Cabinet Office, 2004


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Table 8.3 Percentage satisfied with the police response to reporting of crimes Country Denmark Finland Sweden Australia Canada Netherlands Switzerland England & Wales USA Belgium France Japan Poland Portugal

Percentage 77% 74% 71% 71% 71% 70% 70% 66% 65% 62% 47% 45% 39% 31%


Table 8.4 Percentage who felt the police did not do enough in response to a crime report Country Australia Netherlands France England & Wales USA Finland Japan Canada Sweden Switzerland Denmark Poland Portugal Belgium

Percentage 30% 34% 37% 37% 38% 43% 44% 49% 53% 56% 56% 59% 62% 70%


these suspicions. The results quoted in Tables 8.3–8.7 show that the people of Japan are much less happy with their police than most other countries in the ICVS. r Only two countries among those answering the ICVS 2000 had a lower satisfaction with the police response to the reporting of crimes; r Japan was about average in the percentage of people who felt that the police did not do enough in response to a crime report;

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THE HANDBOOK OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED POLICING Table 8.5 Percentage who thought the police impolite when responding to a crime report Country England & Wales Portugal Switzerland Finland Australia Netherlands USA Poland Belgium France Canada Denmark Sweden Japan

Percentage 4% 4% 9% 10% 10% 13% 15% 15% 16% 18% 19% 19% 20% 32%


Table 8.6 Percentage who felt the police did not find the offender in response to a crime report Country Netherlands Switzerland France Denmark Australia England & Wales Sweden Canada USA Finland Portugal Japan Belgium Poland

Percentage 8% 8% 12% 13% 14% 14% 15% 16% 17% 22% 31% 47% 47% 64%


r Japan had the highest proportion of people (32%) who felt that the police were impolite when responding to a crime report; r 47% of Japanese reported that the police did not find the offender responsible for a crime, a figure only exceeded by Poland; r 32% of Japanese felt the police did not give them enough information when they reported a crime, a figure only exceeded by Belgium.


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Table 8.7 Percentage who felt the police did not give information in response to a crime report Country

Percentage

France Canada Switzerland Australia England & Wales Sweden Portugal Denmark Netherlands Poland USA Japan Belgium Finland

7% 7% 7% 8% 8% 9% 9% 9% 12% 18% 24% 32% 52% N/a


Crime Prevention Although Japanese society seems to have lower confidence in the police than many other societies, at least judged by the ICVS, Japanese people have not reacted by paying more attention to crime prevention in their homes. Table 8.8 shows that the use of alarms and special locks in Japanese houses is one of the lowest in the ICVS. Table 8.8 Percentage of homes with burglar alarms or special door locks Country England & Wales Australia USA Canada Belgium France Netherlands Sweden Portugal Denmark Finland Japan Poland Switzerland

Homes with burglar alarms

Homes with special door locks

69% 67% 53% 53% 50% 40% 70% 43% 36% 21% 37% 10% 17% N/a

34% 26% 24% 23% 21% 13% 11% 10% 9% 7% 4% 3% 2% N/a


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Japanese households reported the lowest level of homes with burglar alarms, and the second lowest level of houses with special locks. Compared to Japan, English houses were over 20 times as likely to have burglar alarms and 10 times as likely to have special locks fitted to their doors.

INTERPRETATION OF ICVS 2000 RESULTS FOR JAPAN These results may generate surprise to most, though not all, western criminologists. Most studies carried out on the police in Japan and in the United States suggest that the Japanese police are very efficient, enjoy wide public support and respect, and are free from political interference (Ames, 1981; Bayley, 1991; Hoffman, 1982; Kim, 1987; Parker, 1984; Thornton, 1992; Westermann & Burfeind, 1991). As Leishman (1999, p. 123) has argued: “Japanese policing. . .like so many of that country’s other institutions, has become to a significant extent shrouded in an aura of ‘cultural uniqueness’.” Since the late 1980s however, this cultural uniqueness has been increasingly questioned (Dale, 1988.) It is possible to deconstruct three inter-related key concepts that distort analyses of Japanese policing and its relationship to low recorded crime rates: r the uniquely harmonious operation of the koban/chuzaisho system (manned local police boxes); r the unique values found in Japanese police culture; r the effectiveness of the Japanese legal framework (in so far as it affects police investigations). These issues, in turn, are discussed below and form the bulk of this chapter.

Koban/Chuzaisho and the Uniquely Harmonious Police–Public Relationship As Finch (1999) argues, the majority of English-language studies on Japanese policing are about the organization and intelligence gathering through the koban/chuzaisho system (manned local police boxes) (Ames, 1981; Bayley, 1976, 1991; Clifford, 1976). Most of these are American and rely heavily on explaining the difference between US and Japanese police efficiency by focusing on the koban and chuzaisho from which the omawari-san (literally Mr Walkabout) patrol officers operate in order to stay close to the community (Cao, Stack & Sun, 1998). Koban policing in this context: “is generally favourably portrayed as an ideal of ‘communitarian’ policing, nostalgically associated in the West with some longlost golden age” (Leishman, 1999, p. 114). However, Aldous and Leishman (2000) have challenged this view as yet another “myth”. There are about 15,000 urban koban or rural chuzaisho in Japan (White Paper, 2002:22). Most routine Japanese policing is done under this koban system, and around 40% of the Japanese police establishment is assigned to such duties (Hoffman, 1982). This often involves extensive use of foot patrols. These are features which are radically different from most US policing practices and it is easy, though flawed, to see this as an explanation for the large difference in reported crime rates between the US and Japan. As Leishman (1999, p. 115) notes: “The linkage of Japan’s apparently low crime rates with the cosy neighbourhood orientation of the koban has become something of a commonplace (and often uncritically accepted) assertion.”


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Finch (1999) argues that this American-based approach is additionally flawed because it ignores the much narrower gap found when comparing European countries’ crime rates with equivalent Japanese rates. Finch also notes that most of these studies make some reference to the popularity of the police with the Japanese public, but his study was not explicitly attempting to examine public attitudes to the police. As such, Finch is rather left with accepting the view that “Attitudes to the police, though sometimes ambiguous, are again seen as being largely favourable” (1999, p. 485), and that the success of the koban system is based on a population “already favourably disposed to their activities” (1999, p. 507). Similarly, Leishman (1999, p. 123) agrees with Bayley’s (1995, p. 89) assessment that the Japanese police have the necessary attributes to ensure democratic nation-building, that is, “responsiveness to public needs; adherence to the principles of human rights; and participative and self-critical management”. It is left to Cao, Stack and Sun (1998) to point out that the majority of comparative studies were based on qualitative personal interviews or participatory observation techniques that did not provide empirically comparable quantitative data to support their claims. Steinhoff (1993) also points out that most of the research on the Japanese police focuses on the criminal justice system, and not the public as the “clientele” of the police. Further, the Japanese police have rarely been independently evaluated or scrutinized by independent and/or academic researchers (Araki, 1985; Miyazawa, 1990). Cao, Stack and Sun (1998) therefore carried out a quantitative analysis (using data from the World Values Study Group, 1991) to compare attitudes to the police in the USA and Japan. They found that the Japanese public had a lower level of confidence in the police than the American public. In a more recent paper (Cao & Stack, 2005), data from national representative samples were analysed to compare the levels of confidence in the police between the USA and Japan. This new analysis addressed some methodological limitations of the previous study; with more updated data and a more robust methodology the results confirmed the previous study that the US public have significantly higher confidence in the police than the Japanese public. This supports our own findings and suggests that most previous western research on Japanese policing reveals more about the authors’ views concerning the negative aspects of policing in the United States than they do about factors which underlie the relatively greater success enjoyed by the Japanese police in coping with the problems brought about by industrialization and urbanization (Finch, 1999, pp. 487–488).

A major flaw in such accounts is the failure to understand the difference in Japanese culture between tatemae (public behaviour) and honne (real feelings), or omote (front, or public face) and ura (back) (Leishman, 1999), and their importance as a survival skill and control mechanism (Leishman, 1999; Hendry, 1995). In relation to police–public interaction and public attitudes to the police, western scholars, for the most part, have therefore failed to “differentiate compliance with the police from confidence in the police” (Cao, Stack & Sun, 1998, p. 287). The localized koban system of policing involves regular calls by officers to all homes on their patch to talk generally with residents and to ask a lot of questions (Bayley, 1991; Cao, Stack & Sun, 1998; Finch, 1999). These visits, junkai renraku, are not part of any formal investigation, but, as Finch (1999, p. 494) argued, “Most individuals willingly comply with this process, even though it is purely voluntary (the police claim that ‘only communists’ refuse to participate)”.

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However, Finch (1999) also noted that apartment blocks may not be thoroughly surveyed and there is some evidence that junkai renraku is declining. Indeed, Leishman (1999, p. 115) noted that: While the tatemae was that all premises were visited twice a year, the honne has for some time been, as Murayama’s 1990 study suggested, rather different. Changing family and work patterns, not to mention increased social mobility and anonymity have made it difficult for officers to retain the community contact that was possible in earlier decades. This raises the issue of how the koban system is adapting to the Japan of the twenty-first century.

Moreover, Aldous and Leishman (2000, p. 8) also cite the comment in the NPA White Paper (1993, p. 13) on the police: “the number of households irresponsive to door-to-door enquiries is on the increase”. The National Police Agency’s own (2004) Attitude Survey on Police Boxes and Residential Police Substations has shown that only 23% of the public were satisfied with the service provided by the koban officers. The major complaints were about aki koban (empty koban), lack of patrol presence and indeed, in nearly a quarter of cases, lack of junkai renraku (see Yoshida & Leishman, 2006, p. 233). Some earlier fieldwork conducted on koban in Tokyo in 2002 and 2003 shows that the lack of patrolling was often down to koban officers fulfilling their friendly neighbourhood non-crime role in assisting the public, which meant that patrol time was sacrificed (Yoshida & Leishman, 2006, pp. 233–4). In addition, koban officers are becoming increasingly elderly, remaining in the force until 60, and some of them find patrolling increasingly arduous (Yoshida & Leishman, 2006, p. 234). In addition, and contrary to the nostalgic view of koban policing, older officers “may employ an old-fashioned rather confrontational style towards the public that could lead to trouble” (Yoshida & Leishman, 2006, p. 234). In terms of dealing with crime, the public’s dissatisfaction is perhaps further fuelled by the established status distinction between koban officers and the criminal investigations division. Established culture and working practices mean that koban officers are discouraged from exercising their legal powers, without permission from their criminal investigation colleagues, even when their use might be necessary or desirable (Yoshida & Leishman, 2006, p. 234). A re-assessment of existing evidence also shows that policing is often varied and differentiated along similar lines to those found in accounts of policing in the USA and UK. Even generally positive western accounts of Japanese policing carry a number of details that suggest an undercurrent of public dissent in relation to the Japanese police. For instance, most of the volunteer support groups consist disproportionately of older, relatively well off, politically conservative men who are able to contribute financially to police activities (Bayley, 1991; Finch, 1999). Indeed, the homes of such community stalwarts are likely to be visited much more frequently by koban officers (Finch, 1999). There is also evidence that day labourers, those on the political left, and the young do not have as cosy a relationship with the police as the general population (Bayley, 1976, 1991; Katzenstein & Tsujinaka, 1991; Thornton, 1992). Citizens are also likely to be differentially policed, depending on their location. While citizens in rural villages are serviced by a police officer from a local station-cum-family home (chuzaisho), in urban areas, the koban tends to be a smaller two-storey station, with a dozen or so officers working a 24-hour shift (Leishman, 1999), but still small enough to remain personal. However, “In slum and entertainment districts. . .there exist manmosukoban (mammoth koban) from which as many as 30 officers may patrol” (Leishman, 1999, p. 114). These manmosukoban are harder to conceptualize as “police boxes” and


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it is apparent that public–police relations in these areas are likely to be more impersonal since increased mobility and anonymity have made it more difficult to retain continuity of contact (Leishman, 1999). In fact, these manmosukoban appear easier to conceptualize as the standard police stations of the British “Basic Command Units”. The ICVS results therefore add important empirical evidence to support the notion that: After a prolonged period in which the police were regarded domestically and internationally as a repressive arm of the state, in the 1970s and 1980s, on both official and academic accounts, the Japanese police had come to be “reinvented”, and an aura of celebration began to permeate discussions of crime and policing in Japan. (Aldous & Leishman, 2000, p. 2)

The focus during this reinvention changed from surveillance, state control and maintaining order, to serving the community, local responsiveness and community safety (Aldous & Leishman, 2000). Aldous and Leishman cite the works of two key figures in promoting this reinvention: first, David Bayley’s view of Japanese policing as a distinct “oriental model” which focused on low-level service interactions; second, Braithwaite’s (1989) high-impact theory of reintegrative shaming “which was developed in large part from a consideration of Japan as seen through the koban’s intimate window” (Aldous & Leishman, 2000, p. 2). Any examination of the Japanese police before 1945 questions both their history of harmonious relations with the public and their uniqueness. Rather than developing a truly autochthonous “oriental” system, the Japanese Meiji rulers in the 1870s and 1880s were impressively eclectic in importing Western criminal justice and policing models, most notably French, Prussian and English models (Aldous & Leishman, 2000; Finch, 1999; Leishman, 1999; Mitchell, 1992; Westney, 1982). The adoption of the rural chuzaisho policing system was a way of ensuring that the state had snail’s feelers (katatsummuri no shokkaku) that could penetrate to the lowest geographical level and detect any activity likely to be injurious to the state (Aldous & Leishman, 2000; Obinata, 1987; Tipton, 1990; Westney, 1982; Hackett, 1971). Certainly, from 1925 until after World War II, the police were increasingly intrusive as Japan became more isolated and expansionist (Gluck, 1985). During this time, the koban and chusaizho were clearly used as agencies of surveillance and control, passing on information to the Special Higher Police (Thought Police) (Aldous & Leishman, 2000). This tension or duality is still apparent today in the function of the koban. Are they agencies of the State monitoring society at neighbourhood level, or are they a public service, always providing help to the needy? (Aldous & Leishman, 2000). Vogel (1979, p. 208) noted that: The good relationship between the public and the police did not exist in all periods of Japanese history. In the 1930s and early 1940s Japanese police were noted for their haughtiness, sometimes even brutality, and the public kept their distance without complaining.

With such an historical perspective in mind, Cao, Stack and Sun (1998) point out that the low confidence in Japanese police is perhaps less remarkable. They argue, in line with Vogel, that Japanese policing during the Second World War, which is hardly discussed in English-language literature, was extremely repressive under a privately invasive fascist government. At its worst, it was called kensatsu fassho (fascism by the procuracy) which allowed prosecutors, judges and the police to fabricate cases against dissidents “from whom confessions had been forcibly extracted” (Leishman, 1999, p. 112; Johnson, 1972, p. 161). Evidence from other countries with a fascist government during this period, such as Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Belgium also tends to show lower public confidence in the police when using an American yardstick (Stack & Cao, 1998). In fact, the junkai renraku

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visits are a continuation of a pre-war system called soko chosa (Finch, 1999). Further, “The Japanese police system, although notionally decentralized and democratized during the Occupation, still retains more than a hint of the authoritarian and centralized pre-war establishment” (Finch, 1999, p. 494). Thus, while Bayley (1976, 1991) is able to describe Japanese policing methods “as heaven for a cop” (Cao, Stack & Sun, 1998, p. 281), there is now enough evidence to suggest that the biennial (or decreasingly frequent) visits by omawari-san are more like purgatory for at least some, if not many, Japanese citizens. Indeed, Japanese scholars such as Sugimoto (1997) emphasize the importance of koban as a way of ensuring close surveillance of the private lives of individuals despite the international emphasis on them as a way of reducing crime. Not surprisingly, the recent decline in levels of contact has a rather different focus of attention in a Japanese media still saturated with nihinjinron ideas. Rather than look to the way the police carry out their investigations (which we discuss below), a Japan Times (2002) editorial article typically identifies decreasing community spirit (a result of modernism through urbanization and industrialization) as the major cause of falling clear-up rates. It notes a “lack of a sense of standards and guilty feelings among offenders” (and it is also forcefully noted that some of these offenders are foreigners); that “relations among neighbors are weakening, and disinterest is spreading even in local communities”; and that “investigations relying on human ties are becoming increasingly ineffective”. The 1993 NPA White Paper on the police also voices similar “criminogenic consequences of Japan’s ‘thinning’ social relations” (Leishman, 1999, p. 115). In reality, while the gossip and information picked up through junkai renraku is ostensibly for public service purposes, it can also be employed in criminal investigations. Koban and chuzaisho can therefore be regarded as clearing houses for information collected within the local area (Finch, 1999). However, despite all the effort put into studying the koban and chusaisho, plus media and police concern over the decline in junkai renraku, the proportion of crimes cleared up through such investigative legwork by the police has been extremely small for some time. This again questions the causal relationship between the koban system and Japan’s low crime rate which is often asserted or presumed in key studies such as those of Bayley (1976, 1991) and Braithwaite (1989). While the number of cases cleared up in this way dropped from 11,470 in 1992 to 5,729 in 2001, it represents only 3–4% of all crime (White Paper, 2002), suggesting that this is an unlikely, though popular avenue of explanation for a rise in recorded crime. Perhaps it could even be classified as a moral panic? Before examining why the koban system performs so poorly in police investigations, it is important to first challenge another relevant “myth”: that of Japan’s unique police culture.

Japan’s Unique Police Culture Most western literature on the topic represents Japanese police officers, especially koban/chusaisho officers, as having “uniquely different core philosophies and values from their Western counterparts” (Aldous & Leishman, 2000, p. 8). Other authors have extended this analysis to the Japanese criminal justice system as a whole. In their book on comparative penal systems, Cavadino and Dignan (2005, p. 171) claim that Japanese criminal justice and their penal institutions and processes “look extremely familiar to Western eyes [but] the way


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they operate can often seem surprising since they are still strongly imbued by traditional Japanese attitudes and values”. Prominent among these values is the high degree of dependency on and respect for institutions such as the family, the school, the community and the workplace that is still maintained in early 21st Century Japan. Such informal methods of social control make the context within which the police and the justice system operate very different from other countries. As far as the police are concerned, the level of involvement in “friendly service activity” or non-crime work by koban officers is “legendary”, for instance, giving directions, lending out lost umbrellas to commuters, ensuring drunken sararimen get on the train, counselling on “citizen troubles” or komarigato sodan, producing neighbourhood newspapers, running martial arts classes and increasingly providing services for pensioners (Leishman, 1999, pp. 114–115; White Paper, 2002, pp. 23–24). Much of this might be compared to British and American police officers’ day-to-day experience, referred to by Punch (1979) as a “twenty-four hour social service”. They also enjoy the support of volunteer support groups (e.g., crime prevention associations or bohan kumiai), although, as noted, membership of these groups may not be representative of the population policed. However, US and UK studies of police culture find that many officers tend to regard much of their non-action-orientated tasks as “shit work” (Manning, 1977), despite the fact that most of the time they are engaged in these tasks (Bayley, 1994) of “peace-keeping” (Bittner, 1967) or “service work” (Chatterton, 1976). However, it appears that only Japanese scholars are prepared to point out that the “Emperor has no clothes” in Japan; that routine patrol work is as unpopular with Japanese officers as it is with those in the US and the UK. Indeed, Aldous & Leishman (2000, pp. 8–9) argue that there is evidence in these Japanese studies (Miyazawa, 1992; Murayama, 1990), that: police occupational culture in Japan. . .prizes ‘crime fighting’ over community service and. . .just like cop culture in other parts of the world – exhibits Jerome Skolnick’s (1966) core characteristics of suspiciousness, internal solidarity coupled with social isolation, and moral and social conservatism.

In an earlier study by Ames (1981), he noted the “total institution” character of the police, their social distance (keisatsu shakai) from the public, and their elitist and strongly macho culture. Leishman (1999) and Aldous and Leishman (2000) have noted the small proportion of women officers, and the White Paper (2002, p. 11) shows the current rate as 3.9%. In this context, it appears that servicing the public is regarded as low status by Japanese police officers, just as Punch (1979) found in the west. In short, within the Japanese context, Japanese police officers are not that different from police officers the world over! Work carried out by the Japanese scholar Miyazawa (1997) further questions the current basis of much of the western theorizing on communitarianism and crime control which has its roots in Japanese policing and crime control. He found that far from the re-integrative ideal posited by Braithwaite (1989), the police were usually more interested in finding evidence to justify longer detention and heavier penalties. Miyazawa (1997, p. 9) also found that there was little evidence to show that the police were concerned to “provide assistance to the suspect to make it easier for him or her to return to normal life”. In re-evaluating the koban system and Japanese police culture together, there is a need for a new starting point for most western scholars, but also for Japanese policy makers. As Brogden (1999, p. 179) notes:

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THE HANDBOOK OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED POLICING In reality, there is no mobilization of local people or communities in the Anglo-American community policing sense. The police are unwilling to reveal much about themselves to the community. . .The Koban is often staffed largely with elderly officers, those who have failed in other sections, and young probationers. In sum the Japanese model may suffer, in the Western commentaries, from a confusion between rhetoric and practice.

Worse still, is the idea that western accounts of Japanese policing are “heaven for Japanese cops”. Western ahistorical, uncritical and counter-intuitive assessments may have “convinced Japanese police officials of the uniqueness and merits of their own system” (Aldous & Leishman, 2000, p. 11) and fuelled further the nihonjinron-soaked notion of cultural uniqueness. Indeed, the koban system has already been adopted in Singapore, and NPA runs annual seminars on community policing to promote international understanding of its unique system which maintains Japan’s “safe and peaceful community life” (White Paper, 2002, p. 21). The danger of this self-perpetuating exchange, in a period of rising official crime, is that Japanese politicians and police will also tread the well-worn, but ultimately unsuccessful western path of misplaced media-led crime control.

The Effect of the Japanese Legal Framework on Policing Having examined the myths surrounding koban operations and Japanese police culture, the overarching effect of the Japanese legal framework needs to be examined, not least because it allows us to put the current Japanese relationship with recorded crime into an historical perspective and allows us to question the extent to which it is unique. The effect of the legal framework within which the Japanese police developed, and now operate, has attracted comparatively little interest (Finch, 1999) and again, critiques are offered mainly by Japanese scholars, (e.g., Miyazawa, 1990, 1992). This relative lack of research is unfortunate, since the existing evidence shows that it goes some way to explaining Japanese police’s lack of interest in western “investigative” methods and hence the prevailing police culture noted above. In the mid-nineteenth century, Japan was forced to “modernize” economically, militarily and politically in a very short time frame in order to remain a sovereign state (Leishman, 1999). As noted, this included borrowing and adapting “the best from the West” for Japanese criminal justice (Finch, 1999; Leishman, 1999; Mitchell, 1992; Westney, 1982). From the very beginning, the legal system was quasi-Continental, rather than uniquely oriental. This legacy, with stricter evidential rules than under English Common Law, lays heavy emphasis on confessions ( ji haku hencho) (Bayley, 1991; Finch, 1999). The Japanese police, in turn, therefore concentrate heavily on obtaining confessions at the expense of interviewing witnesses and gathering physical or forensic evidence (Watson, 1995). Miyazawa (1992) has pointed out that this can be very problematic for the suspect who can quickly “become caught in a vicious circle in which he or she is exposed to unlimited and unrestrained questioning by detectives eager to improve their performance” (Finch, 1999, pp. 497–498). The lack of a Japanese equivalent to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) in England and Wales, means that there are a series of hierarchical possibilities for questioning a suspect, including: visiting the suspect at home (Namazugoshi, cited in Watson, 1995); in the street (shokumu shitsumon or duty questioning); or in a police station (nin-i doko or voluntary accompaniment; nin-i shutto or voluntary appearance), while avoiding the time limits that begin with actual arrest (Finch, 1999; Miyazawa, 1992). In other words, criminal case


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investigation does not typically begin with arrest, as it does in most other countries (Araki, 1985), although there are similarities with “pre-Miranda warning” conversations in the USA. Finch (1999, p. 499) argues that the unjustifiably high use of returning the suspect to police custody (daiyo-kangoku or substitute imprisonment) despite readily available alternative designated detention centres “allows the police unlimited and virtually unrestrained access to the suspect throughout the period of detention”. During the ample period available for questioning, Miyazawa (1992) found suspects could be subjected to intense psychological and physical pressure. Igarashi (1986), in contrast to Ames (1981), also found evidence of physical abuse of some suspects and this was not confined to serious cases of murder or terrorism. This has disturbing echoes from the Second World War kensatsu fassho period referred to above. Further, Japanese police and prosecutors are reluctant to allow access to lawyers before a confession has been obtained (Miyazawa, 1992; Namazugoshi, cited in Watson, 1995; Oda, 1992). In contrast to the intended transparency afforded by PACE, Japanese confessions are mostly written by police officers and signed by the detainee. This is in stark contrast to the increasing use of technology (auditory or video recorded interviews, CCTV in custody suites, etc. to ensure detainees’ rights in England and Wales – see Newburn & Hayman, 2002). Indeed, Japan has, so far, not developed an equivalent to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 which established codes of practice regulating investigative processes and providing safeguards for suspects during custodial questioning (Brown, Ellis & Larcombe, 1992). Both Amnesty International and the United Nations Human Rights Committee have called for suspects detained by the Japanese police to be given greater protection (Watson, 1995). A number of civil court actions were started in the 1990s over alleged police violence and in 1993 there was a landmark judgment in favour of a suspect who had been denied access to his lawyer (Watson, 1995). Indeed, despite widely publicized cases where false confessions had been identified, the confession culture continues within both the police and the judiciary (Haley, 1982; Herbert, 1992; Igarashi, 1986; Japan Federation of Bar Associations, 1993). As Bayley (1991, p. 146) noted some time ago, confession remains “King of Evidence” in Japanese criminal justice. However, the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground by the Aum cult and “other instances of social fragmentation” may eventually force the adoption of methods more familiar in British policing in order to compensate for the limitations of the koban system (Aldous & Leishman, 2000). The evidence on Japanese public confidence in the police, coupled with the other evidence of changes outlined above, suggests that we may have witnessed the beginning of a huge, perhaps post-modern, change in Japanese attitudes to criminal justice. It would be a shame if this were to become misleadingly and simplistically associated with a rise in recorded crime. Unfortunately, changes in public attitude are showing an all too familiar pattern.

ATTITUDES TO PUNISHMENT If the Japanese public believe that crime is increasing rapidly and do not feel that the police are able to combat it effectively, it is important to look at the impact this might have on public attitudes to sentencing. Such attitudes were measured in ICVS 2000 in two ways:

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r respondents were given a range of sentencing options and were asked to choose what they thought was the most appropriate sentence for a 21-year-old man found guilty of burglary for the second time; r they were asked what they thought was the most effective way of reducing youth crime. Even though the Japanese self-reported victimization rate for burglary is among the lowest in ICVS, Japan, along with England and Wales, returned the second highest proportion (51%) of respondents asking for a custodial sentence for the burglar. Only the USA scored higher (56%), while France recorded the smallest proportion (12%).4 The proportion choosing custody as the way of reducing youth crime was the ICVS 2000 highest at 48%.5 Further, while the reasons for not reporting a crime differed little between the ICVS countries, the reasons for reporting a crime were distinctly different. In most countries, reporting offences for insurance purposes is common, while in Japan, only 2% of Japanese respondents reported crimes for insurance purposes. Instead, in Japan, 66% of respondents reported offences in order to obtain “retribution”, compared to a range of up to 11% to 35% for the other ICVS counties (excluding Poland which also recorded 66%). These results are remarkable in the context of Japanese courts’ sentencing patterns, which produce one of the lowest incarceration rates in the world despite a recent, but modest, upward trend (see Walmsley, 2000, 2002). One Japanese explanation (Kawai, 2004, summarized in Hamai & Ellis, 2006; 2008) argues that a pervasive feeling among the public of the “collapse of secure society” has resulted in a more specific and personalized fear that crime is occurring in the area where they live and that they are now more likely to become a victim.

DISCUSSION The evidence shows that Japan has a low crime rate, especially for violent crime. However, the Japanese public has low confidence in, and satisfaction with, the police; a high level of fear of crime; pays low attention to crime prevention and has a very punitive attitude toward offenders. The high level of media focus on rising recorded crime has contributed toward these findings, but there are many other factors at play, some of which may, or may not, be uniquely Japanese. Previous studies have found that fear of crime is created by multiple interrelated factors (Ferraro, 1995; Williams, McShane & Akers, 2000). We have carried out a new analysis of the ICVS 2000 data from van Kesteran, Mayhew & Nieuwbeerta (2000) and show in Table 8.9 below that the lack of satisfaction with the police is the single most important variable affecting fear of crime levels outside the home. In terms of immediate criminal justice policy, the results suggest that the most promising way to begin to reduce fear of crime in Japan would be to boost the very low levels of public confidence in the police As noted above, Cao, Stack and Sun (1998, p. 287) argue that “seeming compliance with the police does not necessarily mean confidence in the police”. Whilst we have criticized the over-reliance of western accounts on cultural explanations, it is important to emphasize here that the role of culture cannot be discounted entirely. The key task for the future is to establish empirically the proper balance between the impact of

4 5

Data from Switzerland are not available. Data from Switzerland are not available.


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Table 8.9 Results of analysis of “Fear-of-crime” question from the 2000 ICVS Step

Independent variables

B-Value

Probability

Odds Ratio

1 2 3 4 5

“Police do a good job controlling crime” Gender Overall victimization Marital status Victims of violent crime

−1.234 −0.642 −0.327 −0.479 −0.412

0.000 0.000 0.016 0.001 0.076

0.291 0.526 0.721 0.619 0.663

Source: Based on data collected for the 2000 Japanese ICVS. The analysis has used a 5-step logistic regression to show the relative importance of the independent variables. Thus, at step 1, “police do a good job. . .” has been calculated as the most important variable; at step 2, gender of victim has been calculated as the next most important variable, and so on.

culture on Japanese crime levels, vis-à-vis other factors. To boost public confidence in the police, some specifically Japanese factors do need to be taken into account. For instance, Cao, Stack and Sun (1998) found that age, conservatism and personal satisfaction with life were significant predictors of confidence in the police in both the USA and Japan. On the other hand, variables such as support of deviant subculture, parenting responsibility and religiosity that were predictive of confidence in the police in the US were not predictive in Japan. In fact, social bond variables of marriage, parenting responsibility, employment and religiosity all turned out to be opposite to each other in relation to confidence in the police when comparing the two countries. As Cao, Stack and Sun (1998, p. 287) note, these differences might have captured “the unmeasured underlying concept of individualism and collectivism – the watershed of the two cultures”. To further complicate the picture, analysis of ICVS 2000 data shows that social disadvantage (low educational achievement, being divorced and/or unemployed) was more likely to increase the general level of fear of crime than fear of victimization for specific crimes. Our analysis is necessarily limited and based upon data for 2000 that might have changed by 2008. Much more research is required to untangle the specifically Japanese relationship between crime rates, fear of crime, confidence in the police, social variables and attitudes to punishment. The link between media representations, perceived public pressure and the changes in sentencing behaviour that have combined to bring about the sudden rise in the Japanese prison population also need to be addressed. There also needs to be more use of geodemographic data to enhance the ability of analysts to look into what lies behind the Japanese experiences of victimization, confidence in the police, fear of crime, and attention to crime prevention, the extent to which these vary by geographical area, and whether a criminal justice response, differentiated by geographical area, would be more effective. Such an approach would require a more complex victim survey, with a geographical metric, on the lines of the British Crime Survey. If these issues are not addressed, it is likely that Japan will suffer the same malaise as the rest of the developed world in relation to crime. Indeed, as Finch (1999) suggests, it might be best to start by moving the comparative emphasis away from the focus on Japan’s low crime rates, given the difficulty involved in such cross-cultural comparisons, and to move instead to look at comparative crime trends as suggested by Gurr (1977). By doing this, Japan can be viewed as not very different from other developed nations over the past 150 years – decline from a peak, followed by a return to that peak. Indeed, the US-dominated focus on how different Japan is, especially in relation to the quantity of crime, has resulted in an avoidance of recognizing that in many ways, the quality of crime and the methods used to combat it (Finch 1999), are not so different at least in the European context. It seems

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clear that Japan and other developed nations are not as uniquely different as much of the criminological and criminal justice literature has wished them to be and that criminologists must engage with research written in Japanese if they are to learn comparative lessons. From the very beginning of its modern criminal justice process, Japan has incorporated much of the developing west’s structure and methods, including it seems, police culture. Despite this, the koban system has been represented in the west as an impossible but desirable dream. In knowing this, both Japanese and western scholars must now ask themselves “whether the lesson to be learned is exemplary or cautionary” (Dale, 1988, p. 34). As a final comment, it is clear to us that the Japanese policing system is not standing still. Kawamura and Shirakawa, in Chapter 7, have detailed the most recent changes to the koban system, and recent English-language publications from the National Police Agency confirm this (White Paper, 2004; NPA, 2006). However, without a continuous research tool in Japan such as an equivalent of the BCS, plus a continuing research programme which addresses the question as to whether the current Japanese changes to their community policing are actually working in reducing crime and improving public confidence, there will be no objective measures for the Japanese authorities to judge the success of their policies.

REFERENCES Aldous, C. & Leishman, F. (2000). Enigma Variations: Reassessing the Koban. Nissan Occasional Paper No. 31. Oxford: Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. http://www.nissan.ox.ac.uk/ nops/nops31.pdf [Accessed 22 May 2006] Ames, W.L. (1981). Police and Community in Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Araki, N. (1985). The flow of criminal cases in the Japanese criminal justice system. Crime & Delinquency, 31, 605–627. Bayley, D. (1976). Forces of Order: Policing Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bayley, D. (1991). Forces of Order: Policing Modern Japan, 2nd edn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bayley, D. (1994). Police for the Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bayley, D. (1995). A foreign policy for democratic policing. Policing and Society, 5, 79–103. Bittner, E. (1967). The police on skid row: A study of peace keeping. American Sociological Review, 32, 699–715. Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brogden, M. (1999). Community policing as cherry pie. In R.I. Mawby (ed.), Policing Across the World: Issues for the Twenty-first Century (pp. 167–86). London: UCL Press. Brown, D., Ellis, T. & Larcombe, K. (1992). Changing the Code: Police Detention Under the Revised PACE Codes of Practice. Home Office Research Study 129. London: HMSO. Cabinet Office (2004). Public Relations Office of the Cabinet Office. Report of the National Survey on the Public’s Image of Japanese Society. Tokyo: Cabinet Office. (fx) 2004. Cao, L., Stack, S. & Sun, Y. (1998). Public attitudes toward the police: a comparative study between Japan and America. Journal of Criminal Justice, 26, 279–289. Cao, L. & Stack, S. (2005). Confidence in the police between America and Japan: results from two waves of surveys. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 28, 139–51. Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J. (2005). Japan: Iron fist in a velvet glove. In Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach (Chapter 11, pp. 171–98). London: Sage. Chatterton, M. (1976). The police in social control. In J. King (ed.), Control Without Custody (pp. 104–122). Cropwood Papers No. 7. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology. Clifford, W. (1976). Crime Control in Japan. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.


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Dale, P. (1988). The Myth of Cultural Uniqueness Revisited. Nissan Occasional Paper No. 9. Oxford: Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. Ferraro, K. (1995). Fear of Crime: Interpreting Victimization Risk. New York: State University of New York Press. Finch, A.J. (1999). The Japanese police’s claim to efficiency: a critical view. Modern Asian Studies, 33, 483–511. Gluck, C. (1985). Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the late Meiji Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gurr, T.R. (1977). Crime trends in modern democracies since 1945. International Annals of Criminology, 16, 41–85. Hackett, R.F. (1971). Yamagata Aritomo in the Rise of Modern Japan, 1838–1922. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Haley, J.O. (1982). Sheathing the sword of justice in Japan: An essay on law without sanctions. Journal of Japanese Studies, viii, 265–281. Hamai, K. & Ellis, T. (2006). Crime and criminal justice in modern Japan: From re-integrative shaming to popular punitivism. International Journal of Sociology of Law, 34, 157–78. Hamai, K. & Ellis, T. (2008). Japanese Criminal Justice: Was re-integrative shaming a chimera? Punishment & Society, 10(1), 25–46. Hendry, J. (1995). Understanding Japanese Society, 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Herbert, W. (1992). Conjuring up a crime wave: the rapid growth in the crime rate among foreign migrant workers in Japan critically examined. Japan Forum, 4, April, 109–119. Hoffman, V.J. (1982). The development of modern police agencies in the Republic of Korea and Japan: A paradox. Police Science 5, 3–16. Igarashi, F. (1986). Forced to confess. In G. McCormack & Y. Sugimoto (eds), Democracy in Contemporary Japan (pp. 195–214). Sydney: Hale and Iremonger. Japan Federation of Bar Associations (1993). What’s Daiyo-Kangoku? Tokyo: JFBA. Japan Times (2002). Put a Stop to Rising Crime. Editorial, 10 October. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ed20021010a1.htm [Accessed 7 October 2005] Japan Times (2003). Editorial, 1 February. Johnson, C. (1972). Conspiracy at Matsukawa. Berkeley: UCLA Press. Katzenstein, P.J. & Tsujinaka, Y. (1991). Defending the Japanese State: Structure, Norms and the Political Responses to Terrorism and Violent Social Protest in the 1970s and 1980s. Cornell East Asian Series. Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University. Kawai, M. (2004). Paradox of the Myth of the collapse of secure society. Iwanami Publication. 2004. Kim, Y. (1987). Work – the key to the success of Japanese law enforcement. Police Studies, 10, 109–117. Leishman, F. (1999). Policing in Japan: East Asian Archetype? In R.I. Mawby, Policing Across the World: Issues for the Twenty-first Century (pp. 109–25). London: UCL press. Manning, P. (1977). Police Work: The Social Organisation of Policing. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Mitchell, R.H. (1992). Janus-Faced Justice. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Miyazawa, S. (1990). Learning lessons from the Japanese experience: a challenge for Japanese criminologists. In V. Kusuda-Smick (ed.), Crime Prevention and Control in the United States and Japan (pp. 104–135). Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Juris Publications. Miyazawa, S. (1992). Policing in Japan: A Study on Making Crime (translation by F.G. Bennett with J.O. Haley). Albany: State University of New York. Murayama, M. (1990). Keira keisatsu no kenkyu. Tokyo: Seibundo. National Police Agency (1993). White Paper on the Police 1992. Tokyo: National Police Agency. National Police Agency (2006). Current Juvenile Police Policy in Japan. NPA. Police Policy Research Center National Police Academy of Japan: Research Foundation for Safe Society. Downloaded from: http://www.npa.go.jp/english/ on 9 March 2006. Newburn, T. & Hayman, S. (2002). Policing, Surveillance and Social Control. CCTV and Police Monitoring of Suspects. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Oda, H. (1992). Japanese Law. London: Butterworths. Obinata, S. (1987). Tennosei Keisatsu to Minshu. Tokyo: Nihonhyoronsha. Parker, L.C., Jnr. (1984). The Japanese Police System Today: An American Perspective. New York: Kodansha International.

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Punch, M. (1979). The secret social service. In S. Holdaway (ed.), The British Police. (pp. 102–117). London: Edward Arnold. Sparks, R. (1992). Television and the Drama of Crime. Buckingham: Open University Press. Stack, S. & Cao, L. (1998). Political conservatism and confidence in the police: A comparative analysis. Journal of Crime and Justice, 21, 71–76. Steinhoff, P.G. (1993). Pursuing the Japanese police. Law and Society Review, 27, 827–850. Sugimoto, Y. (1997). An Introduction to Japanese Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thornton, R.Y. (1992). Preventing Crime in America and Japan: A Comparative Study. New York: M.E. Shape Inc. Tipton, E.K. (1990). The Japanese Police State: The Tokko in Interwar Japan. London: Athlone Press. van Kesteren, J., Mayhew, P. & Nieuwbeerta, P. (2000). Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries. NSCR, Wetenschappelijik Onderzoek - en Documentatiecentrum. Vogel, E.F. (1979). Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America. New York: Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc. Walmsley, R. (2000). World Prison Population List, 2nd edn. Home Office RDS Findings 116. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/r116.pdf [Accessed 22 May 2006] Walmsley, R. (2002). World Prison Population List, 3rd edn. Home Office RDS Findings 166. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/r166.pdf [Accessed 22 May 2006] Watson, A. (1995). The dark cloud over Japanese criminal justice: abuse of suspects and forced confessions. Justice of the Peace & Local Government Law, August 5, 516–519. Westermann, T.D. & Burfeind, J.W. (1991). Crime and Justice in Two Societies: Japan and the United States. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co. Westney, D.E. (1982). The emulation of western organizations in Meiji Japan: the case of the Paris prefecture of police and the keishicho. Journal of Japanese Studies, 8, 307–342. White Paper (2002). Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice. White Paper on Crime 2002. Tokyo: Ministry of Justice. 2002 14. White Paper (2004). Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice. White Paper on Crime 2004. Tokyo: Ministry of Justice. 6. Williams, F.P., McShane, M.D. & Akers, R.L. (2000). Worry about victimization: an alternative and reliable measure for fear of crime. Western Criminology Review, 2(2). [Online] Retrieved 17 July 2007: http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v2n2/williams.html World Values Study Group (1991). World Values Surveys 1981–1983. Ann Arbor, MI: ICPSR. Yoshida, N. & Leishman, F. (2006). Japan. In T. Jones & T. Newburn (eds), Plural Policing: a comparative perspective (pp. 222–238). Abingdon: Routledge.

FURTHER READING Chatterton, M. & Ellis, T. (1995). What’s going on out there? Policing, 11, 171–7. Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Critchley, T.A. (1978). A History of Police in England and Wales, 2nd edn. London: Constable. Director General of the Life Security Bureau and the Assistant Director General of the National Police Agency (2000). Strengthen[ing] the Consultation Work in the Police on the Problems, Troubles and Disputes brought to the Police. 4 March. Ditton, J. & Duffy, J. (1983). Bias in the newspaper reporting of crime news. British Journal of Criminology, 23, 159–165. Downes, D. & Morgan, R. (2002). The skeletons in the cupboard: the politics of law and order at the turn of the millennium. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan & R. Reiner (eds), Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd edn (pp. 286–321). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ekblom, P. & Heal, K. (1982). The Police Response to Calls from the Public. Research and Planning Unit Paper No. 9. London: HMSO. Finch, A.J. (2001). Homicide in contemporary Japan. British Journal of Criminology, 41, 219–235. Fujimoto, T. & Park, W-K. (1994). Is Japan exceptional? Reconsidering Japanese crime rates. Social Justice, 21, 110–135.


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Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control, Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Oxford: Clarendon. Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T. et al. (1978). Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (1996). A Review of Crime Recording practices. London: Home Office. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (2000). On the Record. Thematic Inspection on Police Crime Recording, The Police National Computer and Phoenix Intelligence System Data Quality. London: Home Office. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (2000). Policing London: Winning Consent. London: Home Office. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/hmic/pollondon.pdf [Accessed 25 September 2002] Home Affairs Ministry (2003). No title. http://japanupdate.com/previous/00/08/10/story6.shtml [Accessed 21 February 2003] Ishii, M. (2002). Improving the process in dealing with the troubles, problems or disputes brought to the police. Sousa Kenkyu (Research on Police Investigation), Vol. 600, pp. 113–119. Tokyo: NPA. Kitamura, T., Kijima, N., Iwata, N., et al. (1999). Frequencies of child abuse in Japan: hidden but prevalent crime. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 43, 21–33. Komiya, N. (1999). A cultural study of the low crime rate in Japan. British Journal of Criminology, 39, 369–390. Kumigai, F. (1983). Filial violence in Japan. Victimology, 8, 173–194. Maguire, M. (2002). Crime statistics. The ‘data explosion’ and its implications. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan & R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd edn (pp. 322–75). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Macpherson, W. (1999). The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. Cm 4262-I. London: The Stationery Office. Morgan, J. (1988). Children as victims. In M. Maguire & J. Pointing (eds), Victims of Crime. A New Deal? (pp. 74–82). Milton Keynes: Open University Press. National Public Safety Commission and National Police Agency (2000). Summary of the Restructuring of the Police. Tokyo: National Police Agency. 2000. National Police Agency (2000). Circular issued by the National Police Agency on 4 March 2000, from the Deputy Director General of the NPA to Chiefs of the Prefectual Police Headquarters. http://www.npa.go.jp/pub docs/index.htm [Accessed 22 May 2006] National Police Agency (2005). Police of Japan. NPA. Osborne, R. (1996). Crime and the media: From media studies to post-modernism. In D. Kidd-Hewitt & R. Osborne (eds), Crime and the Media (pp. 25–48). London: Pluto. Park, W-K. (1997). Explaining Japanese low crime rates: a review of the literature. Annee, 35, 59–87. Punch, M. & Naylor, T. (1973). The police: a social service. New Society, 24, 358–361. Reiner, R. (2002). Media made criminality: the representation of crime in the mass media. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan & R. Reiner (eds), Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd edn, (pp. 376– 416). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiner, R., Livingstone, S. & Allen, J. (2000). No more happy endings? The media and popular concern about crime since the Second World War. In T. Hope & R. Sparks (eds), Crime, Risk and Insecurity (pp. 107–25). London: Routledge. Royal Commission on the Police (1962). Final Report. Cmnd. 1728. London: HMSO. Scarman, Lord (1981). The Brixton Disorders. Cmnd. 8427. London: HMSO. Shapland, J. & Hobbs, D. (1989). Policing priorities on the ground. In R. Morgan & D. Smith (eds), Coming to Terms with Policing (pp. 11–30). London: Routledge. Shigehisa, M. (2002). After 1 Year of Enacting Anti-stalker Law. Sousa Kenkyu (Research on Police Investigation), Vol. 600, pp. 128–138. Skogan, W. (1990). Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods. New York: Free Press. Smith, S. (1984). Crime in the news. British Journal of Criminology, 24, 289–295. Sugai, S. (1957). The Japanese police system. In R. Ward (ed.), Five Studies in Japanese Politics (pp. 1–14). Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

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Surette, R. (1998). Media, Crime and Criminal Justice: Images and Realities, 2nd edn. Belomont: Wadsworth. Vaughn, M.S. & Tomita, N. (1990). A longitudinal analysis of Japanese crime from 1926 to 1987: The pre-war and post-war eras. International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice. 14, 145–169. Watts, J. (2002). Japan’s Teen Hermits Spread Fear. Observer, 17 November. White, P. (1995). Homicide. In M.A. Walker (ed.), Interpreting Crime Statistics (pp. 130–144). Oxford: Oxford University Press. White Paper (2001). Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice. White Paper on Crime 2001. Tokyo: Ministry of Justice. 2001 13. Williams, P. & Dickinson, J. (1993). Fear of crime: read all about it? The relationship between newspaper crime reporting and fear of crime. British Journal of Criminology, 33, 33–56. Yamagishi, T. (1999). From Secured Society to Trusted Society: The Future of the Japanese System. Chyuko Shinsho. Young, J. (2000) The Exclusive Society. London: Sage

PART 2

Knowledge-Based Policing: Future Directions

Introduction to Part 2 Part 2, Knowledge-Based Policing: Future Directions, illustrates the future direction of community policing. It begins by building on the earlier discussion by Brodeur and Dupont and their view that traditional policing studies have tended to underestimate the importance of the complex web of institutions that govern and deliver security. In the information society, where time and space are collapsing and uncertainty flourishing, knowledge work is irremediably embedded in these networked structures. For community policing, this suggests a trajectory of change around networks may be identified which provides opportunities to capture data and process it into information, intelligence and knowledge. The section begins by looking at the challenges faced by attempts to introduce the concept of intelligence-led policing (ILP). It then considers how community policing has so often been the poor relation in terms of the information that it needs to deliver effective local policing and engage other social agencies in joint action. Next, it examines new tools for producing community intelligence within a model that seeks the co-production of neighbourhood order and reassurance. The emerging interest in networking is discussed by two contributors who begin to sketch out new networked forms of governance that allow information to flow more freely than in traditional bureaucratic silos and illustrate how this enables resources to be accessed that are beyond the reach of bureaucracies. Much of the discussion about community appears to be predicated on the basis that small geographic areas are homogenous. However, geodemographic tools demonstrate that even within a small area there can be a great deal of heterogeneity, a finding that is exploited effectively by the commercial sector in order to better target resources. In that context, it is also important to note the gap that exists between the commercial and public sectors as regards ICT expenditure: something upon which knowledge-based systems and modern commercial practice are heavily reliant.1 Since the cost of introducing knowledge-based systems may be beyond that which any government can afford, it may be that their adoption in criminal justice and policing will depend upon successful partnerships with the private sector. New tools and technologies are being developed that will help us to move from simply producing “hot spot” maps of where crime has occurred to predictions of where the criminal will strike next. If new ways of managing ICT networks and networks of people represent a way forward, it would be na¨ıve to think that politicians and policy makers would abandon the ground they currently hold. At the same time, most practitioners would be greatly relieved if the management of crime and criminal justice policy was based on 1

For example a patient record system for the British National Health Service is estimated to have cost in excess of £12.5bn, and a new logistics system for a major British supermarket cost £2.4bn.


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more than the latest tabloid press headlines or whim of politicians. The section concludes by showing it is possible to develop methodologies that provide an evidence base for a national or regional picture for prioritizing and resourcing crime initiatives that is based on extensive consultation. The national picture may be the price that is paid for the freedom to allow informal networks and managed networks (also called heterarchies) based on trust and reciprocity to bear fruit. The theme of organizational opposition to intelligence-led policing (ILP) is examined by Jerry Ratcliffe (Chapter 9) when he examines the knowledge management challenges of ILP. He makes the distinction between old and new knowledge. The old knowledge was at the heart of the detective’s craft; it related to information about criminals and crimes, and could be conceived as a cache of private information retained by the detective. In contrast digitization provides the opportunity for new knowledge as represented by a broader interpretation of intelligence; it encompasses approaches such as crime mapping, trend and demographic analysis, and strategic intelligence using open source information. If the custodians of the old knowledge were detectives, the custodians of the new knowledge may not even be police officers and may rarely be professionally involved outside of the police station. Ratcliffe points out that the gulf between this small but growing army of analysts and the traditional cops is huge. ILP he believes holds the prospect for the best of both worlds by harnessing old and new knowledge. But he cautions that the organizational resistance and culture is such that moving forward with analysis as the dominant knowledge tool for decision making is likely to be a slow process with no guarantee of success. In Chapter 10 Frédéric Lemieux describes the findings from a cross-cultural comparison of intelligence-led policing by agencies in 10 countries. He describes how threat and risk assessments have become part of the vocabulary of modern policing and that there is a change taking place from reactivity to proactivity. The drivers for this change were different in the various countries visited, but environmental factors including rising crime or public disgrace from an investigation that had been poorly conducted were sufficient to bring about the change. States had also changed the legal environment thereby allowing police agencies to become more proactive and empowered to conduct surveillance. Two models could be observed, one in which agencies were created with purely an intelligence gathering and analytical capability and the other in which the intelligence capability is combined with executive police powers. The management of these complex organizations and activities is discussed with an observed trend towards matrix forms of management where the chains of vertical and horizontal command are fully integrated. The police organizations studied have realized that the fight against serious crime requires a decentralized decision-making structure to be composed of individuals from a variety of organizations and occupations working together to reach common objectives. However, the organizational culture can work against the effectiveness of ILP as some organizations have a closed mind when it comes to embracing new methods, and there can be competition between individuals and their organizations concerning their respective statuses, which creates a lack of trust and restricts the exchange of information. The organization may be too indulgent to those who fail to communicate information. The ILP organization is a “learning” organization in which a strong intelligence culture resides first and foremost in the proper use of intellectual resources, and the contribution of their analyses to the creation of intelligence and corporate knowledge. In Chapter 11 Martin Innes and Colin Roberts describe various iterations of community policing in England and Wales which have now been followed by a recent evolution or

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reinvention in the form of the concept of reassurance policing. They explain how this relates to community intelligence and the co-production of neighbourhood order. Locating this discussion around the concept of reassurance rather than community is intended to capture how, in late modernity, policing as the delivery of formal social control has to adapt to a complex, mobile and reflexive contemporary social order. Rhetorical invocations of the notion of “the community” retain little analytic purchase in an environment where individual citizens routinely enact membership of multiple communities to which they belong. It recognizes that some of the core social problems that policing is being used to address have subtly shifted in their configuration. A pervasive sense of insecurity that haunts the conduct of a more fluid form of social ordering is increasingly recognized as a social problem of at least equal magnitude to actual crime rates. The reassurance policing model relies on the systematic collection and analysis of community intelligence in order to construct a detailed knowledge base which can be used to guide policing interventions so that they may be as impactive as possible upon those matters that de-stabilize and disrupt everyday local social orders. Another feature of the model is that it seeks co-productive arrangements including the active participation of communities themselves, together with other local agencies whose remit impacts upon community safety. The chapter is organized around three key themes. First, the key facets of reassurance policing are described together with why the model was introduced and the theoretical and empirical supports for this approach. The main body of the argument then focuses upon the knowledge base that can be created by drawing on new methodologies for collecting and analysing community intelligence and their use in reassurance policing processes. The chapter concludes by examining connections between police-based formal social controls and community-based informal social control. In Chapter 12 Monique Marks and Jennifer Wood look at new ways of building police– community partnerships. They argue that in community policing reform programmes the police have held on to their modern identities as the central (state) agency, even within multiagency policing and safety networks. Based on a pilot scheme in schools in the Australian state of Victoria, Marks and Wood examine ways of generating youth safety from below by situating young people at the centre of the knowledge-based policing of their environment. The paper also considers the question, “Where are we heading in community policing in the 21st Century?” and concludes that if community policing is to be conceived of as “a vehicle for empowerment and a means of community mobilization and activism” (Casella 2002, p. 369), conventional security networks and partnerships need to be re-conceptualized. This entails that police officers’ basic assumptions about their role in these networks be completely reoriented. In order for this to occur, public police organizations need to engage with community groupings in ways that allow for the robust articulation of different forms of knowledge and capacity around safety problems. Youth safety is simply one example wherein new “nexus” arrangements for policing are required. The conceptual and cultural leap from a centred conception of networks to a de-centred one is significant. Police members working the streets experience a tension between broader organizational imperatives to think differently and strategically about issues of safety and security whilst at the same time being pressured (often by communities) to target their resources on the people and places most “at risk”. The challenge of aligning social prevention objectives with “new managerial” tendencies is undoubtedly difficult. What is known is that the embedded sets of habits and world views that have dominated policing for decades are very resilient, despite a widespread awareness and acceptance amongst contemporary

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police members (especially leaders) that old ways of doings things are limited, and most certainly not always conducive to fostering safer communities. The project described in this chapter endeavours to promote a new model that combines, as well as advances, both theory and practice in the networked production of safety by and for young people. Its success will in no small part depend on the degree of engagement with it by all police. Research programmes like Nexus Policing are an effective way of re-focusing policing from the bottom up reinforced by innovative and supportive police policy at the top. In Chapter 13 David Ashby demonstrates how geodemographics, which is the analysis of people by where they live, is a discipline which can contribute to knowledge-based policing by helping to better identify the communities in community policing. This chapter describes how geodemographic classification of neighbourhoods can be used to interpret crime survey data and operational databases of crimes reported to the police. This practice of classifying neighbourhoods has been widely used in the commercial sector for decades to segment customers and target appropriate services, and identify the most effective channels of communication and the most appropriate messages. Yet its application in the public sector has been slow, although there is growing interest in England and Wales. The chapter demonstrates that geodemographic analysis provides a clearer indication of the level of risk of victimization in different types of neighbourhood. This kind of analysis can help target resources to areas of greatest need. This may also point to the correlation between certain neighbourhood types and the demand for other public services such as schools and health, indicating that the solution to areas that have experienced long-term deprivation will lie in multi-agency partnerships and empowering of communities through activities designed to provide greater social capital and collective efficacy. Geodemographic analysis provides a shared understanding that can facilitate networking between individuals and organizations in crime and disorder reduction partnerships. Fundamentally, geodemographics contributes to knowledge-based policing and public sector delivery by building upon a foundation of classifying communities on the basis of social similarity rather than mere locational proximity; communities and localities are examined using a neighbourhood typology which groups on a basis of the underlying social conditions, rather than merely crude areal divisions. From this basis, one may begin to develop a framework for evidence-based policing strategies which account for the geodemographic composition and social capital found within different local communities. Such a foundation, at a fine spatial granularity, appears to be one clear pathway to achieve knowledge-based delivery of public services in line with the rhetoric of the new localism espoused by the current government. In Chapter 14 “Community Policing and Prediction”, Nick Ross and Ken Pease argue that community policing must concentrate on where it can do most good in suppressing today’s crime and forestalling tomorrow’s. Accordingly, police involvement should be commensurate with the presenting crime problem; and more urgency should be given to short-run prediction of crime to enable the police to offer timely help and enforcement. They present data that shows that doubling the number of crimes to be dealt with at force level is only associated with approximately a 62% increase in the number of police officers available to deal with them. So doubling the problem does not double the resource to deal with it. A similar pattern is observerved at smaller basic command unit level and sectional stations. Not only should the right level of resources get to the areas of most need, these authors argue that prospective mapping involves prediction of risk, based upon how it spreads. Even the leader in prospective mapping, known as ProMap, is work in progress, but at

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an early stage in its development it was shown to outperform the most sophisticated form of retrospective mapping. To harness the benefits of prospective mapping would require a considerable investment in research and development, including the automatic collection of data relating to all reported crime and the development of algorithms that would enable the resources known to be available to the system to be deployed proactively. ProMap is an example of the kind of knowledge-based policing tool that could become available during the 21st Century. Community policing would become more effective if it became smarter in harnessing research and developed algorithms that enabled it to make predictive analysis. In Chapter15 Karen Stephenson, an academic and management consultant, draws our attention to the need for new approaches to governance in a social world that is becoming smaller, flatter and more complex. She points to the different roles of bureaucracies, markets and networks in providing a governance function. From an academic perspective the role of networks has been overlooked. After briefly examining the weaknesses of bureaucracies and markets she discusses the benefits that can come from developing further the concept of networks. Networks can be purposefully designed to align, and outcomes can be large-scale managed collaborations. This has important implications for governance. There is a name for this type of network structure. It is called heterarchy, the features of which, it is argued are more suited to 21st Century social structures. As people tend to work within organizational silos, information tends not to flow as freely as it does in networks. Heterarchy provides a methodology to facilitate the collaborative endeavours of organizations that are networked together. Network analysis identifies through brief web or paper surveys the vestigial remains of trust and hidden knowledge in the embryonic collaborative enterprise. It then shows how to leverage trust relationships to bridge gaps in service, thereby encouraging reciprocity and avoiding perverse outcomes. A second technique is process mapping which identifies inefficiencies and duplicative effort and thereby streamlining operations. Effective intelligence is a third technique for improving individual and collective thinking. Five case studies are provided covering a range of subjects including the structure of the Los Angeles Police Department divided between community policing teams and SWAT teams; a transformational project involving police departments in the Dutch Antilles; networking between agencies in a domestic violence project in Northampton where the methodology revealed the hidden role of key stakeholders; a multi-agency burglary project in Nottingham, illustrating cultural conservatism by the police which prevented them tapping into resources that were available from other partner organizations; and a study of an Anti-Social Behaviour Team in Mansfield which revealed that there would have been more resources available to the team if they had worked in a more networked way, going outside normal boundaries to engage with other partners who were willing to help. Structured networks or heterarchies appear to be more fit for purpose in the 21st Century, experience and research showing that New Public Management has been a failure. Heterarchies also fit more closely with the concept of “public value”, a concept that is currently receiving attention. Most traditional leadership models are based on hierarchy, not heterarchy and focus on the typical “one leader” approach, emphasis being placed on overt positional “power”. In heterarchical governance there are many moving parts, each with a leader; the sheer complexity and scale of it far exceeding what traditional leadership may be able to do. What may be required to deal with the greater scale inherent in heterarchy is a similarly scaled leadership: one skilled in conceptualizing and working with networks, which understands the implications for new mechanisms of governance based on trust and reciprocity.

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The focus in previous chapters on the local arrangements for policing may leave politicians, policy makers and police leaders wondering what role is left for them in these networked arrangements. In Chapter 16 Martine Pattyn & Paul Wouters of the Belgium National Police describe how they have developed the National Police Security Picture for Belgium by means of a multi-criteria decision-making model as the basis for the deployment of police resources at national and regional levels. They are concerned that establishing crime priorities at the national level has previously lacked an empirical basis and is therefore prone to political and media influence. Whilst it may be na¨ıve to envisage a situation without political influence, there is a growing realization that good policy making requires an evidence or knowledge base. The growing complexity of security issues in our fast developing societies poses a real challenge to those in government who are responsible for effective security and criminal justice policy making. Within a democracy it is not only essential to acquire the information needed to map out all relevant security problems, it is also necessary to adopt an objective, scientific method that makes the reasoning behind the selection of priorities transparent. Consequently it should no longer be possible, even for senior police officers or politicians, to make policy “off the top of the head”. On the contrary, because of legitimate democratic, economic and professional concerns, a well-researched approach is required. The methodology developed here allows the authors to present a picture representing a general ranking of the top 33 crime and disorder problems according to their gravity. Further developments will enable the national police security picture to evolve into a full risk analysis. From the various existing methods of multi-criteria decision aid (MCDA), the Prométhée method was chosen and its methodology is described. The analysis is based on data held in the national police database and is weighted according to three criteria: the volume of the particular crime, its consequences and how it is perceived by the public. The resulting rankings provide the evidence base for the national policing plan. The methodology also enables new and emerging trends to be incorporated into the model as a result of the observations of front line practitioners. Using such techniques can make the decision process fully transparent, enhancing democratic decision making and providing a knowledge base against which performance against the prioritized objectives can be measured. It demonstrates the added value that can come from this kind of analysis of crime data in order to evolve a national crime picture that endeavours to reflect a key stakeholder consensus.

REFERENCE Casella, R. (2002). Where policy meets pavement: stages of public involvement in the prevention of school violence. Qualitative Studies in Education, 15, 349–372.

CHAPTER 9

Knowledge Management Challenges in the Development of Intelligence-Led Policing Jerry Ratcliffe Temple University, US

INTRODUCTION Building on Brodeur and Dupont’s opening chapter on knowledge-based policing, this chapter argues that their conceptualization of knowledge (as it applied to policing) can be further disaggregated into “old” and “new” knowledge. Old knowledge consists of information which has been traditionally respected within the realms of law enforcement and relates to the activities of criminals. It is knowledge gleaned through traditional law enforcement techniques such as informant handling, investigation and investigative interviewing. I argue here that a new kind of knowledge has evolved due to the rapid digitization in the last 20 years, a greater understanding of crime and police effectiveness in combating and reducing crime, and a new era of accountability. This “new” knowledge is represented by a broader interpretation of intelligence and encompasses approaches such as crime mapping, trend and demographic analysis, and strategic intelligence using open source information. Unlike old knowledge, the new intelligence is held by people who rarely leave the police station and who might also be civilians in a sworn world. This slow paradigm shift on what information is perceived as significant and valuable has taken most police agencies into uncharted territory both culturally and organizationally, and has the potential to change the dynamics of long-held notions of value and worth within policing. These challenges to the traditional hegemony are discussed in the chapter. The chapter starts by outlining old and new knowledge, and then considers their place within the framework of current law enforcement structures, structures that are not necessarily efficiently organized to funnel crime analysis and criminal intelligence to the right people. In the opening chapter of this book, Jean-Paul Brodeur and Benoˆıt Dupont articulate many of the problems associated with defining knowledge, an essential component of any attempt The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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to characterize the current trend in law enforcement management as a knowledge-based paradigm. They are also right to suggest that we are not yet at the stage where knowledge (in its various manifestations) forms the dominant influence to a police decision maker’s strategic operations, though this is a developing possibility. The current situation is probably such that there is a slow, but growing, realization that information and knowledge management are central to effective policing decisions. Brodeur and Dupont are right to be a little cautious in their appraisal. It would be easy to gaze into the future and envisage a policing nirvana, where policing decisions would be centred on a thorough grounding in effective tactics, a comprehensive view of the criminal environment based on an integration of crime analysis and criminal intelligence, a complete understanding of criminological theory and the crime reduction principles of environmental criminology, and where police and other non-law enforcement partners in the crime prevention milieu interact through equal and mutually beneficial partnerships. But this is a goal that is still quite distant for a few communities, and may remain a complete fantasy for most. This chapter aims to build on the work of Brodeur and Dupont by exploring some of the predominantly internal issues surrounding the development of knowledge within local law enforcement agencies. In particular, the chapter will explore changes that have occurred in the management of information within police departments over the last 20 years or so. Here the emphasis will be more on local concerns with high volume crime, rather than the terrorism and high policing (Brodeur, 1983) concerns from the first chapter. It is argued that there has been a dominant form of knowledge, long respected and revered in law enforcement, centred on information known about offenders. The dominance of this “old knowledge” has been recently challenged by the growth of a “new knowledge”, one that focuses more on the crime event rather than the criminal. This new challenger provides opportunities for police departments to respond better to crime, but also causes a myriad of problems for organizations, problems which police departments have yet to fully embrace and resolve. The move from the old “criminal knowledge” to a more embracing “crime knowledge” is rife with organizational and cultural issues for police departments, some of which will be discussed in this chapter. However, before getting to that point, some clarity as to old and new knowledge is required.

OLD KNOWLEDGE To better understand the new challenges for intelligence-led and knowledge-based policing, it may be useful to explore the existing hierarchical structure of knowledge value in the policing domain. While knowledge is power, not all knowledge is equal. Modern policing had hardly been in operation long before certain types of knowledge were being prized above others. Although London’s Metropolitan Police was founded in 1829 on the principle of crime prevention as the primary motive for police operations (Mayne, 1829), the introduction of detectives and plain clothes personnel changed the dynamic considerably. Indeed it has been argued that the move away from crime prevention to a preoccupation with detection began with the hiring of the first plain-clothed “intelligent men” in the early 1840s, hired to investigate and recover stolen jewellery (Ross, 2005). A terrorist bombing in London in 1867 sparked the creation of the first formal detective department, and although originally viewed by the public with suspicion, the detective role has been on the rise ever since (Audit Commission, 1993). By 1963 every force in England and Wales had a detective bureau and since that time policing has tended to idolize detectives and rewarded them for their

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knowledge of the criminal environment, and of offenders in particular. In a culture where knowledge is power (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997, p. 317), the power that has traditionally been respected, treasured and retained by individual officers has been knowledge that can solve individual cases. As a result, the detective function – a function which emphasizes the case-specific and investigative facet of law enforcement – has become a prized position within policing. Along with its elevated status, the position has a number of perks for detectives, such as an associated reward structure and significant public recognition. All of this is based largely on a myth of specialized knowledge retained by the detective and withheld from the rest of the police department. I say myth, because there is evidence that many investigative practices have largely remained stagnant over the last 30 years, and the increase in the use of investigative technologies within policing (such as automated fingerprint identification, DNA analysis and computerized databases) has not apparently provided a discernable benefit to clearance rates for most agencies. Researchers lament that: It is ironic that these advances have not been accompanied by a corresponding improvement in investigative effectiveness, except, perhaps in the most visible but relatively infrequent situations. Thus, while technology is playing an increasingly influential role in the criminal investigation process, it for the most part remains supportive of and reliant upon the relationship between the public and the police in solving crime (Horvath, Meesig & Lee, 2001, p. 8).

Thus the search for improved investigations has always relied on the relationship between police officers, victims and offenders, with detectives seeing their pivotal role as managing the relationship between police and offenders, a relationship that revolves around information gleaned through interviews with arrested suspects and confidential informant handling. While operational security has often been cited as the reason for keeping information secret, the simple reality is that personal advancement is usually the reason, as information can often be translated into arrests – and a good arrest record can be translated into personal success. For example, arrests were for many years in the Metropolitan Police the primary way to advance within the detective ranks. Officers who were aides to the Criminal Investigation Department could demonstrate their worth and in doing so earn a place on a CID course, and so become a detective (Grieve, 2004). Respect was therefore accorded to a “good thief-taker” or a cop who had a nose for nicking villains. In patrol cars, canteens and offices across the land, respect fell to those that knew the streets, had a feel for villainy, and who had a snout or two who could tell them what was going on. As Flood notes (at least in relation to the UK): By and large, intelligence gathering from the 1960s onwards was more art than science with most collection capability consisting of the use of informants whose exploitation was usually immediate and sometimes dependent upon the personal insights, priorities and personal determination of the informant handlers. Intelligence activity in most police forces had exclusively short term operational objectives (Flood, 2004, p. 40).

While there will always be a place for arresting prolific offenders, the emphasis on detection and the value of success in individual investigations has, until recently, completely overshadowed the original preventative role of policing. As detectives have risen through the ranks by being able to demonstrate good police work through arrests, they have in turn reinforced the importance of an impressive arrest record as the way to advance within the sworn ranks, both by their promotion choices for junior staff and by their personal examples. In contrast, the field of crime prevention – where results are hard to prove and rarely end in arrests – has lamentably become an exile from mainstream policing for the unambitious, the idealistic, and the unpromotable.

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A corollary of this general trend within law enforcement has meant that the emphasis on individual case investigation has tended to warp the meaning of intelligence within policing. The International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts defines intelligence as “the product of systematic gathering, evaluation, and synthesis of raw data on individuals or activities suspected of being, or known to be, criminal in nature. Intelligence is information that has been analysed to determine its meaning and relevance. Information is compiled, analysed, and/or disseminated in an effort to anticipate, prevent, or monitor criminal activity.” (IALEIA, 2004, p. 37).1 This definition emphasizes the individual casespecific nature that is the reality of much criminal intelligence analysis. While there exists a range of application areas for criminal intelligence across an array of tactical, operational and strategic theatres (Ratcliffe, 2004), most front-line police officers simply interpret the term intelligence as synonymous with covert information. Civilian (and sworn) staff hired and paid to take covert photographs of suspects or transcribe recorded telephone conversations have been hired as “analysts” to gather “intelligence” though they perform no analysis and simply create covert information for detectives investigating single cases or a series of linked offences, all for the sole purpose of effecting an arrest and prosecution. This misrepresentation of the terms perpetuates the myth that if information cannot be used to crack a case, it is not intelligence. This pervasive view has remained surprisingly steadfast, even when evidence of the relative ineffectiveness of individual investigations to long-term crime reduction efforts has been documented, with some researchers expressing the view that “progress in police criminal investigative efforts remains largely isolated from broader police efforts to respond more effectively, more efficiently and more resolutely to the crime problem in general” (Horvath, Meesig & Lee, 2001, p. 9). Nowhere is this view more noticeable than in the area of strategic criminal intelligence, an area where many intelligence analysts are still required to “sell” their product and work to make themselves and their wares attractive to decision makers (Nicholl, 2004; Sheptycki & Ratcliffe, 2004, p. 196). Even though intelligence-led policing has advanced considerably in the UK, Sheptycki’s review of strategic intelligence still found as notable “the status and prestige that accrues to the detective occupation, the pre-eminence of which has inhibited intelligence-led policing by converting ‘intelligence’ into ‘detections’” (Sheptycki, 2004b, p. v). Strategic intelligence is analysed information that aims to provide “insight or understanding, contributing to decisions on broad strategies, policies and resources, directed to achieving long-term organisational objectives” (ACS, 2000, p. 5). As such, it is hardly of interest to many front-line officers. Unfortunately, that view still remains when some of those front-line officers become executives, perpetuating the value of traditional knowledge best used to solve cases. When commanders in three New Zealand police districts were interviewed, none of them felt that they should be the clients for crime analysis and criminal intelligence, feeling that lower ranks were more appropriate levels for that type of analysed information (Ratcliffe, 2005). It is likely that this view was based on their perception that criminal intelligence was simply an investigative tool that would be of little value in their broader roles as decision makers.

1

They do however rather confuse matters by having separate definitions for crime-pattern analysis (a process that looks for links between crimes and other incidents to reveal similarities and differences that can be used to help predict and prevent future criminal activity), criminal analysis (the application of analytical methods and products to raw data that produces intelligence within the criminal justice field), and criminal intelligence (information compiled, analysed and/or disseminated in an effort to anticipate, prevent, or monitor criminal activity) (IALEIA, 2004).


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Until recently therefore, criminal intelligence has been mislabelled as an adjunct to investigations, as a poor cousin languishing in the shadow of the detective who is still the family favourite. This even when, at least in the US, only a minority of agencies (39%) provide any training for newly appointed investigators (and when they do it is less than two weeks in duration), and only slightly more than half of police departments require their detectives to undergo refresher or additional training (Horvath, Meesig & Lee, 2001). The old knowledge has therefore been that which is secret, case-specific, offender-focused and locked inside the heads of detectives or good “thief-takers”. Intelligence-led policing still recognizes the value of the old knowledge, but also seeks to integrate it with new knowledge, knowledge that comes from very different sources. The next section explores these new forms of knowledge.

NEW KNOWLEDGE If case-specific, covert information that can be directly applied to solving investigations is the old knowledge, what then is the new knowledge? To understand the new information areas available to the police, it is helpful to look at three drivers for change: the rapid digitization in the last 20 years, a greater understanding of crime and police effectiveness in combating and reducing crime, and a new era of public accountability. The digital age has impacted both sides of the crime equation, increasing opportunities for, and methods of, criminality while simultaneously creating opportunities for police departments to better understand patterns of crime and the bigger picture of police operations by acting as a retrievable repository of information that shrewd departments can analyse and model. Police departments have reacted to the digitization of police record keeping with variable levels of enthusiasm, with police chiefs ranging from the pioneering enthusiast to the downright Luddite. In many cases, the introduction of new technology has met with problems, such as the chronic obsolescence of many systems, systems which take ages to introduce, to the resistance of officers unfamiliar with new technology and fearful of the implications for assessment of competence (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997, pp. 432–3). Digitization of police data has, however, enabled a whole breed of new crime analysts to access and analyse recorded crime data, offender information and explore patterns in local crime activity. Policing was ripe for digitization. As early as the 1920s, detectives in London’s Metropolitan Police were using a card index of local thieves to target for arrest (Grieve, 2004) and as currently as the mid-1980s your current author (as a young constable) used a faded photograph glued to the back of a collator’s card to identify and arrest (while off-duty no less!) a man wanted for murder in the East End of London. Card indices are still in use in many places, though have been generally replaced as the limitations of such rudimentary devices have become clear. Intelligence databases are now more often digital, searchable and national. As recently as 1985, police stations in London were using paper records to manage calls for service.2 Now, locally recorded police data, 2

When I arrived in 1985 at Bow Road Police Station (H District in Tower Hamlets) in East London, the command and control centre was a converted corridor with antiquated equipment and a rudimentary telephone system. Calls from the public were recorded on a message pad and stored on a two-pronged holder. To prevent messages falling off the holder, the prongs were secured at the top by an elastic band. When the public rang the emergency 999 number, the call was answered at New Scotland Yard and the details forwarded to Bow Road via a telex printer that was kept in a cupboard. When an emergency call was received, a little bell rang inside the printer to signify the urgency of the message!

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such as calls for service and crime reports, are digitally recorded and available for analysis by the more advanced police departments, analyses that can incorporate non-police data sources such as census data, or crime distributions from neighbouring police departments. Crime analysts, unheard of in most departments 20 years ago, are now becoming peddlers of the new knowledge, knowledge that relies less on individual knowledge gleaned about offenders, and more about offending patterns. The new knowledge is therefore less about criminals and more about crime. And it is also about the computer technical prowess required to manipulate this new, rich information source. While most officers could figure out a card index, complex searches of relational databases requires a little more digital prowess. However, this knowledge would be of little value if crime was a random phenomenon. For crime patterns to be deemed “knowledge” requires a greater understanding of crime from a theoretical perspective, and this has been provided by crime researchers and analysts, especially from the field of environmental criminology. Greater digitization has increased the flow of raw information available to crime researchers interested in patterns of crime and the range of possible responses. In the last 30 years, environmental criminology has grown to be a substantial field within its own right. Environmental criminology, and related approaches such as crime science (see, for example, Laycock, 2001), worries less about the causes that lead an individual to engage in a life of crime, and is more concerned with the dynamics of the crime event itself and what conditions of the crime target or local environment can be ameliorated to prevent repetition. In this way, environmental criminology demonstrates significant differences in philosophical approach to mainstream criminology (Clarke, 2004). This more practical focus has led to a wealth of knowledge about spatial and temporal patterns of crime over the last couple of decades. For example, environmental criminologists have mapped the extent of routine activity theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979; Felson, 1998), the rational choice perspective (Clarke & Felson, 1993; Cornish & Clarke, 1986) and crime pattern theory (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1993a, 1993b) to arrive at a range of practical crime-reduction and detection tactics. Such tactics include situational crime prevention (Brantingham & Brantingham, 1990; Clarke, 1997; Newman, 1997), geographic profiling (Canter et al., 2000; Rossmo, 2000), and a body of knowledge about reducing crime at specific places (for a good summary see Eck, 1998). Many of these strategies are woven together under the banner of problem-oriented policing (Braga et al., 1999; Goldstein, 1990; Leigh, Read & Tilley, 1996, 1998; Skogan, 1996). What differentiates problem-oriented policing from a more traditional approach to law enforcement is the emphasis on long-term problem solving, requiring a different type of analysis and a more strategic view of the use of information. This growing need for strategic information has added value to the new knowledge provided by crime analysts. The information created by well-trained crime analysts has therefore become valuable as a result of a growth of work that explains how crimes are committed. Where crime analysts have value and their knowledge is prized is, in part, due to the work of environmental criminologists and crime scientists. It is also in part due to the need for police departments to better account for their activities, a role that mainstream criminology could never fulfil. It is probable that the increased enthusiasm to make the police more accountable is a direct result of greater digitization of police data. It was always difficult to hold police accountable when there were no benchmarks or measures of their activity. That time has now gone forever. Research suggests that much of the data recorded by police is not used


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by the police but is now provided to external institutions (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). Some of these institutions have an oversight role over policing, and the provision of data in the new information-rich world of the digital age has created a huge accountability industry in the policing arena. The push for accountability within a framework of what was described as a general trend towards a new type of public management (Crawford, 1997) left police managers struggling to manage the range of areas to which they were deemed responsible (Fleming & Lafferty, 2000; Serpas, 2004; Sheptycki, 2002). All of this has driven the creation of a new type of analyst, one who rarely leaves the police station, who rarely (if ever) has contact with offenders, who is often regarded as a secondclass citizen of the police world, yet is one who is the gatekeeper to new knowledge about police activity and an essential part of the measurement of police success in a risk-adverse environment. In this context, I therefore define the new knowledge as that which relates to information about crime events, patterns and themes that run through what can initially appear to be random events, and is knowledge that is more relevant to resource management and operational priorities than case support and individual investigations. The skills and types of analyses that can explore these broader patterns are very different to the skills necessary to collect the traditional wisdom. Crime-centric knowledge requires computer dexterity, analytical ability, database management and reporting skills, and can be conducted largely in an office environment. In many respects, this all runs as an anathema to the traditional, offender-centric knowledge that recognized skill in manipulating and managing informants, and respected knowledge based on a long history working in one area and getting to know the characters and offenders in that geographical region. As such, it is noticeable that old knowledge has a tendency toward the parochial – new knowledge skills are transferable and portable. This may be a significant advantage in the modern workplace where employees no longer spend their entire career at the same location and in the same job. Prior to intelligence-led policing, the new knowledge was central to the development of both problem-oriented policing and CompStat. Problem-oriented policing requires police agencies to analyse new knowledge in order to scan for problems, analyse the problems, and to assess the results of police attempts to reduce crime (Eck & Spelman, 1987; Scott, 2000) while CompStat uses digital crime data almost exclusively in order to create a management accountability process (McGuire, 2000; Serpas, 2004; Walsh, 2001; Willis et al., 2003). However, the success of the new knowledge in these environments has not been as great as some have hoped. Problem-oriented policing is still to become a mainstream police activity irrespective of the high levels of adoption from a few police forces (Scott, 2000) and while CompStat has grown to, if not mainstream status then certainly celebrity status in the US (Firman, 2003), little is yet known about its effectiveness for crime reduction (Moore, 2003). The mapping component of CompStat meetings is often rudimentary and point-focused, such that while CompStat does use new technology and data sources recorded digitally, it often does so in a tactical manner, eschewing more long-term strategic goals in favour of ameliorating patterns of dots rather than exploring long-term problems. Intelligence-led policing is an attempt to unite new and old knowledge. To fully understand the development of intelligence-led policing and its aim of combining a general understanding of crime problems with information on recidivist offenders and central players in the criminal milieu, it is helpful to have an impression of how information-led initiatives have led us to the current situation.

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INTELLIGENCE-LED POLICING: THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS? Intelligence-led policing did not appear from thin air. A number of different paradigms preceded intelligence-led policing, as already stated. For example, the community policing paradigm that swept US policing in the 1980s and 1990s provided a fertile ground for a more information-driven approach to community safety. Although community policing is a rather protean concept within law enforcement, it can be summarized as a philosophy and strategy that seeks to increase the level of contact between the police and the local population. Ideally, contact with the public is directed towards operational priorities that are dictated through an increased information processing requirement on the part of the police. What separates this information processing requirement from the information demands of previous eras is the requirement to analyse “information from domains that had previously been either ignored or neglected” (O’Shea & Nicholls, 2002, p. 2). As such, police are required to identify and correct “problems” in the community, and the requirement to identify problems has been a driving force for increased information processing, not just within community policing, but also with the growth of problem-oriented policing. Along with the Broken Windows hypothesis of Wilson and Kelling (1982), Herman Goldstein’s problem-oriented policing philosophy (Goldstein, 1990) has been credited with “discovering” community policing (Oliver & Bartgis, 1998). Problem-oriented policing has a significant information-processing requirement, especially at the scanning, analysis and assessment stages of the methodology, as commonly defined with the SARA method (Eck & Spelman, 1987). Problem-oriented policing places a significant responsibility on crime analysis to drive the problem identification and response evaluation process. However, problem-oriented policing, while growing in popularity, has so far failed to achieve the status of mainstream practice in both the UK (Townsley, Johnson & Pease, 2003) and the US (Scott, 2000). One cause of the slow diffusion of problem-oriented policing has been the lack of suitably-trained crime analysts to assist with both problem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing (Clarke, 2004). Intelligence-led policing grew in the UK in the wake of two influential government reports by the Audit Commission (Audit Commission, 1993) and the Home Office (HMIC, 1997). These reports lamented the reactive focus of British police and sought to shift this focus to a more proactive stance that focused more on the criminal than the crime. This drove the development of a policing strategy (intelligence-led policing) that concentrated on the use of informants and intelligence analysis to identify problem areas and recidivist offenders (Christopher, 2004). The conceptual framework of intelligence-led policing is now enshrined in the UK National Intelligence Model (NIM), a business plan for police that concentrates on targeting offenders, the management of crime and disorder hot spots, the investigation of linked crimes and incidents (series), and the application of a range of preventative measures (Flood, 2004; NCIS, 2000). As Brodeur and Dupont (2006) argue, intelligence-led policing also grew from the development of information as a fundamental resource in policing, and the realization (probably a reluctant one on the part of some police officers) that policing is a networked activity, where there are many participants, both within and without the uniform branch, who contribute to law and order. This network has always been recognized by intelligence analysts who have relied on informal networks to provide the information snippets that were often held up in bureaucratic information bottlenecks, inter-agency turf wars, or the myriad other


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ways that vital information is not communicated. Indeed, while a strength of the law enforcement intelligence world has been the way that informal information mechanisms have often filled the breach when formal approaches to information sharing failed, this resulted in an unintended consequence when police services attempted to formalize intelligence-led policing. In the UK, this has occurred through the introduction of the NIM (NCIS, 2000). Prior to the NIM, the use of informal information transfer systems had negated the need for formal systems and once the NIM was introduced, there were a number of teething problems, some of which may be attributable to the imposition of a formal structure on what had, for many years, been a relatively informal business. Suddenly there were formal reporting mechanisms and organizational collaborations to be structured and quantified, yet all of this was being imposed on a policing system that was unfamiliar with the subtleties of the underlying constructs of intelligence, existing as it was in an intelligence “lacuna” (Christopher, 2004). The NIM holds out the promise of a more objective, problem solving focused approach to policing problems, and has grown to have a broader mandate than just the “high” policing functions of regional and international organized crime threats (Oakensen, Mockford & Pascoe, 2002; Tilley, 2003). With the inclusion of volume crime as a key target of the NIM from the start, the opportunity to integrate the new knowledge with a resurgent interest in the old (intelligence-based) knowledge has held out the panacea of an integrated, objective analysis of the criminal environment driving policing priorities. However, policing is beset by fads, and there is recent evidence in the UK that the police are moving away from a single intelligence focus towards a more community-oriented “reassurance” model (Maguire & John, 2006). Maguire and John may be right when they argue that the NIM can survive the move to a more neighbourhood-type model of policing, and that the retention of the NIM might provide a more objective framework to future changes in policing priorities. However, the time will inevitably come when there is conflict between community concerns and the evidence from objective crime and intelligence analysis. If the priorities of the former are taken over the latter, then the NIM may continue to be a business model for policing, but it may cease to be an intelligence-led model. The next section considers the challenges facing the development of intelligence-led policing.

KNOWLEDGE-RICH OR JUST INFORMATION-RICH? The challenges facing an integration of criminal intelligence and crime analysis – the old and the new – are not insignificant. Even though recent publications emanating from the Home Office suggest that there will be a premium on intelligence and expertise in the policing environment of the future (HMIC, 2005), there are challenges that are technological, organizational and cultural (Ratcliffe, 2007).

Technological Concerns Attempts to move forward with an integration of new and old knowledge are running into significant technological barriers, due to a degree of incompatibility of the types of information required to feed the knowledge structures. Crime analysis is inherently spatial with a near one-to-one relationship between crimes and locations. Criminal intelligence

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is less distinct. Offenders offend in a variety of places, live at different locations – often simultaneously – and knowledge of their routine activities and patterns of offending is usually incomplete and often of variable quality. As a result, many police forces have separate computer programs to deal with these different knowledge structures. Database structures that are designed to audit one function of policing are not necessarily capable of providing useful information to another function. For example, I was recently reminded of the dangers of assuming that police data recording practices have moved into a more crime-focused area, while I was wandering (virtually) through the databases of a local police department. While trying to gain an understanding of their data systems in order to see what information could be valuable to aid with the development of CompStat and problem-oriented policing, I found data fields called “incident start date/time” and “incident end date/time”. Having worked with many police departments that use these fields to record crime start and end times, such as when a house was known to be safe and then later discovered burgled, I assumed that these fields were the same and could be useful for crime and problem analysis. In making my assumption I failed to recognize the limitations of current police data recording practices, practices that were geared towards a bureaucratic response to police work rather than a problem-solving response. The data systems reflected the preoccupation with output rather than outcome. These fields recorded when the incident was opened onto the dispatch system and when it was cleared, because these bureaucratic micro-measurements of “performance” were more important than getting a handle on the picture of criminal activity in the area. Further inquiry discovered that the data systems did not record temporal characteristics of incidents because nobody was interested in the crime patterns and no one deemed this information worth recording. It certainly appears that greater digitization in the policing world has, rather than free police officers from “stifling bureaucratization” (Brodeur & Dupont, 2006, p. 12), simply replaced the often meaningless paper form with an often meaningless electronic form. And I suspect the latter will continue to grow, against our best efforts. If Government policy relating to increasing police officers without an appropriate knowledge creation infrastructure continues, the situation in relation to knowledge management improvement within the police service does not augur well for the future of intelligence/knowledge-led policing. (Hughes & Jackson, 2004, p. 73)

Organizational Concerns Organizational problems can be considered to be a two-pronged problem. In the simplest terms, what is the point in expending effort to develop intelligence and analyse crime patterns if police forces do not have the capability and personnel necessary to capitalize on the advantage that knowledge-driven policing is supposed to give them? In a recent Home Office review of UK police forces, the ability of the police to respond to criminal intelligence-driven initiatives was found to be hamstrung by organizational limitations: The response to serious and organised crime suffered in many places simply because there were not enough resources and specialist support to act upon the intelligence gathered. The strength of the public order domain was dependent upon the experience and exposure of the force, as well as capacity issues (HMIC, 2005, p. 7).

Secondly, even if resources are available, what is the point if there is no requirement or organizational enthusiasm to steer output to a more intelligence-driven operational plan? These questions currently plague attempts by analysts to take a greater role in driving the


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direction of police forces, attempts that are largely dependent on the individual leadership and support of commanders at the local level. Cope’s (2004) research in two police forces is particularly illuminating of this issue. The lack of policing experience of many crime analysts was an issue for sworn officers who were unwilling to accept recommendations for action from non-police personnel, and many analytical products were simply ignored by operational police. Furthermore, the “paucity of training on analysis affects police officers’ ability to ask the right questions of analysts in order to ensure the products are useful operationally” (p. 194). These are but a few of the organizational problems. Sheptycki’s (2004b) review of strategic intelligence capacity in British policing identifies no fewer than 12 organizational problems that inhibit the advancement of criminal intelligence in a multi-agency setting.

Cultural Concerns The power of police culture as an inhibiting influence on change is almost legendary, and has the potential to leave an integrated analytical model in a cachectic state. In other words, the ideal of an integrated model may not be actively dismantled, but instead may be left to wither on the vine through inactivity and professional malnourishment. This passive resistance will be familiar to many street cops used to having to deal with the latest buzzwords and ideas and who know that if they wait long enough the latest fad will eventually disappear. As Herman Goldstein noted, “Police departments have a life of their own. Powerful forces within the police establishment have a much stronger influence over the way in which a police agency operates than do the managers of the department, legislatures and courts, the mayor, and the members of the community” (Goldstein, 1990, p. 29). One of the more significant effects of these forces within policing is a long-held mistrust of civilians by their sworn colleagues. This exacerbates the existing problem of recognition of crime analysts, by compounding it through the placement of civilians into the role. In effect, crime analysis suffers a doublewhammy of being both a new discipline as well as a (usually) civilian one. However, even when analysts are not civilian, they still experience problems surrounding the issue of intelligence sharing within their organization. These intra-agency occupational subcultures (Sheptycki, 2004a) work counter to the sharing ambitions of intelligence-led policing. While the organizational issues may be overcome, this lack of willingness to share intelligence is clearly a cultural issue, and is one that most police agencies have either ignored or to which have been unable to find a solution. Sometimes the withholding of information with analysts is not from any malicious desire to limit information flowing to the centre, but is more simply due to a lack of recognition that the information the officer possesses is worth passing on. The vicious cycle of officers not passing on information is returned to them as a lack of intelligence provision. As they feel that they do not get anything from the intelligence analyst, they don’t bother passing information on, and the cycle continues. And there is no reason for the cycle to stop, given that many officers feel that the intelligence arm of the service tells them things they already know . . . Crime prevention initiatives are only as effective as the accuracy of the analysis on which they are based. In other words, proper understanding of the problem is vital. This will not occur when police officers persuade themselves that they understand more about a problem than they really do . . . The ‘I know best’ syndrome is a trait prevalent in all officer ranks (Townsley, Johnson & Pease, 2003, p. 192).

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A desire to seek longer-term solutions to crime problems than simply palliative arrests is an aim of intelligence-led policing, one that is shared with problem-oriented policing. It is possible that this desire has not been sufficiently articulated to rank-and-file officers and that perhaps greater direction and leadership will allow this to become more of a corporate direction for the police service. This is to be hoped for, but don’t hold your breath. Such a dramatic change as is probably required would be a significant innovation, and a lack of support for innovation (in reality a resistance to change even when current practices are not working) does tend to characterize many police organizations – a point recognized by Cope: “Poor problem-oriented approaches, poor analytical thinking and a culture that does not support innovation, alongside fragmentation, occupational divides, media and public expectations all contribute to the lack of integration of knowledge into practice” (Cope, 2004, p. 196). It is possible that these issues are more prevalent with new knowledge rather than old knowledge, largely because of the source and delivery of that knowledge. Cops still favour knowledge that comes from other cops.

AN UPHILL STRUGGLE Publicly, information sharing has become the lynchpin of law enforcement’s effort to reduce crime and prevent future terrorist attacks within the United States. To a considerable degree, this enthusiasm for the principles of information and intelligence sharing stems from within law enforcement, and is supported by state and federal government. In early 2002, law enforcement executives and intelligence experts met in Toronto, Canada, at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Criminal Intelligence Sharing Summit. There they called for the creation of a nationally coordinated criminal intelligence council so that the country could develop a national intelligence plan. This resulted in the creation of a Global Intelligence Working Group, who wrote the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan [NCISP] (GIWG, 2003). The plan, supported by President Bush and endorsed by the Department of Justice, is a central tenet of US law enforcement in the 21st Century: “The plan is the outcome of an unprecedented effort by law enforcement agencies, with the strong support of the Department of Justice, to strengthen the nation’s security through better intelligence analysis and sharing.” (Attorney General John Ashcroft, May 14, 2004). The Global Intelligence Working Group promoted their vision of the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan’s relevance to police at all levels of American law enforcement. In this vision (GIWG, 2003, p. iv), they noted that the plan should be (among other things): r A mechanism to promote intelligence-led policing; r A technology architecture to provide secure, seamless sharing of information among systems; r A plan that leverages existing systems and networks, yet allows flexibility for technology and process enhancements. While it is laudable to promote intelligence-led policing, in terms of information sharing, the NCISP recognizes that challenges exist. The first recommendation of the plan was that “the agency chief executive officer and the manager of intelligence functions should seek


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ways to enhance intelligence sharing efforts and foster information sharing by participating in task forces and state, regional, and federal information sharing initiatives” (GIWG, 2003, p. vi). Yet information sharing initiatives run counter to much of the existing culture within law enforcement, a culture that recognizes knowledge is power and retention of information gives an individual (or organization) power within the community of law enforcement agencies. Information sharing does not necessarily result in an equal transfer of knowledge. The aim of utilizing “existing systems and networks” fails to recognize that existing networks survive due to the mutual benefit inherent in the arrangement. The “pay-to-play” or “give-to-get” principle is “a widely understood, unwritten rule . . . the expectation in law enforcement that data access and sharing hinge on equitable participation” (GIWG, 2003, p. 18) and a recognition of this is written into the plan. However, an equitable sharing of knowledge may not be a realistic proposal. After all, if information sharing was regularly equal and beneficial to both sides, surely we should have seen more of it, making the plan redundant? Articulating support for intelligence sharing has become the Zeitgeist of our times, however articulation of intelligence sharing principles and active participation and sharing are not the same thing. Intelligence-led policing is attempting to synchronize two different types of knowledge (old and new) that are, on the surface, fairly mismatched, and is attempting to do so in order to create intelligence products that go beyond the existing arrest mentality and into preventative areas that are incompatible with the subculture of current policing. The challenges are significant. It is yet unclear whether intelligence-led policing will completely rescue the role of intelligence from “over 150 years in the murky backwaters of policing” (Christopher, 2004, p. 179). It may be that the route to an integration of crime analysis and criminal intelligence is a tortuous labyrinth at best. It may be that intelligence-led policing does not survive in its current form. The provision of information to the community may take on an even greater role in the knowledge management practices of police services, and if that is the case, it may herald the dominance of the new knowledge over the old knowledge, with criminal intelligence slinking back off into the murky backwaters of policing, and crime analysis expanding its client base to include as many customers out of uniform as in uniform. New expectations for information from clients inside and outside the police may push new knowledge to the fore, eclipsing old knowledge that runs a risk of being deemed needlessly secret and parochial. With the greater portability of skills in the new knowledge arena, and with a greater demand for quantitative information from the client base, there is the risk that modern work practices could make old knowledge redundant. This process may be accelerated through greater emphasis on community policing. A greater role from the community in policing priorities can tend to drive policing to become more reactive, and as a result crime analysis can lack an understanding of the complex web or network nature of organized crime – the sort of information that the old knowledge can provide but that is rarely shared with community groups. Secondly, the reactive nature of much police–community liaison often seeks a rapid response to local crime problems to alleviate an immediate need, rather than to develop the longer-term problem-solving solutions that many issues really require. As a result, crime prevention decision making can become driven by “what happened last week” or gets skewed by priorities dictated by the media, who are always interested in recent crime events of note. All of this suggests that moving forward with an integrated model of analysis combining new and old knowledge as the dominant tool for decision making is likely to be a slow process with no guarantee of success.

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REFERENCES ACS (2000). Intelligence Doctrine. Canberra: Australian Customs Service. Audit Commission (1993). Helping With Enquiries: Tackling Crime Effectively (Management handbook). London: HMSO. Braga, A.A., Weisburd, D.L., Waring, E.J. et al. (1999). Problem-oriented policing in violent crime places: A randomized control experiment. Criminology, 37, 541–580. Brantingham, P.L. & Brantingham, P.J. (1990). Situational crime prevention in practice. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 32, 17–40. Brantingham, P.L. & Brantingham, P.J. (1993a). Environment, routine, and situation: Toward a pattern theory of crime. In R.V. Clarke & M. Felson (eds), Routine Activity and Rational Choice, 5, 259– 294. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Brantingham, P.L. & Brantingham, P.J. (1993b). Nodes, paths and edges: Considerations on the complexity of crime and the physical environment. Environmental Psychology, 13, 3–28. Brodeur, J-P. (1983). High policing and low policing: remarks about the policing of political activities. Social Problems, 30, 507–520. Brodeur, J-P. & Dupont, B. (2006). Knowledge workers or ‘knowledge’ workers? Policing and Society, 16, 7–26. Canter, D., Coffey, T., Huntley, M. & Missen, C. (2000). Predicting serial killers’ home base using a decision support system. Quantitative Criminology, 16, 457–478. Christopher, S. (2004). A practitioner’s perspective of UK strategic intelligence. In J.H. Ratcliffe (ed.), Strategic Thinking in Criminal Intelligence, 1st edn, pp. 176–92. Sydney: Federation Press. Clarke, R. (ed.) (1997). Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies, 2nd edn. Albany, NY: Harrow and Heston. Clarke, R.V. (2004). Technology, criminology and crime science. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 10, 55–63. Clarke, R.V. & Felson, M. (1993). Introduction: Criminology, routine activity, and rational choice. In R.V. Clarke & M. Felson (eds), Routine Activity and Rational Choice, 5, 259–294. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Cohen, L.E. & Felson, M. (1979). Social change and crime rate trends: A routine activity approach. American Sociological Review, 44, 588–608. Cope, N. (2004). Intelligence led policing or policing led intelligence?: Integrating volume crime analysis into policing. British Journal of Criminology, 44, 188–203. Cornish, D. & Clarke, R. (1986). The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending. New York: Springer-Verlag. Crawford, A. (1997). The Local Governance of Crime: Appeals to Community and Partnerships. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Eck, J. (1998). Preventing crime at places. In L.W. Sherman, D. Gottfredson, D. MacKenzie et al. (eds), Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising. Washington DC: National Institute of Justice. Retrieved on 13 July 2007 from: http://www.ncjrs.gov/works/ Eck, J.E. & Spelman, W. (1987). Problem Solving: Problem-Oriented policing in Newport News. Washington DC: Police Executive Research Forum. Ericson, R.V. & Haggerty, K.D. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Felson, M. (1998). Crime and Everyday Life: Impact and Implications for Society, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press. Firman, J.R. (2003). Deconstructing CompStat to clarify its intent. Criminology and Public Policy, 2, 457–460. Fleming, J. & Lafferty, G. (2000). New management techniques and restructuring for accountability in Australian police organisations. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 23, 154–168. Flood, B. (2004). Strategic aspects of the UK National Intelligence Model. In J.H. Ratcliffe (ed.), Strategic Thinking in Criminal Intelligence, 1st edn, pp. 37–52. Sydney: Federation Press. GIWG (Global Intelligence Working Group) (2003). The National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan. Washington DC: Department of Justice.


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Sheptycki, J. (2004a). Organizational pathologies in police intelligence systems: Some contributions to the lexicon of intelligence-led policing. European Journal of Criminology, 1, 307–332. Sheptycki, J. (2004b). Review of the Influence of Strategic Intelligence on Organised Crime Policy and Practice (Special Interest Series Paper 14). London: Home Office Research and Statistics Directorate. Sheptycki, J. & Ratcliffe, J.H. (2004). Setting the strategic agenda. In J.H. Ratcliffe (ed.), Strategic Thinking in Criminal Intelligence (pp. 194–216). Sydney: Federation Press. Skogan, W.G. (1996). Problem-Oriented Policing in Chicago. Paper presented at the Conference on Problem-Oriented Policing as Crime Prevention, Stockholm. Tilley, N. (2003). Problem-Oriented Policing, Intelligence-Led Policing and the National Intelligence Model (Crime Science: Short Report Series). London: Jill Dando Institute for Crime Science. Townsley, M., Johnson, S. & Pease, K. (2003). Problem orientation, problem solving and organizational change, Crime Prevention Series, 15, 183–212. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press. Walsh, W.F. (2001). CompStat: an analysis of an emerging police managerial paradigm. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 24, 347–362. Willis, J.J., Mastrofski, S.D., Weisburd, D. & Greenspan, R. (2003). CompStat and Organizational Change in the Lowell Police Department: Challenges and Opportunities. Washington DC: Police Foundation. Wilson, J.Q. & Kelling, G.L. (1982). Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety. The Atlantic Monthly, March, 29–38.

CHAPTER 10

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Intelligence-Led Policing Frédéric Lemieux George Washington University, US

INTRODUCTION The collection and analysis of information regarding the commission of crimes are not recent activities in police history. From the very beginning, detectives have searched for clues, gathered evidence, used informants and formulated hypotheses. However, in the past two decades, intelligence-led policing (ILP) has formalized the use of intelligence within police departments to meet economic, organizational, political and technological considerations. It should first be noted that the interest in criminal intelligence stemmed from the many setbacks suffered by American police departments before the courts following the 1970 implementation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.1 In fact, police organizations were unable to subscribe to procedural requirements and produce evidence of sufficient quality to obtain convictions under this legislation (Peterson, 1994). The use of criminal intelligence has made it possible to structure police work and reinforce the knowledge of investigators by focusing their investigations on a conceptual model of organized crime: the criminal business model. As well, the criminal intelligence boom is the result of disillusionment regarding the effectiveness of traditional crime-fighting techniques in the 1980s, namely the inability of police to anticipate and understand skyrocketing crime rates at the time. And lastly, the many scandals concerning interrogation techniques, failed surveillance of repeat offenders and “prolific” criminals also contributed to the development of intelligence-led policing (Audit Commission, 1993; Home Office, 1989; Home Office, 1995; Maguire, 2000). In the 1990s, it was noted that a relatively low number of offenders was responsible for a substantial number of crimes reported to police. Efforts were therefore made to dissuade or neutralize these individuals in order to reduce crime rates and generate an impact on specific crime-related problems (crime hot spots). The 1980s and 1990s saw the streamlining of interventions by public authorities in the area of internal security and the erosion of the population’s trust in police (Home Office, 1995; 1

This legislative provision was based on the recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Police Services and the Administration of Justice (1967), which had exposed the power and extent of organized crime in US society, demonstrating by this fact itself the inability of police organizations to counter the phenomenon.


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Johnston, 1992, 1999). This sparked the emergence of a long list of non-government players in the area of security, which led to a redefinition of the paradigm of policing (Bayley & Shearing, 2001). This restructuring resulted in the establishment of a new governance of security, in which cost-effectiveness and performance became key parameters. Institutional and social players henceforth required greater efficiency from police organizations, stressing the need for them to cut operating costs and reduce the size of their administration. This downsizing context sounded the knell of police reactivity, leading departments towards operational proactivity designed to meet crime reduction targets and performance indicators and towards a “results-based” culture (HMIC, 1997). Police also pumped a lot of money into informatics and surveillance technology in an effort to increase operational effectiveness. This technological arsenal made it possible for police to gather and analyze information obtained from social and criminal environments. This drastically changed the role of police, with officers now required to become “knowledge workers” (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). In fact, more than ever before, police work focused on managing information concerning criminal phenomena and law-breaking individuals or corporate entities. This information is stored in databases and used in investigations, profiling, the planning of operations, assessment activities and the study of crime-related spatial-temporal trends (Ouimet, 1995). Although the cross-over of information gathered by public agencies continues to be governed by a legislative framework dictated by privacy protection requirements (Klosek, 2000), normative frameworks have significantly expanded in recent years (Brodeur, Gill & Töllborg, 2003). Despite law constraints, the process of technology and methods of analysis are under way and will continue to develop as policing moves towards a more knowledge-based paradigm. In response to environmental pressures, police focused on developing a proactive doctrine which made it possible to coordinate crime-fighting operations and the allocation of resources (Crawford, 1997). In the past few decades, several other proactive models have surfaced, namely community policing and the problem-solving approach. However, intelligence-led policing is special because its doctrine is heavily influenced by a corporate and commercial vision in which police organizations adopt a “client-centered approach” with respect to the offender population. Under such a model, intelligence units thus become consultant “firms” in charge of developing new strategies or tactics to target criminals or phenomena which until then eluded police control or may not have been policed at all. ILP therefore adds yet another weapon to the police arsenal: criminal analysis. It is a sort of “service” which processes and organizes police information in order to: (1) direct decisions and the deployment of resources; (2) coordinate police action based on various levels of jurisdiction, and (3) ensure continuous learning via feedback on operational results (John & Maguire, 2003). Also, knowledge generated by analytical techniques now makes it possible to expand the ILP managerial approach towards an actuarial management of crime. Just as the systems were introduced in the 1990s to develop a predictive capability regarding repeat offence risks and problems (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997; Marx, 1988), police departments are now able to produce prospective analyses on emerging criminal trends. Threat and risk assessments have now become part of the vocabulary and activities of police (Maguire, 2000). ILP proposes an alternative to traditional reactive methods used by police by stressing the importance of focusing police efforts with greater discernment and thought, while incorporating information technology and analytical methods (Tilley, 2003). In adopting such an approach, police organizations must develop and regularly update their knowledge of crime patterns, criminal networks and prolific offenders. The application and implementation of

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON OF INTELLIGENCE-LED POLICING

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these objectives require specialized staff, as well as flexible procedures and structures which make it possible to manage the continuous flow of information and act in a swift, systematic and accurate manner. The proactive nature of this model is beneficial for several reasons: (1) it offers flexibility in the choice of tactics; (2) it avoids the ethical problems related to the use of confessions by opting for electronic surveillance, informers and informants, and (3) it encourages cooperation among detectives, uniformed officers, civilian employees and members of non-police agencies (Maguire, 2000). The intelligence-production process used by police organizations is essentially based on that employed in the military and security intelligence community (Morehouse, 2000). Although the works of Godfrey and Harris (1971) and Harris (1976) helped initiate police departments to the rudiments of the cyclical intelligence-production process, the procedural application of this activity has long been related to rhetorical rather than pragmatic views (Maguire, 2000, p. 316; Norris & Dunnighan, 2000; Ratcliffe, 2002, p. 51; Tilley, 2003, p. 334). In the 1990s, criminal intelligence activities expanded to Anglo-Saxon countries and Europe. Several police organizations therefore integrated key terminology and concepts related to this practice (Gottlieb, Arenberg & Singh, 1994). However, dissemination of the criminal intelligence policing model did not proceed in an integral and systematic fashion. Although the reasons for change – efficiency of police activities – were shared by a vast majority of police departments, application of the model seemed to have a differential integration. The diversity of legal constraints, jurisdictional parameters, organizational cultures and criminal problems resulted in a wide array of standards and practices from one state to another. In this chapter, we will elaborate a transversal analysis between the standards and practices regarding criminal intelligence of 12 police organizations that we have visited for prior research purposes. Precisely, we will look at the influence of environmental contingencies and the constraints posed by the structure of police agencies on the criminal intelligence activity as well as the formalization of processes of criminal intelligence.

METHODOLOGY First of all, we must point out that this research is part of an international comparative analysis. This methodological approach offers the possibility of comparing organizational practices/standards currently in effect in Canada to those of other intelligence services around the world. The sampling used in this research is based on the choice of reputable organizations with extensive criminal intelligence experience. This makes it possible to make a selection based on criteria such as the age and size of the service, its resources, level of jurisdiction (local, regional, national and supranational) and the areas of targeted criminal activity. We also diversified our sample by integrating criminal intelligence services from non-Western countries (Asia and Latin America). For the purposes of this research and considering the time limitations, we targeted only 12 police organizations in the fall of 2004. We visited the following agencies: National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS – England), Australian Crime Commission (ACC – Australia), Federal Police of Belgium (Fedpol – Belgium), Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP – Canada), Administrative Security Department (DAS) and National Police (Colombia), European Police Office (Europol – the Netherlands), International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO-Interpol – France), Singapore Police Force (SPF – Singapore), Cantonal Police of Geneva and Vaud, and Police and Customs Cooperation Centre (Switzerland). We conducted 76 semi-structured

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interviews with analysts and managers within criminal intelligence services. The goal of interviews was to explore the viewpoints of players regarding the normative framework and operational rules of their respective criminal intelligence services and identify evaluation criteria/procedures for the intelligence produced.

THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTINGENCIES A review of how several criminal intelligence services operate shows, with all things being equal in other respects, that the environment and sociopolitical context in which they evolve significantly affect their informational capability. It was noted that the criminal, institutional, legal, political and social environment greatly influences the standards/practices that exist in police agencies tasked with conducting intelligence operations. This first section will focus on the impact of the following: evolution of the criminal environment, hostility of the environment, constraints imposed by the legal system and involvement of political authorities in the development of criminal intelligence activities conducted by police departments.

Evolution of the Criminal Environment The cases set forth in this research show that intelligence activities expanded mostly in the wake of radical reforms of the policing system, namely due to the ineffectiveness of reactive methods and the absence of law enforcement strategies. In England, the Tackling Crime Effectively Report published by Audit Commission (1993) showed that police departments were unable to detect the existence of prolific offenders responsible for an appreciable proportion of crimes. Through its work, the Bichard Commission (Bichard, 2004) shed light on the inability of police organizations to capture a habitual offender due to a series of breakdowns in intelligence-exchange mechanisms and the fact that the information management systems of forces were not integrated. Such police setbacks sparked profound changes in the English police system, including the establishment of the intelligence-led policing model. These examples demonstrate that progress towards ILP or knowledge-based policing is still at an early stage of its development, at least in England and Wales, as it does not have the information networks for the collection and transformation of data into intelligence and knowledge. In Australia, the expansion of transnational organized crime was more to blame on the lack of strategic vision by the forces of law and order; and high-level police corruption, which has been the subject of a number of reports, may also have allowed organized crime to develop in Australia, and inhibited it being targeted aggressively. Australian police organizations were unable to identify the criminogenic effects of changes resulting from an international environment in full development, i.e. the increase in drug trafficking activities sparked by the Vietnam War in the 1970s and the proliferation of illicit markets resulting from the democratization of commercial transactions with Southeast Asian countries in the 1980s and 1990s. This sociopolitical context led to a succession of police reforms in Australia over a 15-year period. In Belgium, the brutality of the Brabant killings and the Dutrou case not only shocked public opinion, but also brought discredit on the forces of law and order. As a result of the Belgian police’s inability to put an end to the violent killings and monitor a well-known


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pedophile, both the police and the legal system as a whole lost all credibility with the public, resulting in an unprecedented overhaul of the entire judicial system. These three examples show that the restructuring of the policing system stems from the failure by police organizations to adapt to the evolution of criminal problems. In each case, criminal intelligence activities were at the very heart of reforms and identified as the key to ensuring the effectiveness and proactivity of police actions.

Hostility of the Environment An environment is usually considered to be hostile when there are high risks, either temporary or permanent, to the safety and integrity of institutions, persons or property. This hostility can come from a variety of sources, i.e. political, social, economic, technological, etc. In such a context, the sociology of organizations shows that businesses tend to develop a better knowledge of the environment in which they evolve; the same is true of their stability and survival. To do so, they develop informational and analytical skills which are superior to those of organizations which progress in a stable environment, in an effort to better manage uncertainty. This also seems to apply to police departments which evolve in areas affected by conflicts and political instability. Although police organizations are not subject to the same vulnerabilities as businesses in the private sector, given their public nature and the legitimacy of their status (stability of resources, political and legal legitimacy), they nonetheless are under great pressure to ensure and maintain public order. However, hostility of the environment remains a relative notion based on conjunctural elements. So in most western nations, a strong and increasing sense of insecurity among the population, a criminal event which receives extensive media coverage or political pressure to curb specific types of crime all represent a certain form of specific adversity stemming from an environment which is temporarily hostile. On the other hand, the risk of significant financial, human or physical losses or the destabilization of economic, political and social institutions are undeniable signs of a hostile environment which can have disastrous consequences over a long period of time. The police in Colombia and Singapore evolved in such a context. Colombia is under pressure from both the national and international environment. The influence of drug cartels, revolutionary groups and paramilitaries threatens the stability of Colombia, as well as political stability in the Andes region. On the one hand, actions taken by these groups significantly weaken public institutions, cause major damage to communities and spread disorder and chaos throughout the country. On the other hand, the magnitude of drug trafficking activities and the spilling over of the insurrectionist movement onto the international scene cause several countries, including the United States, to put pressure on Colombia to rectify the situation. In order to guide their operations and define medium-term intervention policies, police agencies have developed a significant informational capability by establishing an extensive network of police informants and using analytical strategies based on the anticipated evolution of security problems. In Singapore, pressure with respect to internal security comes mostly from the international environment. We must not forget that Singapore is located on the periphery of the Golden Triangle area of influence (Burma, Laos and Thailand). It also occupies an enviable

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position in the regional economy (financial centre), resulting in its strategic role in maritime and air transportation. Neighboring countries (Indonesia and Malaysia) are struggling with insurrectionist movements whose activities (financing, trafficking of weapons, etc.) run the risk of spilling over into Singapore. So in response to a hostile international environment, the police in Singapore have adopted an array of surveillance mechanisms (at the border and internally) and an integrated approach in the area of criminal intelligence which puts the emphasis on organizational learning. This intelligence system makes it possible to better detect the expansion of security problems. In July 2002, the Singapore Police Force won the Singapore Quality Award, given to organizations which attain a commendable level of productivity and performance in their area of expertise. This award recognizes that the police force subscribes to international standards in terms of efficiency, strategic vision, corporate values, organizational flexibility and quality of customer service. The Singapore Police Force defines itself as being a “learning organization” which strongly encourages the ongoing training of its employees and the sharing of knowledge both internally and externally. And in 2004, the Criminal Intelligence Department held the first “Learning Festival”, a three-month event which stresses the importance of acquiring new knowledge in order to support and improve the SPF information system. In an effort to improve its informational capability and, ultimately, its learning capacity, the SPF has developed an ambitious national criminal intelligence program. At present, the SPF information system represents, to a certain extent, the key element of the organization’s learning capacity, thus ensuring its position atop the organizational structure. The free flow of exchanges of information between the Criminal Intelligence Department and the various operational units of the SPF is supposed by an extensive network of liaison officers and analysts. C-CRIS is currently being used by four of the eight departments in the Ministry of Home Affairs: the Central Drug Office, the Department of Prisons, the Immigration and Border Surveillance Department and the Singapore Police Force. It is considered as a technological platform which allows the departments to exchange – in real time and in a secure way – information that is often crucial to the carrying out of their respective missions.

Legal Environment It is obvious that a hostile environment also influences the legal framework governing the fight against crime and the operation of police organizations. Countries like Colombia and Singapore have a very developed legal system in which statutes represent, to some extent, tools or mechanisms in support of police action (especially for intelligence activities). For instance, in Colombia, the government can declare a state of emergency and impose systematic identification controls on its population. Under the law, hotel owners are required to indicate to police (DAS) the identity of clients who stay in their establishments; for their part, those in charge of exchange bureaux are required to fingerprint their customers, as well as collect routine personal information. In Singapore, the police are authorized to deploy plainclothes officers to watch public places, visit citizens in their homes as part of community policing initiatives and use a camera system in several places in the city to observe sensitive areas. These few examples show how surveillance techniques set forth by lawmakers help to better detect offences and increase the informational capability of


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police organizations. But in other countries, such as Belgium, the legal system significantly limits intelligence activities conducted by police. For instance, the presence of an examining magistrate limits the possibility of conducting surveillance operations and puts operational intelligence units in a reactive mode by guiding criminal analyses. Since the late 1990s, and especially since September 11, 2001, lawmakers in western nations have been tightening the noose in the area of market crime, financial crime, terrorism and organized crime in general. This legislative evolution also gives more power to police in the area of investigations and surveillance, namely for electronic surveillance, remote surveillance, searches, surveillance of suspicious financial transactions, etc. At the same time, there is a tightening of the control mechanisms to which police organizations and criminal intelligence services are subject. In fact, as illustrated by the cases under review, new legal and administrative provisions have been added to monitor criminal intelligence activities, namely internal/external audit committees, database breakdown mechanisms, access to information and privacy legislation and procedures limiting access to information management systems. It should also be noted that too much latitude in intelligence activities can also have adverse effects. This was the case in Switzerland with the “files” scandal, which tarnished the reputation of Helvetian police departments for several years. In 1989, the Royal Commission announced that the Confederation’s prosecution office had in its possession a database containing more than 900,000 records or files for a total population of 6.5 million people. This information had been collected by the Swiss political police in the absence of a legal framework during the period of the cold war. There were also records on terrorists/extremists, homosexuals, the Jura separatist group and religious groups. Although this incident dates back to the cold war and involves mostly security intelligence services, the fact remains that the measures taken by the federal executive echoed throughout the Swiss police system. The adoption of harsh legislation significantly limited the informational capability of police departments. Still today, the “files” scandal haunts the memory of the population, who remain watchful of the expansion of police powers. Legislative changes and new control measures vary from one state to another, causing an array of problems with respect to exchanges of intelligence. For example, in England, an argument put forward by the police prior to the Bichard Inquiry was that Data Protection legislation prevented them from passing on information. There was a strong discipline of data protection that ran counter to the sharing of information between police agencies. At the international level, the diversity and complexity of national legal systems have a major impact on the informational and analytical capabilities of Europol and Interpol. It is imperative that these international organizations comply with the rules of law and conditions set forth by individual member states regarding security surrounding the storage of police data, analytical procedures (cross-checking of information) and the dissemination of information based on the sensitive nature thereof (restriction of recipients). Also, each legal system is likely to describe offences in its own fashion (descriptions are sometimes even different), and there are several problems with the consistency of entry codes. So the complexity of penal procedures and heterogeneousness in the encoding of offences inevitably lead to fluctuations in the exchanges of information, thus altering the quality of analyses. To overcome these obstacles, police organizations send information in free text format, meaning that recipients must then spend more time and additional resources to structure the information before it can be processed.

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Problems at the international level also apply at the national level. Throughout our research, we noticed that the proliferation of law enforcement jurisdictional authorities and the fragmentation of police apparatuses represent major obstacles to the exchange of information and the standardization of criminal intelligence practices. Whether it be in England, Australia, Canada, Colombia or Switzerland, the superposition or juxtaposition of police agencies whose missions fall under different or similar jurisdictions inevitably causes the locking and/or incompatibility of information systems and the inadequacy of practices and terminology in the area of criminal intelligence. In England, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS)2 faced several obstacles in exchanging information at the local level, due to the uneven development of intelligence activities in municipal police departments and the lack of understanding inherent to the National Intelligence Model (NIM). The National Intelligence Model seems to be welldefined and the integration of its components seems to be sufficiently developed, but the fact remains that it does present many problems. According to John & Maguire (2003), police organizations do not fully understand the NIM. Also, police officers are reluctant to use terminology that is not their own, but rather that of an “establishment” associated with academics. And lastly, it seems that the model’s three levels are not fully functional, thus neutralizing any possibility of assessing its effectiveness. According to several analysts, application of the process faces two major obstacles. First of all, we must not forget that NCIS has no power to enforce the law and therefore does not control the carrying out of operations (prevention and repression). In other words, although NCIS can suggest appropriate operational measures, at no time can it guarantee that said measures will be followed to the letter by police organizations. Since this part of the process is completely beyond its control, it becomes difficult to establish objectives and anticipate expected results. Analysts also agree that this step in the process remains a grey area since there are still no sufficiently reliable measures to estimate the scope of organized crime activities and, as such, the impact of police operations on said activities. In Australia, intelligence activities of the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), of federal jurisdiction, are largely limited by the sovereignty of provinces in the fight against organized crime. The ACC must therefore always ensure the cooperation of provincial police agencies and comply with the codes of penal procedure of each region in Australia, which sometimes limits its investigative powers and the scope of its intelligence operations. In Canada, even though a notable proportion of police departments use the automated criminal intelligence system, even though the code of penal procedure falls under one sole jurisdiction (federal), and even though the federal government established Uniform Crime Reporting several years ago and the Viclass system for serious offences, criminal intelligence practices remain very heterogeneous. In Colombia, despite the centralization of government agencies in charge of intelligence activities, the Administrative Security Department (DAS) and the National Police exchange very little information as a result of intra-jurisdictional rivalry. And although these two agencies operate at the national level, they do not have equal access to the senior levels of government, thus generating great disparities regarding their influence on security strategies (high intelligence v. low intelligence). In Switzerland, the extensive decentralization of police jurisdictions leads to significant disparities in intelligence activities at the level of cantonal police departments.

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Now replaced by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).


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STRUCTURING INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES: ORGANIZATIONAL CONTINGENCIES In this second section, we will review the role played by various organizational elements in the structuring of intelligence activities. We will focus on the status of police agencies, organizational structure and organizational culture.

Status of Organizations Tasked with Criminal Intelligence Activities The status of organizations is usually set forth in a statute, decree or incorporating legislation defining the operation thereof. The status of organizations tasked with intelligence activities can be divided into two categories: (1) organizations with executive power, i.e. law enforcement (police departments), and (2) organizations with no such power (criminal intelligence agencies or services). This distinction is crucial since it directly affects the informational capability of organizations, as well as the quality of the criminal analyses they produce. Police departments have an executive power in order to perform their operational duties, which generate a large number of sources of information, provide a strong ability to detect offences and foster the diversification of expertise in several criminal areas. Access to investigative files/internal police databases/police informants, the presence of a pool of analysts with a diversity of skills and, above all, the possibility to initiate new intelligence operations have a direct impact on the quality of tactical and strategic criminal analyses. For their part, intelligence agencies have no executive power, which creates a series of obstacles in the performance of their duties. Since they have no authority to conduct field operations, most criminal intelligence services find themselves in the role of “distributor” of information in order to facilitate exchanges among police departments. Their mandate also includes producing strategic criminal analyses and participating in the development of crime-fighting policies. However, their ability to fulfill their mandate is based on a reduced informational capability since the status of these criminal intelligence agencies is such that they find themselves in a situation of dependence with respect to the organizations vested with executive power, namely to gain access to information of a criminal nature. But special powers given to the Australian Crime Commission (examination power) allow the ACC to overcome most of these obstacles and conduct its own intelligence operations or special investigations (with the approval of the Executive Committee). Criminal intelligence services have no legal means authorizing them to “compel” police organizations to cooperate in the exchanging of information. This cooperation is based essentially on the willingness of police departments and the extent of networks developed by the employees of intelligence agencies. On this latter point, it should be noted that none of the intelligence agencies we visited had permanent staff, unlike police departments. Employees are loaned to intelligence services for a given period of time and when they leave their duties, intelligence agencies face two major problems: (1) fragmentation of the corporate memory combined with a loss of accumulated expertise/knowledge; (2) weakening of the professional networks that connect intelligence agencies to police departments. Most of these problems were noted in the National Criminal Intelligence Service (now changed as a result of SOCA) in the United Kingdom, as well as within Europol and Interpol.

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Organizational Structure Most police departments and intelligence agencies are based on an organizational model that is highly hierarchical and borrowed from the military. The adoption of such a model significantly complicates the structure of police organizations, forcing them to develop a strong ability for various work units to liaise and fit in with each other. The organizational structure must then be able to ensure the incessant movement of flows of authority, decisions, material and, above all, information (Mintzberg, 1982). In most cases, police organizations and criminal intelligence services opted for a structural configuration which favored resultsbased management, adapted to an environment which was both stable and complex. In this context, operations are delegated to staff that are qualified and fairly autonomous in order to process all elements of a situation based on an obligation of results, the parameters of which are precisely set for the short term. This is a professional bureaucracy that is usually characterized by a standardization of work, qualifications or productions and a horizontal, vertical specialization or a combination of the two. It goes without saying that this type of structure creates a number of obstacles in carrying out criminal intelligence activities. First of all, the vertical compartmentalization of work units stands in the way of feedback from criminal analysis “consumer” units. Responsibility is usually taken away from those who could evaluate criminal intelligence products, thus undermining any improvements in this area of activity. Hurried by the urgency of the cases with which they must deal and having only minimal contact with analysis units, managers and investigators timidly get involved in the feedback process, preferring instead to retain what is of use to them and reject what is not relevant. That sort of attitude goes against the most elementary rules of organizational performance and efficient systems. Indirectly linked to the compartmentalization of work units, too much importance is given to the professionalization of work, which leads to a fragmentation of information within some groups of “experts”. This situation sparks the creation of professional cells in which information becomes trapped that is often essential to other professional groups, including analysts. This phenomenon can be seen in all professional areas of policing, including the gendarmerie, investigations, administration and criminal analysis. The withholding of information also stems from the complexity of power games inherent to the hierarchical structure of police organizations. Aware of organizational stakes, the hierarchy can have a major influence on information flows by fragmenting communication channels in order to consolidate or disintegrate spheres of power (Crozier & Friedberg, 1977). Possible outcomes include the isolation of work units, the abandonment or torpedoing of special projects or the negation of innovative ideas. It should also be mentioned that the intelligence function is characterized by an erratic activity which can be explained in part by a high movement of staff. Police officers have access to a variety of positions within the organization, and thus rarely pursue a career in the intelligence field, due to their professional ambitions or administrative rules governing staffing conditions. We noticed that police officers use intelligence units as professional springboards to secure positions in specialized units or within the senior executive. We also noted that human resource management standards provide for the cyclical turnover of staff within intelligence units. The main reasons are to avoid the “de-qualification” of police staff and introduce new resources who are familiar with the evolution of criminal problems. Considering that analysts become autonomous after a few years of training and experience,


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it must be acknowledged that these practices have an adverse effect on the production of intelligence and organizational learning (Wang & Ahmed, 2003). And lastly, the operation of professional bureaucracies such as police organizations is inevitably governed by a mountain of internal regulations, directives and legal procedures which structure work and interactions among stakeholders, by extension modulating information flows. The complexity of procedures, poor supervision of superiors and a lack of training at the legal level are strong incentives to “cover your behind” in order to avoid formal or informal sanctions (isolation) in the event of confusion. In short, the formalism of police organizations puts a lot of negative pressure on the movement of information. In order to improve the decision-making process and exchanges of information within the organization, several police departments or intelligence agencies have adopted a matrix structure. To do so, lateral and hierarchical structures are merged in order to create dual authority (Pinto, 1998; Wisocki & McGary, 1995). The chains of vertical and horizontal command are therefore fully integrated. The result of this fusion is the junction of project-type competencies and functional-type competencies within the organization. Most of the advantages stem from the creation of horizontal communication links. Horizontal communication requires managers to develop greater inter-functional cooperation. This sort of structure ensures a freer movement of information, accelerates turnaround times and allows for a quicker, better-quality decision-making process. Matrix organizations also lead to better working conditions. As well, responsibility levels are increased and action becomes easier. It should also be noted that the development of expertise is a direct result of matrix organizations, and specialists are used in all areas where they are required. The matrix configuration seems to be effective in developing innovative activities and organizing diffuse interactions. This structural configuration has been adopted by the Federal Police of Belgium, Europol, the Singapore Police Force, and the National Criminal Intelligence Service in the United Kingdom. The matrix organization generates multiple areas of authority due to the proliferation of executive positions, which at times can lead to ambiguity with respect to responsibilities. Power crises and struggles will also be more frequent, mostly in prioritizing the duties to be performed by functional managers and project managers. The reduction of these problems resides in the definition and specific assignment of the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders who are part of the matrix structure. The clarification of roles also brings its own weight in terms of a greater need for processing and dissemination of information (we will take a closer look at this in the next section). Although it is more effective, the matrix organization is more expensive than the traditional organization, due to the superposition of two structures (horizontal and vertical). It goes without saying that the intelligence-led policing model requires a flexible decisionmaking process in a decentralized structure. It allows intelligence units to adapt their activities to the variations which occur in the criminal environment and offers the possibility of delegating authority to professionals who must manage and process information flows. Although the events of 9/11 sparked a centralizing movement, the trend in recent years has been towards the decentralization of police activities, namely intelligence efforts and criminal investigations, including access to surveillance technologies that previously were prohibited to “low” policing operatives and organizations. Joint investigations and joint organizational structures are becoming increasingly popular. These communication circuits are becoming key mediums for the flow of information, the sharing of knowledge and the maintenance of social interactions among agencies (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997, p. 45). Until

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now, they have proven their effectiveness in carrying out “special missions” requiring a high level of innovation with respect to investigative and information-processing practices. Police organizations have thus realized that the fight against serious crime requires a decentralized decision-making structure to be composed of individuals from a variety of organizations and occupations working together to reach common objectives. Intelligence-wise, in this context of structural decentralization, interaction among police agencies becomes one of the key tools in the production of information in the fight against organized crime. However, the development of such a structure requires a flexible decision-making process which meets three basic criteria: (1) the relations established among stakeholders must be characterized by sustained exchanges, an ongoing production of information and a permanent structure; (2) the structure of relations among stakeholders must stem from an interdependence and coexistence based on reciprocity and the stability of relations; (3) the rigorous assessment of operational effectiveness of the projects that have been sponsored must be evaluated. By taking aim at security problems which are dispersed depending on the territory and community in question, intelligence systems are based on a geographical rationality (local, regional and national) of criminal problems, thus requiring a decentralized information system. The spatial differentiation of intelligence activities is crucial since it influences the informational capability to develop links with key stakeholders present in the environment and gather/circulate information which meets the concerns of key recipients at every geographic or jurisdictional level. Police organizations and criminal intelligence agencies operate in a complex, dynamic environment in which they must be able to adapt. According to Mintzberg (1982), environmental contingencies are what shape the structure of organizations. In order to adapt to changing conditions and the evolution of phenomena (e.g. criminal), police departments must rely on the flexibility of their structure, namely in the area of intelligence activities. To capitalize on innovation, the sophistication of technology, mutual adjustment and adaptation to environmental contingencies, intelligence units and agencies should lean towards an organic structure. The latter is characterized by a low formalization and a strong ability to adapt depending on: (1) the different functions of the organization; (2) the requirements of the environment, and (3) the spatial-temporal contingencies related to the performance of duties. As well, the adhocratic structure – an extreme form of the organic structure – focuses on the training of stakeholders (maximize knowledge) and reduces the level of formalization, thus fostering intra- and inter-organizational exchanges. This type of structure also stimulates the opening of new channels of communication and neutralizes to a large extent the resistance that slows the flow of information and decision-making processes. But we must realize that no “pure” organizational structures exist to ensure optimal, constant operation. However, since intelligence activities require a flexible structural configuration in an organizational system open to the environment, a happy medium has to be found between the rigidity of the professional bureaucracy and the excessive latitude of the organic structure. One possible solution might be to increase the number of “project groups” and “standing committees” dealing with specific matters. The mandate of a project group is to perform a specific, targeted task. The group is dissolved upon completion of said


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task. For its part, a standing committee is a stable group which meets to discuss persistent problems which represent a common interest and persist in time, such as specific forms of crime. This approach is similar to those developed by NCIS (strategic groupings) and Europol (analysis working files). Each of these groups could integrate both tactical and strategic components. This approach would multiply communication channels, increase the speed of information flows and foster the development of expertise. However, this approach can also lead to management by endless committees and to increased bureaucracy which detracts from action (cultural resistance and managerial dominance).

Organizational Culture, Roles and Statuses Organizational culture can be defined as a grid of hypotheses developed by an organization in response to problems faced in adapting to the external and internal environment (Schein, 1992). Having been proven in the past, these hypotheses are taught and disseminated as the proper way to deal with the problems in question. The organization then develops a common framework to be used by its members in collectively establishing the meaning of information which comes from the environment (external and internal). It is to some extent what police leaders, with the support of political authorities, attempted to do by implementing the intelligence-led policing model (ILP). In England, the implementation of a national intelligence model (NIM) made it possible for police organizations to structure the processing of information based on the geographic prioritization of criminal problems or concerns (local, regional and national). However, this conceptualization quickly revealed both operational and strategic limitations. The hypothesis that security problems can be dealt with based on pre-established geographic levels does not necessarily correspond with the structure of criminal activities, illicit markets and criminal organizations (Sheptycki, 2004). Moreover, a recent study published by Maguire and John (2006, pp. 83–84) points out that the NIM and its strategic planning approach (analysis of crime pattern and intelligence) may be competing with community issues at local level. They argue that police cultural resistance and misunderstanding, over-dominance of pre-set targets and performance indicators, and silo thinking can undermined the flow of information between national intelligence model levels. According to Schein (1992), organizations have distinct cultures based on and developed through the core values, artifacts and suppositions of their members. From the outside, the organizational culture of police departments can seem fairly homogeneous characterized by the opaqueness of views, highly formalized work due to the complexity of procedures (legal and internal), strong resistance to change, esprit de corps (code of silence) and a cut-and-dried vision of society (law-abiding citizens and criminals). From the inside, the majority of police officers see themselves first and foremost as crime fighters working in a complex world that only they can understand, thus distancing them from the outside environment and their comparator universe (us against them). But the police culture seems rather fragmented, defined instead of based on the career fields that constitute it. The diversification of expertise/statuses often generates internal dialectics which oppose the occupational culture of managers and police officers, investigators and patrol officers, civilian members and police officers. Seen from either the outside or the inside, the cultural traits of police organizations show the full importance of values such as trust, secrecy, solidarity, the [over] protection of assets and occupational autonomy.

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Unlike the traditional and community-based policing model, intelligence-led policing (ILP) is based on a mission guided mainly by legalistic concerns, and intervention requirements are determined mostly by the need to produce tangible, quantifiable results. According to Tilley (2003, pp. 325–326), this model generates views involving essentially legal considerations, and police officers appear to be “solely” receptive to law enforcement agencies due to the confidentiality surrounding the exchange of information. Government priorities become the sole source of legitimacy for police action, and action taken by police is conducted to reinforce this legitimacy with public authorities (results). And lastly, tactics of choice include large-scale repressive operations which lead to arrests, searches and the dismantling of criminal networks. In short, the values and beliefs promoted by the ILP model are compatible only with how police officers perceive themselves, i.e. as crime fighters. However, according to Maguire (2000, p. 332), the views attributed to ILP have not succeeded in penetrating all areas of police activity, namely the gendarmerie and some investigative units known for being “closed”. One of the reasons that explain this resistance is the choice of spokespersons, i.e. middle and senior managers. The latter’s occupational culture is diametrically opposite to that of police officers assigned to operational units. This difference is also clear in their representation of intelligence: “Intelligence is power”. This philosophy is completely contrary to the culture of intelligence since it suggests that a manager, like a sovereign, has control over the flow of information in order to modulate the decision-making process. So if information becomes a source of power, promotion or glory, the individual or individuals who hold information will find it difficult to share it and will instead favor the centralization thereof. The main objective of ILP is to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of police in the fight against major criminal phenomena (organized crime) or recurrent criminal problems. This approach inevitably relies on the refocusing of police values on the obligation of results and the culture of performance. This leads to high expectations which create a lot of pressure from the organization, the media and politicians. Although operating in a “demanding” environment can accentuate the informational capabilities of organizations, this situation also generates a context in which police departments must produce better results with a minimum of resources. Carrying out projects (tactical or strategic) related to priority criminal problems with few resources encourages the speeding-up of intelligence-producing processes and the reduction of formalization in the execution of intelligence activities. This fosters the production of tacit knowledge and the inappropriate use of information. Tacit knowledge is used by members of an organization to perform their duties and give meaning to what they are doing. There is no systematic codification of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is difficult to communicate and serves as the basis of intuitive judgment. The result is a low production of explicit knowledge, which significantly reduces the learning ability of police agencies and the development of police know-how. In order to increase the effectiveness of police action, the ILP model advocates police cooperation and the multilateralization of information exchanges within joint organizational structures. These structures offer the possibility of developing mutual responsibility between individuals and police agencies in the reaching of common objectives: the fight against crime. It also favors a strong specialization, thus increasing interdependence among stakeholders and stimulating the development of structured and frequent social ties (Wastell et al., 2004; Zolin et al., 2003, p. 3). An extensive organizational mix can also reduce the scope of agreements and protocols for cooperation between police agencies due to cultural


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differences and the structural asymmetry of partner agencies (Medd, 2001). Information management studies have shown that a negative relationship exists between interpersonal trust, cultural distance and the sharing of information (Luo, 2002). In other words, the greater the cultural distance between stakeholders, the less likely the latter are to develop relationships of trust, thus increasing cracks and breaches in the flow of information. The lack of trust is also exacerbated by conflicting values and beliefs based on status. Occupational differentiation creates “culture shocks” which warp the processing of information and the production of knowledge. Although they tend to lessen with time, the most palpable tensions occur between civilian and police staff. The vagueness of occupational definitions of civilian positions, limited promotional opportunities and the fact that several police officers believe that civilians are unable to fully grasp the subtleties of problems in police work cause double frustration for civilian members. On the one hand, they do not feel they are being treated as they should in light of their skills, and on the other, the absence of a recognized professional certification incites them to under-use their abilities, as they are relegated to technical tasks. However, the large increase in the number of civilian analysts may point to the auxiliarization of another core police function and over time to the development of its own career and professional structures. In the absence of clear occupational differentiation, tasks or specialties are sometimes only vaguely defined. This generates a duplication of professional activities and an infringement of expertise, thus fostering the defilement of exclusive domains. In such cases, poor occupational differentiation leads to incomprehension, mistrust and rivalry among professional groups and, as such, affects the fluidity of communications by favoring the implementation of information withholding mechanisms. In the short term, this provokes the division of staff, causing poor communication within the intelligence unit.3 The managerial approach (effectiveness x efficiency) on which the ILP model is based puts strong emphasis on the production of “results” via police operations guided by intelligence, without, however, truly developing the bases of a culture of intelligence. To be performing and effective, police organizations and intelligence agencies must avoid situations in which information is inaccessible, in which individuals are listened to only if they come in themselves to provide information, in which responsibility for providing information is non-existent, in which the sharing of information is authorized but often neglected, in which the organization is too indulgent towards those who fail to communicate information and in which new ideas represent a “threat” (Choo, 2001, p. 55). These situations usually stem from a hostile system of values with respect to the sharing of information. They lead to poor feedback on the quality of information provided, reveal a high level of bureaucratization and reflect little interest in innovation. In such conditions, the organization does not base its strategies for action on knowledge or know-how, but rather on the myths and values that characterize its culture (McGill & Slocum, 1994). The challenge of incorporating ILP into police organizations does not reveal only structural changes. These organizations also have to change the traits of their culture in order to stimulate interpersonal trust in the sharing of information, intensify feedback on the use of the intelligence produced, promote organizational learning and encourage innovation. The development of organizations with a strong intelligence culture resides first and foremost in the proper use of intellectual resources. To ensure the optimum development 3

But with time, tensions are eased if the organization favors the creation of informal ties outside working hours via socialization activities (recreational or training-related).

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of knowledge and their learning capacity, police organizations must review their traditional conception of expertise within intelligence units. The management of information flows must go beyond status or rank-related barriers and redefine itself in expertise with respect to areas of specialization focused on the content of information, the organization of information and information systems. This means developing expertise in a specific area of knowledge to ensure that information is processed by professionals (police or civilian staff) with the intellectual skills to produce new knowledge. Many police agencies or criminal intelligence services had hired civilian academics in the past years and most of them came from a variety of disciplines like anthropology, criminology, law, political science, sociology. For many civilians, the major problem was to change their mind setting and adapt the way to make analysis: they need to give up theoretical knowledge and develop a “practical knowledge” adapted to police practices and culture. Also, accessibility and dissemination of intelligence rely on the presence of expertise in the management of information flows, i.e. by professionals who know how to gather and organize information in a system. And lastly, the omnipresence of information technology requires expertise focused on the creation and improvement of information systems.

CONCLUSION Yet the adoption by police departments of the intelligence-led policing model is based on the integration of an ability and true resolve to develop close ties and better knowledge of the environment. The latter is an endless source of information to guide organizations in achieving their operational and strategic objectives (Choo, 2001). By establishing more gateways with the outside world and the various institutional players working in the area of law enforcement and internal security, police organizations will be better able to understand and integrate environmental changes in carrying out their mission. However, it is imperative that the development of such interfaces be based on flexible information systems so they can adjust to the dynamism and the integration of a culture based on the sharing of information. In other words, an “intelligent” organizational structure can be defined as one that is able to detect signals and interpret messages from its environment. More specifically, the measurement of an organization’s intelligence quotient is based on three main principles: (1) the ability to access and recognize information of use in its operation; (2) the ability to integrate and communicate information both internally and externally; (3) the ability to analyze and understand signals from the environment in order to learn from them (Choo, 1998, p. 10). Furthermore, the creation of an “intelligent” organization requires an atmosphere which promotes learning, the design of information-processing processes and procedures which promote the production and use of knowledge. And lastly, an intelligent organization must have insight by periodically evaluating its performances in order to make any necessary adjustments and alleviate the counter-productive effects of structural, cultural, individual and technological dysfunctions. They are merely myths and beliefs that have become firmly established in the managerial culture, which is always seeking to simplify and standardize organizational procedures. The practices set forth herein must therefore be implemented with caution and parsimony. Managers are asked to consider the many limitations related to the implementation thereof,


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namely the support of political authorities, the rules of law which govern the operation of police apparatus, flexibility of the organizational structure, the degree of receptiveness of police officers and senior managers and the availability of financial/human resources. It should also be mentioned that several problems persist concerning the measurement of performance in the area of criminal intelligence activities. Since the intelligence-led policing model favors the development of a results-based culture, police organizations instinctively develop indicators aimed mainly at a repressive operational reaction (seizures, arrests and convictions). So the goal of criminal intelligence is not merely to produce results. Instead, it involves developing the knowledge and learning of individuals/organizations in order to increase the chances of success in achieving operational and strategic objectives. As mentioned by Keegan (2004) regarding military intelligence, information plays a minor role in the chances of victory on the battlefield. The brute power of protagonists, technological superiority, the dedication and involvement of soldiers, along with several other external elements (weather, topography, etc.), have a greater effect on the outcome of a confrontation than intelligence. In short, according to the author, the complexity of intelligence activities boils down to the ability to see, recognize and report relevant information, as well as ensure quality reflection thus allowing the organization (or its components) to learn from the information that is collected (Keegan, 2004, p. 325). The function of the criminal intelligence process cannot be taken as an instrument to achieve perceptible results in enforcing the law but as an activity aiming at the production of knowledge. The outcome of this process must then be channelled into a learning process within those organizations in order to develop and refine their strategies to fight crime. Nevertheless, the criminal intelligence process is still constrained by organizational, structural and cultural factors that are specific to professional bureaucracies and their internal complexity. On the one hand, the limits on use of information in the management of police affairs show how difficult it is to assess the intelligence process in terms of measurable outcomes. On the other hand, to be useful, intelligence must rely on an organizational structure supporting the constant sharing of information as well as on an occupational culture that strongly values police knowledge.

REFERENCES Audit Commission (1993). Helping with Enquiries. Tackling Crime Effectively. London: HMSO. Bayley, D. & Shearing, C. (2001). The New Structure of Policing: Description, Conceptualisation and Research Agenda. Washington: National Institute of Justice. Bichard, M. (2004). The Bichard Inquiry Report. London: Home Office. Brodeur, J-P., Gill, P. & Töllborg, D. (2003). Democracy, Law, and Security: Internal Security Services in Contemporary Europe. Burlington: Ashgate. Choo, C.W. (1998). The Knowing Organization: How Organizations Use Information to Construct Meaning, Create Knowledge, and Make Decisions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Choo, C.W. (2001). Information Management for the Intelligent Organization. Medford: Information Today. Crawford, A. (1997). The Local Governance of Crime: Appeals to Community and Partnerships. London: Oxford University Press. ´ du Seuil. Crozier, M. & Friedberg, E. (1977). L’Acteur et le Système. Paris: Ed. Ericson R.V. & Haggerty, K.D. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Godfrey, E.D. & Harris, D.R. (1971). The Basic Elements of Intelligence. Washington: Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Gottlieb, S., Arenberg, S. & Singh, R. (1994). Crime Analysis: From First Report to Final Arrest. Montclair: Alpha Publishing. Harris, D.R. (1976). Basic Elements of Intelligence – Revised. Washington: Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. HMIC (1997). Policing with intelligence. London: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. Home Office (1989). Criminal and custodial careers of those born in 1953, 1958 and 1963. Statistical Bulletin. London: Home Office. Home Office (1995). Criminal careers of those born between 1953 and 1973. Statistical Bulletin. London: Home Office. John, T. & Maguire, M. (2003). Rolling Out the National Intelligence Model: Key Challenges. In K. Bullock & N. Tilley (eds), Crime Reduction and Problem-Oriented Policing (pp. 38–68). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Johnston, L. (1992). British policing in the nineties: free market and strong state? International Criminal Justice Review, 1–18. Johnston, L. (1999). Private policing in context. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 7, 175–96. Keegan, J. (2004). Intelligence in War. The Value and Limitations of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy. New York: Random House. Kloseck, J. (2000). Data Privacy in the Information Age. New York: Quorum Books. Luo, Y. (2002). Building trust in cross-cultural collaborations: toward a contingency perspective. Journal of Management, 28, 669–694. McGill, M.E. & Slocum, S.J. (1994). The Smarter Organization: How to Build a Business that Learns and Adapts to Marketplace Needs. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Maguire, M. & John, T. (2006). Intelligence-led policing, managerialism and community engagement: competing priorities and the role of the National Intelligence Model in the UK. Policing and Society, 16, 67–85. Maguire, M. (2000). Policing by risks and targets: Some dimensions and implications of intelligence control. Policing and Society, 9, 315–336. Marx, G.T. (1988). Undercover: Police Surveillance in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Medd, W. (2001). Complexity and partnership. In D. Taylor (ed.), Breaking Down Barriers: Reviewing Partnership Practice (pp. 29–46). Health and Social Policy Research Centre: University of Brighton. Mintzberg, H. (1982). Structure et Dynamique des Organisations, Montreal: Les Editions d’Organisation. Morehouse, B. (2000). The role of criminal intelligence in law enforcement. In M.B. Peterson, B. Morehouse & R. Wright, Intelligence 2000: Revising the Basic Elements (pp. 1–12). Sacramento: Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU). Norris C. & Dunnighan, C. (2000). Subterranean blues: conflict as an unintended consequence of police use of informers. Policing and Society, 9, 385–412. Ouimet, M. (1995). Vers une police informée. Revue Internationale de Criminologie et de Police Technique, 1, 87–94. Peterson, M.B. (1994). Application in Criminal Analysis. A Source Book. Westport: Greenwood Press. Pinto, J.K. (1998). Project Management Handbook. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Ratcliffe J.H. (2002). Intelligence-led policing and the problems of turning rhetoric into practice. Policing and Society, 12, 53–66. Schein, E.H. (1992). Organisational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Sheptycki, J. (2004). Organizational pathologies in police intelligence: Some contributions to the lexicon of intelligence-led policing. European Journal of Criminology, 1, 307–332. Tilley, N. (2003). Community policing, problem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing. In T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing, pp. 311–339. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing. Wang, C.L. & Ahmed, P.K. (2003). Making Organisational Memory Perform. Journal of Information & Knowledge Management, 3, 229–235.


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Wastell, D., Kawalek, P., Langmead-Jones, P. & Ormerod, R. (2004). Information systems and partnership in multi-agency networks: an action research project in crime reduction. Information and Organization, 14, 189–210. Wisocki, R.K. & McGary, R. (1995). Effective Project Management. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Zolin, R., Hinds, P.J., Fruchter, R. & Levitt, R.E. (2003). Interpersonal distrust in cross-functional, geographically distributed work: A longitudinal study. Information and Organization, 4, 1–26.

CHAPTER 11

Reassurance Policing, Community Intelligence and the Co-Production of Neighbourhood Order Martin Innes Cardiff University, UK

and Colin Roberts Surrey, UK 1

INTRODUCTION Iterations of community policing theory and practice, although shaded in subtly different hues, have all tended to share a fundamental premise – that there are significant benefits to be accrued by connecting the police and communities (Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990; Wycoff, 1988). Engaging with local communities is, amongst other things, suggested as a mechanism for increasing confidence and trust in the police (Scarman, 1982), and enhancing a community intelligence “feed” (Fielding, 1995). Reassurance policing is a contemporary reinvention of some of the traditional premises and values of community policing. It is a reinvention because, although sharing a “genetic” affinity with the community policing tradition, it innovates in a number of important respects. First, positioning around the concept of reassurance rather than community articulates how policing as the delivery of formal social control has to adapt to a complex, mobile and reflexive contemporary social order. Rhetorical invocations of the notion of “the community” retain little analytic purchase in an environment where individual citizens routinely enact membership of multiple communities to which they belong (Herbert, 2006; Skogan & Hartnett, 1997). Second, and as will be discussed in detail shortly, some of the core social problems that policing is being used to address have subtly shifted in their constitution. A pervasive sense of insecurity that haunts 1

The authors would like to express their gratitude for the helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter received from the late Tom Williamson and from Peter Manning.


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the conduct of a more fluid form of social ordering is increasingly recognized as a social problem of at least equal magnitude to actual crime rates. Most notably though given the theme of this book, reassurance policing processes and systems are explicitly designed to provide for, and be guided by, the systematic collection and analysis of community intelligence. Located in a reassurance-oriented framework, local police officers, Police Community Support Officers, and other relevant actors (including council environmental services staff, housing officers, private security guards etc.), are tasked to engage with members of the different communities in their assigned territory in order to develop a “richer picture” of the “drivers” of neighbourhood insecurity. The crime and disorder issues and problems identified as generative of local concerns are then subject to consideration and analysis with some becoming established as priorities for action to be dealt with by the police and their partners who are collectively engaged in managing neighbourhood security. In effect, developing community intelligence is enacted in order to construct a detailed knowledge base about the contours of the problems and issues that are negatively impacting upon neighbourhood security. The purpose being to guide policing interventions so that they may be as impactive as possible upon those matters destabilizing and disrupting everyday local social orders. This approach can be understood as integrating the sorts of disciplined approaches to knowledge management that were advocated under discourses of intelligence-led policing and applying them to neighbourhood issues (Maguire, 2000). A further key innovation of reassurance policing when compared with earlier formulations of community policing is that, where possible, it seeks to co-produce solutions to local crime and disorder problems. Such co-productive arrangements seek the active participation of communities themselves, together with other local governmental agencies involved in managing community safety. At the core of the community policing tradition has been a belief that it is vital that police consult and engage with citizens. The accent upon coproduction found in reassurance policing is more radical though when compared with the more limited notions of consultation and engagement. For whereas with the latter, police retain the power to define and direct the consultative process, the move to co-production requires a ceding of power away from police to communities. Thus communities are cast in a role where they have direct influence upon policing priorities, how these are to be addressed and where possible, are actively involved in dealing with them. As an approach this seeks to recognize that the public police are not monopoly suppliers of social control at the neighbourhood level. Indeed, on a day-to-day basis the management of social order in a neighbourhood may have little to do with policing, but results from the regulatory arrangements performed by communities themselves, together with interventions performed by a plethora of other agencies and organizations. As such, reassurance policing is envisioned as an approach that integrates the delivery of formal social control with other local sources, rather than automatically privileging the role of the police. Thereby, at least partially, countering increasing expectations of and dependency upon the state. In what follows, these concepts and practices are given a more detailed and considered elaboration. To facilitate this, the chapter is organized around three key themes. We start by giving an outline of the key facets of reassurance policing, why it was introduced and the theoretical and empirical supports for it. The main body of the argument will then focus upon community intelligence and its use in reassurance policing processes. Finally, by way of reprise, we will return to the issue of connections between police-based and more informal sources of social control.

REASSURANCE POLICING

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The argument developed in this chapter is informed directly by our involvement in the National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP). Funded by the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in 16 sites throughout England, the NRPP was established to develop and test what precisely could be delivered through a reassurance approach to policing. It is worth noting that the research sites included a range of different circumstances and settings, from reasonably affluent communities, to the high levels of urban deprivation in Aston, Birmingham, and the inter-ethnic community tensions of Oldham. The outcome evaluation for this trial of reassurance policing was conducted by the Research, Development and Statistics Department of the Home Office. Across the 16 trial sites they collected data on: police interventions, police recorded crime data, and public perceptions. The latter were gathered through a two-wave telephone survey of approximately 300 residents in each ward, where respondents were asked a range of questions designed to measure their perceptions of crime, disorder, risk, social capital and changes in these. Six of the trial sites were matched with “control sites” in other locations, where an undertaking was provided by the local police commander that no reassurance-oriented policing interventions would be undertaken for the trial period. The purpose of this was to try and establish a robust measure of what difference the reassurance policing interventions might have over and above any wider regional or national trends that might be occurring. The other 10 research sites were not matched with control sites. For the purposes of this chapter though, we do not draw upon this evaluative data. Our focus is instead upon a second strand of more “basic research”. As detailed below, this extensive largely qualitative work was conducted in order to develop a knowledge base for reassurance activities. In what follows we want to explore and explain the significance of this work for understanding the conduct of reassurance policing.

POLICING INSECURITIES In the mid-1990s, after several decades where it exhibited consistent year-on-year increases to become what Garland (2001) dubbed “a normal social fact”, the historically high recorded crime rate in the UK started to decline. Initially it was not clear what the causes of this change might be, or whether it was merely a temporary “blip” in an overarching trend, but by the early part of the new century it was clear that an important recalibration was taking place. To be sure, considerable complexity lies behind the macro-pattern, in that according to the British Crime Survey, the overall decline in recorded crime is driven largely by reductions in property offences, whilst inter-personal violence is becoming comparatively more prevalent (Walker, Kershaw & Nicholas, 2006). But what is important about these trends are the correlates, or more precisely the lack of them, with the emerging situation. For although overall crime levels have been declining for a decade now, recent sweeps of the BCS suggest that the majority of the public in England and Wales do not believe this to be the case with nearly two-thirds of respondents expressing the view that the crime problem is getting worse. Over the same time period public concerns about anti-social behaviour and levels of physical disorder have also increased (Wood, 2004). Seeking to understand the meaning of these patterns, at the start of the new century elements of the Association of Chief Police Officers began to articulate the problem as being attributable to a “reassurance

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gap”.2 Less prosaically, what these emergent trends revealed was a sense that managing fear of crime and the insecurity that crime generates was becoming a public policy problem at least as significant as managing actual crime rates. The notion that policing can and should play a reassurance function, although implicit in earlier formulations, was first formally articulated by Charles Bahn (1974). Bahn made his assertion at a time of growing pessimism about the social functions of police patrol, particularly following the Kansas City Preventative Patrol experiment suggesting it had little impact in terms of deterring or detecting crime (Kelling et al., 1974). His claim was that a visible policing presence, although having only a marginal role in respect of the police’s crime management function, may fulfil other needs that the public has. Today, we would understand this as concerned with the management of security and the notion that policing can play an important role mitigating and mediating the fear of crime. Several empirical studies published following Bahn’s somewhat eccentric consideration of the concept of reassurance, did produce good evidence to support the idea that policing could play an important role in managing crime fears (cf. Weisburd & Eck, 2004). But in a policy environment shaped largely by the neo-liberal imperatives of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, the notion that policing could perform a reassurance function was neglected. However, as intimated above, over the past decade or so, finding ways to manage, mediate and mitigate an increasingly pervasive sense of insecurity and uncertainty has become established as a significant policy problem. Indeed, there are now a number of sophisticated theoretical accounts that suggest that to an increasing degree our key modes of social organization and dominant sensibilities are constructed around what Bauman (2002) terms conditions of “ambient insecurity” (see also Furedi, 2002; Giddens, 1991; Glassner, 1999). Such developments have become particularly acutely defined in relation to public understandings of crime and disorder, inasmuch as these have provided a cipher channelling and giving form to otherwise inchoate sensations of unease (Girling, Loader & Sparks, 2000). Confronted with this environment and a growing recognition of the need to better manage public fear and insecurity, alongside actual crime levels, the notion of a reassurance function was revived and provided a contemporary rendition by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary. This posited that policing reassures when officers are visible, accessible and familiar (HMIC, 2001). However, looking at both the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of earlier work on community policing practices and visibility, Innes and Fielding (2002) determined that the HMIC approach to reassurance was unlikely to succeed. According to their analysis, visible police presence constitutes a necessary but not sufficient condition for influencing peoples’ perception of safety. And so, Innes and Fielding (2002) set out an alternative, more theoretically informed approach to the problem of delivering reassurance. Central to this approach was the signal crime concept first outlined by Innes (2001).

2

In so doing, they were led by Denis O’Connor the Chief Constable of Surrey. O’Connor’s acuity in recognizing this trend is in part attributable to the particular situation he encountered in Surrey (an affluent county in England with comparatively low crime rates). In the early part of the 2000s according to the Home Office’s performance indicators Surrey Police was performing well and yet O’Connor and his senior officers were struck that the attitudes of the members of the public they encountered did not seem to cohere with what their performance data said. There was in essence a particular local inflection of the reassurance gap that concentrated their minds upon this problem.


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REASSURANCE POLICING The Signal Crimes Perspective (SCP) was originally devised as a way of understanding individual and collective reactions to crime, and how people interpret deviant behaviour and render it meaningful to themselves (Innes, 2004). In addressing these concerns, the development of the SCP was coherent with growing research evidence questioning the analytic purchase provided by the fear of crime concept that dominates thinking about how people respond to crime. In particular, across several studies, Professor Jason Ditton and his colleagues showed that the fear of crime concept was lacking both theoretically and methodologically when subject to robust testing. In sum, they demonstrated that the attitudinal measures through which fear of crime is typically measured or inferred are highly susceptible to a range of exogenous influences that tend to artificially inflate its prevalence (cf. Ditton et al., 1999). Starting from a different set of theoretical premises, most notably Erving Goffman’s (1972) work on urban social order and Umberto Eco’s (1976) pragmatist social semiotics, the SCP set out to calibrate how specific incidents were interpreted as connotative indicators of risk to people that caused them to change how they think, feel or act in relation to their security. In deciphering the encoded meanings that people routinely ascribe to particular events this approach showed how certain crime and disorder incidents are interpreted as indexical expressions of the security apparently afforded by a particular social situation (Innes, 2004). Moreover, individual and collective reactions to crime were more complex than fear alone, being influenced by issues and problems people encountered directly themselves, things that happened to families, friends and neighbours and incidents learnt about via mediated channels of communication.3 Applying this conceptual apparatus to a small scale empirical investigation in Surrey and South London, Innes (2004) found that a lot of the signal events people attended to in their local environments did not involve contraventions of the criminal law, but were sublegal manifestations of disorderly conduct, involving antisocial behaviour and the material traces of this. The significance of incivilities and disorder has long been recognized in the criminological literature. For example, Taylor (2001) identifies at least five permutations of the “incivilities thesis”. The most famous being Wilson and Kelling’s (1982) longitudinal “broken windows” version which casts disorder as criminogenic, in that if untreated, it leads to higher crime rates. Attempts to empirically validate this approach have produced only weak support for its pivotal contention (Harcourt, 2001; Sampson & Raudenbusch, 1999; Taylor, 2001) but it is nevertheless significant in recognizing that police cannot afford to ignore physical and social disorder. Whilst there is some common ground between the SCP and the broken windows approach, there are important points of difference also. The SCP does not seek to arrange disorderly and criminal conduct in a causal sequence, whereby the former begets the latter. Rather the SCP focuses upon how both disorder and crime act as cues for individual and collective social reactions that can induce detrimental consequences for places and their people. Whether an incident signals the presence of risk or not is held to be influenced by aspects of the social and physical environment in which it is situated. In this regard it accords more directly with some of the principles outlined by Sampson and Raudenbusch (1999) and Harcourt (2001). A second point of departure is that whereas Wilson and Kelling treat disorder as a broadly 3

Similar conclusions but couched in the terminology of fear of crime research have recently been reported by Sacco (2005).

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undifferentiated mass, the SCP contends that it is specific incidents that occur within and have resonances to particular community contexts that are important in generating negatively consequential reactions for neighbourhood security. Thus it is not disorder or crime as generic classificatory schemas that are important as the focus for interventions, rather it is particular defined crime and disorder events and event types that need to be focused upon. In thinking about signal events and their impact upon public perceptions of risk at a collective level, early research revealed a need to distinguish between a signal’s “coherency” and its “strength”. The former relates to the number of people who attend to a particular signal crime or disorder in some way. Thus highly coherent signals will influence how a lot of people think, feel or act in relation to their security. This is different from the “strength” of a signal, which concerns how profound an effect it has upon each individual. Bringing these two ways of calibrating the impact of signals upon perceptions of risk together starts to illuminate the fact that at a neighbourhood level, different signals can act in different ways for different groups of people. As can be seen, adopting this approach starts to illuminate the different ways that crime and disorder problems shape perceptions. Across the 16 research sites for the National Reassurance Policing Programme, public concerns about local problems consistently tended to gravitate around issues connected with the perceived anti-social activities of groups of young people, and problems connected to drug use. These were very often coherent and strong signals and were part of a more general picture where disorder and incivilities occurring in public spaces were regularly identified by members of the public as being amongst their most pressing concerns (cf. Innes, 2004). Such issues assumed salience and demanded that people attend to them, because of what their presence was interpreted as encoding about the state of the local social order. In Table 11.1 litter and homicide are located as highly coherent but relatively low strength signals. On the surface it appears something of a remarkable claim to suggest that these fundamentally different types of problem exhibit similar effects upon neighbourhood security. But this is not to say that they are equivalent, rather they function in similar ways in terms of influencing public risk perceptions, in that lots of people mentioned them, but didn’t see them as having a particularly important impact upon how they thought, felt or acted in relation to their security. A brief caveat to this is warranted, in that some homicides did function as coherent and strong signals, but such incidents are rare. Most homicides take place between people known to each other in the midst of an argument. As such, they appear to do little in terms of making people outside of these relationships concerned about their safety (Innes, Roberts & Lowe, 2006). Domestic violence and gun violence tended to emerge from the research as comparatively low down in the rankings of those problems people self-defined as influencing their security. Of course this is not to say that police should not deal with such matters, but rather in doing so, this is not a route likely to induce wide-ranging improvements in public reassurance. Table 11.1 Signal strength v. signal coherence Signal Measure

High Strength

Low Strength

High Coherency

1. Youth-related disorder 2. Drugs

1. Litter 2. Homicide

Low Coherency

1. Burglary 2. Racial harassment

1. Domestic violence 2. Gun violence


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For the most part, people living close to areas where gun crime occurred on a comparatively regular basis understood that, barring exceptional circumstances, it was a problem largely confined to groups already engaged in serious criminality. The fourth cell (low coherence – high strength) is particularly important though. This relates to where an incident or incidents, although not widely perceived as a signal, had a profound impact upon a limited number of people in an area. Burglary functioned in this way in a number of sites, in that it frequently acted as a signal to those living close to the victim, but not for people across a wider area. Likewise, racial and verbal harassment tended to arise as a signal where there were minority ethnic populations resident in an area. It was not always a signal with high coherence, as its impact tended to be concentrated in particular sections of a geographic community, but it had significant effects upon those it was relevant to. In light of this developing thinking, the importance of Innes and Fielding’s (2002) contribution was that it started to outline an application of the SCP for policing, enabling police to get some traction on being able to reassure local communities. That is, by identifying and targeting the signal crimes and disorders present in a local community, police and their partner agencies could address those problems influencing a local population’s perceptions of risk and threat. Ditton and Innes (2005) have suggested that this provided the basis for a “logic of perceptual intervention”, setting out a coherent, theoretically informed vision of how policing should be enacted in order to influence the public’s sense of security at both the objective and subjective levels. It was these ideas that were developed and tested by the NRPP. Ultimately then, the SCP provided a theoretical engine for reassurance policing, establishing a rationale for resources being focused upon those crime and disorder incidents that have a particularly profound impact upon neighbourhood security. But it was recognized that in orientating themselves to tackling these signal events, police had to harness other available governmental and community resources in addressing these problems, and that the efficacy of any interventions would be enhanced if conducted by visible, accessible and familiar officers. On this basis the design of the NRPP’s formulation of reassurance policing rapidly evolved to pivot around three key components: r visible, accessible, familiar and dedicated policing resources; r targeting signal crimes and disorders, r and doing so in a manner that co-produced solutions with partners and the public. Overall, the Home Office evaluation of the attempt to implement policing processes based upon these components concluded that, Taken together, the evidence presented . . . provides a consistent picture which shows that positive change in key outcome indicators in the trial sites, such as crime, perceptions of anti-social behaviour, feelings after dark and public confidence in the police, was attributable to the National Reassurance Policing Programme. (Tuffin, Morris & Poole, 2006, p. 93)

In Table 11.2 below, a summary of results across a number of key indicators is provided. The table is split into three main columns. Two columns summarize data for the six “experimental” sites (that were matched with control sites). The first of these records where significant changes were observed, providing the most compelling evidence that change has occurred. The second column details where a positive change in the data for that indicator was apparent, but this was not statistically significant. The reason for including these data is that some of these are very difficult problems and issues to affect, and given that the

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Table 11.2 Summary of NRPP outcome data

Indicator Recorded Crime Perceptions of Crime Perceptions ASB Fear of Crime Public Confidence in Policing Police Visibility Perceptions of Police Engagement Perceived Community Cohesion Trust in Neighbours

Experimental Sites: statistically significant change (6)

Experimental Sites: positive but not significant change (6)

Other Research Sites: positive change (10)

3 0 1 2 4 3 2 1 1

3 3 3 3 1 2 4 1 3

1 7 7 10 7 9 8 0 1

NRPP was a comparatively short programme, the presence of positive improvements might suggest the possibility of longer term benefits. Having said this, these data should be treated with some caution. The third column provides data on the 10 NRPP research sites that were not assessed against a matched control site. These data simply suggest where there was a broadly positive change.4 The numbers in each of the cells show how many of the 6 experimental sites and 10 research sites saw positive change in that particular indicator. The top four rows in the table contain data on crime and perceptions, the next three rows address public attitudes to policing, and the last two, indicators of collective efficacy. Although as is evident even from this fairly high-level summary there was considerable variation in terms of what was achieved in the individual sites, it can be seen that the broad pattern is largely positive. Across the majority of the sites there is a suggestion that fear of crime reduced and public confidence in the police increased. The latter is particularly significant as recent research evidence from America suggests that confidence in the police is one of the strongest predictors of the willingness of communities to engage in informal social control activities (Silver & Miller, 2004). Thus although at first glance the NRPP results for community cohesion and trust do not appear particularly impressive, we might infer that actually they are potentially important for the longer term. It is generally recognized that inducing change in the make-up of communities is hard and certainly requires more sustained interventions than the NRPP. But the fact that some changes do appear to be taking place, particularly in relation to levels of community trust – a precursor for more active engagement between people – is worth noting. For as will be described below, one of the principal causal change processes embedded within reassurance policing is to galvanize communities to become more actively involved in the co-production of social order. In terms of explaining these results, it is clear that the implementation of reassurance policing processes and systems worked in different ways in different sites. In some of the high crime and high disorder communities, it was assertively targeting the signal crimes and signal disorders that were important. By dealing with these problems improvements in neighbourhood security were manufactured. In other less troubled areas, it appears that the 4

Some of the indicators in Table 11.2 are aggregated from several data streams. Where this is the case, positive change was only ascribed where at least half of the data streams available indicated improvement. This table is a summary and for a far more detailed account of the results readers should consult Tuffin, Morris & Poole (2006) and Morris (2006).


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process of engaging community members and taking their concerns seriously was sufficient to improve perceptions of the area and confidence in the police. It is worth briefly highlighting some of the more intriguing results that were achieved, as these serve to illuminate important facets of both the community situations and policing processes. For example, in Brunswick Ward in Lancashire, a comparatively deprived area with high levels of drug dependency amongst the resident population, over the two years of NRPP, the actual police recorded crime rate rose by 28%, but the majority of those surveyed thought it had actually declined (Morris, 2006). This seems to reflect the fact that the enhanced police engagement with residents resulted in more crime being reported to police than previously, whilst simultaneously by focusing upon the signal crimes and disorders the police created an impression of improving security that was sufficient to cause a significant proportion of residents to alter their perceptions.

COMMUNITY INTELLIGENCE Applying the SCP to the problem of how to reassure communities predicted that by working to understand the local drivers of neighbourhood insecurity, police interventions could be targeted with increased precision to those problems and issues that are of most consequence in terms of influencing public perceptions of safety. Achieving this in practice requires police to attend carefully to the problem definitions held by communities through processes of systematic engagement. One of the core problems of previous approaches to community policing is that they typically failed to provide the conditions for what Skolnick and Bayley (1986) term the “reciprocity” of exchange. The reluctance and recalcitrance of police to engage wholeheartedly with communities in order to understand what really matters to them, has tended to mean that although the rhetorical thrust of community policing has accented community consultation, in practice this has been largely peripheral to what remains a decidedly police-defined agenda. But if reassurance policing is to act upon the causes of insecurity, then it is imperative that police find ways to systematically acquire forms of community intelligence in order to establish what signal crimes and disorders are present in any community, and their impact upon how people think, feel or act in relation to their security. The concept of community intelligence (COMMTEL) has become increasingly fashionable in the UK policing sector, although as yet, there is no settled and agreed upon definition of what it is. Some sense of what is trying to be articulated is obtainable though if we juxtapose the idea of COMMTEL with the more established concepts of criminal and crime intelligence. Intelligence can be defined as analysed information that suggests some insights into future opportunities, conditions or problems. Thus criminal intelligence is data that when subject to analysis provides some insight into the illegal activities of particular individuals. Crime intelligence is similar, but its focus is upon activities rather than people. In terms of how these two related concepts are typically invoked in police discourses, they refer to information derived from covert “closed” sources and particularly covert human intelligence sources (Innes, Fielding & Cope, 2005). Notions of community intelligence in contrast, have been used to refer to information provided by “open” sources, typically “ordinary” members of the public. This is in spite of the obvious conceptual confusion this involves in that whilst crime and criminal intelligence are defined upon the basis of what the intelligence is about, COMMTEL is being defined on the basis of its source. Moreover, this implies that information provided by community members cannot provide intelligence on crimes or criminals.

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Connected to the identification of signal crimes and disorders though, the concept of COMMTEL starts to take on a different meaning, one that is more coherent with the traditions of defining intelligence data on the basis of its content. Subject to this framing, COMMTEL can be defined as information that when analysed provides insight into the risks posed by and to a particular group of people sharing some facet of common identity. In effect, COMMTEL is the information developed by police in order to establish the basis for their reassurance interventions. In order to develop this approach to generating COMMTEL a methodology for identifying signal crimes and disorders was devised. Whereas orthodox police intelligence methodologies are largely “supply” -oriented, relying upon sources of intelligence being able to access data on the required subjects. The COMMTEL methodology embedded within reassurance policing sought to develop a systematic demand for information in the police organizations. That is, the police would, using qualitative survey techniques derived from social science methodology, seek to systematically identify a sample of respondents across a given territory and interview them in order to identify what, if any, signal crimes and disorders were present in the area. Having completed interviews with a number of local respondents these data were then analysed using the SCP’s conceptual framework to establish what the collective view of the key local problems was. These people, places and events would then be targeted by police. The key innovation being the discovery that community intelligence to inform the delivery of policing could be generated through survey processes. In the early phases of the NRPP these qualitative intelligence surveys were conducted by a research team, but as the procedures and methodological principles were progressively distilled, local police officers took on the task. By the end of the NRPP a computer-based interview instrument had been devised, providing a structured interview guide for officers with questions designed to elicit detailed information about actual events in the locality, supplemented by prompts to elicit as much detail as possible about these. The digital recording of interview data had down-stream benefits in terms of facilitating rapid analysis of these data. This approach was dubbed the intelligence-based neighbourhood security interview (i-NSI). The i-NSI approach was designed to collect data from members of the public in a format suitable for utilizing the SCP’s analytic framework so as to allow practitioners to identify the presence of signal crimes and disorders. By aggregating the data from across a number of individual interviews the idea was that a “richer picture” of the issues and concerns pertaining to specific neighbourhoods could be constructed. Interestingly, the development of this approach revealed two important findings. Firstly, comparing neighbourhoods it was apparent that the “drivers” of collective insecurity varied significantly. Secondly, at the intra-neighbourhood level, there were often reasonably high levels of agreement between individuals about what events and problems were functioning as the key signals in their neighbourhoods. So rather than relying upon recorded crime and incident data as the knowledge base informing their actions, which as is well established is largely an artefact of resource deployment and subject to significant levels of under-reporting, under this system police are required to systematically develop their knowledge about local issues and concerns. By adding this community intelligence to that developed from other sources, officers are positioned to establish a more detailed and nuanced understanding of what is happening in the territory to be policed. This has potential utility for both reactive and proactive modes of police work. For the former, understanding what incident types are likely to trigger enhanced community concern provides a way of calibrating a priority response


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Figure 11.1 Outline map of Trinity Ward in Burnley

system to ensure that those matters that are most likely to harm neighbourhood security in an area are dealt with quickly. For more proactive styles of working, this knowledge identifies which problems should be targeted through problem-solving processes in order to positively influence the perceptual field of a community.

i-NSI Results Using signals as the base unit of community intelligence is significant in that, by their very nature, they act as a filter. Analysis of signals is designed to separate out those incidents that are signalling the presence of risk to people and thus are consequential in how they appraise their exposure to potential harms and threats, from the background noise of everyday life. In so doing, this immediately reduces the “informational fog” that can result from large flows of information, which have inhibited police use of intelligence and especially community intelligence in police organizations (cf. Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). The significance of this separation of signal from noise is that it facilitates the development of knowledge about the people, places and events of most concern to the local public; knowledge that is otherwise only vaguely and ephemerally articulated within police organizations (Manning, 2003). Moreover, because it is a systematically structured process it ensures that the police are not biased to those with the “loudest voices” or those whose concerns are presented most forcefully. As an illustration of the richer picture that the i-NSI process generates, below are results from Trinity Ward in Burnley where this analysis has been conducted.5 Figure 11.1 provides a schematic representation of Trinity Ward, with the ward boundary marked upon it. Superimposed over this are a series of cells that perform two important functions. Firstly, 5

This ward was not one of the original NRPP trial sites although Lancashire Constabulary did have two sites in the programme.

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they provide a sampling frame in terms of identifying key individuals to interview. Each of the cells is sized at the level of what research for the NRPP revealed to be the median average size of people’s self-defined neighbourhoods (Innes et al., 2004). Thus by breaking wards up into these smaller units we know that in order to obtain detailed information of what is going on across the ward as a whole, it is likely you are going to need to interview a number of people in each of these micro-locations. The second function of these cells is to provide an aggregate unit of analysis. As can be seen in Figure 11.1, in the top right-hand corner of all of the cells is a small shaded square. This is used to indicate where public perceptions of problems and risk are comparatively strong and weak. So the cell marked with the black square is where there are strong and coherent signal crimes and disorders exhibiting influence over public risk perceptions. The pattern-shaded cells denote where concerns are pronounced but not as strong. The cells with light and grey indicators are where there are no particularly important signals present. As indicated in Figure 11.1, and consistent with the results from the 16 NRPP sites, engaging in this detailed form of analysis shows that the signal crimes and disorders driving neighbourhood insecurity are not spread evenly across areas, but tend to cluster in particular “public risk perception hot spots.” The obvious implication for policing practice being that targeting the signal events in these locations through problem-solving techniques is most likely to positively influence public feelings of safety. In order to support such processes, the intelligence data can be analysed to provide police and their partner agencies with high resolution knowledge about the key signals occurring in the particular locations. As an example of this, in Table 11.3 below are the intelligence data generated from the interviews in Trinity Ward for the three most important cells. As can be seen, the intelligence data Table 11.3 Analysis of top signals by location Rank

Location

Feature

Effect

Signals

1

Coal Clough Lane, Coal Clough Area

Outside chemist, fruit and veg. shop, sandwich shops, back street

Anger, direct action, fear

Litter, youths, fireworks, verbal abuse, damage, robbery (commercial), burglary, signs of drug use, vandalized bus shelters, dog mess, inconsiderate parking

2

Piccadilly Road, Piccadilly Area

Public areas, road, off-licence

Drugs house, anti-social Fear, anger, behaviour, litter, changes in arson, verbal abuse, behaviour, drug dealing in investment in public, auto crime, security speeding, fireworks, equipment, area public drinking degenerating

3

Clifton Street

Car park, roads, Direct action, fear, Anti-social behaviour, litter, speeding, drugs, fields, electricity anger, area signs of drug use, sub-station, ntl degenerating, assault, damage, auto box, street increased crime threat, changes in behaviour


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can be analysed to show the key locations (i.e. Coal Clough Lane) where problems are occurring, the sorts of effects that members of the public are reporting that the signals are having upon them, together with what specific activities are functioning as signals. From this small example, it can be inferred just how “rich”, the intelligence “picture” that can be constructed is. Police routinely use findings derived from surveys to assist them in their work, but typically these tend to be fairly broadly based, analysed at force area, or for individual basic command units. In contrast to these “top-down” approaches, the i-NSI COMMTEL methodology is based upon a bottom-up approach to diagnosing the key issues in the micro-locations in each ward. Thus for each ward a highly detailed rich picture about the crimes and disorders functioning as signals driving insecurity can be produced. As part of the NRPP, these intelligence pictures were compared and contrasted with other intelligence based upon more orthodox police data. This revealed that the community intelligence very often made sense in relation to other intelligence streams and provided an important supplement to what the police already knew. These ward profiles constitute a knowledge base from which to inform bespoke interventions, relevant to the particular situation and the specific contours of the signal events in question. But they can also be aggregated to provide a more strategic knowledge view for a wider territory. A second important difference between this approach and other surveys the police and their partners have tended to conduct is that whereas the latter have tended to survey public attitudes, the i-NSI methodology is seeking to collect specific information about problems occurring in particular localities.

Key Individuals The capacity to provide a richer picture of places and their problems is dependent upon obtaining detailed accounts about local crime and disorder issues from members of the public. Contrasted with more orthodox quantitative survey instruments typically used by police organizations, the i-NSI methodology works by interviewing a comparatively small number of key individuals in an area, an important innovation in terms of the epistemology of this COMMTEL methodology. The adoption of this approach is justified on the basis that it fulfils two very different functions. Firstly, it provides a way of maximizing the likelihood of collecting the kinds of high quality intelligence that might be useful for informing police interventions. Secondly, engaging with these key individuals also provides the basis for a subtle way of influencing a community’s perceptual field. In terms of generating community intelligence data, adopting an approach based upon the purposive sampling of key individuals was developed in response to early empirical research findings for the NRPP. These suggested that, owing to differences in lifestyle and routine activities, some people were strongly embedded in local social networks resulting in them being especially well informed about what was happening in their neighbourhoods. Other individuals spent less time with and had less connectivity to their co-residents, and as a result had less awareness of local crime and disorder issues. Consequently, it was decided that if the aim was to collate intelligence about what issues and problems the police should target, then the former are particularly important individuals for police to engage with. It should be emphasized though that the key individuals in a community are not necessarily established local political representatives. For the COMMTEL generating system to work,

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police have to reflect carefully upon the demographic make-up of the local population and locate individuals who key them into these groups. Support for such an approach can be traced back to a seminal paper in the social research methods literature published by Donald Campbell (1955). Campbell conducted a systematic test of random versus purposive sampling in a study of morale in the American navy. He found that conducting qualitative interviews with respondents deliberately selected because they had in-depth knowledge of life on board the navy ships produced marginally more accurate predictions of morale levels than did a randomly sampled survey approach of all naval personnel. Engaging with these highly networked individuals also has a second more subtle function, seeking to exploit their high levels of social connectivity. The interview interactions where neighbourhood police officers spend time with these individuals to find out in detail their concerns about the local area provide the foundation for a form of social influence, harnessing the same social-psychological processes exploited by advertisers in peer-to-peer and viral marketing campaigns. In advertising practice, certain key individuals who have highly developed social connections and are recognized as influential opinion-formers within a particular community, referred to as “mavens”, are often deliberately targeted as part of a campaign (Gladwell, 2002; Levine, 2003).6 These individuals are important because they tend to be trusted by other citizens and if they like a product they will, due to their social connections and elevated status, be effective in persuading lots of other people to like or use it as well. It is precisely this logic that is designed into the COMMTEL methodology. Although on the surface the interviews are simply collecting data about neighbourhood problems, there is a secondary hidden agenda in process, in that the interviews occasion what advertisers term a “seeding” process (Levine, 2003). The idea being that because police have demonstrated interest in their concerns, the highly connected interviewees will start to relay a message to those in their social network about how the police are serious in trying to address local problems. So although the idea of neighbourhood officers spending time conducting face-to-face intelligence interviews initially appears to be quite resource intensive, it is actually a process that performs multiple functions. By engaging with high-knowledge individuals in a neighbourhood the likelihood of obtaining valid and reliable COMMTEL is increased. At the same time, the process is designed to induce a form of positive contact between police and public to increase public confidence in the police. The latter aspect is of particular consequence given that trust in the police amongst certain minority communities is often very low. It can be seen then that designed into the key processes of reassurance policing are mechanisms to address the attenuated connections between police and what are often marginalized and disadvantaged communities. Moreover, by requiring neighbourhood officers to engage with the public, they are also exposed to direct feedback from the communities they are serving; feedback which when organized according to response modes of policing, they may well be insulated from, resulting in a situation that, . . . can lead police agencies to become more concerned with how police services are allocated than whether they have an impact on public safety. (Weisburd & Eck, 2004, p. 44)

6

According to Levine “maven” is a Yiddish term that “refers to a person who’s an expert, or a connoisseur . . . ” (2003, p. 55). As individuals “They (1) know a lot of people; (2) communicate a great deal with people; (3) are more likely than others to be asked for their opinions; and (4) enjoy spreading the word about what they know and think.” (2003, p. 56).


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As such, structuring police interactions with citizens in this way deliberately seeks to establish leverage over what work the police do, so that their activities become focused upon delivering real and meaningful improvements in neighbourhood security. This direct accountability is intended to challenge conceptions of the local police role in order to induce a form of policing that is more responsive to the actual needs of specific, situated communities, rather than police assuming that they know what needs to be done and obsessing about achieving administrative targets. A brief caveat to this discussion is warranted. The overall success of the seeding process in terms of positively influencing local citizens’ views of the police and neighbourhood does depend upon actually conducting interventions targeting the local signal priorities revealed by this process. In the absence of visibly effective action, any positive influence is unlikely to be sustained.

Moving Beyond Meetings At first glance, the COMMTEL methodology outlined above appears comparatively elaborate and resource-intensive. But such an investment can be justified once one is aware of the range of potential benefits that can be accrued by operating such a process. In the context of the NRPP, the development of this methodology was driven by a recognition that there was a need to overcome some of the limitations and weaknesses pertaining to community meetings. In community policing programmes such as the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, community meetings have featured prominently as devices for enabling police to engage with communities. However, as Skogan and Hartnett (1997) remark, the capacity of the police to sustain strong attendance from communities at such meetings over an extended period of time seems limited. In Chicago, people were not willing to “turn out” to consistently attend and participate in police-hosted events. This is illustrative of the more general degree to which, as mechanisms for providing some form of democratic input to policing, community meetings are comparatively limited in their efficacy. In terms of attendees, they are unlikely to be demographically representative of the target population and such meetings are vulnerable to being “hi-jacked” by the agendas of any majority group at the expense of less powerful and visible minorities. To some extent, the COMMTEL methodology described above circumvents such problems, in that police are responsible for ensuring that the individuals they glean intelligence from are broadly representative of all of the viewpoints in an area.

THE CO-PRODUCTION OF SOCIAL CONTROL The COMMTEL methodology and the SCP framework that underpins it provides the basis for determining what people, places and events reassurance policing interventions should be targeted towards; the significance of these being that they provide for a more textured and nuanced understanding of the public’s concerns and problems than would be available if police relied solely upon crime and incident data. In effect, this establishes what reassurance policing focuses upon, but equally important in understanding why the outcomes described previously were achieved, is how these issues were addressed. It is here that the concept of co-production becomes important.

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Ethnographic studies of social order and social control in local areas have long recognized that on a day-to-day basis routine neighbourhood order is maintained and managed by a complex of rules, conventions, censures and sanctions that lie outside of the purview of policing and formal agencies of social control (Baumgartner, 1984; Foster, 1990; Jacobs, 1961). Despite the tendency for “police fetishism” in Anglo-American culture noted by Reiner (1997), where the police are viewed as an irrevocable requirement for effective social control, they remain a stand-by institution intervening in situations where the grounds of social order are either threatened or breached. The empirical complexities pertaining to how social control is enacted in the management of social order is most insightfully developed by Albert Hunter’s (1985) differentiation between “private”, “parochial” and “public” social orders. Broadly coherent with Black’s (1976) general thesis on social control, Hunter (1985) intimates that police activities are most relevant to the public social order and are progressively less significant as the social bonds between people become closer. This is not to say that formal police control has no role in the production and reproduction of private or parochial social orders, rather it is less significant to these. Grounding the theoretical bases of reassurance policing in the literature on social control in this way renders explicit how making places safer and making them feel safer also, necessitates thinking about how the supply of police social control meshes with that enacted by other agents at a neighbourhood level. Co-production thus aims to capture how other nonpolice agencies (such as local council environmental services and social services) together with communities themselves are to be actively engaged, where possible, in designing and delivering solutions to a neighbourhood’s signal events. There is a pragmatic basis to this approach. As outlined above, many signal disorders are not criminal activities per se, and as such lie beyond the proper purview of the police. Thus for many problems that concern the public, the police may not be best placed to deal with them. Certain problems will always require the implementation of the coercive powers that police are legally endowed to deploy in pursuit of a resolution to some form of conflict between citizens. However, not all solutions are dependent upon police action. In certain situations the most sustainable and effective outcomes may not be explainable solely in terms of what the police do. As such, in terms of understanding how reassurance policing exhibited influence upon neighbourhood orders, it is vital to attend to the interactions between police controls and those emanating from other sources. There is certainly strong empirical evidence to suggest that in some of the NRPP sites improvements in neighbourhood security derived from police “control signals” were established, creating a “space” where community-based collective efficacy could thrive (Innes & Jones, 2006). In terms of understanding how these changes occurred it is important that the subtleties of the argument are not obscured. The proposition that is being forwarded on the basis of the NRPP data is not that the police created collective efficacy, but rather they established the context in which it could develop. They were enablers or facilitators, rather than creators or generators. It is also abundantly clear from the research, administrative and evaluative data that these co-productive arrangements were apparent in only a limited number of the 16 sites. So why did this work in some areas but not others? To answer this question we need to attend to the role of both police and community members. In some sites it appeared that the police did not really believe in the possibilities of co-production. Thus whilst they were willing to afford a restricted consultative role to citizens, they still saw the management of neighbourhood security as fundamentally “owned” by the State. In other sites, the seriousness of the crime and disorder problems meant that the actors involved


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were unable to develop more partnership-based modes of working as they were continually constrained to reacting to events. However, it was equally apparent that other neighbourhood communities did not have a desire or the capacity to enter into partnership arrangements. For example, in some sites the public seemed to desire a minimally interventionist police service, called upon to deal only with the more serious crime problems as and when they occurred. Contrastingly, in some of the more affluent areas the problems were not sufficiently grave to create the impetus for people to establish close ongoing relationships with local police personnel. Rather, in these areas, the community tended to galvanize when confronted with a problem, but these connections tended to dissolve once the immediate issues had been resolved. In other sites the basic patterns of social organization mitigated the capacity of people to collectively come together in a meaningful way with the police so as to articulate their needs with a collective voice. It is clear that, in the words of Steve Herbert (2006), some communities simply did not have the capacity to bare the “political weight” being placed upon them. There is a need for more detailed empirical research on this issue of the potential for co-production, but it would seem, on the basis of the NRPP evidence, that three key ingredients need to be present for it to occur: (1) The definition of a problem with sufficient collective agreement as to its problematic status that collective action is a possibility. In the absence of an ongoing problem, or if the nature of the threat posed is too grave, the likelihood of securing a collective desire amongst community members to engage with the police over time is limited. (2) Neighbours and the communities of which they are a part require sufficient bonds and social organization to enable them to engage with the police in a coherent manner. The capacity to articulate a collective dimension to their needs provides a sense of political impetus in terms of how they are received by the police. (3) The police themselves have to establish a genuine commitment to moving to coproduction. Very often whilst senior officers espouse such rhetorical dispositions, they are not able to engineer the belief in this enterprise amongst those officers working at a neighbourhood level, whose role will be rendered more complex by adopting a co-productive posture. On this basis it can be identified that the potential to genuinely integrate aspects of formal and informal social control so as to co-produce improvements in neighbourhood security is dependent upon a complex of factors that need to coalesce in time and space. It is perhaps not surprising then, that such phenomena are “discovered” only rarely in empirical studies. Such a conceptualization also helps to clarify that the police can only help to create the conditions in which collective efficacy develops. Scanning across the academic literature on community policing there does appear to be something of a tendency to provide “police-centric” accounts. In effect, the accent has been on the “policing” element of “community policing” at the expense of detailing what it is that communities are doing and how. The limitation of this being that there is growing evidence to suggest that it is the condition of communities and the relations between citizens that provides the primary source of resilience to crime and disorder threats (Sampson & Raudenbusch, 1999). An important exception to this police centrism is Carr’s (2005) recent book. Based upon ethnographic fieldwork in the Beltway area of Chicago, Carr details how, in the wake of several gang-related homicides, residents in some of the affected neighbourhoods came together to “defend” their neighbourhoods from what they saw as mounting crime and disorder problems. Central to Carr’s explanation of why after two

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failed attempts, success prevailed, was the role of the police. Through assisting community problem solving and various other direct and indirect interventions, the police acted to galvanize the community’s efforts in a way that the local social order was perceived as more secure. It is a process he labels “the new parochialism”. In sum, Carr’s work addresses two points directly relevant to the development and positioning of reassurance policing. First, subject to a range of macro-structural forces associated with the liquidity of contemporary social orders, community members often lack the inter-personal social networks and confidence that enable them to effectively tackle local problems. Thus by spreading knowledge and organizing action, police and other agencies engaged in the manufacture of neighbourhood security can help to redress the weaknesses that bedevil the development of informal social control. Second, and in line with the analysis outlined above, Carr suggests improvements often occur only in the wake of what he terms a “stimulus for action”. That is an incident of sufficient gravity that individual community members agree that they will have to do something or the situation is going to get even worse. In our terms, these are signal crimes and disorders.

CONCLUSION: TAKING REASSURANCE SERIOUSLY The idea that reassurance policing should interlock with other sources of formal and informal social control at a neighbourhood level is driven more by a pragmatic recognition of the limitations of policing and what it can achieve, than an ideological commitment to “responsibilized” citizenship. This awareness of the limitations of policing is also tacit in the very concept of reassurance itself. It does not convey a vision of policing that can “solve” all problems, “control” crime, or eliminate all threats. Rather, reassurance alludes to a more contingent sense of managing security and buttressing social order where it is threatened or breached, whilst not claiming to be its main guarantor. Reassurance policing thus accents the symbolic and dramaturgical aspects of the police function, recognizing it is fundamentally about managing impressions of order (Manning, 2003). That such sensibilities are threaded through the design of reassurance policing has eluded several recent commentaries and critiques. Collectively these have failed to appreciate some of the more subtle social and social-psychological dynamics that are being deliberately manipulated through specific reassurance policing practices.7 The most sophisticated and nuanced of these critiques is provided by Ian Loader (2006), who casts reassurance policing as the latest incarnation of a more general “ambient policing” tendency (also encompassing community, broken windows and problem-oriented policing approaches). Loader contends that all of these variants lead policing to intervene too readily in social life and in a way that renders security a pervasive condition of social relations. Furthermore he asserts that, in advocating police responsiveness to community concerns, reassurance policing is at risk of countenancing or unleashing a repressive tyranny of majority communities at the expense of the needs and expectations of minorities. Loader follows his critique by outlining a philosophical argument for a “minimalist” public policing guided by a form of deliberative public participation. 7

We would include here Fitzgerald et al. (2002) and Millie and Herrington (2005). For although the latter provides a fairly sympathetic rendition of the NRPP’s version of reassurance, it gives scant consideration to the causal processes that underpin its operations.


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As we have argued above, one of the principal aims of reassurance policing is to act upon the informal social control capacity of communities in such a way as to permit them to deal with at least some of their own security problems. Of course, such an approach is neither desirable nor possible for all issues. Some threats to public safety are such that only the formal social control resources of state agencies are sufficient to deal with them. However, there is empirical evidence, both from the NRPP and elsewhere, that policing can function as an agent of social change improving the life of communities in this manner. The presence of such benefits is not accounted for by Loader’s analysis. Relatedly, the integration of the signal crimes framework both opens up the range of problems that policing agencies should deal with, but at the same time it closes down some potentialities also. As noted above, adopting a signal crimes perspective on neighbourhood security issues necessitates policing agencies recognizing that they cannot restrict their interventions to BVPI crimes.8 Neighbourhood security is shaped by a combination of signal crimes and also a range of anti-social behaviours, and their material traces. The radical challenge of the SCP for policing is its contention that police and their partners do not have to deal with all crime or all disorder to impact upon security. Rather, they need to precisely calibrate their responses in order to tackle effectively those events and event types that signal risk to the local public. Thus it can be seen that in a number of ways reassurance policing is at least partly aligned with Loader’s (2006) desire for a restricted role for policing agencies in the governance of security. It also negates one of Loader’s charges, that all ambient policing approaches are founded upon increasing numbers of police staff to service them. To be clear, in our version of reassurance policing, increasing police staff is not the difference that makes a difference. The crucial factor is precision targeting, in a concentrated fashion, the signal disorders and signal crimes that drive insecurity. Loader’s worries about rendering policing responsive to citizen needs and the consequences this may have for minority communities interests, although not unwarranted, can also be satisfactorily accounted for. Indeed, conducting field work in areas such as Aston in Birmingham and St. Mary’s Ward in Oldham, one cannot but be aware of the importance of this issue. Rendering reassurance policing responsive to community concerns should apply to all communities equally. Minority communities should have an opportunity to influence how they are policed and be provided with mechanisms that help to ensure that police work on those problems that matter to them, rather than on a police-determined agenda. Indeed, it is arguably such communities who have most to gain from the implementation of any such reforms. The significance of engaging in a reassurance policing process and particularly constructing a rich community intelligence picture is that it can significantly enhance police understanding of what the problems are, and the inter- and intra-community tensions involved. For example, as part of the NRPP research: in Oldham, a signal crimes analysis produced insight into the tensions between white and Asian residents and the mutual victimizations reproducing ongoing conflicts; in Aston it detailed growing tensions between Asian and black communities; and in St. Helen’s, Merseyside it provided detail on intergenerational tensions between younger and older residents (Innes et al., 2004). Producing knowledge for the police about these issues was an important first step in establishing a mode of response appropriate to the particular insecurities in these areas. Moreover, and contrary to the broad thrust of Loader’s argument, based upon our ethnographic fieldwork, we would contend that the insecurity and fear found in some areas were not unreasonable reactions. 8

Best Value Performance Indicators – these are measures set by central government for all police forces.

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These were, after all, people living in difficult conditions, confronted by high crime and high disorder environments on a daily basis, subject also to a number of other social stressors. Loader’s focus upon how “ambient policing” artificially inflates levels of insecurity, leads him to ignore the fact that for some groups insecurity is an entirely “rational” response to the conditions in which they find themselves. Whilst cognizant of concerns about the increasing willingness of political elites to “govern through crime” and the repercussions of this (Simon, 1997), it is nevertheless our belief that policing needs to be reconfigured along the lines traced out in the preceding discussion, if it is to be effective in helping individuals and groups to navigate social life under fluid, mobile, multi-cultural social orders. Loader also identifies a need for reconfiguring policing, but in a markedly different way. He advocates, albeit in only lightly sketched form, the development of deliberative mechanisms via which the security concerns of all communities can be articulated and negotiated (p. 217). In so doing though, he fails to consider the implications of what we know about the functioning of deliberative fora for his own argument. Empirical experiments with deliberative mechanisms across a range of settings suggest that individuals engaging in deliberation of complex issues do not all change their attitudes in the same way. Some people have their views challenged and revise them in light of exposure to new evidence, but for others, a deliberative process causes them to harden or become more “radical” in their position. Others do not change their views and some disengage from the process.9 Moreover, applied to issues of crime and disorder, the institutionalization of such deliberative processes would necessarily involve denying the provenance of what some people claim to be their legitimate security concerns. But in so doing, this is likely to amplify rather than reduce their feelings of insecurity and consequently enflame inter- and intra community tensions as a result. Deliberative mechanisms are thus unlikely to be a viable practical solution for managing security concerns. Ultimately then for Loader (2006, p. 211) “The police, in short, are both minders and reminders of community . . . – a producer of significant messages about the kind of place that community is or aspires to be”. It is true that the police are an important source of symbolic meanings, but not because they performatively encode aspirations about community. Rather, policing is the “dirty work” of liberal democratic order and policing interventions are of dramaturgic import because of how they expurgate the limits of community. The police are called upon to resolve those situations where citizens’ interests come into conflict with each other. Reassurance policing represents an attempt to adapt the state’s principal agent of formal social control to an environment where pervasive insecurity has become established as an influential social problem. In this chapter, we have sought to trace the ways it is designed to manage the impressions that people form of neighbourhood order, so as to act upon the causes of insecurity they experience. In so doing, our claim is that certain forms of policing intervention can help to generate sufficient levels of security so that a more autonomous form of community resilience to crime and disorder can develop. In order to develop such capacities it has been suggested that it is crucial that police interventions are informed by “rich” and textured knowledge about what are the problems that really influence the properties of neighbourhood order and security. This is a form of knowledge that has not routinely been captured by policing organizations to date. 9

See, for example, Fishkin (1997); Luskin, Fishkin & Jowell (2002); and Mitofsky (1996).


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REFERENCES Bahn, C. (1974). The reassurance factor in police patrol. Criminology, 12, 338–45. Bauman, Z. (2002). Violence in the Age of Uncertainty. In Crawford, A. (ed.), Crime and Insecurity: The Governance of Safety in Europe (pp. 52–73). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Baumgartner, M. (1984). The Moral Order of a Suburb. New York: Oxford University Press. Black, D. (1976). The Behaviour of Law. New York: Academic Press. Campbell, D. (1955). The informant in quantitative research. American Journal of Sociology, 60, 339–42. Carr, P. (2005). Clean Streets. New York: New York University Press. Ditton, J., Farrall, S., Bannister, J. et al. (1999). Reactions to victimisation: Why has anger been ignored? Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal, 1, 37–54. Ditton, J. & Innes, M. (2005). Perceptual intervention in the management of crime fear. In N. Tilley (ed.), The Handbook of Community Safety and Crime Prevention (pp. 595–624). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ericson, R. & Haggerty, K. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fielding, N. (1995). Community Policing. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fishkin, J. (1997). The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy. New Haven CT: Yale University Press. Fitzgerald, M., Hough, M., Joseph, I. & Qureshi, T. (2002). Policing for London. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Foster, J. (1990) Villains: Crime and Community in the Inner City. London: Routledge. Furedi, F. (2002). Culture of Fear: Risk Taking and the Morality of Low Expectation. London: Continuum. Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity. Girling, E., Loader, I. & Sparks, R. (2000). Policing and Social Change in Middle England. London: Routledge. Gladwell, M. (2002). The Tipping Point: How Small Things Can Make a Big Difference. London: Abacus. Glassner, B. (1999). The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York: Basic Books. Goffman, E. (1972). Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Harper Colophon. Harcourt, B. (2001). Illusion of Order. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Herbert, S. (2006). Citizens, Cops and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary (2001). Open All Hours. London: HMSO. Hunter, A. (1985). Private, parochial and public social orders: the problem of crime and incivility in urban communities. In G. Suttles & M. Zald (eds), The Challenge of Social Control (pp. 230–242). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Innes, M. (2001). Control creep. Sociological Research Online, Special Issue on September 11, 2001, (6/3). http://socresonline.org.uk/6/3 Innes, M. (2004). Signal crimes and signal disorders: notes on deviance as communicative action. British Journal of Sociology, 55, 335–55. Innes, M. & Fielding, N. (2002). From community to communicative policing: ‘signal crimes’ and the problem of public reassurance. Sociological Research Online (7/2). http://socresonline.org.uk/7/2 Innes, M., Fielding, N. & Cope, N. (2005). The appliance of science: the theory and practice of crime intelligence analysis. British Journal of Criminology, 45, 39–57. Innes, M., Hayden, S., Lowe, T. et al. (2004). Signal Crimes and Reassurance Policing Volumes 1 and 2. Guildford: University of Surrey. Innes, M. & Jones, V. (2006). Neighbourhood Security and Urban Change: Risk, Resilience and Recovery. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Innes, M., Roberts, C. & Lowe, T. (2006). The Impact of Homicide on Community Reassurance. London: ACPO. Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage.

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Kelling, G., Pate, T., Dieckman, D. & Braun, C. (1974). The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment. Washington DC: Police Foundation. Levine, R. (2003). The Power of Persuasion: How We’re Bought and Sold. Oxford: Oneworld. Loader, I. (2006). Policing, recognition and belonging. ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 605, 201–221. Luskin, R., Fishkin, J. & Jowell, R. (2002). Considered opinions: Deliberative polling in Britain. British Journal of Political Science, 32, 455–87. Maguire, M. (2000). Policing by risks and targets: some dimensions and implications of intelligenceled crime control. Policing and Society 9, 315–36. Manning, P. (2003). Policing Contingencies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Millie, A. & Herrington, V. (2005). Bridging the gap: Understanding Reassurance Policing. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice (44/1), 41–56. Mitofsky, W. (1996). The Emperor has no clothes. Public Perspective (7/1), 17–19. Morris, J. (2006). The National Reassurance Policing Programme: a Ten-Site Evaluation (Findings 273). London: Home Office. Reiner, R. (1997). Policing and the Police. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan & R. Reiner (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 2nd edn (pp. 997–1050). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sacco, V. (2005). When Crime Waves. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. Sampson, R. & Raudenbusch, S. (1999). Systematic social observation of public spaces: A new look at disorder in urban neighbourhoods. American Journal of Sociology, 105, 603–51. Scarman, L. (1982). The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders of 10–12 April 1981. London: Penguin. Silver, E. & Miller, L. (2004). Sources of informal social control in Chicago neighbourhoods, Criminology, 42, 551–584. Simon, J. (1997). Governing through crime. In L. Friedman & G. Fisher (eds), The Crime Conundrum: Essays on Criminal Justice (pp.171–184). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Skogan, W. & Hartnett, K. (1997). Community Policing Chicago Style. New York: Oxford University Press. Skolnick, J. & Bayley, D. (1986). The New Blue Line. New York: Free Press. Taylor, R. (2001). Breaking Away From Broken Windows. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Tuffin, R., Morris, J. & Poole, A. (2006). An Evaluation of the Impact of the National Reassurance Policing Programme. London: Home Office. Trojanowicz, R. & Bucqueroux, B. (1990). Community Policing: A Contemporary Perspective. Cincinatti, OH: Anderson. Walker, A., Kershaw, C. & Nicholas, S. (2006). Crime in England and Wales 2005/06. London: Home Office. Weisburd, D. & Eck, J. (2004). What can police do to reduce crime, disorder and fear? In W. Skogan (ed.), To Better Serve and Protect: Improving Police Practices, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 593, 42–65. Wilson, J.Q. & Kelling, G. (1982). Broken windows. The Atlantic Monthly, March, 29–38. Wood, M. (2004). Perceptions and Experience of Antisocial Behaviour: Findings from the 2003/2004 British Crime Survey. Home Office Online Report 49/04. www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ rds/pdfs04/rdsolr4904.pdf Wycoff, M. (1988). The benefits of community policing: Evidence and conjecture. In J. Greene & S. Mastrofski (eds), Community Policing: Rhetoric and Reality (pp. 103–20). New York: Praeger.

CHAPTER 12

Generating Youth Safety From Below: Situating Young People at the Centre of Knowledge-Based Policing1 Monique Marks University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

and Jennifer Wood Temple University, Philadelphia, US

INTRODUCTION Police throughout the world have undergone immense organizational change programmes in the past four decades. While the philosophies and the restructuring programmes of each reform agenda differ, the basic goals have remained the same. The police are constantly striving to find new and better ways of increasing their effectiveness in crime prevention and order maintenance and are aiming to strengthen their relationships with the public. This drive toward greater community involvement and responsibility in policing has taken on a number of forms, ranging from enhanced information exchange, to community participation in consultation forums, to community ownership of local safety projects. The broadest term for capturing the most widespread police reform movement aimed at building community– police partnerships is “community policing” (He, Zhao, & Lovrich, 2002). At a practical level, community policing has emerged in a variety of guises. Commonsense expressions of its philosophy are seen in initiatives such as foot patrols, community policing forums and neighbourhood watch schemes. Partly as a result of this diversity, some have argued that community policing reform is a “largely haphazard initiative that [has] mostly failed to alter organisational practices” (McLeod, 2003, p. 362). A radical expression 1

We are very grateful to David Bradley and Tess Walsh for their insightful and constructive comments on a previous version of this chapter. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council (LP0348682) for their sponsorship of the Nexus Policing Project.


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of community policing is captured in the idea of a “co-production of safe communities” (Bazemore & Griffiths, 2003, p. 335), involving a significant shift in power from the police to community groups in safety enterprises (Bayley, 1994). Yet, it remains debatable whether this conception of shared power has been taken seriously and actualized in police– community partnerships. While community policing programmes provide a possible means for mobilizing civic participation in the generation of security, police agencies generally tend to take the lead role in such endeavours (Wood & Marks, 2006). They have held onto modern identities as the central (state) agency, even within multi-agency policing and safety networks. In this paper we focus on the production of safety by and for young people. We demonstrate that despite significant changes in formal police policy and even in the self-identities of police organizations, police traditionally overlook the agency of young people in providing and generating knowledge about youth safety and in designing responses to the issues that most affect their lives. As Casella points out, police policy and practice in regard to young people generally reinforces the assumption that “kids need to be changed and that adults have the means to change them, and that the way of changing them is by adjusting their cognitive facilities and threatening them with punishment” (2002, p. 369). We argue, contrary to this dominant police view, that young people can form the hub of structures and process for identifying, analysing and acting on youth safety issues. In making this argument, we refer in some detail to a project in a rural town in the state of Victoria, Australia where school students have participated actively in creating a viable model for youth-directed safety promotion. This particular project forms part of a broader programme on “Nexus Policing”, managed jointly by the Australian National University and Victoria Police, which is devoted to exploring and developing ways of linking the knowledge and capacities of police and non-government agencies, community groupings and the business sector through more coordinated approaches to community security. Both authors have been directly involved in this project as academic partners. We begin this paper by reviewing current international police approaches to working with schools and school-going youth. We then turn towards Victoria Police policy in regard to the policing of young people and discuss our interpretation of how this is practiced by police in this Victorian town. Following this, we propose a new approach to generating safety at schools (and among young people more broadly) by discussing the emergence of a new model for youth-centred safety partnerships and problem solving.

PROVIDING SCHOOL SAFETY: CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN THINKING AND PRACTICE Throughout the English speaking Western world (and beyond) there is a growing consensus surrounding the importance of dealing with youth crime and delinquency through preventive as opposed to punitive, traditional criminal justice measures. This shift has coincided with the development of policing policies and strategies that emphasize partnerships at the community level (Shaw & Tschiwula, 2002). Such partnerships have involved a mainstreaming of community safety issues through multi-agency structures and processes (Stephen & Squires, 2004). In recent times, prevention has been thought about from a restorative justice perspective in a number of countries. In theory, restorative policing encourages a far more active role

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on the part of the community in promoting public safety. “[C]ommunity members own the process of reconciliation and reintegration, [while] police agencies support them in that endeavor” (McLeod, 2003, p. 370). By supporting the community in this role, some police organizations devote, at least in theory, significant attention and resources to community building, aimed at “mobilising and enhancing citizen and community groups’ skills and confidence in informal responses to crime” (Bazemore & Griffiths, 2003, p. 337). Bazemore and Griffiths argue that restorative policing appears to represent the next logical step in community policing and police reform. How successful this agenda has been in actually mobilizing youth participation and in centring young people within youth safety networks is a point to which we will return later in this chapter. There have been other policy movements that advocate more active youth and community involvement in policing and security governance more generally. In places like Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, there is an increased use of the term “youth citizenship”, particularly within educational and local government policy as a way of mobilizing young people to actively take on more responsibility in their everyday lives (Cislowski, 2002). Citizenship discourse and practice has led to a more focused attempt at including young people in plans to prevent violence, risk and crime (Shaw & Tschiwula, 2002). While ideas about youth citizenship have shaped social and public policy, it remains debatable whether young people are able to be at the centre of discussions and forums that focus on young people’s destinies. This is particularly the case when it comes to issues of policing and security. Stephen and Squires put this well when they say that “amidst the cacophony of voices from political and media protagonists and academic detractors of community safety, one essential group’s voice remains unheard; that of young people and their families subject to this discursive onslaught” (2004, p. 354). This failure to place young people at the centre stage of knowledge production in regards to youth safety is perhaps due to what Stephen and Squires (2004) refer to as an “institutionalised mistrust” of youth. These authors go as far as to suggest that despite the “moralistic rhetoric of responsibilisation” (2004, p. 352), young people remain universal symbols of disorder. And this is even more the case when police refer to youth whom they view as “unrespectable”, generally those from lower socioeconomic groupings (McAra & McVie, 2005). The “working rules” originating from the informal culture of the police guide police responses to youth and their interventions in youth safety matters. McAra and McVie go so far as to argue that police continue to view themselves as the moral guardians of society. They even contend that police produce a particular morality by “[enforcing] social discipline through punishment, humiliation and extraction of submissiveness from groups who constantly come within their purview” (2005, p. 6). This shift toward community policing is reflected in the ways in which police have engaged with schools in recent decades. While they have been involved in schools since the 1960s, their role has become more formalized in the past 20 years as a result of growing concerns about school-based violence such as bullying and fights as well as drug use among school-going youth (Shaw, 2004). In many countries, police are now actively collaborating with schools to combat crime and violence. School violence and problem behaviour has increasingly been viewed as a community and family issue rather than as an exclusive policing issue (Sanders, 1996). As a result, governments have promoted the development of local partnerships to deal with these problems. Nonetheless, police continue to be seen as one of the most important parties, if not the key agency, in such partnerships (Shaw 2004, p. 2). The ways in which police have formed partnerships with schools has differed across countries, both in terms of philosophies and objectives. This has led to very different styles of intervention in schools. For the most part, Shaw (2004) argues that these intervention

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programmes lack a clear theoretical basis and normative vision. They are driven, instead, by a mix of police organizational sensibility, policy requirements and school/community expectations. Shaw, in reviewing the range of interventions by police in schools across the world suggests that there are three different models. These are the school-based officer programme model, police officers as teachers model, and the police–school comprehensive liaison schemes model. Each of these models emerged as part of community policing agendas to build trusting relations and partnerships between the police and school communities.

School-Based Officer Programme Model In this model, which is the most widespread, police are placed in the schools on a regular basis. Specifically, individual police officers are tasked as School Resource Officers (SROs) who regularly visit the schools and participate in school events. The aim of this model is to change young peoples’ perceptions of the police through friendly and informal contact with them (Hopkins, 1994) as well as maintain security in the school (Shaw, 2004). Ongoing police presence in the school is viewed as the best way to build healthy and trusting relationships with students. In England, SROs tend to target high risk areas and schools with the aim of reducing crime and anti-social behaviour. “They work in partnership with teachers, other education services and related agencies to identify, support and work with children and young people regarded to be at high risk of victimization, offending and social exclusion” (Shaw, 2004, p. 11). The success of this model is highly dependent on the personality of the SRO. Young people in the schools are not viewed as deliberative actors who should be directly engaged around debates, discussions or plans around safety issues. Instead, it is presumed that intermittent relationship-building initiated by police will shape young people’s perceptions, understandings and behaviour.

Police Officers as “Teachers” Model This is the oldest model of police–school cooperation wherein police are viewed as an educational resource. Police have two main functions. First, they provide surveillance by, for example, patrolling schools. Second, they provide information about a range of “police” -related issues. The best known example of this model is the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) programme in the United States. The prime goals of this programme are to prevent substance abuse among school children and to help them develop violence resistance techniques (Ringwalt, Ennett, & Holt, 1991; Shaw, 2004). This is usually achieved through police-led classroom lessons which focus on school students acquiring knowledge and skills that enable them to recognize and resist negative peer pressure, enhance self-esteem, and develop assertiveness techniques. The effectiveness of the programme is contested, but the programme continues to expand “because it is well liked and gives the impression that ‘something is being done’ to counter drug use among young people” (Shaw, 2004, p. 14). The DARE programme is regarded by the police as a collaboration between local law enforcement agencies and schools. The approach of most police involved in this programme is of police as “resource persons” who, in the words of an American police officer, “provides answers, teaches [students] and gets them to trust me” (cited in Casella, 2002, p. 364). In


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short, police who adopt this model view themselves as the custodians of knowledge and ethical conduct. The recently terminated Police School Involvement Programme (PSIP) in Victoria Australia has, according to Shaw, been another example of this model. Under that model, police officers were meant to focus as much as possible on being educators, rather than as law enforcers. Two of the key objectives were to forge better relationships between the police and young people, and to make young people aware of the police role. PSIP is supposed to be a proactive partnership between police and school communities. However, as is the case with DARE programmes, the success of the PSIP has been heavily reliant on the personality of individual police officers (Sutton, 2002a). Police officers who are accessible have been able to change attitudes toward the police and law enforcement generally. Unfortunately though, it is the police, not the young people or even the broader school community, who are the agents of change within this programme.2

Comprehensive Police–School Liaison Schemes In this model, police engage in school safety matters as part of a multi-agency network. These networks may include a range of social sectors outside of the schools. Since the 1990s (in America at least) violence prevention in schools has involved partnerships between schools and social service agencies, civic groups and police departments (Casella, 2002; De Stefano, 1998). One example of this model is the programme d’intervention en milieu scolaire in Quebec, Canada. This is a multi-partnership programme in which the police form part of a broader network designed to respond to concerns about drug abuse, bullying and school violence. The network includes school administrators, principals and staff, school bus drivers, psychologists, youth workers, students and parents. Police provide an initial presentation to school authorities about safety issues in the particular school and area, and specific programmes for responding to these problems are then developed with the school community. While police take on a more networked approach, the programme draws on a conventional understanding of police as experts on safety issues. Their role continues to involve collecting information, interrogating suspects, searching school premises, and making arrests if necessary (Shaw, 2004). An example from Europe is the Amsterdam School Safety Plan. The aim of this programme is to prevent punitive police interventions in schools. This is done by bringing together police, justice and city administration and the schools to diagnose safety problems in and around the school and to develop safety plans. Safety priorities and plans are determined by a series of focus groups involving students, teachers and experts (including the police). Police are not necessarily the lead agency in identifying or solving safety problems. Rather they foster a multi-agency approach which is formalized though agreements between network partners. While young people are part of the focus groups, they do not “direct” the discussions or the intervention plans (Shaw, 2004). A further example of this partnership approach is the Student Assistance Center and Community Outreach Program at East Hartford High School in the USA. This programme was developed in the 1990s within a secondary school that was faced with increasing 2

The PSIP programme was commenced in 1989 and is currently being phased out as Victoria Police are moving to a new model for working with young people. See below.

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violence and drug-related problems. The police and school authorities recognized that tough policies and practices were not having a positive effect. The programme was initiated as a way of incorporating conflict prevention and resolution with a range of other supports and services through bringing together police, schools, community social services and the local university (Shaw, 2004). It is administered by a full-time staff member, a rotation of teachers and interns, a substance abuse councillor and trained student mediators. The programmes in this model all offer a partnership approach to creating safe school environments and provide strategic and integrated responses to safety and security issues in schools and their surrounding communities, allowing for a “balancing of police expertise and contributions with that of other specialists” (Shaw, 2004, p. 26). This third model takes community policing beyond simple ideas of community support for the police toward a far more networked approach to policing. Police, within these networks, are key actors but are not necessarily the primary actors. Yet, the common thread in each of these models is that while they are centred on youth concerns, the programmes remain adult-led. The question that remains for us is: Is there a community policing approach that would give more weight to the knowledge, skills and capacity of school students themselves in creating safer school environments? To date, the restorative justice movement in both policing and educational policy provides an important conceptual move towards more selfdirected youth governance schemes.

YOUTH AGENCY AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE The issue of youth agency has received a fair amount of attention in the past decade. Innovative police organizations, youth workers and educational policy makers now view restorative practices as a means for building youth and community citizenship and as a process for diverting young people away from the formal criminal justice system. Where restorative practices have been adopted, there have been significant shifts in how the police work with and think about young people. While restorative justice, like community policing, can embrace a range of practices, the philosophy of restorative justice has begun to take hold in parts of Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand (Abramson, 2003). The essence of youth-focused restorative justice is that young people can and should take responsibility for their actions and should realize the impact of their actions on others. The onus is then on young people themselves (supported by the police and a range of other agencies) to repair any harm done. This approach demands systemic change in police organizations as they are expected to focus on direct community involvement in the control and prevention of crime. Police are expected to “buy into” programmes which encourage shared responsibility for public safety and community peace (Hines & Bazemore, 2003). Through this community ownership, police support the community in “establish[ing] norms and social boundaries to clearly articulate what behaviour is not tolerated within the community” (Hines & Bazemore, 2003, p. 414). This requires the police to let go of their own identities as moral guardians and as security governance “experts”. The term “restorative justice” is now used as frequently, if not more frequently, than the term “community policing” in policy pertaining to youth safety and crime prevention. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 stipulates that in dealing with young people, restorative processes should be used at all stages. Since 2003, police have completely re-oriented their processes for dealing with young offenders. All


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“arrest” cases are now referred to Youth Offender Teams (Kearns, 2005). Youth Offender Teams work together with a range of agencies in an attempt to get referred youth to take responsibility and to create alternate life choices. In New Zealand, the Children, Young People and their Families Act of 1989 has catalysed far-reaching change in the way children and young people are dealt with by the criminal justice system. The Act aims at ensuring that young people who commit offences are dealt with fairly and that they are held responsible for their behaviour. The Act also insists that “the child should be given ‘consideration’ in decision making, and ‘wherever practicable’ all of this should be within the time frame appropriate to the child’s sense of time” (Swain, 1995, p. 164). Framing the Act is the principle that unless absolutely necessary, criminal proceedings should not be instituted against a child or young person. Rather than resorting to traditional criminal justice procedures, the capacity of the family should be strengthened to assist them in dealing with behaviour problems. One mechanism for doing this is family group conferencing in care and protection matters and in youth justice situations (Swain, 1995). The New Zealand model of family conferencing was revised as a community policing technique in 1991 by an innovative team of police officers in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. The Wagga Wagga model was the brainchild of Terry O’Connell, a police sergeant at the Wagga Wagga police station. O’Connell was acutely aware that existing ways of dealing with juvenile crime were not working well. He introduced family group conferencing at a time when local police were experimenting with a range of community policing initiatives. O’Connell and his team were trying to find ways of improving the youth cautioning process by bringing together young offenders, victims and their respective support people (O’Connell, 1998). Discussions in the family group conference focused on what harm had been done and what needed to happen to make things right. The Wagga Wagga model was based on John Braithwaite’s theory of reintegrative shaming (Braithwaite, 1989). According to O’Connell, six months after the new programme had been introduced, police at the station started to tell different stories about the policing of young people and the importance of finding alternatives to the young people “landing at the door” of the courts. All of this happened without any change in police policy since the existing community police policy with its emphasis on cautioning for young offenders provided an enabling policy environment for initiatives such as the one in Wagga Wagga. However, as O’Connell points out, restorative justice initiatives have been blunted by existing organizational culture within Australian police organizations (O’Connell, 1998). While, ironically, the Wagga Wagga model has not been adopted in the New South Wales Police, it has been embraced by the police in Thames Valley in England and by the police in various parts of the USA who have bought into the broader philosophy of restorative justice (McCold & Watchel, 1998). In Thames Valley, restorative justice processes have been integrated into the way in which the police operate both externally in dealing with the community and internally in dealing with complaints and workplace conflict (O’Connell, 1998). Restorative justice principles and practices have also been introduced into police organizations undergoing radical reform processes. In Northern Ireland, the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act of 2003 prompted youth conferencing. As explained in a report on the Northern Ireland Youth Conference Service, “[i]n contrast with more traditional models of justice, youth conferencing seeks not only to encourage young people to recognize the effects of their crime and take responsibility for their actions, but also to devolve power by actively engaging victim, offender and community in the restorative process” (Campbell et al., 2005: iii). In October 2005, police officers in three areas of Northern Ireland were interviewed about

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their involvement in youth conferencing. Police officers expressed enthusiastic support for the restorative principles that underpinned the conferencing process, arguing that it helped the young person to appreciate the true impact of the offence, and this had led to decreased rates of re-offending (Campbell et al., 2005, p. 119). Officers viewed their role in conferencing as either “presenting the facts” or as informing the young person about why their incident was in fact criminal (Campbell et al., 2005, p. 121). In Northern Ireland, restorative justice is owned by the local community who decides which cases are eligible for restorative processes. There is also joint community participation in the outcome of restorative justice forums. There are other examples of appeals to restorative justice processes in youth-oriented policy in Australia and Canada. In both of these countries, the police are encouraged to use extrajudicial measures in dealing with young offenders, particularly if they are first offenders and their offences are not violent (Chatterjee & Elliot, 2003). In each of the cases mentioned, restorative justice offers both a philosophy and a range of mechanisms for a networked approach for dealing with youth safety measures. Within this network, the knowledge and skills of a range of community actors other than the police are mobilized in creating safer environments and in facilitating improved relationships between young people and other community groupings. It remains unclear, however, to what extent police are willing and able to de-centre themselves in the governance of security. While restorative policing holds great promise for supplying young people with a leading voice and role in safety networks, sceptics point out that this potential has not really been realized. Hines and Bazemore believe that whatever the philosophy influencing policing organizations, “policing has contributed to the weakening of community capacity by trivializing or ignoring the natural resources of social control and support that do exist” (2003, p. 413). Perhaps they make the point a bit too strongly given that police the world over are now taking middle row or back row seats in the pluralised theatre of security governance (Wood & Dupont, 2006). But what they do alert us to is that police still view themselves as “experts” with a wide-ranging mandate (Crawford, 2006, p. 136). We re-visit this critique further as the chapter unfolds. In the following section we examine the most recent policy of Victoria Police directed at young people and schools. Drawing from data gathered in focus groups with police members at a local Victoria station, we provide some observations with respect to whether and how police see young people as active and productive citizens in the promotion of safety.

POLICING YOUNG PEOPLE: POLICY DIRECTIONS IN VICTORIA The policy documents of the Victoria Police (VicPol) place strong emphasis on establishing localized approaches to policing services through collaboration and partnerships with the community. Through establishing local safety committees, VicPol has developed localized structures that are meant to mobilize the knowledge and skills of a range of agencies and individuals in making communities safer. One indicator of VicPol’s success in establishing networks is “a greater number and diversity of partnerships with government departments, research institutions, industry groups, other social agencies, community groups and experts” (Victoria Police, 2003, p. 17). Another indicator is “greater use of non-punitive responses to certain kinds of offending such as diversion, restorative justice and counselling” (2003, p. 17).


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In line with its strategic vision, VicPol has decided to reorient the policing of young people, including police involvement with schools. If we are to use Shaw’s categorization, VicPol is moving from using the first model (police officers as “teachers”) toward the third model (comprehensive police–school liaison schemes). Their current focus is the building of local partnerships, increasing local community capacity and resilience and encouraging the active participation of young people in safety matters (VicPol, 2006a). The new VicPol Child and Youth Strategy stresses that young people and the community must “own” the solutions to youth safety offending problems. For this to be achieved, the voice of youth must be recognized and heard. What is required, then, is enhanced communication with young people so that they can be actively involved in decision making connected to their safety (VicPol, 2006b). By the year 2002, police cautioning and warnings had become established as a foremost approach to juvenile justice diversion in Victoria and throughout Australia (see Polk, 2003). Through cautioning and diversion processes young people are drawn into conversations about their actions and are given “choices” about how to behave in the future armed with knowledge about the consequences of “bad choices”. Yet, it is unclear whether, given these new practices in dealing with young offenders, ideas about youth citizenship and the centrality of youth themselves as decision makers and problem solvers have been firmly embedded within police organizations. In research carried out collectively by members of the Nexus Project we therefore endeavoured to explore the following lines of inquiry: To what extent has new thinking about policing, and particularly the policing of young people, impacted on the consciousness and practice of local police? Do local police members value the contributions and knowledge of young people in youth safety matters? Is there space for innovation among young people and in partnership with police in regard to youth and school safety? In discussing the first of these two questions we draw on information derived from focus groups held with members of a local police station. These focus groups were facilitated by members of Victoria Police from the Nexus team who work at Melbourne headquarters and their results were jointly analysed by the two authors and the VicPol interviewers. There are a number of themes that emerged clearly from the focus groups. Firstly, police from the station have very little interaction with young people who are not “at risk” or “in trouble with the law”. The young people with whom they interact are most often viewed as trouble-makers with chequered histories. Focus group participants indicated that the business of policing currently allows for little time to stop and interact with young people when responding to calls in which youth are involved. This focus on high risk kids should be contextualized within the broad public service approach to dealing with young people in Victoria. The Victorian Government has initiated a range of interventions aimed at high risk adolescents (Bryant, 2002). While there is a focus on prevention, early intervention and a networking approach to working with youth, government agencies remain “protectors” rather than facilitators of youth-driven social programmes (Bryant, 2002). The focus on “high risk” and “at-risk” kids also means that more adaptive or “good” kids are often peripheral to government intervention programmes. Local police members rarely have much to do with kids who are not in conflict with the law and tend to see working in the schools as well as prevention work with young people as tangential to the core business of policing. Such policing, they believe, is not valued by the police or by the community. In some ways, dealing with young people has been conceptualized as an “add on” to regular police work in Victoria. Under the PSIP model, individual police officers were given the portfolio of School Resource Officer (SRO) and

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they were responsible for carrying out the PSIP in an identified number of schools (Sutton, 2002b). Focus groups revealed that most local police officers viewed the SRO portfolio as marginal to the “real work” of policing. The fact that most local police did not engage much with the “good kids” meant that they knew very little about what these young people felt about the safety of their own environments or how they may want to deal with such issues. There is no real sense coming from these officers of young people as potential partners in creating safer communities. Having said this some police officers believed that there were some kids who simply can’t be changed, the majority of local police were, at the same time, positive about diversion programmes. They were aware that traditional policing methods, in particular arresting and charging young offenders, was not reducing recidivism or reducing the “core” numbers of young offenders. In their everyday policing with young people, local police officers had incorporated a range of diversion processes. Through these processes, officers had come to realize the importance of reasoning with young people and involving their families as partners in creating solutions to youth safety and offending issues. However, they identified a number of limitations within the police organization to working differently with young people. First, they felt that the organization lacked the resources (materially and in terms of interpersonal skills) to formalize these new ways of working with young people. Secondly, they had little opportunity to reach out to a range of young people who could be actively involved in identifying and solving problems that affected young people directly. In essence, police members could not incorporate the limitations they expressed into the business of their everyday roles. Local police felt that what was required was a means of working with young people that encouraged youth to take more responsibility for their own safety issues, but in ways that did not increase the work load of the police. They were aware of new Victoria Police policies and were willing to engage in youth safety projects that involved police as partners – even de-centred ones – in problem solving and problem identification. With these concerns and interests in mind, the Nexus Policing Project team began engaging a range of partners concerned with youth safety issues locally. Guiding this project was the belief, held by all stakeholders, that new approaches are required to build youth safety partnerships and for young people (both the “good” and the “bad”) to play a leading role in creating safer environments for themselves.

RE-SHAPING POLICING: ENABLING AND DEVELOPING OTHER KNOWLEDGE AND CAPACITIES The Nexus Policing project in Victoria, Australia is aimed at establishing practical arrangements for linking the knowledge and capacities of police with those of non-police groupings in new and innovative ways. In essence, it is a practical model-building project, but one that is grounded in theoretical understandings of where policing is headed in the 21st Century. As part of the project’s overall methodology academics at the ANU together with the Victoria Police jointly develop explanatory maps of how policing partnerships and networks have been thought about and realized in specific settings. We then identify opportunities to challenge old ways of thinking and insert new ones into the conventional paradigm of community policing.


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As we have implied throughout this paper, the “co-production” vision of partnership policing has to date been unduly narrow in theory and in practice. For instance, co-production has not been understood to include a de-centred perspective. Whilst police organizations throughout the world embrace partnerships as an ideal, they tend to develop practical arrangements that place police at the centre of safety promotion. This often generates ways of conceptualizing community safety, and in particular youth safety that are framed by police understandings, and the categories and language that inform their work. Fundamentally, safety is conceived in relation to types of crime and disorder. It is for this reason that police focus their energies on “at risk” youth or those otherwise in conflict with the law. Broader public fears and anxieties around safety are relatively marginal to the priorities of police because police concern themselves with those instances and actions that necessitate police intervention. In the context of the developments we outlined in relation to police involvement in schools as well as the broader restorative justice emphasis, the Nexus Project developed a partnership model for youth safety that centred youth and de-centred the police. After conducting a general mapping of youth safety partnerships in the locality in which we were working, we undertook original research with children from two schools (a primary school and a “middle years” college). The main component of this research was a series of focus groups over a period of several months with young people in grades six, seven and eight. A researcher from the Australian National University and a youth worker from the local city council sought to understand how participants conceptualized safety as well as how they acted on their safety concerns. A particular emphasis was on the help-seeking behaviour of youth in terms of the knowledge, capacities and resources they mobilized in safety promotion. In other words, we were concerned with who young people went to (including one another) in addressing their issues and concerns. The focus groups were not framed by any pre-conceived notions of what “safety” meant to young people. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we discovered that issues of safety and security were often bound up with issues of health and wellbeing, as seen in their prioritization of issues such as self-harm, sexuality, eating disorders, family violence and bullying. Of considerable note is the fact that the safety priorities expressed by young people diverged considerably from the crime- and disorder-related issues emphasized by police members in the focus groups held with them. In our dealings generally with local police, we found that whilst such issues are acknowledged by them as important ones in society, they are not seen as “police business”, unless they are expressed through acts of crime and disorder that are brought to their attention. This original research informed the design of a problem-solving model for schools that gives young people the lead role in articulating and expressing issues of safety relevant to their everyday lives as students, as members of families and as young citizens. This model – which drew inspiration from the values, aims and design features of a “local capacity governance” programme administered by the Community Peace Programme in South Africa (Shearing, 2001) – is based on a set of nine principles that affirm both the centrality of youth knowledge and capacity in safety promotion as well as the importance of knowledge networks and capacity networks that young people can deploy in their action planning or implementation activities. One of the nine principles is that on their own, government agencies and non-governmental agencies do not possess all of the resources, capacities and knowledge that are available in communities. Rather, knowledge, capacity and resources exist that have not been mobilized or coordinated. In the local area in which

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we work, a diverse array of social and youth-oriented agencies form part of a committed network available to be deployed by the young people as part of what is called a “Students Solving Problems” group. The model contains a set of problem-solving steps and guidelines aimed at ensuring that a rich set of knowledge and capacities – particularly amongst young people themselves – are assembled in problem identification, problem analysis and action planning. The steps are designed so as to reduce the possibility that particular young people may dominate the group’s workings, either as a matter of personality or as a matter of purported skills and confidence. Rather, the approach aims to structure a robust deliberative process, not unlike that which occurs in restorative justice conferencing. In contrast to most restorative justice programmes, however, the young people monopolize the process of problem identification and prioritization in the first instance. Furthermore, unlike established police-led restorative justice programmes, such problems are not necessarily those of a criminal nature. There are guidelines pertaining to adult oversight of the process to ensure that issues of a serious or criminal nature are responded to in ways appropriate to school rules and duties of care and around mandatory reporting. The intention is not to divert cases away from the youth groups, but rather to embed the groups’ workings within a broader set of protective measures within the schools and the community more generally. Following a youth-only problem identification process, the young people decide upon which external resources to pull in for a subsequent deliberative process in which they analyse the issue and establish an action plan. Local police would be invited to such a meeting if it was felt they possess unique knowledge, experience and capacity in problem analysis and problem resolution. The same goes for various other agencies, such as those working in the areas of mental health or community development. The problem identification process is framed in terms of “private” or “public” issues. An example of a private issue is a particular incident of bullying between identified parties. Likewise, the issue of bullying could be addressed as a generic, school-wide problem – a public issue – where it is addressed without personalizing particular actions or events. Throughout the entire deliberative process, the young people adopt a values-based approach to maintaining the integrity and legitimacy of the group. Two elements of their Code of Practice are “confidentiality” (“everything that is said in the group stays in the group”) and “respect” (“we respect each other’s and other people’s opinions and feelings at all times”). As we have suggested, while the model is largely inspired by restorative justice principles and is embedded in restorative practices, several of its features stand out from general accounts of restorative justice theory. Similar to restorative justice, the model aims at giving all parties in a dispute the opportunity to voice their concerns, their feelings and their understandings. Second, it aims at healing relationships and developing inclusive practices within the school environment through empowering young people in their everyday life and by giving youth the tools to address specific safety issues. A third aim is to build responsibility and citizenship in young people. As is the case with restorative practices, the steps and values of the model are intended to move parties away from a blaming mentality and toward a problem-solving orientation focused on the future. The model, is distinctive both in the way it uses detailed steps as a guide to problem solving and in its flexible approach to involving a wide range of potential agencies and individuals in the problem-solving process. What is most distinctive, however, is that it is youth-driven. Agencies such as the police, the courts, or even youth service organizations are not responsible for determining how and when problem-solving meetings will be held.


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At the time of writing, this model is in its early days of implementation. It is operating in the two schools that originally participated in the research. Another school has just introduced it. As the implementation of the model progresses in these school settings, indicators of success will be related to the ways in which, and the degree to which, youth knowledge and capacity is more fully mobilized around safety and wellbeing issues. More fundamentally, the model will be measured in terms of whether it is seen as more desirable and more effective than current approaches in addressing safety issues by and for young people. It will also be measured in terms of whether such de-centred policing practice can develop “buy-in” from police officers at all levels. A significant part of this “buy-in” will relate to the ways in which this model advances Victoria Police policy on police–school and police–youth relationships. The Nexus model takes up strands from all three of the different models for police intervention in schools that we outlined earlier in this chapter. While not relying on regular police presence and visibility in schools – which is central to the “school-based officer programme” model – the Nexus model will provide a vehicle for strengthening young people’s positive perceptions of the police. By making police available to assist in problem identification and analysis when called upon by the young people, the assumption underlying the model is that healthy and trusting relationships between youth and police can be delivered. Most importantly, such relationships can be forged in a manner that respects the agency of young people in agenda setting. Trust is thus based more on cooperative than paternalistic relationships. At the same time, within the Nexus model police officers are treated as an educational resource, not unlike the police officers as “teachers” model. The difference rests in how the knowledge and experience of police officers is deployed. The Nexus model prescribes that, on a case-by-case basis, police officers are invited by the school-based group to impart their expertise on a specific issue in a manner that enables young people to actively address it. In theory, this process allows for a more efficient allocation of police educational resources, as these resources are deployed in addressing issues that young people prioritize as most relevant to their safety and wellbeing in the home, in school and in the wider community. Finally, the Nexus model aims to deepen the commitment of “comprehensive police– school liaison schemes” to multi-agency and multi-group networks. It endeavours to radicalize this commitment by shifting from an adult-led focus (typical of established liaison schemes) to a youth-led one. At the same time, the Nexus model nests within existing governance models in schools and in the criminal justice system generally. Its use does not usurp the authority of state agents including teachers and police. Rather, it can alter everyday power relations in ways that allow for greater agency to be exercised by young people in the promotion of safety. While adoption of the Nexus model advances Victorian policy on policing generally and on young people specifically, there are inevitable dilemmas and challenges for police officers when they try to negotiate different kinds of roles and partnerships with other agencies and groupings in the production of safety. As such, the success of Nexus will in part be measured by its contribution to new and practical arrangements that provide clear guidance to police on how they can develop partnerships centred on the knowledge of the young. That being said, young people and the various agencies that form part of youth safety networks, must continue to work together to promote new thinking on community policing and the importance of youth agency. The robustness of networks for youth safety promotion will always be determined by the degree to which different forms of knowledge and capacity are identified and mobilized, especially those of the young.

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CONCLUSION If community policing is to be conceived of as “a vehicle for empowerment and a means of community mobilisation and activism” (Casella, 2002, p. 369), conventional security networks and partnerships need to be re-conceptualized. This entails that police officers’ basic assumptions about their role in these networks be completely reoriented. In order for this to occur, public police organizations need to engage with community groupings in ways that allow for the robust articulation of different forms of knowledge and capacity around safety problems. Youth safety is simply one example wherein new “nexus” arrangements for policing are required. The conceptual and cultural leap from a centred conception of networks to a de-centred one is significant. Police members working the streets experience a tension between broader organizational imperatives to think differently and strategically about issues of safety and security whilst at the same time being pressured (often by communities) to target their resources on the people and places most “at risk”. The challenge of aligning social prevention objectives with “new managerial” tendencies is undoubtedly difficult. What we do know is that the embedded sets of habits and world views that have dominated policing for decades are very resilient, despite a widespread awareness and acceptance amongst contemporary police members (especially leaders) that old ways of doings things are limited, and most certainly not always conducive to fostering safer communities. The Nexus Project to which we refer in this chapter endeavours to promote a new model that combines, as well as advances, both theory and practice in the networked production of safety by and for young people. Its success will, in no small part, depend on the degree of engagement with it by all police. Action research programmes like Nexus Policing are an effective way of re-focusing policing from the bottom-up supported by innovative and supportive police policy at the top.

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CHAPTER 13

Identifying the Neighbourhoods in Neighbourhood Policing: A Geodemographic Example of Knowledge-Based Policing David Ashby and Dr Foster, UCL Business PLC, UK

SUMMARY This chapter will describe how geodemographic classification of neighbourhoods can be used to interpret crime survey data and operational databases of crimes reported to the police. This practice of classifying neighbourhoods has been widely used in the commercial sector for decades to segment customers, target appropriate services and identify the most effective channels of communication and appropriate messages. The chapter demonstrates that geodemographic analysis provides a clear indication of the level of risk of victimization in different types of neighbourhood. This kind of analysis can help target resources to areas of greatest need. This may also point to the correlation between certain neighbourhood types and the demand for other public services such as schools and health, indicating that the solution to areas that have experienced long-term deprivation will lie in multi-agency partnerships and empowering of communities through activities designed to provide greater social capital and collective efficacy. Geodemographic analysis provides a shared understanding that can facilitate networking between individuals and organizations in crime and disorder reduction partnerships.

INTRODUCTION The chapter is built upon the findings of a knowledge exchange programme between collaborating universities, local police forces, central government and the private sector extending The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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over the past four years.1 The primary focus has been the transfer of private sector practices and academic research to better inform strategic decision making and the analysis of information within the context of public service reform and the new localism agenda. This research is timely in many ways, not least the convergence of the community cohesion doctrine and reassurance policing towards the advent of the Neighbourhood Policing Programme (see www.neighbourhoodpolicing.co.uk). The current focus on neighbourhood policing has been regarded as the reaction to a 15year “regime drift” in UK policing where performance indicators had dominated and where efficiency had become more influential than public satisfaction and confidence (Bettison, 2004). Recent government publications including the White Paper and National Policing Plan (Home Office, 2004b) focus attention on an understanding of local communities, neighbourhood policing and achieving improvements in both policing performance and its measurement. However, Ashby (2005) posits that the contemporary performance assessment framework and local delivery and analysis of public service provision fail to substantiate much of the political rhetoric surrounding the new localism agenda. This chapter develops this argument with particular reference to neighbourhood policing. In recent years central government in the UK has become increasingly focused upon the efficient delivery of policing under the public service reform agenda (Home Office, 2001, 2003b, 2003c, 2004a, 2004b; OPSR, 2002). Significant increases in expenditure have been coupled with a drive to demonstrate improvements in performance and increased accountability throughout the public sector. However, as noted in the 2004 White Paper there is growing dissatisfaction with contemporary performance measures and a real need to “make changes to the way police performance is measured and inspected so that it reflects the priorities of the public and their views about the policing they have received” (Home Office, 2004a, p. 66). Reform is needed in both the delivery and assessment of public service provision, and a knowledge-based framework required for the effective and efficient delivery of neighbourhood policing. Furthermore, the Statistics Commission (2006) report on Crime Statistics, and the public trust thereof, produced a number of key recommendations: (1) the structural separation between Home Office policy and compilation of crime statistics; (2) improved communication with users of crime statistics; (3) better, more consistent, crime data for small areas, and (4) further technical research. This chapter focuses largely on the last two of these recommendations, in providing an example of technical research which may well inform and direct policy and practice to provide better more consistent small area crime data. It is the continued emphasis upon the increasingly interchangeable “new localism”, “neighbourhood” and “community” within guidance, strategy development and research which is of utmost concern in our research (see Ashby, 2005). Indeed, within the 10 commitments made to the public in the 2004 White Paper there are no fewer than 13 references to the terms “local” and “community” (including derivatives thereof). However, the statistics and interoperable data structures necessary for the assessment of comparative performance within a neighbourhood context remain underdeveloped in the UK public sector. Furthermore, there is little understanding or consistency in the definition of what is “local” within the UK policing context. Definitions appear to range from devolving policing responsibilities to individual police forces (of which there are 43 geographical units in England and Wales), through basic command units and local authority districts, to similarly ad hoc administrative units such as electoral wards or police beats. 1

With thanks to the National Reassurance Policing Programme, the Audit Commission, Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, Experian Business Strategies, University College London, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Police Foundation.

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Here, we primarily focus upon techniques being used within a UK context, although we maintain that our findings are relevant internationally. Indeed, many of the private sector decision-making tools outlined here are marketed to over 20 countries worldwide with a growing market for international comparability. This chapter focuses upon utilizing geodemographics2 for both crime analysis and as a strategic management tool which may inform policing styles at a neighbourhood level. The adoption of a geodemographic approach allows much of the subsequent analyses to be conducted at a spatial granularity far finer than many official statistics and performance metrics, which are most frequently reported for coarser administrative geographies. Subsequently, such work can illustrate geographical trends at a spatial scale which is more likely to mirror that which the public perceive as their local community or neighbourhood. This reflects an increasing focus by central government on the new localism agenda, neighbourhood service provision and community engagement.

GIS AND GEODEMOGRAPHICS IN POLICING The increasing importance given to geographical location as a way to analyse social and environmental phenomena stems on the one hand from advances in technology and the availability of digital data linked to a specific place, and on the other by the recognition that society is becoming ever more complex and that multiple analytical perspectives are needed to make sense of it, identify possible action, target resources and monitor outcomes (Ashby & Craglia, 2007). The diffusion of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), that is, of computerized systems specifically designed to analyse geographic data, is clearly an important component of this trend. Furthermore, the rapid development of location-based services and GIS in the public realm – through Internet-based services such as maps (www.multimap.com), neighbourhood information (www.upmystreet.com) and detailed representations of many diverse datasets with global coverage (e.g. Google Earth, http://earth.google.com) – are testament to the surging demand for geographical knowledge and frameworks as a way to view the world, publish, search and access information. Geographic information systems include the combination of hardware, software, people, skills and organizational processes necessary to handle GI, including data collection, display, integration, analysis, use, dissemination and output. See Longley et al. (2005) for a detailed discussion of geographic information systems and science, which includes a range of applications relevant to crime, policing and criminal investigation. Geodemographics, or neighbourhood classifications of social traits, often employ GIS as a means for displaying and analysing local data. These classifications are derived from the statistical clustering of a range of census data, lifestyles data and other public or private sector datasets which can discriminate between different types of neighbourhood at a local level. The recent renaissance of interest in GIS and geodemographics within the academic and government sectors was examined by Longley et al. (2005), who asserted that the revival of interest in neighbourhood classification has been driven by: r support by central governments for the pursuit of evidence-based policy; r improvements in local level spatial data infrastructures; r a focused desire to develop a rational basis on which to set performance targets for public service delivery at a local level. 2

Small area indicators of social, economic and demographic conditions; “the analysis of people by where they live”.

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This is supported in the policing domain by recent publications from the Audit Commission (2006) and the Statistics Commission (2006); the latter of which cites the former in its attempt to address: the problems posed for the local government’s evolving local delivery framework by the lack of granularity of crime data at neighbourhood-level. A variety of techniques and approaches are suggested based upon the techniques of Geo-demographic Information and the technologies of Geographic Information Systems. (Statistics Commission, 2006, p. 71)

The two Commissions’ reports concur that many crime-related statistics fail to inform the public or practitioners about criminal activity or their susceptibility to crime within their local neighbourhood due to insufficient spatial granularity in many crime statistics. Crude aggregate statistics (e.g. national or regional summaries) and trends are valuable, but provide little indication of the match between the geographies of resource expenditure and that of need at a local scale. The geographic dimension is increasingly recognized as an important facet to customized local service delivery. Indeed geography is a central tenant to policing in the UK – different services, strategies, procurement contracts, information infrastructures and even response times can be expected, and are determined by the headquarters of the 43 police forces in England and Wales. This constitutional/administrative recognition of the importance of space is not, however, sufficiently reflected in the new policing performance culture or the ethos of much of the police management structures. Furthermore, the social and demographic context of areas is all too often overlooked and much analytical work often remains undervalued: You who read this manual are more important than perhaps you think. Crime analysts are not well-known to the general public. You don’t star in peak-time TV series or big-screen movies as do behavioural profilers or forensic scientists. Even some of your colleagues in the police aren’t sure what you’re about. But you are the new face of policing. [. . .] Police analysts will become more important, indeed increasingly will be seen as crucial, if we are to tackle crime more intelligently. (Nick Ross Foreword in Clarke & Eck, 2003)

It is now increasingly apparent to key decision makers that geography and spatial analysis are significant to service delivery: it is not the case that the outcomes of some kinds of policing are “good” (e.g. domestic burglary clear-up rates) and others are “poor” (e.g. recorded levels of violence against the person) and that these issues can be confronted in isolation, but rather that it is space and context that matters in public service delivery in many different ways. Whilst there certainly have been significant improvements in the delivery and vigour of both streams of crime statistics (recorded and British Crime Survey), the spatial scale of such aggregate summary measures is often national or regional in scope. Statistics are regularly presented simply by aggregate category (e.g. crime type) with no sensitivity to spatially variable trends, for example, by Government Office region (10 divisions in England and Wales), by police force area (43 divisions), or by the Basic Command Unit (BCU) or Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership unit (CDRP; 376 divisions). Consequently, resultant analysis frequently fails to explore spatial trends and cannot examine geographical variations at any granularity finer than the local authority district. The resulting thematic analyses thus fail to adequately describe crime trends at any kind of “local” level, and this is unquestionably inconsistent with the new localism agenda. In short, a central tenet is that the


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scale of local analyses should support the political rhetoric surrounding locally-devolved community-based and citizen-focused service provision. Moreover, the scale of any analysis should be appropriate to the specific phenomenon under study and should be appropriate to the scales at which police interventions take place – i.e. increasingly localized. It is recognized that many geographical and spatial approaches to crime analysis and knowledge-based policing have been advocated and developed in recent years. Chainey and Ratcliffe’s (2005) GIS and Crime Mapping is a much welcomed volume, as is the Policing Standards Units (PSU) guide for front line officers. Additionally, following the Bradford riots CENTREX commissioned research to explore and develop geographical indicators for assessing community cohesion. The resulting Vulnerable Localities Index (VLI)3 for identifying priority neighbourhoods has to date been well received, but has experienced somewhat disappointing uptake across the UK Police Service. Other valid and insightful criminological analyses can be made using, for example, the Indices of Deprivation.4 However, it is argued here that the adoption of ancillary data sources and multivariate neighbourhood classifications may also be appropriate in neighbourhood policing and would serve to complement both the above techniques and other frameworks such as the Signal Crimes Perspective (see Innes and Roberts, Chapter 11 of this volume). The purpose of all such classifications should be recognized. The VLI appears to discriminate well for “vulnerable” localities, yet the spatial granularity and focus of the measure may not be appropriate for targeting reassurance policing interventions. Similarly, deprivation indices are widely used statistical measures within the public sector and the traditional uses of deprivation indices in policing are of great value for some purposes, but by no means an analytical panacea. The Department for Communities and Local Government deprivation5 programme includes a 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) with seven constituent domains of deprivation: income; employment; health and disability; education, skills and training; barriers to housing and services; living environment; and, most significantly here, crime. Each domain contains a number of key indicators which are domain-specific; for example, the crime deprivation domain contains 33 recorded crime types under the four major crime themes: burglary; theft; criminal damage; and violence. The IMD and domain-specific deprivation indices provide small area measures of the level of deprivation observed within Super Output Areas. These geographical units have a minimum size of 1,000 residents and 400 households, with an average 1,500 residents6 and therefore cannot purport to represent variation at “neighbourhood” scale; rather these areal divisions are best considered to be stable statistical reporting units for which one can assess deprivation information for the delivery of meso- and macro-scale public-service policy. Essentially, these deprivation profiles rank from most to least deprived, and are then categorized into two types, above or below some threshold (e.g. the top 20% most deprived). These indices attempt only to discriminate the relative level of deprivation between geographically extensive statistical areas, and no comparative attempt is made to discriminate between the constituent neighbourhoods that make up such statistical divisions, which may or may not be materially deprived. Whilst the use of deprivation indices is widespread in policing, and across the public sector, the primary use of such measures should be limited to that for which they were designed. The 3 4 5 6

See www.jdi.ucl.ac.uk/crime mapping/vulnerable localities/index.php The Department for Communities and Local Government, formerly the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), produced the Indices of Deprivation at Super Output Area and Local Authority District in 2004. Previous indices were created in 2000. www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1128440 www.statistics.gov.uk/census/

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IMD was not intended to be used for micro-scale decision making, service provision or indeed to characterize “neighbourhoods”. Whilst census data and indices of deprivation may provide much insight to some policing roles, if one were to take an intervention-specific approach these data may prove inadequate. For example, in the case of a police force that might have a particular problem with rogue utility meter readers, the distribution of awareness-raising crime prevention literature to the predominantly elderly population most at risk is unlikely to be effectively targeted using a deprivation index. Similarly, the most effective medium of communication is likely to vary significantly both within an OA, and within the 20% of households most deprived in terms of income, and thus the use of such data alone fails to support the concept of knowledge-based policing. With the ever-sharpening focus on the local and the increasing visibility of public service standards in domestic policy, there is a need to hone research to the task of identifying opportunities for increased productivity and enhanced performance. A broader issue is whether procedures that have proven successful in quite different areas of business and service planning are applicable to policing. Geodemographic systems potentially offer significant breakthroughs in policing local needs, in the same way that they have become an integral part of many commercial and marketing ventures (Ashby & Longley, 2005; Ashby, Irving & Longley, 2006).

CLASSIFYING NEIGHBOURHOODS AND COMMUNITIES The term geodemographics, or locality marketing, is commonly used to describe the analysis of people and places by where they live. This phrase sets phenomena in space, and implies a cause–effect relationship between places and people. The relationship link is bi-directional, in that places with the same characteristics and behaviours attract people of a similar type and that these characteristics, in turn, reinforce neighbourhood characteristics (Harris, Sleight & Webber, 2005; Gibin & Petersen, 2006); birds of a feather flock together. In such a classification framework populations and communities that fall into the same category are likely to live in similar neighbourhoods that may nevertheless be located far from each other. A number of statistical techniques are available to help segment people and small areas into clusters sharing similar attributes. Commonly some form of the k-means statistical clustering algorithm is used to classify a large number of attribute data (e.g. census data) in N zones (e.g. Census Output Areas) into k number of clusters (e.g. the ONS Output Area Classification). There are many geodemographic classifications available today including the National Statistics Output Area Classification, Experian’s Mosaic and CACI’s ACORN. Sleight (2004) reviews a wide range of these classifications. In geodemographics the term “neighbourhood” most frequently and most simply refers to the ecological units used in the neighbourhood classification, e.g. unit postcodes7 or aggregations thereof. Whilst this definition of neighbourhood may not correspond exactly to those areas that local residents perceive as their local community or indeed those that may be optimal for neighbourhood policing strategies, it is contended that the finer the spatial 7

Equivalent to 17 households on average


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granularity of the analysis the more probable it is that one can accurately define and delineate “real” neighbourhoods or communities that reflect local perceptions. Indeed the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU, 2002, p. 5, cited in Harris & Longley, 2002, p. 1073) declares that “almost always” we experience our neighbourhood as smaller than those administrative geographies that are traditionally used (e.g. regions, local authority districts, police force areas or even wards). Whilst it is acknowledged that there is considerable ambiguity in the precise definition of “neighbourhood” and how “neighbourhoods” or “communities” are perceived, for the purposes of this research these terms refer to the classification of the unit postcode building blocks, based on geodemographic methodologies. The classification of small areas based upon social, demographic and economic indicators has developed into both a very successful commercial industry and a burgeoning field of academic research (with both advocates: Bowers & Hirschfield, 1999; Brown, Hirschfield & Batey, 2000; Harris, Sleight & Webber, 2005; and informed sceptics/critics: O’Sullivan, 2004; Voas & Williamson, 2001). However, the application of this approach to policing policy and practice is relatively immature. Indeed, compared with the commercial sector, there are rather few examples of the use of geodemographics within any areas of activity within the public sector. This is somewhat surprising given the origin of the modern neighbourhood typologies in understanding patterns of urban deprivation. Yet the potential of geodemographic modelling remains very underexploited in the delivery of public services, and local service delivery in policing, education and health almost invariably assumes a passive, receiving population undifferentiated in attitudes, expectations or even needs. In short, today’s consumer-led public services remain very much less sophisticated in targeting services than their counterparts in the private sector – almost every public-facing part of the retail sector has had geodemographic segmentation systems for years, if not decades. (Longley et al., 2005, p. 57)

The fundamental argument for “devolution and delegation” (OPSR, 2002) of policing responsibilities to individual forces is to bring them closer to the needs of the communities they serve (Home Office, 2003a, 2003b, 2004a, 2004b). Differences in values, concerns and priorities necessarily reflect the differences in the population make-up of areas covered by different forces. Key issues in a metropolitan force serving multi-cultural communities and with a high proportion of tourists and visitors will clearly differ from those that are important to residents of forces covering retirement areas, predominantly rural areas or exmining communities. Just as the population composition of police force areas varies from force to force so too does the composition of the different neighbourhoods and communities served by any one force, any one basic command unit, or any ward or output area. No such geographical unit is entirely homogenous in terms of its population structure. Furthermore, it has been argued earlier that none of these administrative policing units are likely to focus upon what the public perceive as their locality, their community, or their neighbourhood. Therefore, the best intentions of new localism will fall short if there are inadequate frameworks and data infrastructures for delivering services at a genuinely local level, or even at the small area level at which new neighbourhood policing styles are to be deployed. The key therefore, is to find a balance between a useful and generalizable “neighbourhood” of similar characteristics to inform policing styles, with that of individual nuance and the uniqueness of place. Local communities differ not just in terms of their incomes, age distributions, levels of deprivation, and proportions of families with children, etc., but they also differ in terms

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of the level of offending and victimization among their residents. They differ in terms of the types of crime which are perpetrated, in terms of whether or how they communicate these crimes to the police and in terms of the speed of police response and clear up rates. They likewise vary in terms of their attitudes towards the police, and the effectiveness and appropriateness of different crime prevention strategies. For example, whilst postcode marking and target hardening may prove a very effective policing strategy in predominantly student-populated neighbourhoods near to universities, campaigns to alert residents to the danger of rogue callers may be a much more appropriate use of police resources in areas with a high proportion of elderly residents. Such intricacies cannot be captured by a few crude summary performance statistics for large and heterogeneous areal units, and policing strategies and assessment measures should ultimately reflect the needs of the local community. Those who are involved in the provision of services to the community are likely to understand these differences and customize service delivery accordingly (Ashby, 2005). However, the old adage that “a good copper knows where crime is happening” and could thus adapt policing styles to community needs, has been examined with findings indicating that in the majority of cases police perception differed significantly from computerized hot spot generation (Ratcliffe & McCullagh, 2001, p. 336). Furthermore, operational police are unlikely to be aware of differential performance across neighbourhoods (cf. Scott, 1998, p. 275) and may not have access to the relevant intelligence base to best engage with different communities. Disproportionate fear levels may also go undetected within those neighbourhoods where volume crime and policing activity is low. The challenge therefore, is to provide a solid foundation for proactive, intelligence-led, knowledge-based, citizenfocused service provision at a neighbourhood level. From a policy standpoint, no adequate framework currently exists to enable local service delivery within a national context from which one can share best practice and robustly assess comparative performance. It is within this environment that much of our research to date is grounded. The customization of local service delivery acknowledged above has tended to be subjective and seldom reflected in any systematic, strategic recognition on the part of the service delivery agency as a whole. To achieve this, a standard classification which can be universally applied across an entire population is required. The application of neighbourhood typologies in this context is predicated upon the view that socially disadvantaged areas differ in terms of their pathology of social disadvantage as well as in terms of their level of disadvantage; that there exist qualitatively different types of disadvantaged areas; that their different forms of social disadvantage originate from significantly different historical trajectories; and that the different types of neighbourhood are often suited to quite different types of priority area programme (Ashby, 2005). Furthermore, not only are there significant variations in areas of disadvantage, but there are also significant and quantifiable variations in the attitudes, lifestyles and crime profiles of different neighbourhoods which may otherwise be classified simply on some scale from prosperous to deprived or be ascribed to a particular social class. A fundamental premise to this research is that different neighbourhood types (see Figure 13.1 for examples) can be successfully identified at a very local scale and that these neighbourhoods differ predictably in their crime profiles and policing environments. In adopting any areal classification the user must assume that the variation in policing environments between neighbourhood types is greater than that within each type. The example photographs (Figure 13.1) help to suggest how these types of neighbourhood may


A06: Symbols of Success; High Technologists

D24: Ties of Community; Coronation Street

F38: Welfare Borderline; Tower Block Living

J54: Grey Perspectives; Bungalow Retirement

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Figure 13.1 Typical examples of four neighbourhood types each taken from four different regions in the UK. Photographs courtesy of Richard Webber. Reproduced from Ashby (2005), Policing neighbourhoods: exploring the geographies of crime, policing and performance, Policing and Society 15(4), with permission from Taylor & Francis Ltd.

differ, using the Mosaic UK classification. Analysis of crime survey data supports the likely visual interpretations of these different neighbourhood types; for example, above average levels of natural surveillance and community cohesion are most likely to be found in type D24: “Ties of Community; Coronation Street” areas, compared to those neighbourhoods where the British Crime Survey indicates residents are most likely to “go their own way” (e.g. type F38: “Welfare Borderline; Tower Block Living”) (Ashby, 2005). Given the influence of neighbourhoods, it is unfortunate that the manner in which statistical information is presented by governments rarely appears to sufficiently account for these neighbourhood variations, masking the way in which people’s experience of health, education and crime is mediated by where they live. Crime rates are published which largely ignore the heterogeneity of neighbourhoods and seem to imply that we are all at equal risk of victimization irrespective of where we happen to be. Two issues arise from having clearer profiles of neighbourhood types: primarily, such profiles demonstrate the interconnectedness of health, education and crime problems at the neighbourhood level,

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which immediately challenges the silo mentality of much of public sector managerialism and shows that there could be immediate benefits from an integrated partnership approach. Secondly, if social cohesion is a fundamental factor in healthy societies, then the solution requires more than an economic response. The challenge of improving social cohesion is a psycho-social one which would benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach and which is argued here to be underdeveloped (Williamson, Ashby & Webber, 2005). Prior to the presentation of recent empirical findings it should be emphasized that geodemographics has been used to a limited extent in policing applications in the UK. The new centralized resource allocation formula does employ the distribution of one ACORN group as a component in some of the top-up allowances (Home Office, 2004c). Furthermore, recent annual Home Office Statistical Bulletins analysing crime patterns in England and Wales have started to publish crime statistics by aggregate ACORN group in addition to the traditional geographical units – the British Crime Survey (BCS) has been coded with the ACORN classification for many years but rarely utilized. Rossmo et al. (2004) were also commissioned by the Home Office to explore geodemographic and distance relationships between stranger rapists and their offences. Furthermore, the 2004 White Paper also references Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s use of “market analysis tools to reduce crime” (Home Office, 2004a, p. 56). Whilst geodemographics may be burgeoning within the public sector, the application and relation of neighbourhood profiles back to geography, ideally through GIS, to facilitate local service delivery and performance assessment remains predominantly absent from both research and practice.

THREE THEMES FOR GEODEMOGRAPHICS IN POLICING Three broad themes of geodemographic analyses have been identified as potential subjects that may inform policing strategy (Ashby, 2005). Primarily, the basic geodemographic profiling of areas such as wards, beats, BCUs or force areas may provide an intelligencebased resource for strategic policing and performance review. Secondly, the profiling of operational crime data within these policing units may assist in the identification of local trends in crime incidents. Finally, the geodemographic profiling of survey data may provide indications of the likely variations in attitudes and fear across different neighbourhood types; data which may otherwise prove prohibitively expensive to acquire. Significantly, given the key unique identifier of a postcode, associated geodemographic profiles can be extrapolated and mapped across all unit postcode “neighbourhoods”. This approach therefore imparts significant predictive power whereby trend data can be extrapolated to those local areas for which insufficient data exist. This integration and extrapolation of varied data sources can indicate where certain issues have an enhanced probability of being located. Furthermore, such modelled output may be subsequently compared to those data observed at the local level, in order to highlight any deviation from national, regional or historic trends, which may be accounted for by best practice, for example. The sections below briefly outline these three applications in turn, prior to the presentation of some empirical findings from a recent national pilot study. In 2005, as part of a national study on high crime and high disorder neighbourhoods the Audit Commission selected 10 study wards (pre-selected as “high-crime” areas) within 5 CDRP/CSP regions to profile using a geodemographic approach. The full report containing


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detailed geodemographic and spatial analysis is available online8 (Ashby & Webber, 2005), with a Technical Annex and supplementary analysis conducted by the Audit Commission9 available for the wider national study. Those results presented here are summarized from the Audit Commission study.

Profiling Neighbourhood Composition What does effective engagement look like for the Police Service? A police service which is engaging effectively with the community will [. . .] have a detailed, neighbourhood level understanding of the demographics of the community it serves. (Home Office, 2004a, p. 67)

Unfortunately, it is predominantly the case that the police service does not currently understand their community to such an extent (Ashby, 2005). Geodemographics, however, may provide an important intelligence resource and information tool which can assist the police in interpreting the criminal environment and community composition. The geodemographic profiling of an areal unit such as an electoral ward or basic command unit is a valuable intelligence product for policing purposes. Summary statistics, to the ward level of spatial granularity, are freely available through the National Statistics Neighbourhood Statistics programme and such indicators are commonly used with census data to provide “small area” analyses of different neighbourhoods. However, these fail to adequately highlight much of the heterogeneity present within wards, or even the smaller census output areas (see Ashby, 2005). It is contended that the finer spatial granularity afforded by geodemographic profiling at the postcode level promotes a fuller understanding and appreciation of a local “community”. Furthermore, associated lifestyles data and visualization tools provided with geodemographic solutions offer further insight into the likely dominant characteristics of neighbourhoods. The map and chart (Figure 13.2 and Figure 13.3) detailing the distribution of neighbourhood groups in Talbot Green ward illustrate the diversity of different neighbourhood types within this small area administrative geography. Notably, this distribution is quite distinct from those “typical” high crime neighbourhoods presented elsewhere (e.g. Ashby & Longley, 2005; Williamson, Ashby & Webber, 2005, 2006) where it has been observed that Groups D, F and G often dominate the landscape. Indeed, at first glance of the geodemographic composition it is not evident why such an area would experience sufficient crime rates to justify inclusion in a high crime/disorder programme. The underlying geography of Figure 13.2 may provide some indication of a possible contributing factor; the proximity of the motorway and major transport links may affect the local crime rate and crime mix. Figure 13.2 illustrates the diversity of neighbourhoods in an example of a small area geography (the ward) that is often the foundation for “reassurance policing”, “neighbourhood policing” and in many “local” crime prevention initiatives. This geography is frequently used by CDRP crime analysts and managers to examine local trends and has recently been

8 9

www.spatial-literacy.org www.audit-commission.gov.uk/neighbourhoodcrime

Figure 13.2 The spatial distribution of Mosaic UK neighbourhood groups in Talbot Green c Crown Copyright/database right 2005. An Ordnance ward in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. Survey / EDINA supplied service.

Grey Perspectives 22%

Symbols of Success 12% Happy Families 6%

Suburban Comfort 18%

Twilight Subsistence 8% Blue Coller Enterprise 5%

Municipal Dependency 13%

Ties of Community 7% Welfare Borderline 9%

Figure 13.3 Population composition by Mosaic UK neighbourhood group in Talbot Green ward in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. Reproduced from Ashby (2005), Policing neighbourhoods: exploring the geographies of crime, policing and performance, Policing and Society 15(4), with permission from Taylor & Francis Ltd.


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adopted by many police forces in the UK for local reassurance/community/neighbourhood policing purposes (e.g. the Safer Neighbourhoods teams in London). Whilst wards could be considered amongst the smallest, most disaggregate spatial units used in strategic policing strategy, the demographics, attitudes, perceptions and lifestyles of the underlying population should not be assumed to be homogeneous. Furthermore, the variation in neighbourhood types will inevitably increase as one aggregates up to larger standard policing spatial units (such as BCUs). Such variation is often lost in crude summary statistics and broad-brush strategies applied to large areal units. The population composition of the Talbot Green example bridges 9 of the 11 Mosaic Groups (Figure 13.3), providing testament to the potential level of diversity of neighbourhoods found within these areas.

Profiling Survey Data If the unit postcode of each respondent to a survey is known one can classify these data by neighbourhood type, aggregate the results, and produce average propensities for each type of neighbourhood. For example, national trends taken from the British Crime Survey may be segmented by geodemographic type in much the same way as they can be segmented by police force area. In addition, once the geodemographic profile of national survey data has been produced,10 this can then be extrapolated to a local level, where one knows the neighbourhood composition; i.e. one can extrapolate national trends to a local level for which access to other data may be limited. This approach may help initially shape neighbourhood policing styles and assist in identifying local priorities within a policing unit; an approach illustrated by the Audit Commission (2006) and supported by the Statistics Commission (2006) in their discussion of the insufficient granularity of many crime data. The geodemographic modelling of British Crime Survey data can provide additional insight into neighbourhoods for policing purposes. Table 13.1 presents a profile of different phenomena taken from BCS questions which may help to identify key challenges and issues within different types of neighbourhood. The numbers given here are standardized index scores whereby 100 represents the national average. A value of 200 would indicate twice the propensity for the given variable, whereas a score of 50 would indicate that the observed rate is only half of what would be expected. One can therefore begin to identify in which neighbourhood types such events are more likely to occur, and furthermore achieve an insight into local residents’ likely perceptions of these events and local issues. For example, the propensity of residents to perceive teenagers hanging around on the street, rubbish or litter lying about, and vandalism, graffiti and criminal damage as common within their local area is consistently above the national average in Groups F and G. An alternative and complementary method to the analysis of variables by neighbourhood group is the calculation of average or expected profile values for the study areas (wards) as separate entities, composed of different neighbourhood types. Table 13.2 below outlines the average response profile for each of the 10 study wards for a range of BCS variables. Here the BCS profiles, by neighbourhood type, were multiplied by the percentage share of each neighbourhood type in the ward. These values are then summed to provide an average value for the entire ward (i.e. a weighted average response). 10

See Ashby (2005, 2006) and Ashby & Webber (2006) for further details on how to conduct these analyses.

Symbols of Success Happy Families Suburban Comfort Ties of Community Urban Intelligence Welfare Borderline Municipal Dependency Blue Collar Enterprise Twilight Subsistence Grey Perspectives Rural Isolation

38 83 59 124 75 178 187 138 102 49 9

Very common 28 58 55 139 104 186 181 121 91 48 26

Very common

rubbish?

∗

vandals?

∗

36 63 46 107 85 237 227 132 131 61 4

Very common

How common is/are. . .

All values are Index scores normalized about 100. ∗ Abbreviations of BCS questions used in Table 13.1above: ∗ Teenagers : “Teenagers hanging around on the street” ∗ Rubbish : “Rubbish or litter lying about” ∗ Vandals : “Vandalism, graffiti and other deliberate damage to property”

A B C D E F G H I J K

BCS Response

teenagers?

∗

Table 13.1 Selected BCS profiles by neighbourhood group

53 76 92 124 93 151 154 110 96 66 50

Very worried

burglary?

55 87 89 124 101 153 149 100 110 67 50

Very worried

physical attack?

Feelings about. . .

84 107 85 106 129 130 120 111 89 80 50

Go own way

neighbours?

Teenagers hanging around on the streets

Have bad effect on your life?

Very good place to live Neighbours help each other Very good

Rating of police

Inadequate

Interest shown by police

Nice place to live?

Very worried

How worried about mugging?

Social capital

Very worried Very worried

How worried about having car stolen?

How worried about being insulted or pestered?

Very unsafe

Very big problem

How common is vandalism and graffiti

Very worried

Very big problem

How common is rubbish?

Feel safe walking alone after dark?

Fairly common

How common is people using or dealing in drugs?

How worried about burglary?

Fairly common

Response

How common are burnt out cars?

Question, prompt or theme

Anfield 82

81

57

114

127

125

112

128

145

153

165

159

131

118

Warbreck 83

87

68

108

113

107

113

114

127

143

132

134

124

110

Tong 82

81

64

112

127

128

113

128

145

140

172

152

123

133

Eccleshill 88

86

74

108

116

114

112

117

130

134

139

128

114

117

Pen-y-Waun 81

75

51

120

144

139

122

143

155

177

224

184

144

142

Talbot Green 112

110

124

95

89

82

89

86

106

87

88

71

99

71

108

73

80

114

109

82

77

109

131

99

131

118

140

54

Cliftonville West

Table 13.2 Weighted-average index scores from the British Crime Survey profiles for the 10 Audit Commission study wards

Newington 86

76

57

113

126

128

122

130

133

139

177

161

137

125

Redruth North 92

97

87

106

108

99

105

109

125

123

127

116

116

100

89

102

95

101

96

89

108

97

106

113

99

102

111

92

Illogan South

294


Average profile scores for the study areas can be most useful when presented in a matrix such as Table 13.2. Here one can identify the most likely problems, attitudes or fears within a ward (analysis by column) or one can compare the relative propensity of any one of the variables across the 10 study wards (analysis by row). This table concisely summarizes modelled output for a range of “fear of crime” drivers which are rarely disentangled, or compared at such local scales. For illustrative purposes, one might take the example of Anfield and conclude that rubbish, litter and graffiti are likely to be common problems high on the priorities of local residents. However, these issues may conceivably be of greater concern in Pen-y-Waun. Alternatively, one may highlight that the modelled propensities suggest that abandoned cars seem to be unlikely to pose a problem in Cliftonville West (which appears reasonable given the town centre nature of the ward) and that feeling safe walking alone after dark is a much greater concern for local residents. In the lower portion of Table 13.2 three variables are provided which are of a different nature (and scale orientation) to those concerns in the top of the table. One of the most directly relevant BCS questions for examining social capital is whether neighbours pull together or “go their own way”. Once again, it is notable that Talbot Green stands out from all other wards in this respect and indeed in an above average rating of the police, which is generally unlikely to be observed in any of the other study wards.

Profiling Operational Records The geodemographic profiling of crime incident data and other operational data sets enables the calculation of propensities for different neighbourhood types based on prior experience. For example, victimization propensities can be calculated across all neighbourhood types and be subsequently extrapolated to the local level in a GIS. The mapping of these propensities can be compared to crime hot spot maps in order to highlight areas experiencing unexpected levels of victimization. These may require further investigation, or conversely highlight areas where effective policing strategies have been deployed. The latter of these outcomes in particular, may assist in the identification of best practice. The profiling of operational records using geodemographics offers complementary insight to the standard crime mapping practices that identify the precise location of crimes and any consequent hot spots. The use of geodemographics enables the analyst to further assess relative levels of risk and/or performance, explore likely associations with predominant neighbourhood characteristics and to evaluate the extent to which victims and offenders are disproportionately distributed across the population. Such analysis also enables the identification of differential levels of victim risk for particular crime types, which may go above and beyond that possible through the analysis of geographic location, or personal characteristics alone. The primary focus of geodemographic analysis for all policing purposes should be the residential locations of victims (or offenders, if available) rather than of crimes, i.e. the study of victimization risk. This is to avoid the skewing of statistics in areas of high crime and low population density, e.g. in town centres. A number of caveats and health warnings are given by Ashby & Webber (2005) in the interpretation of the following data. These profiles were produced for illustrative rather than explanatory purposes and the relatively small sample size in the case concerned limits the conclusions that one may robustly draw from this single example. Nevertheless a range


295

Violence Against The Person

Theft From Motor Vehicle

Burglary Dwelling

Public Disorder

Nuisance Youths

Anti-Social Behaviour Complaints

Pop’n share (%)

Criminal Damage Offences

Abandoned Cars

Table 13.3 Profile scores by neighbourhood group for a range of crime variables in Thanet

2.0

A: Symbols of Success

90

70

46

35

41

39

30

13

5.8

B: Happy Families

49

47

50

61

34

36

78

49

14.7

C: Suburban Comfort

52

43

51

35

19

49

61

30

27.8

D: Ties of Community

143

165

183

165

205

176

160

181

0.0

E: Urban Intelligence

2.3

F: Welfare Borderline

211

186

145

181

218

154

175

196

4.5 12.6 3.7 25.8 0.9 100.0

G: Municipal Dependency

143

181

118

171

143

115

96

273

H: Blue Collar Enterprise

141

106

97

131

85

100

108

95

I: Twilight Subsistence

87

93

84

93

76

84

91

68

J: Grey Perspectives

58

55

49

49

46

61

57

39

K: Rural Isolation Total Count

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

848

1538

1233

591

1254

389

512

805

of profile scores are detailed by neighbourhood group for the Thanet CDRP in Table 13.3, illustrative and indicative of those analyses which may be conducted across a range of linked data sets and diverse variables. Table 13.3 illustrates significant variation in index value both across different neighbourhood types and the different variables. Such index values can subsequently be mapped back to local regions in order to identify areas of high risk, or conversely those areas where one might expect higher crime rates than those which are observed. In such cases, proactive policing strategies may include heightened awareness campaigns and target hardening, whilst the difference between modelled data and observed trends may lead one to explore local conditions and discover those circumstances which may indeed be examples of best practice. Of course, any and all of the recorded crime profiles and BCS propensities detailed above can be mapped and represented spatially within a GIS. This approach is complementary to those more conventional crime mapping practices (e.g. the presentation of recorded crime data in choropleth, proportional symbol or dot-density forms); see PSU (2005) and Chainey and Ratcliffe (2005). An example is given in Figure 13.4. Here the BCS variable inquiring as to the level to which local residents perceive teenagers hanging around on the street to be

296

Teenagers hanging about very big problem 173 to 213 110 to 173 90 to 110 55 to 90 21 to 55


Pupil exclusion locations Ward boundary

Figure 13.4 The relationship between observed pupil exclusions and modelled propensities from the BCS in Eccleshill, Bradford. BCS data depict the relative likelihood of residents perc ceiving “teenagers hanging about on the street” as a very big problem in the local area. Crown Copyright / database right 2005. An Ordnance Survey / EDINA supplied service.

a problem is plotted below in conjunction with local observed pupil exclusion data (Figure 13.4). A marked correlation between modelled BCS data and pupil exclusions is evident at the local level. The BCS variable here conveys the expected relative levels of concern regarding teenagers hanging around on the street as a very big problem. Notably, observed pupil exclusions are predominately clustered in those areas with the highest intensities for the modelled variable. Whilst such tentative and subjective indication and interpretation suggests an areal/neighbourhood level correlation/correspondence between these two variables, this research is not suggesting any cause-and-effect relationship or individual-level correlation. Rather, such research may help to identify appropriate proxies for difficult to measure or hard to generalize phenomena at a local level without such geodemographic applications. The compounding effect of different data sets overlaid may indicate, for example, that youth service provision may be a sensible priority to tackle local neighbourhood issues.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Despite the interest and considerable resource recently dedicated towards neighbourhood policing in the UK the framework for delivering and assessing policing at neighbourhood


297

level remains underdeveloped. The new localism agenda that has emerged from public service reform has as yet failed to address many of the most important and fundamental data management requirements necessary for the effective and efficient service delivery at a local level. The geodemographic tradition, though developed to a greater degree in the private rather than in the public sector, does help to fill this void of knowledge and expertise, and enables analysts to examine local trends at a spatial granularity far finer than the administrative geographies typically used as the basis for the mapping of operational data sets. Brownlee and Walker (1998, p. 129) allude to the potential problems and impediments facing those adopting crime prevention and control strategies which emphasize the spatial over the social in the definition of community. The extrapolation of neighbourhood classifications and their associated profiles, or index values, to the local level using GIS is an important development in bridging the gap between purely spatially or purely socially constructed communities. Whilst geographical policing units in the UK are required for service delivery, administrative efficiency and performance assessment, appropriate data infrastructures which increase our understanding of the varied communities within these units are also necessary. An additional advantage of adopting national classifications of neighbourhood type at a fine spatial granularity is the facility to compare local strategies across the country for the dissemination of best practice. Table 13.4, whilst very much a heuristic device and work in progress, identifies some key facets of the neighbourhood groups based on the analysis of the BCS and some operational data set analysis. Research is ongoing to further populate this model with empirical evidence. The appropriate policing options suggested here are tentative and subject to consultation with partnership police forces. However, such a model could be employed in the identification of potential policing strategies in different neighbourhoods and would be generally transferable across regions and administrative divisions. The heuristic model presented in Table 13.4 summarizes likely crime profiles, social capital neighbourhood traits and proposes some appropriate policing options. There is considerable scope to develop this model, alongside other frameworks within the neighbourhood policing and community cohesion doctrines, which are founded on the fundamental premise that policing strategies need to be based upon neighbourhood context. For if Sampson and Raudenbush (1999) are correct in their discussion of collective efficacy and the associated community vulnerability to crime and disorder, then it remains of paramount importance for the police to diagnose relative levels of this social capital derivative and hence identify appropriate neighbourhood-orientated policing strategies (Ashby, 2005). Geodemographics as a strategic diagnostic tool can provide the intelligence base to identify differential levels of social capital and community cohesion in local neighbourhoods. Furthermore, the spatially referenced framework enables the efficient delivery of appropriately targeted strategies to small areas. Geodemographics therefore may provide the initial strategic review of neighbourhoods and communities prior to the incorporation of additional local knowledge and appreciation of community level (and individual) nuances. A diagnostic of this nature would present the police and their partners with a detailed appraisal of those areas where informal social control may be activated within the community, and conversely where levels of collective efficacy are likely to be wholly absent and such strategies rendered ineffective.

Fraud, Traffic Offences

Fraud, some marital violence

Traffic Offences

B Happy Families

C Suburban Comfort

Common types of crime and disorder

A Symbols of Success

Mosaic UK Group

Low

Moderate

Low

Level of crime and disorder

CRIME PROFILE

Low

Low

Low

Level of fear

Informal Contacts

High

Fairly high

Quite high

Moderate

Fairly high Low (excluding “Global Connections”)

Level of trust

High

Moderate

High

Formal Association

Appropriate ‘neighbourhood policing’ strategies

Well established networks

New communities tend to have shallow networks

Engage with local representatives. Establish ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ schemes. Leaflet drops to communicate information and promote campaigns.

Child safety orientation. School based programmes.

Networks are Engage with local often representatives. Leaflet instrumental drops to communicate and not locally information and based promote campaigns.

Summary

SOCIAL CAPITAL

Table 13.4 A segmented approach to neighbourhood policing; neighbourhood groups, crime profiles, fear profiles and social capital, with tentative examples of appropriate neighbourhood policing styles. Reproduced from Ashby (2005), Policing and Society 15(4), with permission from Taylor & Francis Ltd. http://www.informaworld.com

Average

High

Very high

D Ties of AlcoholCommunity related; domestic violence

E Urban Snatching; Intelligence mugging; credit card theft

Drug dealing; child abuse; car crime

Drug usage; Very high marital disputes; vandalism; graffiti; petty theft

F Welfare Borderline

G Municipal Dependency

High

High

Low

Low

Considered Low fact of life

Low

Low

Informal contacts are not local

Moderate – High among Quite high low local residents: apprehensive of outsiders

Tends towards ‘self policing’.

Identify representatives and attempt to recognise parallel communities. Police Community Support Officers. Rapid response to environmental disorders such as abandoned cars

Low

Very low

(Continued )

People may know Liaison with schools and each other but social services. not trust each Increased surveillance. other Target hardening. Rapid response to criminal damage and signal disorders

Low levels of Partnership work with social cohesion housing department and social services; Community Support Officers.

Reliance on Patchy : Networks are communications high for often not local. programmes; target those who Local networks hardening; intelligence are not are often led policing. Police transient transient and Community Support one Officers. dimensional

Quite high

Grey Perspectives

J

K Rural Isolation

Twilight Subsistence

I

H Blue Collar Enterprise

Mosaic UK Group

Theft of equipment; planned, high value burglaries

Few

Alcoholrelated offences; serious traffic offences None

Common types of crime and disorder

Low

Low

Moderate

Moderate

Level of trust

Moderate

Moderate

Informal Contacts

Anxiety High among High about known quality people of police response

Underlying High among High but unfoknown cussed people / need for low reassuramong ance outsiders

Quite high

Above average

Moderately high

Moderate

Level of fear

Level of crime and disorder

CRIME PROFILE

Table 13.4 (Continued )

High

Above average

Below average

Below average

Formal Association

Appropriate ‘neighbourhood policing’ strategies

Reassurance; high visibility policing. CCTV. Anti-fraud campaigns.

High levels of responsibility to other community members

Reassurance on response times. More intensive communications with community leaders

Reassurance; high Highly visibility policing; anti responsible for fraud campaigns; local neighbourhood watch. conditions. Are at home much of the day. Natural ‘wardens’

Low level of mobility impairs social integration

Not ideologically Default strategy communitarian but are responsible on specifics

Summary

SOCIAL CAPITAL


301

These arguments should however be further contextualized against a backdrop of the police aims, objectives and purpose and importantly the training and expertise offered within the Police Service: [. . .] the police are trained to see (and therefore, respond and deal with) only crime and disorder. It is part of what Goodwin (1994) calls the ‘professional vision’. Police are not necessarily trained to see or assess neighbourhood-level properties like collective efficacy. Therefore, many community-policing strategies do not formally or systematically take into account neighbourhood-level collective efficacy or the social processes that affect its development. (Nolan, Conti & McDevitt, 2004, p. 101)

With this in mind, we are in danger of making yet further demands of an already-stretched police service. The widening scope of policing, involving the extended policing-family (Community Wardens, Police Community Support Officers, etc.) and partners clearly represents a new chapter for contemporary policing; a chapter that should be directed by knowledge and understanding of the communities being served. Vast quantities of information are now more readily available, the public are arguably more informed and demanding, and the police service in the UK is traversing a period of radical public service reform. Information sharing and partnership work is now a critical consideration within all police forces, and the research presented here represents a vehicle through which one can assess the relative impact, value and requirement for such collaboration. Developments in policing and crime analysis have been rapid from the 1990s to this day (Ratcliffe, 2002) with community-orientated policing, problem-orientated policing, intelligence-led policing, citizen-focused policing, knowledge-based policing and most recently, reassurance policing, community cohesion and neighbourhood policing all coming to the fore and diffusing into everyday policing vocabulary at an alarming rate. However, the vernacular and rhetoric is nothing without the data, frameworks and knowledge and interventions to implement changing practices. In 2006, the release of the Audit Commission (2006) national study coincided with the Neighbourhood Policing Programme’s release of a Briefing Paper on Neighbourhood Policing and the National Intelligence Model (NPP, 2006). Neither was co-ordinated to leverage direct value from the other study and just a few months later the Statistics Commission released another report on Crime Statistics of direct relevance to the very same audiences. There is an upswell of interest and appreciation of this analytical approach within the neighbourhood policing agenda, but more needs to be done to coordinate, consolidate and direct the delivery of this knowledge base into practice. Analyses are ongoing and initial findings indicate that geodemographic analysis of health and education data profiles demonstrate differences at a neighbourhood level that are at least as significant as those which we have observed for crime and policing. Many crimeprone communities appear to suffer from the consequences of deprivation across a wide range of public services that do not in any real sense appear to be joined up, despite the existence of partnership arrangements such as CDRPs. By refocusing on the heterogeneity of neighbourhoods at the finest levels of spatial granularity it should be possible to customize the management of crime, and other public services, to better meet local needs. Fundamentally, this research has built upon a foundation of classifying communities on the basis of social similarity rather than merely locational proximity; communities and localities have been examined using a neighbourhood typology which groups on a basis of the underlying social conditions, rather than merely crude areal divisions. From this basis, one may begin to develop a framework for evidence-based policing strategies which account for the

302


geodemographic composition and social capital found within different local communities. Such a foundation, at a fine spatial granularity, appears to be one clear pathway to achieve knowledge-based delivery of public services in line with the rhetoric of the new localism.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Much of the research findings presented in this chapter were originally presented in the Audit Commission research study (Ashby & Webber, 2005) and Ashby (2005, 2006). The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Economic and Social Research Council and the Police Foundation (Grant: PTA-033-2002-00026).

REFERENCES Ashby, D.I. (2005). Policing neighbourhoods: Exploring the geographies of crime, policing and performance assessment. Policing and Society, 15, 435–469. Ashby, D.I. & Longley, P.A. (2005). Geocomputation, geodemographics and resource allocation for local policing. Transactions in GIS, 9, 53–72. Ashby, D.I. & Webber, R. (2005). High Crime: High Disorder Neighbourhoods. Spatial Analysis and Geodemographics. Report submitted to the Audit Commission. London: UCL. Available online at: www.spatial-literacy.org Ashby, D.I. (2006). The Spatial Analysis of Crime and Policing in England and Wales. Thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Department of Geography, UCL (University College London). Ashby, D.I., Irving, B. & Longley, P. (2006). Police reform and the New Public Management paradigm: matching technology to the rhetoric. Environment and Planning C, 25, 159–175. Ashby, D.I. & Craglia, M. (2007). Profiling places: geodemographics and GIS. In T. Newburn, T. Williamson & A. Wright (eds), Handbook of Criminal Investigation (pp. 517–546). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Audit Commission (2006). Neighbourhood Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour: Making Places Safer through Improved Local Working. London: Audit Commission. Available online at: www.auditcommission.gov.uk/neighbourhoodcrime Bettison, N. (2004). The Mersey way. Policing Today, 10, 20–21. Bowers K. & Hirschfield A. (1999). Exploring links between crime and disadvantage in north-west England: an analysis using geographical information systems. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 13, 159–184. Brown, P.J.B., Hirschfield A.F.G. & Batey, P.W.J. (2000). Adding value to census data: Public sector applications of the super profiles geodemographic typology. Journal of Cities and Regions, X, 19–32. Brownlee, I. & Walker, C. (1998). The Urban Crime Fund and total geographic policing initiatives in West Yorkshire. Policing and Society, 8, 125–152. Chainey, S. & Ratcliffe, J. (2005). GIS and Crime Mapping. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Clarke, R.V. & Eck, J. (2003). Become a Problem-Solving Crime Analyst (in 55 small steps). London: Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, UCL. Gibin M. & Petersen, J. (2006). Southwark Atlas of Health. London: Southwark Primary Care Trust / UCL. Available online at: www.spatial-literacy.org Harris, R.J. & Longley, P.A. (2002). Creating small area measures of urban deprivation. Environment and Planning A, 34, 1073–1093. Harris, R., Sleight, P. & Webber, R. (2005). Geodemographics, GIS and Neighbourhood Targeting. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Home Office (2001). Policing a New Century: A Blueprint for Reform. Home Office White Paper, CM5326. London: HMSO.


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Home Office (2003a). Home Office Departmental Report 2003. Home Office, CM5908. London: HMSO. Home Office (2003b). Policing: Building Safer Communities Together. London: Home Office. Home Office (2003c). The National Policing Plan 2004–2007. London: Home Office. Home Office (2004a). Building Communities, Beating Crime: A Better Police Service for the 21st Century. Home Office White Paper, CM6360. London: HMSO. Home Office (2004b). The National Policing Plan 2005–2008: Safer, Stronger Communities. London: Home Office. Home Office (2004c). The Police Grant Report (England and Wales) 2004/5. HC277. London: The Stationery Office. Longley, P.A., Goodchild, M.F., Maguire, D.J. & Rhind, D.W. (2005). Geographic Information Systems and Science, 2nd edn. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Nolan, J.J., Conti, N. & McDevitt, J. (2004). Situational policing. Neighbourhood development and crime control. Policing and Society, 14, 99–117. NPP (2006). Briefing Paper on Neighbourhood Policing and the National Intelligence Model. London: Neighbourhood Policing Programme (NPP) and National Centre for Policing Excellence. Available online at: www.neighbourhoodpolicing.co.uk NRU (2002). Neighbourhood Renewal. Neighbourhood Renewal Unit. The Independent, special supplement: 23 January 2002. O’Sullivan, D. (2004). Too much of the wrong kind of data: implications for the practice of micro-scale spatial modelling. In M.F. Goodchild & D.G. Janelle (eds), Spatially Integrated Social Science: Examples of Best Practice (pp. 95–107). Oxford: Oxford University Press. OPSR (2002). Reforming Our Public Services. Principles into Practice. The Prime Minister’s Office of Public Services Reform. London: OPSR. PSU (2005). Crime Mapping: Improving Performance. A Good Practice Guide for Front Line Officers. London: Policing Standards Unit/Home Office. Ratcliffe, J.H. (2002). Intelligence-led policing and the problems of turning rhetoric into practice. Policing and Society, 12, 53–66. Ratcliffe, J.H. & McCullagh, M.J. (2001). Chasing ghosts? Police perception of high crime areas. British Journal of Criminology, 41, 330–341. Rossmo, K., Davies, A. & Patrick, M. (2004). Exploring the geo-demographic and distance relationships between stranger rapists and their offences. Home Office Special Interest Series Paper 16. London: Home Office. Sampson, R.J. & Raudenbush, S.W. (1999). Systematic social observation of public spaces: A new look at disorder in urban neighbourhoods. American Journal of Sociology, 105, 603–651. Scott, J. (1998). ‘Performance culture’: The return of reactive policing. Policing and Society, 8, 269–288. Sleight, P. (2004). Targeting Customers: How to Use Geodemographic and Lifestyle Data in Your Business, 3rd edn. London: WARC. Statistics Commission (2006). Crime Statistics: User Perspectives. Report No. 30. London: Statistics Commission. Available online at: www.statscom.org.uk Voas, D. & Williamson, P. (2001). The diversity of diversity: a critique of geodemographic classification. Area, 33, 63–76. Williamson, T., Ashby, D.I. & Webber, R. (2005). Young offenders, schools and the neighbourhood: a new approach to data-analysis for community policing. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 15, 203–228. Williamson, T., Ashby, D.I. & Webber, R. (2006). Classifying neighbourhoods for reassurance policing. Policing and Society, 16, 189–218.

FURTHER READING Ashby, D.I. & Webber, R. (2006). High Crime: High Disorder Neighbourhoods. Spatial Analysis and Geodemographics, report submitted to The Audit Commission. London: UCL. Available online at: <www.spatial-literacy.org/index.php?p=crime&s=audit>. A detailed and comprehensive

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geodemographic analysis of ten select ‘high crime’ neighbourhoods from a neighbourhood policing context. A range of supporting information is available from the Audit Commission at: <www.audit-commission.gov.uk/neighbourhoodcrime> Chainey, S. & Ratcliffe, J. (2005). GIS and Crime Mapping. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The most recent and accessible text book providing a comprehensive outlook on crime mapping: fundamental theory of mapping and criminology, scientific methodologies, analysis and design techniques, applications and examples of best practice. Harris, R., Sleight, P. & Webber, R. (2005). Geodemographics, GIS and Neighbourhood Targeting. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. An excellent introduction and overview of the methods, theory and classification techniques that provide the foundation of neighbourhood analysis and geodemographic products. Particular focus is given to the presentation and use of neighbourhood classification in GIS and spatial analysis. Longley, P.A., Goodchild, M.F., Maguire, D.J. & Rhind, D.W. (2005). Geographic Information Systems and Science (2nd edn). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The pre-eminent textbook in the field of GIS and spatial analysis; an essential companion for new-comers to spatial analysis and experienced GI practitioners alike. Written in a fluent and lucid style covering Foundations; Principles; Techniques; Analysis; and Management and Policy.

CHAPTER 14

Community Policing and Prediction Nick Ross and Ken Pease

INTRODUCTION Some words are strong on connotation, others on denotation. We almost all agree on what we mean by denotatively strong words such as “tablecloth”; we use connotatively strong words when we want our meaning to be fuzzy, such as “community”. Indeed, few terms are more vague, ambiguous and nebulous than “community”. It can conjure up images of a cosy church hall thronged with happy families in a sleepy village, or a cold, graffiti-daubed, urine-smelling sink estate. There can be communities within communities, such as gated housing within a sector of a borough of a city, and communities which have little in common, such as ethnic minorities. In one sense it is hard to argue with Margaret Thatcher that there is no such thing as community, but equally in politics community means almost anything. And with issues like climate change or human rights there is a case for saying the whole world is one community – everyone, everywhere. In short “community” is a splendid word for those with hazy ideas who want to project a fluffy purpose. Welcome to community policing. Before we get under way with what will be a rather critical review, we must make it plain that we have no quarrel with community police officers themselves. On the contrary, in many ways they represent some of the finest traditions of policing. It is the purpose for which they are routinely used that is the problem, and the extent to which politicians and local crime reduction partnerships shelter behind them rather than be accountable for actually cutting crime. In fact there are many varieties of community policing. The term has been so devalued by indiscriminate use that one of America’s most astute police chiefs, John Timoney (ex-NYPD, then Philadelphia and Miami), warned of pressure to have officers, “sitting around the trees, holding hands and singing Kumbaya”. Sometimes the phrase just means beat patrols where a uniformed officer is assigned on any given shift to any given patch, sometimes it means neighbourhood officers where a patrol is assigned to particular officers for a time so they get to know it, and sometimes it means partnerships where the police are working together with residents and local agencies. Often, it means a bit of each, depending on will (which can be fickle), and resources (which are sometimes quietly withdrawn to help with tasks The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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considered more important). And when rigorously evaluated it is sometimes a palpable failure (Crawford, Lister & Wall, 2003). In Britain community policing is habitually said to have its origins in the early purposes of the Metropolitan Police in the first half of the nineteenth century, but this is wrong. The first officers were perambulating watchmen, expressly forbidden to converse with local people – especially servant women. The real birth of the community ethic followed 160 years later with the Scarman Report in 1981 into the Brixton riots in south London, and from the start there was a lack of precision about what was really intended. In effect it was no more than a reaction to a style of law enforcement that over-depended on stop-and-search and raids so that police were perceived as marauding outsiders. History took a slightly different turn in the United States where community policing is sometimes confused with a much more focused style of crime containment: problemoriented policing. Part of the purpose of this chapter is to tease out the distinctions. The US Department of Justice established its Community-Oriented Policing Service (COPS) Office as a result of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The notion had been theorized by several scholars. Mark Moore (1992) sets the tone. Community policing emphasizes the establishment of working partnerships between police and communities to reduce crime and enhance security. The prevalent approach that emphasizes professional law enforcement has failed to control or prevent crime, has failed to make policing a profession, and has fostered an unhealthy separation between police and the communities they serve (p. 99)

The purpose of the 1994 Act was to advance community policing in jurisdictions of all sizes across the country according to the following precept: Community policing represents a shift from more traditional law enforcement in that it focuses on prevention of crime and the fear of crime on a very local basis. Community policing puts law enforcement professionals on the streets and assigns them a beat, so they can build mutually beneficial relationships with the people they serve. By earning the trust of the members of their communities and making those individuals stakeholders in their own safety, community policing makes law enforcement safer and more efficient, and makes America safer.1

In the COPS model, in contrast with routine practice, and certainly unlike routine practice in the UK: Community policing focuses on crime and social disorder through the delivery of police services that include aspects of traditional law enforcement, as well as prevention, problem solving, community engagement, and partnerships. The community policing model balances reactive responses to calls for service with proactive problem solving centered on the causes of crime and disorder. Community policing requires police and citizens to join together as partners in the course of both identifying and effectively addressing these issues.

Note the phrase community engagement as well as partnerships, and the emphasis on proactive problem solving rather than reactive responses. In Britain crime reduction partner1

http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=35 [Accessed 27 November 2006]

COMMUNITY POLICING AND PREDICTION

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ships have been all the rage – the government formally promoted them with its Crime and Disorder Act of 1998 and one of the authors of this paper with Kate Moss expressed the hope that this legislation would be a turning point, a Trojan horse which would place crime reduction at the heart of local government (Moss & Pease, 1999). This has not turned out to be the case in practice. Some statutory partnerships seem to do little more than observe bureaucratic compliance and can be detached from local problems, have little or no community engagement, have sparse information about crime trends, and have precious little expertise to enable them to think outside the box or be proactive. Many criminologists have been critical of community policing. For example, it has been criticized for being “culturally inappropriate” (Gormally, 2004; Brogden, 2005), or “epiphenomenal” to core policing functions (Zhao, He & Lovrich, 2003; Herrington & Millie, 2006), and been accused of confusing the “tone” of police–citizen contacts with judgements of police effectiveness (Hawdon & Ryan, 2003), or of abusing the word “community” (Forman, 2004). There have, though, been descriptions of community policing strategies (Beckman, Gibbs & Beatty, 2005) and a rather harder edge has been lent to the literature by the broken windows controversy (whether crime can be checked by environmental improvements and/or crackdowns on minor offences) and the “collective efficacy” debate (the willingness of citizens to “have a go” and engage with rule-breakers, see Xu, Fiedler & Fleming, 2005). But, except for some input from economists, outcome evaluations are relatively rare. Nor has there been much thought given to the changing landscape of community. In the criminological literature community is almost exclusively thought of in terms of geography, with the allocation of officers to beats rather than to families or to leisure activities or, say, religious affiliation. Presumably the primacy of geography in the literature on community policing is a by-product of the territorial basis for police resourcing, not because locale is the primary criterion by which a community is defined. But with the advent of the Internet, people often interact with those who share chatrooms rather than those who live a few doors down the street. Moreover, community policing will have to be refined to cope with the rise of religious fundamentalism, just as, after Brixton, it was conceived as a response to alienation of young black people. For all that, there is nothing wrong with flaccid concepts – if they work. The fundamental problem with the concept of community policing is that, far from measurably cutting crime, it tends to further disengage the police from that core aim. The new mantra is reassurance, as though the police are soothers of disturbed people rather than actors for change. They exist to restore confidence rather than remedy.2 Indeed a new rank of Community Support Officers has reassurance as its raison d’être. Presumably this agenda rests on a bizarre notion that citizens once enjoyed a state of assurance which now has to be reinstated by the police. This is not to say that there is no role for reassurance. Crime rates – however defined and however measured – palpably soared through most of the 20th Century. As the new millennium approached crime trends began to turn, first in the US and later elsewhere including Britain. This phenomenon was highly publicized in North America, led by eyecatching reports of dramatic falls in homicide and other crime in New York. The story had a narrative: a new mayor and a new police chief had brought in radical new methods of

2

Some of the underpinning research helpfully identified crimes and acts which people use to classify an area as safe or otherwise, but results got transmuted into the police role as reassurer.

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policing – some of which could be classed as community policing – and public opinion more or less accepted the logic of the downward crime statistics. In Britain, on the other hand, there was no big initiative that could explain a turning-point in crime, and the media were highly resistant to claims that crime was falling. Crime is a staple diet of British news and no doubt journalists were reluctant to acknowledge that strident headlines about crime were losing their validity. But confusion was entrenched by the nature of official crime statistics, with the British Crime Survey showing much greater falls in crime than the “official” police figures, and by politicians attempting to score points. Opinion surveys showed people thought crime was continuing to surge even when both sets of statistics were showing marked declines. The appropriate response, urged by one of the authors (NR), would have been to depoliticize crime figures by handing responsibility for them to an independent agency, an idea that should have been taken up years ago. But instead of adopting this minor administrative change the authorities acted on an altogether grander scale. The fashion of the time was to talk of a return to basics, a return to the oldfashioned bobby on the beat, and the slogan “community policing” seemed perfectly to fit the bill. No doubt ministers were sincere, if (as always with crime) not very well-informed; but it would not take a cynic to suggest that politicians have been engineering a subtle shift in policing away from reducing crime to manipulating voters’ crime-driven emotions. Indeed, community policing is often judged by its impact on citizen perceptions (Adams, Rohe & Arcury, 2005). It would be easy to write this off as the machinations of one passing set of politicians – after all, the manipulation of perception rather than reality is often considered the leitmotif of the Blair government which took office in 1997 – but the Labour government did adopt crime reduction targets (something first proposed by one of the authors in the early 1990s), and did set key crime reduction performance indices for the police, albeit only in respect of certain crime types. And to be fair, there are few signs that other political parties have viable alternatives; certainly none has dared commit itself to much steeper cuts in crime. If community reassurance through community policing is a vogue it seems to have broad political support. So, where should we go from here? How do we make sure that community policing is not pabulum substituting for truly effective policing? How do we identify what really works, rather than what gives the impression that something is being done? The most important central truth is one that politicians might find hard to sell to the electorate, and perhaps find hard to understand: it is that the major drivers of crime lie outside the criminal justice system. This is not to restate the leftist-liberal conviction that crime has roots in poverty and inequality. Rather it is a statement of the obvious which does not fit into the liberal-conservative political paradigm: there is a multitude of factors that defines levels of crime, some remote from the actual criminal activity itself, while some of them are more immediate triggers, such as lust, rage or temptation, and some are palpable, such as opportunity. For example, an unobserved shelf full of untagged games consoles, or a laptop left on the back seat of an unlocked car, is likely to drive up crime more surely than a cut in sentencing. On the other hand, storing the consoles behind the shop counter and hiding the computer in the boot or trunk will prevent crime more surely than an exemplary punishment. Community policing needs to involve itself not just with potential criminals, but with all the actors on the stage, including those who present the circumstances in which crime is most likely to flourish. This, of course, is a tall order. The police have limited resources and they simply cannot engage with every facet of the community at once. They


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must find a way of prioritizing how they allocate their time and money, and that is what the rest of this chapter is mostly about. Our contention is that community policing must concentrate on where it can do most good in suppressing today’s crime and forestalling tomorrow’s. Accordingly: 1. police involvement should be commensurate with the presenting crime problem; and 2. more urgency should be given to short-run prediction of crime to enable the police to offer timely help and enforcement. In other words it must take the grease to the squeak.

THE GREASE AND THE SQUEAK For most people, except when we “chill out”, our behaviour is generally purposeful. That is to say we mostly act now out of a prediction of future outcomes. If we don’t do the washing up, someone will complain or the kitchen will become chaotic. If we don’t fill up with fuel the car will soon run out and leave us stranded. If we don’t go to work tomorrow the boss will be hard to pacify, or we simply won’t get paid. Similarly one might expect that police work should be purposeful, and equally predictive. Surely that is what the police do and what they are paid to do. Presumably, daily briefings and periodic tasking and coordinating meetings are to assign officers to places with problems, and the way the police are funded is supposed to allocate resources to places most at need. Unfortunately that is not always how it works. In fact the opposite is often true. In the rest of this chapter we will offer evidence to show that policing is funded and managed in ways which lead communities most in need to be under-resourced, and places in least need to be relatively over-resourced. We will offer evidence to show that this is true at all levels: between high-crime and low-crime beats in a basic command unit, but also between highand low-crime basic command units, and even between different forces which face different levels of crime challenge. To those who need least shall be given; to those who need most shall be taken away. Our case rests on statistical evidence which is crude but adequate to the point being made. But the effect is so marked that, while anecdotal evidence can sometimes be terribly misleading, in this case you can see it for yourself. Simply walk around areas where you know the scale of crime problems and look at the number of police uniforms and liveried police cars passing by. In theory some especially dangerous areas might be monitored covertly, but CCTV is often used in relatively safe ones, like shopping centres, rather than in high-crime estates; in any case electronic surveillance hardly comes under the banner of community policing. Figure 14.1 shows the relationship between the extent of an area’s crime and the number of police available to deal with it, using numbers from police force areas in England and Wales. Each dot is a police force. This illustration converts the raw numbers into standard scores for convenience of depiction, but the basic relationship is preserved. The important point is the slope of the line of best fit linking the two variables. This shows that doubling the number of crimes to be dealt with is associated with approximately a 62% increase in the number of police officers available to deal with them. So doubling the problem does not double the resource to deal with it.


Number of police officers

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3 y = 0.617x – 5E– 07 2.5 R2 = 0.3807 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 –0.5 –1 –1.5 –2 –2 –1

0 1 Number of crimes

2

3

Figure 14.1 Crime by police force strength

Number of police officers

Figure 14.2 sets out a similar analysis at the BCU level within one force area, with more dramatic results. It shows that a doubling of crime is associated with a mere 23% increase in police strength. So even more than is the case at force level, policing resource does not keep pace with the problem. Finally, Figure 14.3 describes analysis within a BCU and shows a similar pattern. A doubling of crime less than doubles police strength. In this case, on the face of it, a doubling of crime corresponds with roughly a 35% increase in dedicated officers. If anything, the R-squared statistic makes the point even more strongly. It shows that the relationship between number of crimes and number of dedicated officers is very meagre indeed. Of course policing consists of more than dealing with crime. But there is no reason to assume that low crime areas generate more non-crime work than high crime areas, as it would have to so if it were to draw the sting from these graphs. Maybe the opposite is likely to be true. We have not identified the forces concerned because it would be invidious to hold them open to criticism simply because they were willing to cooperate in the research. We suspect the same pattern is likely to be revealed in other forces. If so, and if the pattern is reasonably consistent, it means that the beats with the highest crime rates in the command units with the highest crime rates in the police forces with the highest crime rates are likely to be the most under-resourced of all. This cannot be sensible. 3.00 2.00 1.00

y = 0.2264x – 0.175 R2 = 0.9316

0.00 –1.00 –2.00 –3.00 –2.00

–1.00

0.00

1.00

2.00

Number of crimes

Figure 14.2 Crime by BCU strength

3.00

4.00


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Dedicated beat officers

2 1.5 1 0.5

y = 0.3492x + 4E– 07 R2 = 0.1219

0 – 0.5 –1 –1.5 –2

–1

0

1

2

3

4

Crimes

Figure 14.3 Crime by dedicated beat officers. Beats in this BCU may have no dedicated beat officer, or one, or several officers for part of the time. For example, two officers together on this beat for a quarter of their duty period is counted as 0.5 officers.

AREA CHARACTERISTICS: FALSE PROPHETS OF CRIME? Those familiar with British policing may be surprised that there could be systematic underresourcing of high crime areas. After all there is a sophisticated and closely researched police funding formula which is designed to distribute cash according to policing need.3 Its complexities are beyond the scope of the present discussion, and it includes such imponderables as community relations and public reassurance, but citizens and even policing experts will presumably have assumed that the formula includes the rate of crime that needs to be tackled. In fact it does not. The reason is benign, though the implications are malign: crime levels themselves cannot be made a major factor in calculating financial allocation because to do so would reward police failure. The more incompetent the force, and the more crime it conjured up, the more richly resourced it would be. So, instead of real crime rates, proxies are incorporated in the formula, such as the proportion of: r r r r

people living in terraced housing people living in areas categorized as ACORN category F (largely council estates) people in one parent families households containing only one adult.

The problem is that these factors have less to do with crimes rates than you might suppose. A recent and important study of area effects and crime, by Chris Kershaw of the Home Office and Andromachi Tseloni of the University of Macedonia (Kershaw & Tseloni, 2005; Tseloni, 2006), found that area variables based on census and regional variables are surprisingly poor at predicting local crime rates. In fact they are much better at measuring fear and perceived disorder than they are at measuring crime itself. The implications of this are profound, not least that there is no substitute for crime as a predictor of crime. This calls 3

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ERO/records/ho415/1/afwg/afwgap3.htm [Accessed 29 November 2006]

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for a reassessment by many police forces which assume that area characteristics powerfully determine local crime rates.4 Underlying this is a politically popular convenience. If criminality can be regarded as a consequence of social problems rather than crime rates then social improvements can be championed as crime reductive. Thus, the authorities can be seen to be doing more than they actually are. There are many excellent (and unchallenged) reasons for providing a decent environment for people to live and grow up in. Moreover, there is an association between various measures of crime and area deprivation; and unusually high offender activity and crime rates have been found in deprived areas in various locations in Britain (e.g. Herbert, 1977, in Cardiff), (Hirschfield, Bowers & Brown, 1995, in Merseyside) and (Baldwin & Bottoms, 1976, in Sheffield). But we must not get carried away. The Kershaw and Tseloni work shows how tenuous the links can be. In any case the relationship should not be assumed to be directly causal. Deprivation is a feature of areas which are high in social disorganization, which are loosely associated with crime, and which are places where troublesome citizens settle. We will return to this theme in a moment, but crucially, whatever the underlying dynamics, the direct relationship between deprivation and crime is not powerful enough for deprivation to substitute for crime itself as a predictor of crime. This needs to be said plainly and unequivocally: the use of area classification schemes appeals to a simplistic notion that area characteristics drive crime rates which is misguided. It may go down well in the corridors of town halls and Whitehall, but it may well mislead officials and distract the police as much as it deludes the public. Sadly it does indeed go down well in the corridors of power. For example, an Audit Commission paper opined, “As well as directing effort, the adoption of this core policy has been used to convince local communities and businesses that policing should concentrate on crime hot spots and/or deprived communities” (Smith, 2002, p. 2). The “and/or” suggests that deprivation is a sufficient criterion for crime-reductive resource concentration even in the absence of high crime. The same approach is common at a local level. For example, Calderdale Council argues, “Several socio-economic factors affect the likelihood of being a victim as well as committing an offence. In Calderdale the postcodes with the highest levels of crime tend to rank highest in terms of deprivation.”5 If we really are to take the national and municipal grease to the crime squeak we need to abandon this classic confusion of area and individual factors.

HIDDEN INDIVIDUALS: REPEAT VICTIMIZATION AND THE ECOLOGICAL FALLACY Repeat victimization is a good example of the need to tailor responses to specifics and not to generalizations. This is the phenomenon whereby those already victimized by crime have an elevated probability of being victimized again, usually swiftly (see Farrell, 2005). The reasons are many and vary from place to place and from victim to victim and offender to offender, but include such factors as a burglar knowing how to gain entry and understanding 4

5

In a local study in which one of the writers was marginally involved, an area classification system in use among several police force areas was a much less powerful predictor of current crime than was the previous year’s recorded crime data. ACORN and MOSAIC are the leading classification schemes and are doubtless very useful in their many other applications. http://www.calderdale.gov.uk/community/safety/audit/victim.html [Accessed 27 January 2004]


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Table 14.1 Prevalence rates (%) for different types of housing in each deprivation quintile. Modified from Bowers, Johnson & Pease (2005) (where details of method and data set may be found) Housing type Deprivation

Semi

Detached

Terraced

Flat

20% Least Deprived 21–40% 41–60% 61–80% 20% Most Deprived

16.4 20.4 29.6 44.2 53.2

10.3 17.9 27.5 57.8 71.3

18.9 18.4 21.3 22.0 25.9

12.3 15.9 20.3 25.7 27.3

the layout of a house and so being more likely to return or perhaps tell friends (Tseloni & Pease, 2003, 2004). The mechanism is incompletely understood, as for a century were the effects of aspirin on headaches, but the phenomenon is robust and reliable enough to provide a basis for crime prediction. However, with repeat victimization any assessment of further, future, crime must operate at the level of individual risk, rather than risk to a whole area. Repeat offences tend to focus quite specifically on the original target, with the risk travelling outwards with diminishing force like waves from a brick dropped into a pond. Since re-victimization tends to be swift, prediction must be time-sensitive too. It is crucially important to understand that not every member of a community will suffer the same degree of risk and that any risk will vary over time. Neglect of this is common and leads to the ecological fallacy. This is the misleading assumption that all members of a group share characteristics of the group at large. It is absurd. A young man wearing an Arsenal shirt should not be deemed equally safe in a Holloway pub where most customers are also sporting Gunners symbols, and in a pub where most wear the shirts of bitter local rivals Tottenham Hotspur. Similarly, if detached homes are on average less prone to burglary, one must not assume that any individual detached home is less liable to burglary. Table 14.1, below, shows the proportion of homes of different types burgled at least once in Merseyside. Look in particular at the column for detached homes. It is the most burgled home type in the most deprived areas – but not in the less deprived areas. The lesson is clear. One cannot safely generalize from area risks to individual risks. Crime hot spots are slippery, and individual risks vary over time within areas. Optimizing police deployment shift by shift would confer advantages in both prevention and detection. The next section suggests a means of doing so.

PREDICTING WHERE LIGHTNING WILL STRIKE Gary Lineker, the former England soccer striker, once chided commentators for saying that a player was in the right place at the right time. As he sagely pointed out, if one is in the right place at the wrong time, one is in the wrong place. Apart from demonstrating that Lineker had not headed a football once too often, it suggests that footballers can sometimes be smarter than those who make policy for the police. A police officer in the right place at the wrong time is in the wrong place; and consequences for community safety can be severe.

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So how can one know which will be the right place and which will be the right time? Well, the idea is not novel to policing. Indeed, football is a good example of how police commanders often think this through: they make sure they know when and where important matches are taking place, they use intelligence (in every sense) to work out which are “friendlies” and which might occasion trouble, and they deploy their officers accordingly. In general the police have become rather good at maintaining public order. With crime it is more difficult. Offenders do not publish timetables, and rarely have fixtures – much of what they do is spontaneous or ill-considered. The most serious offences are rare which makes prediction even harder. Indeed, for mathematical reasons we will not go into here, even if we had a 99% predictive tool of major crime like murder, it would finger the wrong people in the wrong place on the wrong occasion at least 99% of the time. Even more common offences can be hard to forecast with much accuracy, but they do create patterns which can be analysed and can inform police deployment. The more frequent the crime the easier it is to predict. Among the most common crimes in the UK are burglary, “mugging” and theft from motor vehicles. In a development from the work on repeat victimization, Johnson and Bowers (2004a, 2004b) have shown that, for burglary certainly, and provisionally for theft from motor vehicles and robbery, risk travels outwards in a predictable manner and decays over a predictable time frame. In domestic burglary, for example, the danger of a further crime is greatest at the home of the original victim and spreads out to some 400 metres, but disappears over six weeks to two months. As we noted earlier, we must avoid the ecological fallacy. Communicability of risk may well vary by area, and indeed that appears to be the case with risk appearing to be most communicable in the most affluent of areas (Bowers & Johnson, 2005), though some degree of communicability seems universal. This has huge implications for the young, but exciting, science of crime mapping. It means that “blobology” – pinpointing known offences on a chart – is crude. Instead of mapping past events in the conventional way we should map the risk they generate for nearby homes, and the map must be dynamic to reflect how the risks decline over time. So a burglary at 14 Acacia Avenue should lead to the mapping of elevated risk at No. 14, and somewhat less at 12 and 16 and so on, with the danger fading as the days and weeks pass by. New burglaries should lead to recalculation of risks all around. This approach has come to be known as prospective mapping (see Bowers, Johnson & Pease, 2004; Johnson, Bowers & Pease, 2005). Forecasts can be displayed using a Geographical Information System (GIS) and overlain on a map of the relevant area, allowing patrolling and other resources to be deployed to areas at highest predicted risk. While it is an unhappy comparison, the logic mirrors that used in the culling of farm animals in epidemics of foot and mouth disease. Culling only animals on farms where there is an outbreak ignores the way in which the disease spreads. Since the incubation period is known, the period of vigilance for the nearest farm escaping a cull is also known, and slaughtering animals in adjacent farms seeks to stop the disease communicating. Mapping burglary in the traditional way likewise ignores what we know about the communicability of the offence. Prospective mapping involves prediction of risk based upon how it spreads. Even the leader in prospective mapping, known as ProMap, is work in progress, but at an early stage in its development it was shown to outperform the most sophisticated form of retrospective mapping (Bowers, Johnson & Pease, 2004). It is a quintessential example of a powerful knowledge-based policing tool It also substantially outperforms predictions police make on their own which, particularly in the short-term, have been shown to be a poor


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c Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. Derbyshire Figure 14.4 Shift predictions – morning. Constabulary 100021015

basis for action (Ratcliffe & McCullagh, 2001; McLaughlin et al., 2007). Police prediction accuracy and confidence in those predictions are effectively unrelated. Figures 14.4–14.6 illustrate the movement of burglary risk over the three policing shifts used in Derby A Division, from where the map derives. As is usual with such maps, the darker the coloration, the higher the risk. Risk, it will be seen, moves with shift. Any map which sums crime risk across shifts will be misleading all the time. This illustrates the Lineker insight again. The right place at the wrong time is the wrong place. A forthcoming Home Office report (Johnson et al., 2007) establishes the operational usability of the ProMap system. At the time of writing ProMap awaits research funding for large-scale extension to other crime types. Meanwhile it is unrealistic to expect police officers to use it routinely – what is needed is a Pan-ProMap, a system for all crime types, weighted by their seriousness so that a presumptive patrolling pattern can be designed which establishes a route maximizing the seriousness of the crimes likely to be encountered. ProMap has already been generalized from burglary to vehicle crime and robbery, and to the locations of Baghdad bombings – although not in such depth as burglary. A substantial developmental research programme is necessary for ProMap to take the work forward, focusing on three issues. 1. Augmenting predictive power by the inclusion of new variables already known to be predictive; 2. Applying the technique exhaustively across crime types, and innovatively in respect to poorly reported volume crime and organized crime;

c Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. Derbyshire Figure 14.5 Shift predictions – afternoon. Constabulary 100021015

c Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. Derbyshire Figure 14.6 Shift predictions – overnight. Constabulary 100021015


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3. Integrating ProMap forecasts with organizational priorities about crimes to be prevented to yield an algorithm for presumptive patrolling routes, modifiable in real time in the light of crimes just reported. This must be done in ways which sit alongside retention and augmentation of front-line policing skills. So let us imagine that research funds are forthcoming and the early promise of ProMap bears further fruit. What might community policing look like in the future? As we have seen, true community policing, on the US COPS model, involves community engagement and partnerships, as well as an emphasis on proactive problem solving, and we will explore those other aspects in a moment. But first let us look at how the patrolling process might develop. And so that officers can take advantage of predictive analysis, let us assume that future investment in police technology is rather smarter than it has been hitherto, and that force rivalries are subsumed by desire for improved service. In other words, let us take a leap of imagination! Calls for service are received by patrolling officers along with the history of events at the same address. They make an oral report which speech recognition software enters provisionally as a reported crime, with text displayed on screen for on-the-fly revision. Every new crime is processed by ProMap in real time using an algorithm which revises patrolling patterns in response to the presenting risks. This is done across force boundaries to remove edge effects which would make patrolling sub-optimal. Because ProMap routing would reflect all crime, a weighting would be necessary to reflect both the relative seriousness of crimes, and the degree of chronic victimization suffered.6 Given differences in crime mix which may be differentially troubling to the public at different times of day, different weightings could be chosen for different shifts. In addition, the system could incorporate the desired visibility of policing at specific times and locations. Then the real-time processing and coordination would ensure that the desired patrolling patterns are realized at the aggregate level. In other words, each beat officer and each patrolling vehicle would complement the pattern described by every other beat officer and by the fleet of vehicles. Reports would be automatically prepared from ProMap for the following purposes: 1. 2. 3. 4.

deployment of Police Community Support Officers deployment of detectives informing local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) informing Crime Prevention Officers.7

The content of these reports would vary according to the local problems and priorities. For example, some might emphasize chronic crime locations and individual repeat victimization so that targeted responses can be set in train. Local authorities would receive reports which can inform their responses – for example, departments organizing traffic wardens or waste disposal might revise timetables so that the presence of council staff interrupts some crime opportunities. Local businesses would be alerted to the ebb and flow of their own vulnerabilities and how they themselves contribute to crime opportunities and can take 6 7

These judgements would be made by senior police officers with CDRP consultation, and could be informed by a training spin-off from ProMap showing what mix of offences would have been on the route of each of a range of patrolling options. We use the conventional term here, but would hope that community policing would subsume some of the roles of crime prevention officers and that civilian staff would be recruited to advise on physical security enhancements.

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steps to avert that. For example, they might be warned against leaving vehicles in certain streets on certain days; or advised to redesign store display counters to reduce shoplifting. The advantages would include a more precise and rational deployment of effort according to crime risk; the distribution of information to partnerships in a form which does not compromise individual confidentially because it reflects future crime risk rather than individual past crimes; and, above all, steering policing back to crime control, which has been the hollow rhetoric of policing since 1829.

PUTTING THE COMMUNITY INTO COMMUNITY POLICING As we have said, crime reduction partnerships are of variable quality. There is no reason why local authorities, in conjunction with the local police and business communities, should not set themselves aggressive targets for crime reduction – or rather there are reasons, but bad ones. The first is lack of self-belief. Authorities are naturally averse to setting themselves goals which they might not achieve; but as any sports contestant or any business executive knows, without measurable goals we tend to flounder. The second is fatalism; they do not believe that radically cutting crime is possible. Despite the halving of some common offences since 1995, and in spite of the vivid examples of safer cities in America, Britain is infused with a “can’t do” mentality. So long as this survives community policing is likely to remain mostly a sop, a visible sign that the authorities are “doing something”. We propose a radical experiment designed to sweep away the pessimism and complacency. Two quite different local areas should be selected from volunteers, where the police commander and local council are both equally enthusiastic about trying radical solutions. The police inspectorate and central government would withdraw all key performance indices, though they would reserve the right to reassert their authority at any time if they thought the experiment was posing a risk to public safety. Funds would be sought for the temporary recruitment of crime analysts and the payment of expenses for researchers, but not for core activities such as increasing police numbers. We would then systematically apply all the lessons discussed so far in this chapter along with other forms of best practice that have emerged from problem-oriented policing across the world. In particular police resources would be more closely directed to the most problematic crime “communities” be those communities geographical, architectural, economic or socially defined, and employing prospective mapping techniques as much as its development reliably allows. There would remain specialist functions (though some, such as detective work, would recruit additional skills from beyond the police service – in this case from other agencies and professions which are expert in investigation) but individual policemen and women would be expected to get to become a familiar face with a local group, or in a particular location, and to get to know residents, businesses and other local institutions. Their principal mission would be to cut crime by measurable amounts, year on year. They must be problem solvers, never accepting that anything is beyond their remit. If a local landlord allows his property to deteriorate and attract vandals, then the officer and local authority must act decisively, recruiting help from other landlords. If community officers encounter challenges which are way beyond their own control – such as the poor design of a particular car lock which is stimulating local auto theft – they must have a systematic way of logging the problem and the Association of Chief Police Officers must have a mechanism for spotting emerging problems and making representations to the manufacturers or government agencies.


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The local authorities must be prepared to experiment too, for example training many of its staff and contractors, including parking attendants, to be informal guardians in support of the police. Of course reducing crime is not the sole function of the police, and it is important not to get carried away with a crime-cutting experiment. Maintenance of public order, anti-terrorism, and public safety – above all road safety – must not be allowed to suffer while attention is shifted elsewhere. Even reassurance has a place in the repertoire of the police, but only in specific cases where unreasonable fear is trapping people in unnecessarily defensive lifestyles, or inappropriately aggressive posturing. If our idea is taken up and the experiment succeeds, further, systematic, trials should follow. There is not room here to rehearse the concept in detail, and it may be rash to pre-empt trying all this out in practice, but we think it is a safe bet that if some of these ideas seem outlandish today all of them, on one form or another, will one day come to pass. The real question is when.

CONCLUSIONS We have quickly painted over a large canvas, and drawn many conclusions. We select four as of greatest importance and from them draw recommendations. The first is that local policing effort should be made proportionate to the local crime problem. The radical means of doing this (starting at the BCU level) would be establishment of a single crime-focused performance indicator, requiring that the most victimized 20% of local residents should not suffer more than twice as much crime per head as the least victimized 20%. The 2:1 ratio should be revisited, but the kernel of the proposal is what counts rather than the numbers initially applied. BCU commanders would be forced to consider the distribution of crime explicitly and deploy accordingly. The change would have the effect of increasing the policing of the most crime-ridden areas, thus remedying the problem outlined in the first part of the chapter. As for the objection that this will mean less police for crime-poor areas, this is admitted – but not as a problem. If those inhabiting crime-poor areas wish to exert political pressure to gain extra policing overall, so much the better. Another implication of an equitable policing funding formula is that it re-focuses on events rather than perceptions. The second recommendation is more prosaic but no less important. If policing is to be effective it must be proactive and predictive, and if it is to deploy effectively it must have the tools to make accurate forecasts. ProMap contains the potential to provide the core of a data platform for crime-reductive policing. The danger is that it will be rolled out for domestic burglary, when what is needed is a programme of research to extend the range of offences to which ProMap applies. Ideally the system would become a common platform which different developers could enhance. A third recommendation flows from the first: that community policing should be a targeted, ambitious programme of formal and informal local alliances based not just on geography but on whatever social or other features create meaningful communities where people have a sense of kinship and joint enterprise. The fourth is that we should experiment – and it is not enough to do so haphazardly, but in a methodologically sound way so that when we think we have discovered things that work we can trial them properly before politicians seize on them for their own purposes. That, sadly, has been the fate of community policing up till now.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are due to Rick Gooch and colleagues in Derbyshire constabulary, and Shane Johnson and colleagues in the Jill Dando Institute for contributions to the discussion of ProMap.

REFERENCES Achen, C.H. & Shivley, W.P. (1995). Cross-Level Inference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Adams, R.E., Rohe, M.W. & Arcury, T.A. (2005). Awareness of community-oriented policing and neighbourhood perceptions in five small to midsize cities. Journal of Criminal Justice, 33, 43–54. Baldwin, J. & Bottoms, A.E. (1976. The Urban Criminal. London: Tavistock Publications. Beckman, K., Gibbs, J. & Beatty, P. (2005). Trends in police research: a cross-sectional analysis of the 2002 literature. Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, 6, 295–320. Bowers, K.J., Johnson, S.D. & Pease, K. (2004). Prospective hot-spotting: The future of crime mapping? British Journal of Criminology, 44, 641–658. Bowers, K.J. & Johnson, S.D. (2005). A test of the boost explanation of near repeats. Western Criminology Review, 5, 12–24. Bowers, K.J., Johnson, S.D. & Pease, K. (2005). Victimisation and re-victimisation: risk, housing type and area: a study of interactions. Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal, 7, 7–17. Brogden, M. (2005). ‘Horses for courses’ and ‘thin blue lines’: Community policing in transitional society. Police Quarterly, 8, 64–98. Crawford, A., Lister, S. & Wall, D. (2003). Great Expectations: Contracted Community Policing in New Earswick. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Farrell, G. (2005). Progress and prospects in the prevention of repeat victimisation. In N. Tilley (ed.), The Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety (pp. 143–170). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Forman, J. (2004). Community policing and youth as assets. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 95, 1–48. Gormally, B. (2004). Tough questions on community policing from Northern Ireland. Community Safety Journal, 3, 23–30. Hawdon, J.E. & Ryan, J. (2003). Police–resident interactions and satisfaction with police: An empirical test of community policing assertions. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 14, 55–74. Herbert, D.T. (1977). An areal and ecological analysis of delinquency residence: Cardiff 1966 and 1971. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geographie, 68, 83–89. Herrington, V. & Millie, A. (2006). Applying reassurance policing: is it business as usual? Policing and Society, 16, 146–163. Hirschfield, A.F.G., Bowers, K.J. & Brown, P.J.B. (1995). Exploring relations between crime and disadvantage on Merseyside, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 3, 93–112. Johnson, S.D. & Bowers, K.J. (2004a). The burglary as clue to the future: the beginnings of prospective hot-spotting. European Journal of Criminology, 1, 237–255. Johnson, S.D. & Bowers, K.J. (2004b). The stability of space-time clusters of burglary. British Journal of Criminology, 44, 55–65. Johnson, S.D., Bowers, K. & Pease, K. (2005). Predicting the future or summarising the past? Crime mapping as anticipation. In M. Smith & N. Tilley (eds), Crime Science: New Approaches to Preventing and Detecting Crime (pp. 45–163). Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Johnson, S.D., Birks, D.J., McLaughlin, L.M. et al. (2007). Prospective crime mapping in operational context. London: Home Office [online]. Kershaw, C. & Tseloni, A. (2005). ‘Predicting crime rates, fear and disorder based on area information: Evidence from the 2000 British Crime Survey.’ International Review of Victimology, 12, 295–313.


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McLaughlin, L.M., Johnson, S.D., Bowers, K.J. et al. (2007). Police perceptions of the long and short-term spatial distribution of residential burglary. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 9, 99–111. Moore, M.H. (1992). Problem solving and community policing. In M. Tonry & N. Morris (eds), Modern Policing (pp. 99–158). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moss, K. & Pease, K. (1999). Section 17 Crime and Disorder Act 1998: A wolf in sheep’s clothing? International Journal of Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 1, 15–19. Ratcliffe, J.H. & McCullagh, M.J. (2001). Chasing ghosts? Police perceptions of high crime areas. British Journal of Criminology, 41, 330–41. Smith, K. (2002). Policing deprived areas. Policy Review, 8 November, 7–8. Tseloni, A. & Pease, K. (2003). Repeat victimisation: ‘Boosts’ or ‘Flags’? British Journal of Criminology, 43, 196–222. Tseloni, A. & Pease, K. (2004). Repeat personal victimisation: Random effects, event dependence and unexplained heterogeneity. British Journal of Criminology, 44, 931–945. Tseloni, A. (2006). Fear of crime, perceived disorders and property crime: A multivariate analysis at the area level. In G. Farrell, K. Bowers, S.D. Johnson & M. Townsley (eds), Imagination for Crime Prevention: Essays in Honor of Ken Pease (pp. 163–86). Crime Prevention Studies, Vol. 21. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press. Xu, Y., Fiedler, M.L. & Fleming, K.H. (2005). Discovering the impact of community policing: The broken windows thesis, collective efficacy and citizens’ judgement. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 42, 147–186. Zhao, J., He, N. & Lovrich, N. (2003). Community Policing: Did it change the basic functions of policing during the 1990s? A national follow-up study. Justice Quarterly, 20, 697–724.

CHAPTER 15

Rethinking Governance: Conceptualizing Networks and Their Implications for New Mechanisms of Governance Based on Reciprocity Karen Stephenson1 NefForm, Inc., UK

SUMMARY It’s strange to speak about hunter-gatherers and large bureaucratic systems in the same breath but they do share a common genetic code – networks – and this makes them kin and part of a larger organizational family of governance. In the family photo, networks can be found standing alongside markets and hierarchies. Governance is simply the act of mediating among these structures, imperfectly stitched together as a unit, and straining to stay together as the world shrinks to smaller, flatter, and more complex dimensions. This chapter summarizes the academic history behind the slow but eventual recognition of the importance of networks as a theoretical construct in human organizational systems. I go further to show how networks can be reconceptualised and integrated with the theoretical construct of heterarchy (collaborative or partnership working scenarios, in effect networked institutions). But heterarchy is more than a construct. I show how it can inform large-scale governance systems.

1

The author wishes to thank her counterpart in the UK, Mr Jeremy Hawkins, for his ground-breaking thinking and work over the past five years regarding the management and measurement of public–private partnerships. She would also like to thank Mr Peter Murphy at the Department for Communities and Local Government (formerly of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) for his insightful contributions throughout the years. Finally, I wish to express my personal gratitude to the editor, the late Dr Tom Williamson, for his thorough reading of the ideas and the respect he accorded the entrepreneurs who test them.


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To do this, I share a work in progress called “Collaborative Excellence” (CE) – a promising application of theory designed to improve individual and collective thinking. Well past its “proof of concept” phase and into the second phase or “proof of process”, a series of trials have been sponsored by the Cabinet Office and the Government Office for the East Midlands in collaboration with the Young Foundation. The results indicate a remarkable rethinking of governance and offer a glimpse of how systemic collaboration can be supported by understanding, implementing and leveraging heterarchical governance.

INTRODUCTION Governance is a morphing process that builds on the skeletal remains of past policies; incrementally extending its reach like a coral reef. And like coral reefs, governance systems can become vast structures, impressive to gaze upon and difficult to thoroughly chart. If not maintained and groomed, governance systems can have an uncanny way of changing the ecosystem around them to become great barrier reefs – what we disparagingly refer to as “bureaucracy”. So how do we prevent this from happening? How do we channel institutional growth in healthy directions away from devolution and a labyrinth of dead ends? How can we ensure governance is both effective and efficient? Everywhere everyone, with the exception of lobbyists perhaps, lament the existence of “big government”. Government sprawl – going from one thousand to fifty thousand to two hundred thousand employees – can and does make a difference in the way things get done or don’t. But just imagine if there were iterative patterns governing the way organizations morph and get bigger. That’s exactly what the French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss reasoned and then subsequently claimed to have found in every family structure. He called it an “atom” of kinship (Lévi-Strauss, 1955, 1969). It was, in essence, a theory of everything. As it turned out, his idea was more provocative than practical: there was no reliably repeating structure as he had envisioned. But what if his hunch was right, only that he was looking in the wrong place? What if there is an atom – of organization – a recurring structure of how people organize? Can it be proven? And if so, what implications does this idea have for sustainable leadership and governance? That’s what I will discuss and illustrate through case work, examples of which are shared in this chapter. Here, I begin with a definition of “networks” and an explanation for why the concept was slow to be taken seriously by academicians. Eventually networks became a critical part of a theoretical triptych without which there would be no atom of organization and no human organization. In our deep past, networks were an essential element to how our hominid forefathers daily survived overwhelming odds. Today, even the tragic consequences of 9/11 serve only to demonstrate how powerful a force networks can be and what great feats could be accomplished were those powers to be harnessed in the service of sustaining large-scale governance systems. But the argument doesn’t stop with abstract academic suggestions. I suggest that these ideas can be tested in practical trials. Results are shared from five pilot studies using the data generated by Network Analysis that examined specific collaborative or partnership endeavours in five large scale “virtual” organizations – organizations which had no real insight into how they were working together. These findings were drawn from the diagnostic mapping of the networks of trust in the existing organizational cultures, communities and civic settings. Recommendations were based on understanding where and how to apply interventions to achieve alignment, eliminate or reduce errors and a number of other culturally specific

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measures of success. The resulting interventions helped further organizational efforts in formative partnership working.

MARKETS, HIERARCHIES AND NETWORKS Three little laws in thermodynamics explain most of what happens in our day-to-day world. Do similar rules exist that explain human organization? Let’s explore this possibility by starting with what we know. Assume a chain of command – commonly called a “hierarchy”. It was long held by economists that hierarchy was an island of planned coordination in a sea of market relationships, a pristine paradise inhabited by vertically integrated tribes of happy employees (adapted from Richardson, 1972). But along came corporate anthropologists who soundly debunked the myth of a righteous and organized CEO and instead depicted him or her as a savage noble (sic) consumed in a bonfire of vanities (Wolfe, 1987). British anthropologists debunked the “primitive” a century earlier – they put an end to romanticizing “the noble savage” and began to see him or her as calculating as any Machiavellian player.2 The moral of these stories is the same: it turns out that jungles – whether they are green and leafy or concrete – are brimming with tangled webs of relationships or networks, which when viewed from afar are repetitive elementary structures. Initially, these elementary structures, or networks, were placed along a continuum of organizational forms: markets, networks and hierarchies. At one end, a chorus of economists chimed “market” as their disciplinary mantra (as they still do today). They consider it to be the grand genesis of commerce. On the other end there is hierarchy, the logical evolutionary endpoint of organizational life, the crowning achievement of civilization. Networks are largely ignored, dismissed as a mixed breed, a doomed hybrid. But as we all know, the resulting theoretical continuum of market – network – hierarchy was misguided as was made profoundly apparent on September 11, 2001. Networks, it would turn out are core to organizational life and hierarchy is the hybridized half-breed, suggesting a re-sequencing of the theoretical continuum to that of: networks – hierarchy – market. A network is the first structure to emerge from the primordial human soup and is inextricably linked to cultural genesis. Only much later did clans, lineages and nation states develop enough self-sufficiency to trade surpluses in local and regional markets.

TRANSACTION COSTS AND ORGANIZATIONAL FORM Understanding how the old continuum mistakenly came to be accepted as fact is less accident and more a lesson in academics. It all began with Ronald Coase’s (1937) classic paper on the nature of the firm. Coase suggested that firms and markets, while different organizational structures, nevertheless share common transactional practices. The distinction, later amplified by Williamson (1975, 1984, 1993), was based on the amount of knowledge about a transaction (or “asset specificity”) that was required. Disinterested, non-repetitive (one-off) exchanges occurred as market transactions (simple contracts). 2

The British debunked the myth of the primitive savage by showing that s/he was just as bright and clever as any industrialist (at the time) – hence the term “noble savage”. A century later, Tom Wolfe did the reverse – he showed that noblesse oblige or the height of civilized achievement in the position of the corporate CEO on Wall Street, the “noble” (or Master of the Universe as he called it) was no more than just a savage – hence the turn of phrase “savage noble”.

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THE HANDBOOK OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED POLICING Table 15.1 Organizational forms and their associated exchange rates Organizational Form Network Hierarchy Market

ABCs of Exchange Mutually interested, repetitive Made routine by a governing authority Disinterested, non-repetitive

Exchanges that entailed greater uncertainty (and therefore a proportional amount of asset specificity), were best sheltered within the firm as a way to mitigate the greater risk. Theories of “the firm” and characterizations of its hierarchical infrastructure were conceived.3 In refining the theory, economists and sociologists drew a clean distinction between discrete market transactions on one end from interested, asset-specific transactions of a firm’s hierarchy on the other. Much later Powell (1990) introduced the notion that another organizational structure – networks – deserved a place somewhere on the continuum but most theorists took a dismissive view of networks as less than a serious contender in the pantheon of theory. Networks were different and hard to classify. It didn’t seem to matter that networks could absorb greater amounts of uncertainty than hierarchies. After all was said and done, where do you put them on the continuum? Beyond hierarchy? Certainly not! Notoriously unruly, networks exceeded hierarchical boundaries with aplomb. Nuanced and capable of asynchronous and asymmetric exchanges, networks deftly eluded the visible hand of hierarchy (Chandler, 1977) and the invisible hand of the market (Smith, 1976). Difficult to domesticate, impervious to pigeon-holing, academicians ignored the idea of networks for a time. Eventually the fog of bounded rationality wore thin and organizational theorists reconsidered a re-sequencing of theory. Slowly minds began to change, an approving nod given and the primacy of primordial networks (characterized by mutually interested and repetitive exchanges) emerged. Opposite a network was the market, characterized by disinterested, non-repetitive exchanges. Hierarchy had qualities of both structures: routine exchanges (repetitive like a network) and a governing authority (like a market). Table 15.1 summarizes these organizational forms and features and lists them in their logical order.

RAMIFICATIONS FOR ORGANIZATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF HETERARCHY Organizations and their governance are directly shaped by these three very different structures: markets, hierarchies and networks. In all three, information moves in mysterious ways. In markets, it’s a “free-for-all” – a knowledge Diaspora, information virally spreading to where it is most needed regardless of legal (or moral) boundaries. In hierarchies, interests are served when information is dispensed in turgid, glacially slow and impersonal ways. By contrast, networks are personal and interests are best served when they are self-served as information moves through reciprocal non-random exchanges. . . at the speed of rumour. 3

Management theorists put their imprimatur on the debate with derivative theories based on hybrid organizational forms and managerial approaches, such as the “U” and “M” organization and Theories X and Y (McGregor, 1957), and Z (Ouchi, 1981) respectively.


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Figure 15.1 Heterarchy (collaborative endeavours – organizations networked together). Organizations are depicted as yellow, layered silos and the collective and combined activity is the blue network shown in the middle

Reciprocity is key to the power of networks, exerting a governing logic over them – the alchemy of mutual give and take over time turning into a golden trust. The difficulty with only one of these three structures – networks – is that they are not tied to any kind of boundary (membership, geographical or organizational). What happens when they reach across to link different organizations together? Outcomes vary. In some cases, networks are not really authorized to do this kind of linking so their very connection can result in irrational stock market highs and lows, political leaks or fraud. Or, for example when networks organically grow but are not regulated – conflicts of interest could result such as insider trading or interlocking boards. Not all outcomes have such dire consequences. Networks can also be purposefully designed to align, and outcomes can be large-scale collaborations with happy endings. This has important implications for governance. There is a name for this last structure. It is called heterarchy (Figure 15.1) and its features can be compared with networks, hierarchies and markets in Table 15.2. Heterarchy consists of essentially three or more separate institutions with their own raison d’être but which must collaborate with each other to accomplish a collective good that is more complex than any one institution (or pair of institutions) could manage on their own. For example, in the public sector the increasing emphasis on customer-focused service delivery translates to delivering what the citizen wants, not simply the services that the Table 15.2 Heterarchy is greater than the sum of its parts Features Relationship Exchange Focus Rate of Change Knowledge Mgt

Market

Hierarchy

Network

Transaction Non-repetitive Disinterested Rapid Contracts

Authority Routine Vested interest Slow Policies

Trust Repetitive Personal interest Radical Conventions

Heterarchy Collaborative Intermittent Collective good Sense & Respond Agreements

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public sector “decides” the citizen needs. This puts a greater emphasis on key agencies such as Local Authorities, Criminal Justice Agencies, Health Agencies, Housing and Education bodies working together effectively on common issues. This is a challenging task requiring more than just a coalition of the willing but also a well-designed and coordinated network to ensure the alignment of tasks. When tasks are not aligned, perverse outcomes may result. A brief but very real example of a perverse outcome to policy is when the police attend a domestic violence incident and take, say a husband into custody for an alleged assault. If in a state of agitation it is not unusual for the suspect to be referred by the Police to the Health Agency for a mental health assessment. This assessment may subsequently result in the suspect being discharged by the Health Agency but their rules on patient privacy prevent them from informing those agencies supporting the victim of the whereabouts of the suspect, who could quite conceivably return to the scene of the incident unannounced. All Agencies are performing their respective duties. Because they are not effective (both centrally as well as locally) in collaborating with each other on establishing common policy and practices to support high level goals, they unwittingly cause an increase in domestic violence. This is the exact opposite of their goal and is referred to as a perverse outcome to policy. It is perverse outcomes like this we usually hear about on the evening news. We are left scratching our heads wondering how such a bizarre turn-of-events ever comes about – police accused of inadvertently aiding and abetting criminals when it is their job to apprehend them. And that’s why we don’t hear much about the successes of heterarchy – because there aren’t any! Heterarchy is a great idea but it is very difficult to do. When the yellow organizational silos in Figure 15.1 compete “in the abstract”, then we experience “on the ground” information hoarding instead of sharing (as that which occurred in our example above), stealing or guarding and empire building instead of collaborating. Sound familiar? Sadly, this phenomenon extends all the way back to our primordial beginnings to predatory-segmentary behaviour. Humans have evolved from a family structure into a tribe or clan growing into segmentary lineages, then chiefdoms, right up to the modern state. Any form of governance we have today betrays this evolutionary heritage (Sahlins, 1961, 1963).4 When policies change or new needs arise, teams or departments are created not from the ground up, but as sub-units of existing segments. As layers of hierarchy proliferate, units at each layer compete against one another, combining to work as a larger unit only when these too are drawn into competition. So within a government department for example, one team jockeys for position with another, one directorate attacks another to protect its budget, and the department as a whole fights other departments to defend its turf. In these systems there is no internal structure or infrastructure to join the system as a whole; it is simply a network of hierarchies (vertically integrated silos). As such, they are never more than (and often much less than) the sum of their parts. Segmentary systems calculate power by comparing and contrasting their stock or status with that of other segments. Competition, not collaboration, is the watchword. For example, the compulsory competitive tendering processes in the public sector, although delivering some benefits to public service delivery,

4

In the early stages of human organization, leaders were typically charismatic. A change occurred between the segmentary lineage and chiefdom, where leadership shifted from that of a charismatic leader who built a following by creating loyalties through generosity, fearful acquiescence through magic, demonstrated wisdom, oratorical skill, etc., to that of an instituted office authorized by God, coup or “chad” (chads were made famous in the highly contentious 2000 presidential election in the United States, where a majority is the US Electoral College was determined in Florida by the counting of punch card ballots).


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does not focus on collaboration and only serves to sustain predatory (read: competitive) segmentary behaviour. On the ground, it comes as no surprise then when people complain of being stuck in organizational “silos”. What we don’t realize is that we are hard-wired to create these silos because of the constraints of segmentary systems held in place by cultural and behavioural barriers, process barriers and above all, measurement barriers. After all, organizations deliver what they are measured on. If they aren’t measured on the degree and effectiveness of their partnership working, then where is the incentive (carrot) or sanction (stick) for them to participate? That’s why I propose heterarchy as the new evolutionary species superseding hierarchical silos. This is the organizational challenge that faces us today because most if not all our social problems and issues require a multi-agency solution. What is needed is a systematic approach to understanding exactly what activities are taking place across all relevant agencies in support of specific common objectives; both in terms of process and in terms of the trust networks that exist among the parties. Two recent but failed examples at managing heterarchies follow. The first example is taken from the United States a few years after 9/11/2001. In an attempt to better protect the nation, the Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to oversee national security by combining three separate government functions: intelligence (NSA, NRO, CIA as a few examples), policing (the FBI for example) and disaster response (FEMA). Built from 60+ pre-existing departments, the new super-ordinate layer of authority only deepened the tug-of-war for limited resources. The DHS is widely considered a failure, mismanaged from the outset because simply putting a higher level of authority over competing organizations is no guarantee that everyone will play together nicely. A second example is taken from the United Kingdom. In October 1998, the Blair administration rightly made much of the need for “joined-up” working. But the subsequent agglomeration of several smaller departments and budgets into the giant Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) failed. Putting people in the same building or changing the name of the department does not automatically lead to integrated working. In the case of either DHS or DETR, effectiveness was undermined by competing organizational cultures. Cultures, it turns out, are not interoperable! Just ask anyone in charge of a mega merger like a DHS or DETR. Networks, however, are interoperable, but we have to find the networks first before we can apply managerial treatment. Networks, even rogue ones, are subject to the science of mathematics. If we can identify pre-existing networks within each separate organizational culture, then we can determine which connections are the most pivotal to manage for leveraged change. Research attests to the fact that if careful investigative diagnosis is performed before a change, then the resulting change management might actually gel and gel quickly. Now that’s worth a closer look! From our two examples of DHS and DETR, we can appreciate how segmentary politics easily and perversely thwart overall objectives and goals. Cross-cutting problems require cross-cutting solutions. Yet in segmentary systems of government there is no network in place to allow the seamless exchange of vital information laterally among the different units or organizations. The result is that information disappears, deadlines are missed, fingers point and wrongs are papered over. It is completely understandable why this misalignment occurs and why it is tolerated. Failure is a continuous feature of evolution not least because market conditions are always changing and organizations are scrambling to adapt. But the sooner we realize that our interests are better served when more diverse minds are at the table,

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then the faster we will get on with building partnerships and more effective collaborative working among public, private and voluntary sector organizations. The theory for how to put this right is embedded in the concept of heterarchy. The process for how to measure heterarchy and achieve collaborative inter-operability rests with CE – Collaborative Excellence.5 CE consists of a set of three techniques combined in new and innovative ways. Netform Analysis6 identifies through brief web or paper surveys the vestigial remains of trust and hidden knowledge in the embryonic collaborative enterprise. It then shows how to leverage trust relationships to bridge gaps in service thereby avoiding perverse outcomes. The second technique is hard-wiring organizations together and mapping their processes in order to identify inefficiencies and duplicative effort, thereby streamlining operations with sound infrastructural support.7 Effective Intelligence8 is a third technique for improving individual and collective thinking. Thus equipped, CE satisfies three essential elements of any public service improvement process. First it has the ability for self-assessment at the individual and collective level. Second, it facilitates external validation where necessary and provides quality assurance. Finally, it is a good diagnostic process and can be easily integrated with other measures. This application has been developed and deployed in some very exciting trials over the last few years. Five cases will now be briefly described followed by a discussion of their implications.

RAMIFICATIONS FOR GOVERNANCE AND POLICING: FIVE CASES Presented here are five case studies; the first case presented was conducted in 1995 and the other four were conducted over the last five years. The cases come from three nations, the United States of America, the Caribbean islands of the Dutch Antilles, and the United Kingdom. All five cases involve community partnerships, governance and policing. All five cases deployed my use of network analysis to determine how the police forces were internally networked with each other as a culture and externally linked to their constituencies as part of a larger civic enterprise. Each of these cases addresses the difficulty as well as the necessity of connecting across cultural boundaries to collaborate as opposed to competing; evolution as opposed to devolution. In some cases, crisis comes from within; in others, from the environment. In all cases, crisis raises the stakes to either embrace change or buckle under the pressures of resisting it. And in one case we glimpse how, by combining network analysis data with Effective Intelligence, community problems are resolved and services effectively delivered.

5

6 7 8

Collaborative Excellence is the name given to the set of management tools used to measure effective collaboration in heterarchical structures. Insight 1st is a community interest company that houses this approach and is headed up by Mr Jeremy Hawkins. Based in the UK it is the institutional home to these techniques, daily conducting analyses, instruction and licensing in the public-private sectors. See http://www.netform.com or http://www.drkaren.co.uk See http://www.tensoftware.com The technique “Effective Intelligence” a business-based system designed by Jerry Rhodes to improve our ability to think well by identifying the core Thinking-Intentions that underlie and drive our thoughts. These Thinking-Intentions, in effect, describe how we think (see http://www.effectiveintelligence.com).


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Riots and Internecine Strife in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) In the mid 1990s a comprehensive study was undertaken in Los Angeles to analyze the effectiveness of its police department. Even before the debacle of the 1992 Rodney King riots,9 an overhaul of the LAPD was long overdue. After the riots, rather than reshuffle the organization, the police chief wisely insisted that a serious and probing diagnostic analysis be performed. As part of a battery of tests, an early version of CE was carried out. The findings most relevant to our argument will be addressed, but first a bit of history. In the late 1980s, the police force had devolved into two camps: SWAT teams and community policing. Expectations were that best practices and personnel be exchanged between camps on a voluntary basis. That never happened. What resulted was that each camp had become a tribe, a separate entity unto itself with community policing stigmatized as the “weaker sister” of the stronger, more powerful SWAT team. As a consequence, the ranks of the SWAT camp swelled with star performers flooding their ranks. Many came from community policing. Dwindling resources accompanied by shrinking ranks, community policing fell behind and languished. Then riots erupted in 1992. To understand what led to the riots is to understand a little more about the mega-city of Los Angeles. Los Angeles has a paper-thin veneer of appearing “relaxed” but if you walk on its streets, you instantly realize it is anything but relaxed. Gangs assumed control of most of the land between the 19 Los Angeles “downtowns”. That land consisted of hundreds of suburban boundaries abutted to each other, hence its alternative name “edge-city”. Every suburban boundary was an edge, every edge a turf, and every turf – a potential war. Rising rates of random, drive-by shootings in neighbourhoods and freeways had brought racial and socio-economic tensions to a near boil. Occasionally tensions were relieved with a small earth quake or social shake-up. But every once in a while, as any Los Angeles native will confide to you, “The Big One is coming.” And the Rodney King riot was a big one. In 1992, when four white officers were acquitted by an all white jury for the excessive force used in subduing a drug-crazed Rodney King, the city erupted into fires and riots. Officers had no coordinated plan of attack, instead each tribal entity had its own plan which they failed to synchronize with each other in any coordinated or sustained way. This served only to exacerbate what was already an overheated social crisis. Already hardened into two cultures, the riots and the police failures only deepened the divide between SWAT and community policing. In the aftermath the network analysis study revealed that two forces, not one, did not communicate, collaborate, share or in any way have anything to do with each other. Recommended actions that followed were sternly worded in a published report. First, aggressive hiring was initiated to fill and diversify the police ranks. Second, mandatory rotation replaced the voluntary policy to ensure that every SWAT officer had community policing experience and every community beat cop had SWAT training. Cultural blinders had caused the beat cop to see everything at a community level and every SWAT officer to see everything as a crisis. That had to change. Third, the “un-official” cultural uniform of a 9

The 1992 Los Angeles riots, also known as the Rodney King uprising or the Rodney King riots, were sparked on April 29, Rodney King, after he fled from police. Thousands of people in Los Angeles, mainly young black and Latino males joined in what has often been characterized as a race riot. In all, 50 to 60 people were killed during the riots.

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moustached, cop in sun glasses was due for an extreme make-over. Using humour to diffuse the unofficial dress protocol, the powers-that-be “got the word out” that moustaches and sun glasses were “optional”. Finally, a change in leadership psychologically and procedurally cleared a way for a fresh start. While not perfect, the police department has subsequently enjoyed a decade-long period of sustained, stable and healthy growth.

The Transformation of the Police Department of the Dutch Antilles10 In 2005, the Dutch Antilles Police Force underwent a cultural change study11 which included CE as an initial diagnostic probe. “Once in a while, just like any other organization, we experience difficult times,” Justice Minister David Dick reported,12 and over the past five years the police force had languished, crime had risen, drug trafficking was commonplace and there was little trust among the force members. One year after implementing the changes suggested from a battery of diagnostic tests and interventions including network analysis, the police force was on the move again. People had a renewed sense of belonging to something bigger than a political agenda or camp. They were becoming an integral part of engaged civic commitment to improve their community. One diagnostic test was network analysis. Individuals (hubs, gatekeepers and pulsetakers)13 were identified who were critical leverage points in a network but who were well below the radar of their colleagues and supervisors. They were deeply trusted and persuasive and once identified, they were given assignments that played to their strengths as natural communicators, negotiators and bridge-builders. They were chosen to populate transition teams and naturally evolved as pivotal players, reinvigorating the police culture with newfound meaning and purpose. They, more than anybody could get the police force re-engaged with the community. As all the police had a part in approving the new organizational structure, all were owners of the change. Furthermore, the change had been publicly announced and been hierarchically authorized and approved by the Minister, the Council of Ministers and the police force chiefs from all the islands. As recently as 2006, the restructuring of the police force is being put into place and it is now better equipped to combat organized crime, cross-border crime, drug trafficking and improve community relations. Half-way during the painful process of transformation when most people weaken and retreat back to what they know, the chiefs reaffirmed that they wanted to continue with the restructuring. “So the development was not only on a ministerial level, but it was also within the force itself. This is a positive sign” reported the Minister. One important part of development is the cooperation with other countries. While the Netherlands Antilles already works together with Suriname on police matters, 10 11 12 13

Five islands: Cura¸cao and Bonaire located off the coast of Venezuela, and St. Maarten, Saba and St. Eustatius lie east of the US Virgin Islands. Corporate Transitions International is a global organization, with offices in the United States, Ireland and Brazil. Victor Pinedo is founder and principal. October 3, 2006, “Dick: Police corps is moving forward; Force celebrates 57th anniversary”, The Daily Herald. Hubs, Gatekeepers and Pulsetakers are three archetypes that represent the most trusted and strongest connections within a network. Hubs are individuals with the most direct contacts. Supremely multi-tasking and socially engaging, these individuals know the most people and how to use them to get a message out. Gatekeepers are strategically located between Hubs on critical pathways connecting organizations together. They can block or broker deals by controlling the flow of information. They know the “right” people. Pulsetakers are indirectly connected to the most people in a community or organization. Unseen, yet all seeing, they are akin to Machiavelli, a “go-to” behind-the-scenes person. Pulsetakers know the people who know the “right” people. Taken together, these three types are responsible for cultural resistance or, if they agree with the proposed changes, they are the carriers for rapid cultural change.


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they also work in concert with Colombia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America to solve cross-border crime. Clearly, inter-island and inter-national collaboration is a complex task, consisting of many moving parts requiring real partnerships of trust to sustain continued and collaborative action.14

Domestic Violence in the Borough of Northampton15 An initial analysis identified approximately 35 organizations and agencies straddling the public and voluntary and community sectors all involved in carrying out activities designed to tackle domestic abuse. In effect, they constituted a “virtual organization”. The analysis revealed, for example, that of the 35 organizations, 4 agencies were all carrying out multiagency training but to different standards and, they were all unaware of each other’s work in this area. In each case, people were ignorant or in denial of the resources that were being wasted in duplicative processes. When these shared practices were identified and aligned, the training was much more effectively leveraged to everyone’s benefit. Also, certain key organizations such as the Crown Prosecution Service and the Probation Service were seriously disconnected from the collective networking – but this was quickly remedied following these findings. Leveraged learning across multiple organizations can only be effectively sustained when major contributions and contributors are consistently recognized. In the analysis conducted in the Borough, CE identified relatively junior staff who were playing a decisively important role in helping agencies cooperate and this fact was very different (and in some instances inadvertently hidden) from the opinions of their managers. This is best illustrated with a specific story. Two young women police officers were leading the way in setting up a drop-in centre for victims of domestic violence. They had both been moved on to other duties a good six months prior to when a network analysis survey had been conducted. Nevertheless, the virtual organization was still relying very heavily on them both, for expert advice, decision making and even day-to-day work decisions. The hierarchy was completely unaware of the continuing importance of the contributions of these two individuals to the collective effort. If this fact had not been uncovered, the centre may have experienced a slow withdrawal of expertise and might never have been able to determine the root cause of the symptom. With this discovery, recognition ceremonies were put in place, deployed and apprentices enlisted to back up and sustain long-term learning in the community.

Burglary in the City of Nottingham A network analysis was conducted in Nottingham to reveal that crucial knowledge was closely held within only one part of the virtual organization – a virtual organization consisting of many moving siloed parts: police, health, the court system and the voluntary sector. For example, decision-making activity and information exchange was centred specifically 14 15

See “Towards Strategic Living”, a working paper by Victor Pinedo, 2006. The three UK projects have been sponsored by the Home Office, the Government Office of East Midlands, the Cabinet Office and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister under the leadership of Mr Jeremy Hawkins, a career civil servant.

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THE HANDBOOK OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED POLICING The Work Network

Nottingham City Council

Police

Other Statutory Bodies

Voluntary Organisations

Figure 15.2 Highlights the untapped resources (minimally connected black lines) and the concentration of effort (densely connected grey lines) within the Police

within the police creating a broad and deep managerial reach. Yet hidden resources were discovered within their broader networks, particularly in the voluntary sector, that could have been more effectively leveraged to support victims and reduce criminal acts. Recognizing, aligning and integrating these key players can advance the collective goals and improve decision making. In some instances, the lack of critical information due largely to the fact that existing resources were “hidden in plain sight” proved detrimental to the larger collective goals. The challenge here was for the police to cultivate more expansive links with their supporting organizations and to look to ways of aligning their own internal and well developed tribal networks with the formal hierarchical (authority) structures of their own and others’ organizations. The importance of this latter point is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that when it was noted that two new recruits to the police investigation team were still more “externally focused” than their more “experienced” colleagues, the light-hearted (but nevertheless telling) comment was that “they would soon be re-educated”. Again we see that building bridges to other organizations is waved away in favour of warring cultural factions competing over who will be king of a hill. Insularity reigns when it comes down to protecting one’s own organizational turf. To combat this powerful cultural norm, recognition and reward systems must be in place to ensure effective knowledge transfer.

Anti-Social Behaviour in Mansfield Partnerships may begin by “shaking hands” at the executive level but more oversight and recognition at middle to lower levels is needed to sustain successful operations when it comes to decreasing crime and reversing anti-social behaviour.


335 COLLABORATORS

Mansfield DC Health

Forestry Commission

CPS

Generic Roles Schools Police Connexions

Fire

Fire: Tom Hiskins

NRF

Left Position Social Landlords

NRF: Jean Bennett

Business

NMT:Paul Sutcliffe

Notts CC Voluntary Sector

NMT Public Other

Marti Lean

Finding: Significant collaborators making the partnership work.

Figure 15.3 “Hidden” key collaborators operating below the radar of the multiple hierarchies

For example, a network analysis of the collaborative effort tackling Anti-Social Behaviour in Mansfield as part of a broader project reviewing the networking supporting the Mansfield Local Strategic Partnership revealed that whilst perhaps not unsurprisingly the Anti-Social Behaviour co-ordination team were critical for making the whole collaborative effort work there were “hidden” strategic connections between the team and the Housing Department around innovation. The Police were critical players and well connected across the heterarchy or “virtual organization”, yet there were more “hidden” (and therefore untapped) key collaborators across the organization in the Neighborhood Management Team, the business community, the Fire Service and Connexions. The findings and insights gained in this study have subsequently led to revisions of working practices and recognition for the “hidden” key players. But this heterarchy is now seeking to systematically review governance and operational processes by applying the thinking intentions technique – Effective Intelligence – in those areas identified from the network analysis where improvements are needed most. It has also experimented successfully with “hard-wiring” data systems and incorporating a technology infrastructure into the heterarchy itself. A web-based performance management system enables all agencies involved to input their “siloed” performance data so that collaborative plans can be monitored, adjusted and measured as a collective responsibility.

DISCUSSION These cases suggest that the assumptions made by managers, politicians and leaders are very different from the reality on the ground as echoed in David Cameron’s lament that the police should become more aggressive in breaking down barriers, getting past political correctness from above or ploddishness from below (Edwards & Skidmore, 2006). Mr Cameron would

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be pleased to know that the new cases presented here demonstrate that relatively junior staff played a decisively important role in delivering service, but unfortunately went unrecognized. And, with a dearth of recognition, such worthy behaviour may altogether cease. In the LAPD case, we learned that if the bigger picture is not effectively communicated to all parties, then people and their organizations lose sight and can become lost in the fog of their own self-interest. Collectively, this manifests itself as a deteriorating state of the relationship between the police, the public and politicians, wherein the police become an arm of the state rather than a servant of the law. Mutual suspicion of each other’s motives and legitimacy can muddy perceptions between a reasonable public wishing to have an authentic say in how they are governed and unreasonable interference in matters that are properly the operational concerns of the police. Our discussion centres on how people think about the value of public service and the degree to which an individual’s self interest and taxes are forfeited in exchange for powers that arise from the collective interest of having a police force to ensure the well-being of civil society. Historically, Adam Smith espoused that individual self-interest alone would be sufficient to generate the value of a good or service, e.g. it was simply the price a customer was willing to pay and the price at which a producer would sell. For example, national defence protects all of us irrespective of how much we may want it. This came to be known as “traditional management” and it oversaw the distribution of public services. In the 1980s, under New Public Management (NPM), the public value of public goods was subjected to measurement by importing the efficiency techniques from the private sector. The emphasis here was on cost effectiveness for the consumers of public services. Public value was reconceived as what was measurable and the proliferation of measurement techniques often had no bearing on determining the actual public value of the service. The perceived inconsistencies between what is measured and what is delivered led to dissatisfaction, misunderstanding and a further rethinking about the nature of public value. The resulting “Public Value” model addresses these complexities within a pluralistic institutional milieu and takes into account their multiple agendas and the negotiated reality we know today as “public service”. For example, the comparison in Table 15.3 is adapted from Kelly, Mulgan and Muers (2002). Their thinking about process parallels our discussion on heterarchical structure herein presented. I have taken the liberty of adapting their input in Table 15.3 (bolded) to indicate these parallels and to suggest the incorporation of the term “heterarchy” as a more accurate structural description of the inter-institutional cooperation on the ground required for the Public Value Model. I have altered their language to make it more compatible with the thinking in this chapter. As you can see, the authors were moving “in theory” toward a heterarchical structure, although they didn’t call it by name. As they saw it, the task at hand was to choreograph the devolution of power so that upwards accountability to government in the Traditional Model can be steadily replaced by greater downwards accountability to users and communities in the Public Value Model. They were moving away from mindless performance metrics in the NPM model and more toward more mindful measures regarding what is actually delivered on the ground. When our five cases are compared to the Public Value model in Table 15.3, it quickly becomes apparent that effective policing and governance will involve cooperation not just between public agencies but also among private and voluntary sectors. One of the very real difficulties in partnership working is engrained ambivalence or cognitive dissonance, e.g. the police are reluctant to let other agencies take on more responsibilities. Casting a wide


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Table 15.3 Evolution of Public Value. Adapted from Kelly, Mulgan & Muers (2002) Model

Traditional

NPM

Public Value

Public Interest

Defined by politicians

Consumer choice

Public deliberation

Performance Objective

Managing inputs

Measuring inputs and outputs

Outputs, satisfaction, trust, legitimacy, maintaining trust (networks)

Accountability

Legislation/policy

Contracts

Citizens: oversight Customers: users Taxpayers: funders

Delivery

Hierarchical

Market

Networks in the service of heterarchy

Ethos Public Participation

Monopoly

Market

Pluralistic

Limited to Voting

Limited to surveys

Multi-faceted

Goal of Managers

Political

Performance targets

Renegotiation

net may include up to 500 or 600 people who belong to as many as 30 or 40 separate organizations all with varying protocols for what it means to have prosecuted and completed a task successfully. The starting point for creating alignment in order to effectively treat problems and improve conditions has less to do with the world of authority, formal rules and bureaucratic procedures within a silo and across silos, and more to do with creating and deepening the trust among the committed participants from different organizations. It is about creating the opportunity for inter-agency informal understandings to blossom and grow, not punishing them for doing so (as is often the case). Nevertheless, police may be reluctant to compromise any of their operational independence to become inter-dependent with other agencies even if it means that they would have increased capacity to get the job done. Another challenge with multiple agency collaboration is “mission creep”. By recognizing additional responsibilities, the police’s capacity may be spread too thinly across an expanding range of priorities. If allowed to go too far, the police can become lost in a fog of purpose. So how do we enable the police to prioritize, to trust and to sensibly collaborate in order to sustain performance over time and through natural rates of turnover? One of the most promising techniques is Collaborative Excellence or CE. Why CE is so promising is precisely because it consists of mapping and measuring invisible trust – thereby making it visible and accountable in complex partnerships; matching it up with existing processes or, in the case of no process, designing processes to augment where trust exists alone. Knowing where trust is and where it isn’t, is a first step to building upon what already exists but is under-utilized; under-utilized because trust relationships are not seen unless they are mapped. Wherever trust exists, it can and should be used to build sustainable processes going forward. Where trust is missing is an eye-opening opportunity to build a bridge, first by examining why trust is lacking or betrayed, and then how it can be developed through a series of sensible interventions. When formal processes are designed without the

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benefit of this kind of knowledge, that is, of knowing who people trust, then you will have a process devoid of cultural context and understanding. A process that may be formally “on the books” but in reality never used or tested is in the end just needlessly consuming resources that could be more profitably spent elsewhere. Why CE is so unique has more to do with the way it supports individuals who are housed in siloed hierarchies; it enables them to build more effective connections among each other. Sustaining hierarchical connection amounts to sustained heterarchical governance and uses the power of collective thinking to build effective trust where it is lacking.

CONCLUDING REMARKS CE is an important approach in facilitating more effective cooperation between organizations, but more work lies ahead. In particular, what kind of leadership is required for heterarchy and what does it look like? Most traditional leadership models are based on a hierarchy, not heterarchy and focus on the typical “one leader” approach with an emphasis on overt positional “power”. In heterarchical governance there are many moving parts, each with a leader; the sheer complexity and scale of it far exceeding what traditional leadership may be able to do. And we are daily reminded of the shortcomings of the traditional model by looking to and learning from our recent past (e.g., DETR and DHS). What may be required for dealing with the greater scale inherent in heterarchy is a similarly scalable idea of leadership. Scaling is achieved through networks, so it stands to reason that leveraging a network of leaders that can cooperate and coordinate will lead to improved efficiencies, delivering a greater good for the common collective. This is true infrastructure and it is scaled to heterarchical dimensions. The real lesson here is that the recombinant properties of a leadership network are just as adaptable, agile and important to understand as the very enterprise processes they govern. The two go hand in hand. Regardless of the name of the model, the key point is this: just because you have an organizational chart at your fingertips does not mean you have a cultural map – the map is not the territory. Rather, it is an intelligent network of leadership integrated and accompanied by a meeting of organizational minds to solve a common social problem that results in public value. And when we lack it is when we experience the lurches, lunges and false starts in public governance. What I have tried to do in this chapter is to show how theory can and does explain the shortcomings of traditional models and how the model of heterarchy informs what actions are required for generating practical solutions in the public service arena. It may be ancient history that tells us that networks have us hard-wired to each other, but it is present history that is going to demonstrate it in the way we govern ourselves in the public sector. Until recently, ancient history was all we really needed to look to for lessons from the past. The history books and business texts teach us that performance is local and measured in narrow terms of human capital – intelligence, education, experience and acquired skills. Collaborating across organizations is to behave in ways we have never done before. So now more than ever we have to look to the invisible ways we are linked and to build networks or liaisons across organizations, not just within them, because what we are asked to accomplish goes well beyond what any one organization is capable of doing on its own. To not acknowledge and/or measure these liaisons would not only be irresponsible but dangerous.


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The measurement and valuation of these liaisons or networks is called social capital and today is given lip service in lieu of being rigourously measured. That’s why people complain when they don’t get recognized for the work that they do because some of the work that they do is done in networks that span across organizations. This component is the missing link in a performance equation that up to now has only valued human capital as measured individually and hierarchically. The very nature of traditional performance measures can be described as hierarchical, vertical and silo-esque – people are measured by those to whom they report. By recognizing the limitations of this approach and combining it with more “horizontal” social capital measures, the intellectual assets of a whole community or region can be asserted and assessed as well as quantified. If we incorporate these measures in order to deliver public value, then we can reward people for running to, not away from civic problems. At the very least, this way of thinking holds the key to neutralizing the destructive networks of international crime, fraud and terrorism. At best, this powerful about-face and the potential it carries with it may at last neutralize the myopic exclusivity of silo mentality – that last barrier to change that we recognize as cultural arrogance. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the public service agencies to break down barriers not only between their own local set of agencies but also with the very public they serve. It is also incumbent upon the police to demonstrate that they can create public value, not just protect it. And, it is incumbent upon both the police and the community to be a stronger voice in assessing, managing and directing the delivery of public services. Differences in public opinion will always exist, but it is in the adjudication of those differences among a pluralistic constituency that yields engaging civic dialogue about the delivery and value of public services and ultimately to the way communities are governed. In this chapter I have discussed a fundamental rethinking of traditional governance arguing for the primacy of networks in understanding reciprocal trust within communities. I have suggested that network analysis is a valid tool for assessing networks as a legitimate form of governance. Finally, as networks are mapped and measured, they can then be artfully and smartly integrated with traditional hierarchy to produce a novel form of governance – heterarchy – which is the best theory has to offer for navigating in today’s small, flat world. The data I have presented here illustrate the possibilities in these prototypical situations of heterarchical governance. However, I regard these efforts as only a beginning.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING Bosk, C. (1978). Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Coase, R. (1937). The nature of the firm, Economica, 4, 386. Chandler, A. (1977). The Visible Hand. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Edwards, C. & Skidmore, P. (2006). A Force for Change. London: DEMOS. Retrieved on 15 July 2007 from: http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/aforceforchange Granovetter, M. (1983). Economic action and social structure: A theory of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 481–510. Hawkins, J. (2006). Networks of trust – making partnerships work. In A. Buonfino & G. Mulgan (eds), Porcupines in Winter (pp. 157–60). London: The Young Foundation. Kelly, G., Mulgan, G. & Muers, S. (2002). Creating Public Value. London: Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Retrieved on 16 July 2007 from: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/seminars/ public value/index.asp

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Lévi-Strauss, C. (1955). The mathematics of man. International Social Science Bulletin, 6, 581–90. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969). The Elementary Structures of Kinship. (English translation.) Boston: Beacon Press (Original French publication, 1949). McGregor, D. (1957). The human side of enterprise. Management Review, 46, 22–8. O’Neill, R., DeAngelis, D., Waide, J. & Allen, T. (1986). A Hierarchical Concept of Ecosystems. N.J.: Princeton University Press. Ouchi, W. (1981). Theory Z. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing. Powell, W. (1990). Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization. Organizational Behavior, 12, 295–336. Richardson, G.B. (1972). The organization of industry. Economic Journal, 82, 883–96. Sahlins, M. (1961). The segmentary lineage: An organization for predatory expansion. American Anthropologist, 63, 322–45. Sahlins, M. (1963). Poor man, rich man, big man, chief: political types in Melanesia and Polynesia. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5, 285–303. Salthe, S. (1985). Evolving Hierarchical Systems. New York: Columbia University Press. Smith, A. (1976). The Wealth of Nations. Gloucestershire: Clarendon Press. Stark, D. (1999). Heterarchy: distributing authority and organizing diversity. In J. Clippinger (ed.), The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprise (pp.153–180). Los Angeles: Jossey-Boss. Stephenson, K. (1989). Rethinking centrality. Social Networks, 11, 1–37. Stephenson, K. (1999). Networks. In R.C. Dorf (ed.), The Technology Management Handbook (pp. 40–45). CRC Press. Retrieved on 16 July 2007 from: http://www.drkaren.us/pdfs/KS 1998 CRC Nets.pdf Stephenson, K. (2004). Towards a theory of government. In H. McCarthy, P. Miller & P. Skidmore (eds), Network Logic: Who Governs in an Interconnected World? (pp. 37–48). London: DEMOS. Weick, K.E. (1977). Organization design: organizations as self-designing systems. Organizational Dynamics, 6, 31–45. Williamson, O. (1975). Markets and Hierarchies. New York: The Free Press. Williamson, O. (1984). The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: The Free Press. Williamson, O. (1993). Transaction cost economics and organization theory. Industrial and Corporate Change, 2, 107–56. Wolfe, T. (1987). The Bonfire of the Vanities. New York: Bantam Books.

CHAPTER 16

Prioritizing Crime Problems in Belgium, According to Strategic Police Planning: Developing the National Police Security Picture for Belgium by Means of a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model Martine Pattyn and Paul Wouters Federal Police Brussels, Belgium

INTRODUCTION This article aims to present the application of a multi-criteria decision-making model for the framing of a general security picture for prioritizing crime problems1 by the Belgian police. The growing complexity of security issues in our fast developing societies poses a real challenge to those in government who are responsible for effective security and criminal justice policy making. It also demands an increasing level of expertise and a high degree of professionalism from the police who bear responsibility for the practical and effective implementation of these policies. In every modern society, varieties of security issues arise or are already on the agenda. Some of these are very visible and cause immediate disturbances or harm, while others remain unarticulated, but affect the social and economic fabric of the society. In tackling these security issues, unavoidable choices are made, whether consciously or not. At the strategic level of police resource allocation, those in charge of developing 1

By crime problems we imply “security problems”, as the model includes crime problems as well as road safety. The term “crime problems” was chosen for this article because of a wider interpretation of “security problems” in English.


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police policy and elaborating a policing plan should, therefore, be able to set priorities, which ideally must be the result of a very well-founded and rational decision-making process. Within a democracy it is not only essential to acquire the information needed to map out all relevant security problems, you also need to adopt an objective, scientific method that makes the reasoning behind the selection of priorities transparent. Consequently it is no longer possible to make policy off the top of your head. The importance of proceeding by means of a well-structured method as a reference for decision making is illustrated by Pal (1997, p. 1): Citizens expect many things from their governments, but at the very least they expect intelligent decision making. Perhaps even more importantly however they expect those decisions to flow from some general position, or vision. Governments can be very decisive without being terribly intelligent. Intelligent decisions come from operating within some consistent framework, however general. . . In short we demand that our governments have policies.

Such a soundly established formulation of priorities requires three conditions: the policy should be developed according to a well-considered method within a policy cycle, which itself is based upon reliable information and for which the appropriate techniques are used. Only under these conditions can the objectivity of the critical choices and their evaluation throughout the planning cycle be guaranteed. The ranking of crime problems and its subsequent analysis, as used within the Belgian Federal Police, is presented here as an exercise that might constitute a model for preparing a national security picture. This picture, in turn, serves to underpin the setting of priorities for a national strategic police plan.

SETTING PRIORITIES IS THE ONLY WAY OUT Setting Priorities for Police Services: Fashion Trend or Necessity? From the government, as well as from all the authorities concerned with security, pertinent, effective and efficient policy making is expected. Efficient policy making can be translated into the following requirements: r tackling the proper issues, meaning making the right choices and being able to argue the options taken (pertinence); r tackling these issues successfully or employing the proper means and methods (effectiveness); r doing this in an economically responsible way (efficiency). A well-studied approach is also required on account of democratic or legitimate, professional and economic considerations: r Each police force in a democratic constitutional state is becoming increasingly aware that security is a common responsibility of the authorities, the democratically elected representatives of the people and the public themselves (social organizations, companies, citizens, etc.). To be able to provide a balanced and equitable policing for all segments of the population, policy makers and police services have to set clear, explicit priorities which are known to and accepted by society as a whole. In doing so, they have to take

PRIORITIZING CRIME PROBLEMS IN BELGIUM

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into account eventual opposing interests in society on the one hand and the need to use police resources as efficiently as possible on the other hand. r The growing complexity of the security problem demands increasing expertise or a higher degree of professionalism from the services that are confronted with providing it. This implies that the police have to fulfil their core duty, namely combating insecurity, with much expertise and that this core duty should in essence be entrusted to the police who can, of course, participate in different forms of collaboration with external partners. It is obvious that structural and organizational features of the police services play an important part in pursuing policy and setting priorities. For example, if a police service has a wellestablished drugs section, there will be a lot of data and information available on this topic. In such a case, there is a danger that drugs as a security problem will be considered far more important than any other problem on which much less information is at hand. A critical view on the link between organizational features, availability of the information and prioritizing is absolutely necessary. For this reason, it is highly important to include information that is independent from the police organization: information that is not generated by the police themselves (i.e. from external sources). Therefore it is crucial that a well-founded argument or reasoning is put forward that is demonstrably the result of police professionalism. r The resources allocated to security are limited. Consequently, we cannot permit ourselves to waste resources by not dealing with the most relevant problems or by dealing with the security problem in an ineffective, inefficient manner. Given an ever-growing demand for police services and a limited budget, it is vital to set unambiguous priorities. Therefore, the economic constraints and their bearing on policy decisions need to be transparent.

Who Decides on Crime Priorities and Who Takes Part in the Decision-Making Process? In recent years there has been a growing awareness among those in charge in the political and judicial realms in Belgium of the importance of strategic policy making and planning in providing police security. As a result of the latest police reform this instigation towards professionalism and modernization of the police policy machinery has been legally embedded. Policy makers who would wish to act wisely by avoiding ideological a priori judgments and want to create an information-based policy with a reasonable prospect of success, will need to take all relevant factors into account in deciding on crime priorities. In order to make this transparent, it is necessary to evolve towards a policy-making process that has built-in evaluation points to assess the results or policy outcome afterwards. This implies a policy that is consistent, scientifically founded and based on professional knowhow and expertise. In this way the police in Belgium can be considered to be moving towards evidence-based policy making.

Evidence-Based Policy What is the true sense of evidence-based policy and what are its aims? Evidence-based policy seeks to ensure that the policy pursued is taking the real problems in hand and that those responsible for it can demonstrate and argue convincingly their choices

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and approach. It means that a policy based on purely “political” or ideological objectives is left behind.2 As a consequence of these requirements, an evidence-based policy must underpin the presentation of choices with solid arguments or “evidence”. The outcome of substantiating and monitoring a policy based on evidence is to make the entire policy process follow a smooth course by introducing explicit evaluation at each phase or decision in the policy-making process. Built-in monitoring and measurable evaluation are absolutely essential for rational policy making. Furthermore, evidence-based policy can send a signal or have a warning function; for specific, well-oriented information can indicate sudden changes, the presence of new technical or scientific findings, deviations in the implementation of the process, and so on. As the British Government White Paper puts it: Policy decisions should be based on sound evidence. The raw ingredient of evidence is information. Good quality policy making depends on high quality information, derived from a variety of sources: expert knowledge, existing domestic and international research, existing statistics, stakeholder consultation, evaluation of previous policies, new research, if appropriate, or secondary sources, including the internet. Evidence can also include analysis of the outcome of consultation, costing of policy options and the results of economic or statistical modelling. To be as effective as possible, evidence needs to be provided by, and/or be interpreted by, experts in the field working closely with policy makers. (Cabinet Office, 1999b, 7.1)

Consequently, the specific application of evidence-based policy via intelligence-led policing on the one hand and knowledge-based policing on the other hand, is a natural step. In broad terms, one can take the position that evidence-based policing is equal to using strategic analysis, irrespective of the information sources employed. Within policy studies, the phrase policy analysis is sometimes used to refer to the way in which evidence is generated and integrated into the policy-making process. This represents analysis for the policy process, which needs to be distinguished from analysis of the policy process: analysis for the policy process encompasses the use of analytical techniques and research to inform the various stages of the policy process. (Nutley & Webb, 2000, p. 15)

Evidently policy making is not an exact science. Sometimes the use of evidence in a policy context should be put into perspective. For this reason, Davies, Nutley and Smith (2000, p. 353) suggest using the concepts of “evidence-informed or even evidence-aware policy”.

Is the need for evidence-based policy recognized? In the public sector, as well as in the private sector, there are several indications that there is a need for evidence-based policy. A few examples make this clear. In the international scientific literature of the first half of the 1980s, a myriad of articles were published on methods and techniques for support of policy analysis and decision 2

Most likely, politicians will continue to react to sudden (sensational) events (over-) exposed by the media, and police services will continue to execute specific actions in reaction to such events. But this does not impede whatsoever the setting of strategic priorities on the long term in a strategic planning document, which is validated by the authorities and the parliament, as is the case in Belgium. During the whole period of the strategic plan the police services will be able to work in depth on these well considered and justified priorities.


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making processing.3 Currently, there are still many handbooks on management, policy making, strategic planning and all the analysis that goes with them. In March 1999 a White Paper on modernizing the government was released in Great Britain: The Modernising Government White Paper (Cabinet Office, 1999a). On the basis of this policy management has been further developed in the report Professional Policy Making for the Twenty-First Century (Cabinet Office, 1999b). According to this report the core competencies of a professional policy are the following: “forward looking, outward looking, innovative and creative, using evidence, inclusive4 , joined up, evaluates and reviews”. The first five requirements are consistent with the proposition that a policy should be based upon analyses of relevant information from the past, the present and the future, coming both from inside and outside the own organization. The Home Office has since 1957 been funding scientific research for the benefit of security policy. Specifically, in 1992 the Police Research Group was established in support of security policy with the mission “to carry out research that addressed the needs of ministers, officials and the police themselves” (Davies et al., 2000, p. 236). In previous times the scientific research was rather academic and the police were more an object of scientific research interest than actively involved in the process, i.e. who the police were, rather than what the police did. In the Netherlands a similar role has been attributed to the WODC.5 In Australia the Office of Strategic Crime Assessments is in charge of making strategic assessments that help “to create a better-informed context for strategic decision making on policies and priorities relevant to the Commonwealth’s law enforcement interests” (Wardlaw, 1999, p. 2). Here as well, it is a clear objective to assess the outcome of these risk analyses in prioritizing policy issues. In the private sector too, policy analysis based on evidence is in demand. Here, this particular component of policy management is more and more contracted out to specialized consultants. This is because of the growing specificity of the techniques used and methods that are needed for proper analysis and for a correct interpretation of the evidence or information. For example, the marketing strategy of commercial enterprises is ever more based on surveys carried out by external data processing agencies. Lawyers use analysts in order to conduct operational analyses on their court files; selection bureaux hire statisticians for multivariate analysis on the profiles of the job applicants; more and more companies use management information systems, and so on.

Prioritizing as a Component of the Policy Cycle Policy development Defining priorities is a crucial phase within a much larger planning and policy cycle. It is no longer acceptable that a security issue can be put on the political agenda by an interest group just like that. In short, the strategic planning process should be structured in a logical, transparent way so that priorities can be ascertained, verified and accepted by all the people involved. Therefore a well-thought-out policy methodology is indispensable.

3 4 5

See a selection of works in the Reference section. Meaning taking into account the needs of those the policy is meant for. Scientific research and documentation centre of the Ministry of Justice, The Hague, the Netherlands.

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The actual development of actions takes place within the policy cycle that comprises three steps or phases: policy development, policy implementation and policy evaluation. In the phase of the policy development, the policy is conceived, thought about and described. After the identification of all possibly problematic fields and the depiction of the threatening nature of these issues, the prioritizing process, meaning the selection of priority problems, starts.

Balancing the spatial levels Security varies according to the spatial level or scale one is considering. International problems are of a different nature to problems on a neighbourhood level. In processing the information, local issues and national issues should be balanced. Regardless of the structural features of its police organization, each country has to achieve an equilibrium in this delicate exercise. Supra-local police services are sometimes inclined to stress the supra-local problems, while the local organizations emphasize their own local issues and feel resistant to collaborating in supra-local matters. Shaping a policy to take on security problems can be done at different levels of the police organization. The general principles of the prioritizing process are not specific for each level. The nature and characteristics of the encountered problems, on the contrary, may be different according to the level. As a result, policy cycles on different levels have to be geared to one another by setting agreements and having to respect a certain hierarchy (vertically and horizontally) in priorities and objectives. In that way, the national level may have to regard the priorities that are laid down at the international level, and the local level may have to take into account the nationally set priorities.

Prioritizing: Science or Management? In the methodology of policy development the priorities that are settled on for policy strategy are a result of a previously conducted problem identification and analysis. Inevitably, it is the quality of the problem analysis that will determine the quality of the prioritization process. A few pressure points can be identified.

Threats to the scientific character of analysis Problem analysis could be a purely scientific, objective process. In questioning the scientific credibility of strategic analysis, we do not share the postmodernist principle that claims that policy making cannot possibly have an objective basis and is always biased (Rochefort & Cobb, p. 7).6 However, in particular with regard to crime problems a very considerable proportion of criminality would remain invisible, without the contribution of the police 6

By “objectivity” of strategic analysis we understand the controllability and transparency of the analysis process. In giving the different choices that are made throughout the analysis process (for example, the number and nature of the analysed security problems, the choice of the variables to characterize them, the choice of the assessment and classification methods and so on (see below, the Belgian national police security picture)) and a solid underpinning with well-considered arguments, the analysis process is, as it were, objectified. This approach does ensure transparency and the possibility to verify the subjective decision moments in the analysis process.


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services. The choice of priorities and management are mutually dependent: crime problems influence the decisions taken by the management, and at the same time, the possibilities of analysing problems are in turn oriented by strategic choices. The choice of the type of crimes that will be tackled, the achievements of the police and the courts, as well as strategic decisions taken throughout the entire police organization will undoubtedly influence the picture. Setting priorities is therefore not based exclusively on scientific results, but also on the results of a series of political decisions, as well as on the strategic choices of the entire police management process.

Information as a basis for setting priorities The setting of priorities and their objectivity are very much influenced by the nature of the information available for conducting the prior problem analysis. Certain important points should be kept in mind while considering and interpreting the results of the problem analysis that finally determines the choice of priorities. 1. First and foremost, there is the question of which crime issues are analysed. The first steps in the analytical process as defined by Wardlaw (1999, pp. 3–4) refer to these decisions as the phase of “deciding to decide” and of “deciding how to decide”. This choice is determined by: r the nature, extent and gravity of the problem itself. Crime problems may be objectively discernible, but they may also involve emotions and perceptions and in that case they are more subjective; r the availability of results from scientific research that are able to indicate which problems arise and what their component parts and explanations are; r the valid standards and rules in society and the way these are perceived at a given moment (we are particularly conscious of the problem involving the children in Belgium in 1996–97, the Dutroux case). The influence of certain subgroups in society is decisive here; r the affinity of the police service with certain subjects, which are determined first and foremost by the mission and the values of the service, its degree of autonomy and its democratic attitude, but also the degree of specialization or task distribution arrangements with partners. 2. However, we should not confine ourselves to already known security problems. Detecting possible new issues, risks and threats is certainly equally important. It is very difficult to detect such latent risks, as they are by definition not very visible. Intelligence techniques are the most appropriate here. 3. The question then arises of which information we are going to use? Should we just consider police sources or other sources too? Within the police, should we look only at recorded crime, or also at victim surveys, subjective feelings of insecurity, etc.? Should we look just at developments within our own country or should we look at what is happening with our neighbours? Should we also take qualitative trends into account, such as the impressions detectives have as regards trends, shifts, potential risks, new target groups – or is it only hard figures that count? 4. It is not only the information itself that is important, but also the way in which this information is collected. The angle from which we explore the information will also

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play a part in defining the choice of the problems to be dealt with. The angle from which we approach an issue not only has to do with the wideness of the scope, but also with precision. What is the police service able to see? How good is their information and how well is it managed? What intelligence do they have? Can they call upon specialized services, special police techniques? Does the law permit the employment of this mode of information gathering? Can subjective problems be detected too? In other words , how effective are the methods of detection and information collection at their disposal? The structure of the police service also plays an important role here. Can information flow from the top to the bottom, but also in the other direction, bottom-up? We will now examine these issues in the context of strategic planning in the Belgian Federal Police.

STRATEGIC PLANNING IN THE BELGIAN FEDERAL POLICE The Belgian national security plan (NSP) contains the priorities for the federal and the local police7 which have to be realized during the planning period (2004–2007); it is set jointly by the ministers of Justice and Home Affairs. This plan is also considered as the strategic plan for the federal police and encompasses the objectives for tackling crime problems on the one hand and the objectives in the framework of organization development on the other. The proceedings and the means in order to achieve these objectives are stated as well. Once the strategic priorities are set on the national level, they are further detailed in yearly action plans with operational objectives and concrete measures. The operational services of the federal police implement these action plans, which are followed up on a regular basis. Every four years the local police draw up a local security plan – covering the police zone – with strategic objectives that may include some specific local issues, but must also take the priorities set at the national level into account. In this way, the national priorities are actually worked on throughout the whole Belgian police organization. In order to help the ministers of Home Affairs and Justice to underpin the selection of security priorities, a national police security picture (NPSP) was developed. This picture represents a general ranking of all crime problems according to their gravity. The first national police security picture was conducted in 2002. It provided input for the definition of priorities for the national security plan 2003–2004. In 2004 a second national police security picture was carried out. However, in the course of the project the terms of the national security plan (NSP) were set at a period of four years in combination with a yearly adjustment of the operational short-term police actions. Therefore, this second national police security picture which offers an update on the crime issues in Belgium is mainly used for ensuring the realization of police operations specified in the framework of the NSP and for the fine-tuning of the priorities. In 2006 a third national police security picture was set out. This picture will be used as input for defining the priorities for the NSP 2008–2011. The methodology and results of the national police security picture will be described below. It is meant as an example of well-founded support for prioritizing within the Belgian police policy at the national level. The method for realizing a general security picture, with crime problems ranked according to their gravity, can be used at all policy levels. It is useful for general strategic planning, 7

Since the police reform of 2001, 1 federal police service and 196 separate local police services have been created. The local and federal police are governed by the same law, regulations and statutes and are mutually connected by a functional collaboration.


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as well as for more specific action plans and police operations, and this at the international, national and local level. In support of the planning process at the local and regional levels similar security pictures are conducted. This model can also be applied for ranking criminal organizations and offender groups. During the last few years, progress has been made in combating several types of criminal offences.8 Considering that the police policy is in fact focused on the most pertinent problems, applying this type of analysis can only contribute to their effectiveness. The choices of the policy and of the strategic police plan are founded on information originating from objective sources on the one hand and from expert estimations on the other. Expert knowledge is mainly employed to estimate certain aspects of crime for which objective data are either insufficient or unavailable. Proceeding as such, information and knowledge are combined in a transparent way in order to give the policy makers all possible information to substantiate their policy choices and to ensure the transparency of the process. Therefore the national police security picture could be considered as an attempt to combine aspects of intelligence-led policing (ILP) and knowledge-based policing (KBP) so that this approach is to lead to an evidence- (in the broadest meaning of the word) based policy.

OBJECTIVES AND CONCEPT OF THE NATIONAL POLICE SECURITY PICTURE Objectives of the National Police Security Picture The national police security picture gives a general overview of the most important crime problems and traffic accidents that occur in Belgium and that belong to the realm of responsibility of the police authorities. This picture is the outcome of a general scanning or diagnosis of these security problems.9 They are described on the basis of a choice of features where each represents a certain aspect of the problem’s impact or of its gravity or problematic character. The crime problems are mutually compared on the basis of selected distinctive features and are ordered according to their gravity. As the police crime problems are studied from the angle of their impact, no statements are made on the threatening character of the offenders or criminal groups responsible, nor on the vulnerability of possible targets. In the near future, the national police security picture will evolve into a full risk analysis, in which in addition to the existing analysis of their “impact”, the components of threat from possible “offenders” and criminal groups and the vulnerability of the targets will also be included. In order to achieve this, a methodology has recently been worked out.

8

This progress can be measured by various concrete results, for example:

r The crime statistics show that the figures for burglaries fell from 85,000 in 2000 to 60,000 in 2004, car theft decreased from 37,000 to 18,500 cases and car-jackings from 1,500 to 700.

r On the other hand, the police are detecting more: each year ± 700 criminal organizations are detected, of which 300 are dismantled (annual report on organized crime 2005).

r Moreover, 86.4% of the population thinks that the police are doing well to very well and confidence in the police rose by 4% 9

over a two-year period (Van den Steen & Van den Bogaerde, 2004). In this article also called “crime problems”.

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Method of Ranking The objective of the national police security picture is to rank all police crime problems in terms of their gravity. Since “gravity” can be expressed by means of various criteria, a method of multi-criteria decision making was opted for. Multi-criteria decision-making methods make it possible to rank problems according to their respective values or scores on several different aspects of discretion. Most often, the evaluation criteria that are considered relevant relate to very distinct characteristics of each problem and are most often expressed in different measurement units. Besides the more “technical” criteria that can be objectively measured (for example, the number of deaths), other criteria that ask for expert assessment (for example, the degree of organization required to commit a certain type of crime or the damage to public health) can also be integrated in the model. Due to the problem of different units of measurement, the use of a weighted sum (traditionally applied to tackle such questions) offers no solution here. Multi-criteria methods make it possible to establish for a set of items with different characteristics a general ranking that incorporates the interpretations/preferences of the decision makers with regards to different characteristics.

The Promothée method Among the various existing methods of multi-criteria decision aids (MCDA), the Promothée10 method was chosen. The Promothée method starts from an assessment of the differences between two crime problems on each criterion, and afterwards proceeds to a synthesis of all these comparisons in pairs. In this way a global ranking, across all the criteria concurrently, of all crime problems, is obtained. The starting point is a basic matrix with data where the rows represent alternative choices (in this case the police crime problems) and the columns represent the weighted criteria. The basic data can be of qualitative or quantitative nature. For the assessment of the differences, in practice a special function for each criterion is used. The criteria can also be weighted depending on the discretion or appreciation of the policy maker. We will briefly illustrate the method. For a detailed mathematical description of the method we would refer the reader to Brans and Mareschal (1994), Mareschal (1987) and Brans, Mareschal and Vincke (1984). In order to make choices among different alternatives; the appraiser must go through four phases of decision. He or she should determine: r which alternatives (in this case police crime problems) should be mutually compared; r which factors can express the gravity of a crime problem and hence can be selected as criteria for appraisal; r to what extent each criterion should influence the general assessment. In other words, what is the relative weight that the appraiser wants to accord to each criterion; r how should observed differences between crime problems be evaluated? 10

In the study by Professors Vincke and Maréschal (see Vincke 1999a), all multi-criteria ranking methods in use were thoroughly evaluated. At that moment, the Promothée method came out as the most appropriate. Research is being conducted to evaluate different multi-criteria methods.


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Choosing the crime problems When choosing a new family car, one could draw up a list of all existing motor vehicle models. Yet, a number of cars do not qualify straight away and the list can just be restricted to cars of the family car type. Lorries, Formula One racing cars, ceremonial vehicles etc. are already excluded. Analogously for the classification of security problems, first a decision should be made as to which security problems will be taken into consideration (for example, will drug use be included or not?). The list of security problems should give a complete picture of all the issues that could possibly be eligible as a priority police matter. In relation to police security problems an additional difficulty arises: one has to determine in which way the different issues can be ordered into (sub-) groups. For example, are all motor vehicle thefts taken at large, or do we make a distinction between car-jacking and “home-jacking” (breaking into a house when the owners are present and stealing, often with violence, the keys of the car, before stealing the car). In the national police security picture some problems can be divided into separate sub-problems depending on whether they need a different/specific police approach. The choice of security problems rests upon the intrinsic comparability of the nature of the criminal offences. For example, the data on indecent assault could be combined with those of rape, but cannot be put into the same category as parental kidnapping although both are offences against individuals.

Choosing the criteria The chosen criteria should reflect all relevant dimensions of the gravity of crime problems and therefore should be as exhaustive, coherent and non-redundant as possible. Each crime problem is appraised according to the same set of criteria. Once the crime problems and assessment criteria are chosen, all necessary data for the basic matrix can be collected. If for certain criteria recorded data are lacking, one can call upon experts in the field to give their appraisal of the problem in order to obtain a sensible measurement (count, estimation or score) for each criterion. Possibly for some criteria there are no data, even after consultation with the experts. The model accepts a certain degree of missing data (maximum 10%) without any difficulty.

Choosing the weights In the general assessment of the gravity of the distinct crime problems, the multi-criteria model allows for the attribution of a specific weight to each criterion. The choice of weights is a direct translation of the way in which the appraisers estimate the distinct dimensions and aspects (criteria) of the problem under evaluation. Their appraisal or discretion is a function of how they estimate the part of the given criterion in the global gravity of the issue. By contrast with some other multi-criteria methods that only allow one to order the criteria, the Promothée method gives the opportunity to attribute to each criterion a precise weight on an interval scale.

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Comparison in pairs – Functions of appraisal The essence of the Promothée method consists in comparing for every single criterion each crime problem in pairs with each other crime problem. Given M crime problems (or crime phenomenon) to compare, we have per criterion M∗ (M−1)/2 comparisons in pairs and differences in pairs (Figure 16.1). C1 C2

Cx

Cn

Phen1

m(m − 1) pairwise comparisons or differences 2

Pheni Phenj Phenm

Figure 16.1 Pairwise comparisons of differences

The user of the Promothée method determines for each criterion the way the differences in pairs should be evaluated by setting an evaluation function with appended parameters. A frequently employed function is the linear evaluation function with two thresholds (an inferior and a superior threshold). With such functions, that need to be decided on beforehand for every single criterion, the differences resulting from the comparisons in pairs are transformed in scores between –1 and 1. The scores (between –1 and 1) that are attributed by the comparisons in pairs depend on the form of the employed function of appraisal and on the previously defined thresholds.11 When using the linear function, if the difference is smaller than value q (inferior threshold) or “threshold of indifference”, a score of 0 is attached to the two compared crime problems. If the difference is bigger than value p (superior threshold) or “threshold of preference”, a maximum score of preference of 1 is attached to the highest scoring crime problem (and – 1 to the other problem). The differences between these two threshold values p and q will be transposed into a score between 0 and 1 for the higher ranking crime problem and in a score between –1 and 0 for the other crime problem (see Figure 16.2).

phen1 pheni phenj

score after pairwise comparison

Cx

1

difference

phenm

difference –1

Figure 16.2 Thresholds of indifference and preference 11

Whatever the form, the function of appraisal of the differences will always be an ascending function (or a non-descending). Put differently, how big the difference is will determine how big the score will be.


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The choice of the form of the functions of appraisal and of threshold values is based on the recommendations in the scientific literature (see e.g. Brans & Mareschal, 1994; Brans, Mareschal & Vincke, 1984; Mareschal, 1987; Vincke 1989). Moreover, we have been cautious in setting the value q sufficiently high in order to counter eventual imperfections of the data (due to less precision or reliability of the information).

Local scores of preference – rescaling the criteria into identical scales Since each comparison in pairs results in a score between –1 and 1, while proceeding to the different comparisons in pairs (with all the other crime problems) the mean of the attributed values to a crime problem A on a criterion X, is also situated between –1 and 1. This result is called “the local score of preference”. In doing this for each crime problem, the original scale of measurement for a criterion – be it a number (for example the number of deaths), a sum of money, a growth index or an expert ranking – is converted into a uniform scale between -1 and 112 (Figure 16.3). Local scores Cx

Cx phen1

phen i

phen 1

phen i

phen 2 Mean score for pheni

pheni

phenm

1

phen i

phen m –1

Figure 16.3 Local scores of preference

By calculating the weighted sum of all local scores for a crime problem, one obtains its final ranking (the weighted sum conforming to the weights that have been given for all of the different criteria). These “general scores of preference” are a weighted average of the local scores, whose weighted sum is equal to one, and have by consequence also a value between −1 and 1 (see Figure 16.4). The crime problems that come out as less serious, obtain a negative score on all the criteria, while the crime problems that are relatively more serious obtain a positive score. By means of the scores of the final ranking, not only is a ranking of the crime problems defined, but also the mutual distance between the crime problems can be judiciously interpreted as a measurement for the difference in relative gravity.

12

In the “classic” explanation of Promothée, in a first stage a pair of alternatives is compared to all criteria and afterwards, the global results per pair are used to establish the final ranking. Even if the final results remain identical, we prefer to change the sequence of the comparisons by proceeding in a first stage to all comparison of the pairs for one criterion (in order to establish the ranking per criterion). And to establish, only in a second stage, the final ranking for all criteria. In our approach, one can better understand the transformation of the original values on each criterion to a standardized scale between [−1, 1].

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Local scores for all phenomena on all criteria C1 1

C2 1

Cn

Cx 1

Final ranking

1

1

weighted sum of the local scores –1

–1

–1

–1

–1 n

w1

w2

wx

wn : weights w1 … wn, with

∑w k =1

k

=1

Figure 16.4 Rescaling the local scores to obtain a final ranking

The software The Promothée method is implemented through the software package DecisionLab2000. This user-friendly software makes it possible to change the functions of appraisal and the parameters in an interactive way. What is more, the software allows the stability of the resulted ranking (see below) to be examined. If the results are stable, every subjective intervention, inherently present at each moment of choice, should have only a minimal influence. The software package also offers an onset to determining the eventual redundancy of the criteria (via a factorial analysis or the so-called GAIA application).

A PRACTICAL APPLICATION FOR THE BELGIAN NATIONAL POLICE SECURITY PICTURE (NPSP) Picture of Security Problems The NPSI is the result of a global analysis of the crime issues the Belgian police services are faced with (see also above).13

Information and Sources The quantitative information on crime problems chiefly emanates from the national general police database (BNG). This database contains the recorded data from police reports of the different local and federal police organizations in Belgium. The qualification of the crime problems is not only demarcated by the judicial qualification of the offences, but also by a number of supplementary variables that contain elements to define the crime problem very 13

This realization was accompanied by a multidisciplinary working group comprising representatives from the public administration, the magistracy and the police services.


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precisely. For the crime problems with insufficient data in the BNG, other expert databases within the police and from other departments and ministries are employed. The qualitative information comes from a variety of open sources, from police documents or from expert interviews. Additionally, a survey of new trends in crime and criminal issues has been conducted among police experts at different levels.

Ranking of the Crime Problems According to Their Gravity The option was taken to measure the gravity of crime problems along three dimensions: r the volume (including the evolution); r the consequences; r the perception by the public. The starting point of the ranking of the crime problems according to their gravity consists in the creation of a matrix with basic data in which the rows represent the crime problems and the columns represent the different aspects of “gravity” (see example Figure 16.5). The basic data are of qualitative or quantitative nature.

Crime problems The 33 selected police crime problems analysed in the picture cover principally two realms: crime and road safety. Road safety was confined to traffic accidents with casualty for reasons of missing reliable complementary information at the national level on other road safety problems. List of selected police crime problems 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Theft of motor vehicles Theft in and on motor vehicles Theft of bikes or mopeds Burglary – habitations Burglary – business and commerce Burglary – public buildings Armed robbery Other thefts with violence Extortion Pick-pocketing Serious and organized environmental crime Other environmental crime Illicit production and trafficking of drugs Hormones and doping products Detention of prohibited weapons Illicit production and trafficking of weapons Counterfeit Illicit means of payment (credit card fraud and euro counterfeiting) Illegal documents

ter rac

ts rm .

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 3 2 3 3

r

fac mb e

29078 91533 46138 53050 26658 7880 5979 20810 1738 34419 1234 17565 1251 9664

31453 146688 89526 95061 44476 8295 7990 34014 17380 68838 ? ? ? 15869

6,4

3,6 0,890 1,020 1,092 0,914 0,988 1,030 0,883 1,030 1,210 1,085 1,110 1,730 1,160 1,005

1,92 1,77 1,55 1,96 2,01 2,09 2,06 1,83 2,08 1,94 1,28 1,16 1,62 2,03

1,3 4 1 1 2 2 2 3 2 1 1 4 1 4 3

1,9

Ev olu tio n 3y ea rs A o f f en vera de rs ge

7,8

ers

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be r kn um

Da

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Pe

4,1 26 0 0 14 14 ? 23 0 6 0 5 0 2 85

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2,9 200 64,59 0 0 0 0 114 32,95 114 32,95 ? ? 149 69,29 0 0 40 15,02 0 0 40 20,77 0 0 11 4,65 598 305,05

2,7

/of De fen gr e ce e of org N a n cri isa m tio i na n N lo off rga e n n isa to der tio cri s b ns m ina elon l o gin rg. g a

ntr

rity

ies eg

12 7 3 10 7 7 7 5 8 3 14 2 12 16

2,3

1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 2 1 0 1 2

1,7

rs he Ot

-st rat

Co

ec u

pre al Int ern

ro f Nu

7,9

nd Of fe

Figure 16.5 Values for each crime problem on each criterion of gravity (2003)

Motor vehicle theft Theft in or on motor vehicles Theft of bikes and mopeds Burglaries in habitations Burglaries in business and commerce Burglaries in public buildings Armed robbery Other violent thefts (excl. armed robbery) Extortion (o.a. racketeering en steaming) Pick-pocketing Serious and organised environmental crime Environmental crime - not-organised Hormones and doping products Illicit production and trafficking of drugs etc……

Weights

356 THE HANDBOOK OF KNOWLEDGE-BASED POLICING


20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

357

Corruption Organized fraud Money laundering IT crime Illegal immigration and smuggling of human beings Economic exploitation Sexual exploitation Child pornography Sexual offences Offences against physical integrity Disappearances and parental kidnapping Vandalism Hooliganism Traffic accidents with casualty

Criteria The 3 dimensions that were taken account of in this national picture to measure the gravity of each crime problem have been made operational by translating them into 23 criteria. Volume 1. Number of recorded offences/accidents by the police services and other official bodies 2. Permanent character of the crime problem 3. Adjusted number of recorded offences/accidents (including the dark number) 4. Number of known offenders 5. Yearly average evolution of the number of recorded offences/accidents of the past three years Consequences/complexity

11. Other crime problems linked 12. Proportion of offences with an international dimension 13. Number of offences committed with the use of violence 14. Number of deaths 15. Number of directly injured 16. Material damage for the victims or for society as a whole 17. Illicit gain for the offenders 18. Use of corruption/influence/attempt on moral values 19. Immediate danger for public health 20. Disturbance of public order 21. Disturbance of public safety 22. European priority: number of regulations, obligations and engagements etc.

6. Average number of offenders per offence 7. Degree of organization 8. Number of criminal organizations Perception involved in that crime problem 9. Number of criminal members of 23. The perception of the public in these criminal organizations relation to the priority assigned to 10. Contra-strategies employed by these each crime problem criminal organizations

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Certain criteria can be expressed in absolute figures, a percentage or a gradual score, which come from a database, a publication or are calculated or derived.

Results of the final ranking of the crime problems Figure 16.6 shows the final ranking of the crime problems, analysed in the national crime picture 2003. It is obvious that certain crime problems distinguish themselves from the others. Final ranking

1. Physical integrity 2. Drugs

5. Vandalism 6. Fraud 7. Sexual offences 4. Ill. immigr. & 8. Money laundering smuggling HB 9. Sex. exploit.

3. Road accidents

0,4

0,3

0,2

10. Environment (org.); 11. Burglary habitations; 12. Economic expl.; 13. Motor vehicle theft

0,1

0

–0,1

–0,2

–0,3

Figure 16.6 Final ranking of the crime problems

The top four crime problems consist of: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Offences to physical integrity Illicit production and trafficking of drugs Road accidents with casualty Illegal immigration and smuggling of human beings.

Profiling each crime problem Besides the final ranking, the method establishes a detailed assessment profile of every single crime problem as well. As explained above, each individual profile of appraisal or assessment consists of the entirety of the local scores of preference on all the criteria for a given crime problem. The profile of appraisal of a crime problem can be represented in a graph by indicating the corresponding local score of preference, lying between –1 and 1 for each criterion. Serving as an example, the following graphs (Figures 16.7 and 16.8) display the first two crime problems: the offences against physical integrity and the illicit production and trafficking of drugs. The profiles of these two types of offence are rather predictable. The first crime problem of offences on physical integrity obtains a very high score on all the criteria that measure the volume or the full extent of the problem. It also obtains a very high score on the criteria relative to the direct victims (which have a heavy weight), as well as on the criteria relative to disturbance of public order and safety and on those measuring the growth rate over the last three years. It shows a rather low score on the criteria measuring the organized crime, the international dimensions and the financial consequences. The score on the criterion


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offenses physical integrity

Perception

Intern. Prior.

public order

public safety

public health

Corruption

illicit gain

N injured

Mat. Damage

N deaths

offen. Violence

Internat. Links

linked offences

Contra-strat.

N crim. org.

offenders crim. org.

degree organised

Evolution

N offenders

Permanent

offenc, correct,

N offences

0

mean offend/offence.

1

–1

Figure 16.7 Profile of the offences against physical integrity. (For full list of criteria see p. 357) product. Traf. Drugs

Perception

Intern. Prior.

public order

public safety

public health

Corruption

illicit gain

Mat. Damage

N injured

N deaths

offen. Violence

Internat. Links

linked offences

Contra-strat.

N crim. org.

offenders crim. org.

degree organised

mean offend/offence.

Evolution

N offenders

Permanent

N offences

0

offenc, correct,

1

–1

Figure 16.8 Profile of the illicit production and trafficking of drugs. (For full list of criteria see p. 357)

perception is relatively high. The graph with the results for illicit production and trafficking of drugs represents fairly the opposite profile: this crime problem has high scores where the offences against physical integrity had a score below 0.

Stability of the model The stability of the final results of the model can be tested; one way to do so consists in applying some alternative computations (different evaluation functions and thresholds of preference and indifference), and in comparing the rankings that are thus obtained. The software can also give an automatic indication of the stability of the model by calculating within which fork the attributed weight of each criterion can vary without influencing the final result, neither influencing the order in the top of the ranking.

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This test revealed clearly that the result obtained for the classification of police crime problems is very stable indeed. The weights may vary considerably but the first four priorities remain unchanged in the top of the final ranking.

Identification of New Trends The data for the study on new trends have been collected in three steps: – at first, there was a wide consultation of open sources and expert sources within the judicial services of the Belgian Federal Police. Based on the information gathered on new forms of crime, new modus operandi, a list and a questionnaire with all relevant issues were drawn up; – in the second phase of the study, this questionnaire served as a guideline for the in-depth interviews with members of the judicial services of the Belgian Federal Police; – in the third phase, the initial list was completed with the information from the interviews and was then sent to all the experts who had been interviewed and to all services concerned in order to give them the opportunity to complete their contribution. The description of the new trends has perforce been compiled with qualitative information, since all recorded data regarding new, previously unknown, types of offences and criminal behaviour are incomplete by definition. These “novelties” will in consequence not figure among the strategic police priorities, however they can be part of the strategic objectives in the sense that a better picture and information gathering of the issue in question are called for.

Final Comments In line with the estimations of gravity, established with the aid of a multi-criteria decision model, there were finally 13 police crime problems that obtained a positive global end score. These results and the final ranking can be employed to improve or refine the annual police action plans, which fit in with the national security plan, as well as with the security plans of the police zones. Based on the selected criteria all the remaining crime problems came out as less important. Certainly for some of these crime problems, the picture, knowledge and possibilities of detection can be enhanced in the future. This finding applies to, amongst others, corruption, counterfeiting, hormones and doping products, child pornography, trafficking in weapons and IT crime. In some of these realms, the police services do not play a major part. Other official services like customs and excise, the ministry of economic affairs, regional authorities etc., can provide more pertinent information concerning those crime problems.

CONCLUSION Scientifically underpinned prioritizing in the framework of a police policy (i.e. evidencebased policy) requires the fulfilment of three conditions: (1) the policy should be developed in accordance with a well-considered method within a policy cycle; (2) the policy should


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be based on reliable information; and (3) appropriate techniques should be employed throughout the planning process so as to guarantee the objectivity and transparency of the moments of choice and evaluation. These three conditions have been discussed in this article. The most important added value of the use of a multi-criteria decision-making model is that prioritizing, with all its objective and subjective parameters, is made more explicit and rendered well structured. Hence, using such a technique can mean a contribution to making the decision process fully transparent and to enhancing democratic decision making. To us, this is the essence of evidence-based policy. In broadening the techniques for analysis, in improving the information (ILP) and in enhancing the technical and intrinsic knowledge and skills of the strategic analysts (KBP), policy making within all levels of the police will become more pertinent in the future. So, ideally, future police actions will be more effective and of a higher quality and standard. The National Belgian Police Security Picture 2003 was established by the Service for Strategic Analysis, with collaboration from the strategic analysts and from the services of the General Directorates of the Judicial and Administrative Police of the Belgian Federal Police.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article was translated into English by Ms Caroline Vanhyfte.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING Brans, J-P. & Mareschal, B. (1994). The PROMETHEE-GAIA decision support system for multicriteria investigations. Decision Support Systems, 12, 297–310. Brans, J-P., Mareschal, B. & Vincke, P. (1984). PROMETHEE: A new family of outranking methods in multicriteria analysis. In J-P. Brans (ed.), Operational Research ’84 (pp. 477–490). Amsterdam: North Holland. Brodeur, J-P. & B. Dupont (2006). Knowledge Workers or ‘Knowledge’ Workers? Policing & Society, 16, 7–26. Cabinet Office (1999a). Modernising Government, Cm 4310. London: The Stationery Office. Cabinet Office (1999b). Professional Policy Making for the Twenty First Century. Strategic Policy Making Team London: Cabinet Office. Retrieved on 16 July 2007 from http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/moderngov/policy/index.htm Davies, H., Laycock, G., Nutley, S. et al. (2000). A strategic approach to research and development. In H. Davies, S. Nutley & P. Smith (eds), What Works? Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in Public Services (pp. 229–50). Bristol: Policy Press. Davies, H., Nutley, S. & Smith, P. (2000). Learning from the past, prospects for the future. In H. Davies, S. Nutley & P. Smith (eds), What Works? Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in Public Services (pp. 351–366). Bristol: Policy Press. De Smedt, M. (1998). Crime and society: a variety of opportunities and threats: the challenge to make the right strategic choice in policy. Lecture given at the International Conference for Criminal Intelligence Analysts, Manchester, 17–19 March. Unpublished. Elliot, G. (1998). What is strategy? Looking for benefits. Lecture given at the Strategic planning meeting, Brussels, 23–24 January. Unpublished. Goldstein, H. (1997). Means utilized in the shifting of ownership. Lecture given at the 6th International Seminar on Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis, Olso, June 1997. Unpublished.

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Hall, R. (1998). Assessing the threat. Establishing and translating strategic priorities. Lecture given at the International Conference for Criminal Intelligence Analysts, Manchester, 17–19 March. Unpublished. Hellendoorn, J. & Sorber, A. (1998). Vijfentwintig jaar in ‘Beleidsanalyse’. In J. Hellendoorn (ed.), Gewikt en gewogen: vijfentwintig jaar ‘Beleidsanalyse’ (pp. 17–19). Den Haag: sd. Mareschal, B. (1987). Aide a` la décision multicritère : développements récents des méthodes. Cahiers du C.E.R.O., 29, 175–214. Maystre, L.Y., Pictet, J. & Simos, J. (1994). Méthodes multicritères ELECTRE. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. Nutley, S. & Webb J. (2000). Evidence and the policy process. In H. Davies, S. Nutley & P. Smith (eds), What Works? Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in Public Services (pp. 13–41). Bristol: Policy Press. Pal, L. (1997). Beyond Policy Analysis. Scarborough, CA: ITP Nelson. Pattyn, M. & Eycken, R. (2001). Prioriteiten kiezen in het veiligheidsbeleid: politiek, management of wetenschap ? In Handboek Politiediensten, Afl. (pp. 3–30). 57n 193, March, Brussels. Rochefort, D. & Cobb, R. (1994) Problem definition: An emerging perspective. In D. Rochefort & R. Cobb (eds), The Politics of Problem Definition (pp. 1–31). Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Roy, B. (1968). Classement et choix en présence de points de vue multiples (la méthode ELECTRE). Revue informatique et recherche opérationnelle, 2, 57–75. Roy, B. (1985). Méthodologie Multicritère d’Aide a` la Décision. Paris: Economica. Van den Steen, I. & Van Den Bogaerde, E. (2004). Moniteur de sécurité 2004 – analyse de l’enquête fédérale. Police Fédérale, Bruxelles, pp.44. www.polfed-fedpol.be/pub/ veiligheidsMonitor/2004/reports/ ´ Vincke, P. (1989). L’aide multicritère a` la décision. Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles. Vincke, P. (1999). Etude Comparative de Différentes Méthodes MCDA Pour Déterminer des Priorités en Matière de Problèmes de Sécurité. Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles. Unpublished report. Wardlaw, G. (1999). The Use of Risk Management Techniques to Increase the Impact of Strategic Intelligence: A Case Study. Presentation given at the 2nd International Conference for Criminal Intelligence Analysts, London, 1–3 March. Unpublished. Weiss, C. (1979). The many meanings of research utilisation. In Public Administration Review, 39, 426–31.

PART 3

Engaging Communities and Regulating Partnerships

Introduction to Part 3 The final two chapters each focus on empirical examples of “pluralised” (Johnston & Shearing, 2003), “multilateralized” (Bayley & Shearing, 2001) or “polycentric” (Berg and Shearing, Chapter 18) policing in action. In so doing, they discuss forms of policing which, if they are to function effectively, need to be both “networked” and “knowledge-based” to the optimum degree. In each case, the authors discuss both the empirical limits and possibilities, and the governance implications, of knowledge-based networks. In Chapter 17 Les Johnston examines the introduction of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) in the London Metropolitan Police. This is a significant new development. If security is now subject to multiple (networked), rather than singular (state) auspices, the police must adopt new ways of working with the public, especially those from minority ethnic groups and those with whom it is useful to engage for purposes of knowledge-based policing. This transition may not be easy to achieve. Johnston’s study shows that whilst the introduction of PCSOs had considerable potential there were also significant problems. He is not able to say whether this was due to a fundamental flaw in what was being prescribed or to flaws in implementation. Successful implementation varied from site to site and where the site had been swamped by too many PCSOs too quickly, or inadequate attention had been given to assimilating them into the existing police shifts, they appeared less successful. This chapter draws upon research carried out in two London boroughs, Westminster and Camden, between October 2002 and December 2003. The research examined Security PCSOs in two Westminster police stations (Charing Cross and Belgravia) and Community PCSOs in Camden. The chapter consists of four substantive sections. The first section examines the impact of PCSO recruitment on the goal of diversifying the MPS workforce, thereby making it more representative of the community being policed. The second section considers the extent of PCSO integration within the MPS. This issue is crucial since, for police sovereignty to be realized through the “police extended family” model, PCSOs need to be well integrated into the organization. The third section examines public attitudes to PCSOs in Westminster and Camden, paying particular regard to the extent to which they are perceived to enhance levels of public reassurance in these boroughs. The final section explores unresolved issues in respect of the future of PCSOs, some of which have particular significance for their role as “information workers” in knowledge-based policing networks. The Conclusion considers the PCSO initiative in the wider context of security governance. Neighbourhood policing in England and Wales is also linked to a project: for reconsolidating the police’s authority over street-level policing. This is part of a wider strategy to reimpose state sovereignty over security networks that are made up, increasingly, of plural nodes (Johnston & Shearing, 2003). Significantly, the methodology that underpins the The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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Neighbourhood Policing Project, the “signal crimes perspective”, employs “control hub” principles to construct a “total policing model” that eschews “nodal” models of security governance. It is therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that the application of “control hub” principles will be used to justify the attempted resuscitation of old-style (top-down) community policing practices. The difference is that in an increasingly nodalized security environment these practices will become more and more untenable. In Chapter 18 Julie Berg and Clifford Shearing examine “polycentric” policing. They begin by looking at the proliferation of security auspices and providers from the point of view of what this has meant for the sources of knowledge and capacity that are being mobilized and deployed in security governance. They also consider what this has meant for the question of whose order is being promoted. A particular emphasis of this chapter is to explore the implications of changing patterns of security governance, not just for developed societies, but for those in the “global south”, such as South Africa. In addressing these issues, the authors begin by noting the redistribution of policing knowledge which has occurred through the growth of security professionals in the private security industry. Accompanying this redistribution has been the process by which policing has also been “de-occupationalized”: that is to say, while there are more specialized police personnel than ever before, policing is no longer regarded as a specialized activity, but rather as one “embedded” within social and physical architectures. Thus, for example, Disney World (Shearing & Stenning, 1987) contains few specialist security staff because security is, literally, the “business” of every Disney employee. This process of embedding security in everyday activities is also exemplified in attempts to construct the citizen as a “responsible subject”, ready to be mobilized in the service of community policing. Another recurring theme of community policing is the growth of security partnerships between public and private sectors. One prominent form has been the emergence of Business Improvement Districts (BID), first in North America and later globally. BIDs are generally non-profit public–private corporations created to supplement government services in local areas, and it is on one example of a BID – the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) – that the remainder of the chapter focuses. The CCID was established in 2000 and employs the services of two private security companies. The authors note that “the deployment of approximately seventy foot patrols and other units has meant . . . that the source of knowledge and the knowledge base has been greatly broadened within the CCID and has been extended to the state policing structure”. These arrangements confirm that the state police do not possess all the knowledge and capacity required to ensure security in the city; and, because of that, as one member of the Cape Town Partnership, interviewed during the course of the research said, the CCID “makes them [the South African Police Service] stronger”. Berg and Shearing also consider the role of the Cape Town Partnership, which is managing agent for the CCID and for 15 other CIDs in the city, arguing that it functions nodally: that is, “as a hub of information and knowledge, [as] consultant, networker and facilitator of partnerships between the main players within the state and the private sector for particular projects and needs, especially where gaps in service delivery have been identified”. Significantly, while not being powerful itself, the Partnership mobilizes those who do have the capacity and resources to impact on development and, effectively, belongs to a “complex and ambiguous” network of governance in terms of running the city. Appropriately, the chapter closes by discussing a normative issue, the tendency of BIDs to represent “club” interests rather than “public” ones. Specifically, this concerns the use of

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exclusionary strategies against those considered “dangerous” or “undesirable” in order to secure public space for “respectable” members of the community. This practice poses the question of how the activities of BIDS might better be regulated, the authors suggesting that “a possible solution could be the utilization of the police as representatives of the public interest to promote various role-players in a ‘guardianship capacity’”.

REFERENCES Bayley, D.H. & Shearing, C. (2001). The New Structure of Policing: Description, Conceptualization, and Research Agenda. Washington DC: National Institute of Justice. Johnston, L. & Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security. London: Routledge. Shearing, C.D. & Stenning, P.C. (1987). Say ‘Cheese!’: The Disney order that is not so Mickey Mouse. In C.D. Shearing & P.C. Stenning (eds), Private Policing (pp. 317–323). California: Sage.

CHAPTER 17

Neighbourhood Policing and Community Engagement: Police Community Support Officers in the London Metropolitan Police Les Johnston University of Portsmouth, UK

INTRODUCTION It is widely accepted in “Anglo-American” policing circles that the future lies in community policing. Yet, paradoxically, there is abundant evidence that community policing is both hard to implement and difficult to conceptualize (Bennett, 1994). It is not surprising, then, that debates about community policing have been preoccupied with matters of its operational definition, its organizational application and its practical efficacy. However, this is only one aspect of the “problematic of community policing”. An equally important consideration is its deployment as a rhetorical device (Klockars, 1991) for telling different “stories” about the dynamics of security governance. In the past, two such stories have been prominent. One is exemplified in Mastrofski’s (1991) account of community policing in the USA. Here, powerful metaphors evoke an imagined past when society was less impersonal and conflict-ridden than today. The problem is that the vision of shared community sentiments implicit in this image is both an inaccurate representation of the past and a poor predictor of the future. Though aware of this fact, the police have remained trapped within a problem of their own making: on the one hand, perceiving “community-as-consensus” to be a prerequisite of governance; on the other hand, forced to fabricate such communities where they do not exist (Mastrofski, 1991). Until quite recently, then, Anglo-American policing was preoccupied with “the reconstruction of nostalgia” (Johnston, 1997, p. 195), the aim being to reconsolidate and reconstruct communities deemed either to be homogeneous or to have the potential for homogeneity. The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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A second, and by no means unrelated aspect of community police rhetoric focuses on the question “who governs security?” Here, community policing tells the story of how police sovereignty over security governance is consolidated by the devolution of certain policing tasks to partner agencies. According to this approach the term community policing describes a range of initiatives deployed by the police to keep control of the “steering” of security governance, while simultaneously devolving much of the “rowing” to alternative providers (Osborne & Gaebler, 1993; Johnston & Shearing, 2003). This dualistic discourse regarding security governance – both nostalgic and state-centric – now faces increased challenge, not least because of the impact of “diversity” on communities. Diversity poses three challenges for the police. First, it renders the traditional, homogenizing, rhetoric of community policing more and more redundant. Second, culturally and ethnically diverse communities are no longer satisfied to be policed by organizations consisting mainly of white, male personnel. Third, the growing pluralisation of security auspices and providers (Bayley & Shearing, 2001) challenges police claims to sovereignty. This last issue is particularly important to the present discussion. Faced with increasing competition from commercial and municipal providers, senior police commentators have been forced to address the question of “who should govern street patrol?” Four distinct models of security governance have emerged out of this debate (Johnston, 2003): that police should seek to maintain the status quo ante; that they should accept pluralisation and, having done so, secure oversight of its coordination and regulation; that they should set up mechanisms for competing with commercial and municipal providers; and that they should devolve certain functions to the private sector and concede any automatic claim to police sovereignty over street patrol. Latterly, the second and third of these models, encapsulated in the concept of the “police extended family” have been adopted as government policy. Concern that the pluralisation of security in London’s boroughs might lead to the “Balkanization” of policing in that city, led one proponent of that concept, Sir Ian Blair1 , to advocate the recruitment of uniformed auxiliaries dedicated to the provision of visible street patrol. Placing auxiliaries under the direction of constables and granting them meaningful powers would, in Blair’s (2002) view, encourage local authorities to invest in state police rather than in the services of commercial providers and, by so doing, enable police sovereignty over community policing to be reconsolidated. This new body of auxiliaries called Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) was introduced into the service under the Police Reform Act (2002). PCSOs are uniformed staff employed by the police authority; they work under the direction and control of the chief officer; and they possess certain limited powers (such as the power to issue fixed penalty notices for specified offences and the power to confiscate alcohol under certain conditions). Currently there are more than 14,000 PCSOs operating in England and Wales, the Home Office (Home Office, 2004; see also HM Government, 2004) having, initially, pledged support for the recruitment of around 20,000 over a three-year period. (We return to the question of financial support for PCSO numbers later in the chapter.) The main function of PCSOs is to enhance public reassurance and to contribute to the reduction of low level crime and disorder by undertaking visible patrols (Home Office, 2004, p. 165). They first became operational in September 2002 when the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) deployed “Security PCSOs” 1

Previously Deputy Commissioner, now Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.

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to carry out anti-terrorist patrols in Westminster. During 2002–3 “Transport PCSOs”, tasked with policing the City’s transport routes, and “Community PCSOs”, charged with providing visible patrol in communities, were introduced on a London-wide basis. This chapter draws upon research carried out in two MPS boroughs, Westminster and Camden, between October 2002 and December 2003. The research examined Security PCSOs in two Westminster police stations (Charing Cross and Belgravia) and Community PCSOs in Camden.2 The chapter consists of four substantive sections, each of which draws upon evidence from the MPS study supplemented by what limited research is available from other sources (Cooper et al., 2006; Crawford et al., 2004; Cunningham & Wagstaff, 2006; Singer, 2004; Wynnick & Calcott, 2006). The first section examines the impact of PCSO recruitment on the goal of diversifying the MPS workforce, thereby making it more representative of the community being policed. The second section considers the extent of PCSO integration within the MPS. This issue is crucial since, for police sovereignty to be realized through the “police extended family” model, PCSOs need to be well-integrated into the organization. The third section examines public attitudes to PCSOs in Westminster and Camden, paying particular regard to the extent to which they are perceived to enhance levels of public reassurance in these boroughs. The final section explores unresolved issues in respect of the future of PCSOs, some of which have particular significance for their role as “information workers” in knowledge-based policing networks. The conclusion considers the PCSO initiative in the wider context of security governance.

DIVERSIFYING RECRUITMENT Though the main function of PCSOs is to enhance public reassurance, their recruitment is also linked to a second government agenda: “our direction of travel is clear – towards an engaged, responsive, accountable, truly representative local police service . . .” (Home Office, 2003, p. 2; italics added). “Representativeness” has been a difficult problem for the police service, in general, and for the MPS in particular. By 2009, police organizations in England and Wales are expected to have an ethnic composition proportional to that of the local population they serve (Home Office, 1999). However, with a quarter of London’s population defined as Minority Ethnic, the MPS regards this target as unachievable and the Commissioner is one of several senior police officers to have called for legislative change permitting affirmative action policies to be introduced. In this difficult environment PCSO recruitment is important for two reasons. Not only does it add to the diversity of the MPS workforce as a whole; it also adds indirectly to the diversity of the police component within that workforce since a significant number of

2

The study employed a number of primary data collection methods including an analysis of PCSO recruitment applications; a survey of MPS police officers, civilian staff (now called “police staff”) and PCSOs working at Belgravia and Charing Cross police stations administered in December 2002 and re-administered in September 2003; taped semi-structured interviews with police, police staff and PCSOs (N = 50), and with partner agencies, local stakeholders, community members and others (N = 20); ethnographic methods (including observation within police stations, observation-based activity analysis of selected PCSO patrols and training observation); and two public attitude surveys administered in May–June 2003 (Westminster) and October 2003 (Camden and Westminster) to residents, workers and businesses. In addition, questionnaire items relating to PCSOs were administered to a “booster sample” of Westminster residents via the MPS’s borough-based Public Attitude Survey. The author is grateful to Dr Roger Donaldson, Ms Deborah Jones and the late Dr Tom Williamson for their valuable contributions to this research. The views expressed in the present paper are the sole responsibility of the author.

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PCSOs will, in due course, apply to become regular police officers. Thus, in the present study, 47% of PCSO respondents in the staff survey, when asked about their main reason for wanting to become a PCSO, said that they saw the job as “a stepping stone to the regular police”.3 This section of the chapter draws upon data from two sources: quantitative data obtained from an analysis of 2,025 PCSO recruitment applications covering the calendar year 1st April 2002–31st March 2003; and qualitative data obtained from observation of and interviews with regular police officers and PCSOs. In its Priorities for Excellence 2003–4 (cited in Johnston, Donaldson & Jones, 2004, p. 6) the MPS had expressed a commitment to achieving the following recruitment targets: 29% women PCSO recruits as a percentage of all PCSO recruits; 25% minority ethnic PCSO recruits as a percentage of all PCSO recruits

Our research showed that two-thirds of applications (66%) came from males and around one quarter (26%) from females, the remainder failing to identify their gender. Though, the MPS has no specified targets with respect to the age profile of PCSO recruits, it is apparent that many apply to become PCSOs later in their working lives than is the case with applications to the regular police. Thus, in our sample the median age for applicants was around 34 years of age with about a quarter of applications coming from people aged 39 years and over. Analysis by ethnicity was complicated by the MPS’s decision to change the coding system used to identify the ethnic origin of applicants during the course of the year under investigation. Initially, the system used a six-fold classification based broadly on the outward appearance (“IC Code”) of the individual. Of the 2,025 applicants in the sample, 1,040 were classified by this method. The remaining 985 applicants were categorized according to a more complex, 16-fold, system the object of which was to capture ethnic diversity more accurately. By combining these two categorizations – and removing from the calculation some 450 applicants who failed to specify their ethnicity – 56% were found to be “White” and 44% from “Minority Ethnic” groups.4 In due course, 430 (21%) individuals were recruited as PCSOs of whom 313 (73%) were male, 111 (26%) were female and 6 (1%) were of unspecified gender. Following the removal of those (10%) who failed to specify their ethnic group, the remaining 386 recruits could be divided into White (65%) and Minority Ethnic (35%). Overall, then, the MPS’s 25% target for minority ethnic recruitment was easily surpassed by the 35% figure achieved in the sample; and the 29% target for female recruitment fell short by only 3%. However, while numerical targets are undoubtedly important, the pursuit of diversity and “representativeness” involves more than simply quantitative considerations. Indeed, qualitative analysis revealed the picture described above to be rather simplistic. Consider an example. During the course of the study, a calculation was made of “recruitment chances” according to ethnic category.5 First, this showed that white applicants (with a likelihood of 28%) had a marginally greater likelihood of being recruited than minority ethnic ones (with 3

4 5

This figure is broadly comparable to the 42% figure cited in the national evaluation (Cooper et al., 2006, p. 46). In Cunningham and Wagstaff’s (2006) study, 19 of the 45 PCSOs interviewed stated they wanted to use the role as a “stepping stone” to a career in the regulars or as a means of gaining experience. Using categories (“White” and “Minority Ethnic”) which, by their very nature, subvert the diversity agenda while purporting to measure its efficacy, was an ironic by-product of the limited data source of which the author was fully aware. See Johnston (2006, pp. 391–3) for details of the method used.


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a likelihood of 20%) and that within the category of white applicants those from within the “IC1” (“White N. European”) group (with a likelihood of 34%) had the best chance of all. Second, while the likelihood of recruitment across the entire sample stood at 21%, those processed under the earlier (“IC Code”-based) categorization had much higher chances of recruitment (at 29%) than those recruited under the later system (at 13%). Indeed, the recruitment chances of both white and minority ethnic candidates applying under the earlier system were almost double those for candidates applying under the later one. Two possible explanations might exist for this pattern. One is that the quality of applicants declined substantially following the commencement of the review process. We found no evidence to support this explanation. The other is that the changed pattern arose from organizational factors, an explanation that was confirmed by reference to our observation and interview data. Qualitative data showed that a number of organizational problems arose in respect of the selection, recruitment, training, integration, supervision and deployment of PCSOs. While these impacted on all PCSOs, their effect was probably greatest on those from minority ethnic backgrounds. In the context of diversity, three organizational problems were particularly noteworthy. First, the three-week training programme proved to be poor at inculcating the cultural values and standards required by a disciplined organization. As a result, a small minority of both white and minority ethnic PCSOs failed to live up to the required standards of conduct. A second issue concerned whether, in the context of rapid implementation, the imperative to admit large numbers of PCSOs led to a lowering of entry standards during the early stages of recruitment. Certainly, the view that standards were, initially, lowered was commonplace amongst police officers involved in the recruitment process. One referred to a “positive policy of recruitment” having been applied while another spoke about “parameters of acceptance that could not easily be breached”. Yet another suggested a more nuanced explanation, akin to a process of “nods and winks”: “people sort of internalised the assumption, so they do what they think the system wants them to do”. A third factor was the poor quality of institutional support provided to PCSOs. This was particularly weak in respect of supervision and training. As regards the latter, the three-week central training programme was supposed to be supplemented by further borough-based provision. In reality, such provision was patchy, the result being a lack of standardized practice across the boroughs. The impact of these factors was cumulative. Initial laxity in recruitment led to the appointment of some PCSOs – both white and minority ethnic – who were ill-suited to the task. Inadequate support structures exacerbated this problem with minority ethnic PCSOs being particularly disadvantaged in this regard. Some had clear language and communication problems that demanded institutional support. All were more visible, and thus more easily isolated as problems within an organization unused to integrating minority ethnic personnel. Overall, then, our quantitative and qualitative evidence presented two pictures, each of which revealed an element of the truth. On the one hand, the MPS had successfully used the PCSO initiative to broaden its ethnic and gender base. As one interviewee told us, the organization had succeeded in recruiting from communities, such as the Bengalis in Tower Hamlets, which had never previously been attracted to the police. The same interviewee pointed out that MPS commissioned research had revealed that while “some [members of minority ethnic groups] wanted to check [the job] out . . . others felt there were cultural barriers to becoming a police office that did not apply to becoming a PCSO”. This

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view is certainly compatible with the following comment made by a male, English-born, Asian PCSO: I’ve always been interested in joining the police and when PCSOs were first advertised, I thought that would be an opportunity to have a look at the job . . . I was aware . . . that there was racism and discrimination in the police service and I wondered how it would be for me being a PCSO . . . I think there is some racism and discrimination but it is minimal and it is not something that is going to be a problem to my work and me.

On the other hand, the organization remains poor at providing institutional support. At one stage, in 2003, a third of all minority ethnic PCSOs at Belgravia Police Station faced disciplinary charges. Significantly, rather than branding this an act of racism, the Black Police Association suggested that the source of the problem lay in “positive discrimination” having been applied during the early stages of the recruitment and selection process. Such a view is congruent with our own findings. In other words, faced with demands for the recruitment of large numbers of minority ethnic PCSOs, the MPS first appointed a number who were ill-suited to the job then, having done so, failed to provide the institutional support that might have helped to bring them up to standard. Finally, when their behaviour did – as, inevitably, it would – fall short of the required standard, the organization subjected them to discipline. Finally, what of the limits and possibilities of “representativeness”? Clearly, the provision of institutional support for PCSOs is vital if the MPS is to become not only more representative of, but also more sensitive to, the needs of the communities it polices. Representativeness can produce real advantages, enabling both the organization and the community to benefit from the skills, life experiences and expertise of recruits from a wider social and demographic spectrum. However, neither representativeness nor diversity is a panacea, and we should be mindful of their limits as well as their possibilities. Take, first, the issue of PCSO recruitment into the regular police. Towards the end of our research it was evident that minority ethnic PCSOs were doing less well than their white colleagues in the “fast track” recruitment process. The danger is that a form of “two-tier policing” might emerge over time in which a predominantly white, male, regular police service works alongside a body of PCSOs made up, disproportionately, of female and minority ethnic personnel. In order to avoid this the MPS may need to adopt a delicate and precarious “balancing act”: on the one hand providing additional institutional support for minority ethnic PCSOs wishing to enter the regular police service; on the other hand, not wanting to denigrate the importance of those minority ethnic PCSOs wishing to remain in that important community role. One also has to be mindful of the practical limits of representativeness. Commentators in both Britain (Holdaway, 1996) and North America (Sherman, 1983) have noted that black police officers may be as likely as their white counterparts to hold negative stereotypes about sections of the black community. This may be no less true of some PCSOs as the following story, related to us by a Police Inspector in Camden, illustrates: The other day three youths were stopped by a PC and a PCSO and we knew one of them had drugs. The PCSO was black and immediately searched the black man and found the drugs. Later, the PC asked the PCSO why he had searched the black man and not the two white youths. The PCSO said ‘Well, you know it’s always the black man who has the drugs’. (Police Inspector, Camden)


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Thus, while enhanced representativeness is a desirable end in itself, it is important to recognize that the relationship between greater minority ethnic representation in the police service and more sensitive policing of ethnic minorities by the police service remains complex.

INTEGRATION This section draws upon data from two sources: observation of and interviews with PCSOs and police in the boroughs of Westminster and Camden; and a workplace survey administered to police, police staff and PCSOs in two Westminster police stations (Charing Cross and Belgravia), first in December 2002 then, again, in September 2003. Before discussing the data it is important to emphasize that the PCSO scheme ran much less smoothly in Westminster than it did in Camden. This was due to the scheme’s hasty implementation in Westminster where, following “9/11”, PCSOs were deployed in an anti-terrorist “security” role. One resulting problem was that the two Westminster stations had to absorb around 200 PCSOs over a very short period of time. By contrast, the arrival of Camden’s 30 “Community PCSOs” was planned over several months. In this section several issues are discussed in relation to the issue of integration including communication, organizational support, acceptance by colleagues and the adequacy of supervision. How effectively was information regarding PCSOs disseminated? The Westminster Staff Survey asked police and non-PCSO civilian staff to comment on the statement that “The MPS has kept me well informed about the reasons for employing PCSOs in London”. In December 2002 only 15% of staff at Belgravia and 17% of staff at Charing Cross “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the statement. When the same question was asked nine months later the percentage “agreeing” or “strongly agreeing” had reduced slightly (14% at Belgravia and 15% at Charing Cross). Respondents were also asked to comment on the statement that “The MPS has kept me well informed about the reasons for employing Security PCSOs in Westminster”. In December 2002 around one third (30% in Belgravia and 38% in Charing Cross) “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the statement. Nine months later that figure had been reduced to around a quarter in both stations (26% in Belgravia and 27% in Charing Cross). Interview evidence also supported this conclusion, the following comment being typical: What were our aims? Nobody really knew. When we were posted on to the teams it was a question of ‘Well, what do we do with them?’ (PCSO, Charing Cross)

What about wider organizational support? The Westminster survey asked personnel to respond to the statement “At my police station MPS support for PCSOs has been good”. Across the two surveys around two-fifths of police and civilian staff “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the statement and between one-quarter and one-third “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed”. The PCSOs response was, however, rather different. In the first survey a substantial majority (95% at Belgravia and 85% at Charing Cross) “agreed” or “strongly agreed”. In the second survey the figure had reduced significantly at Charing Cross (71% “agreeing” or “strongly agreeing”) and had fallen dramatically at Belgravia (where only 29% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” and 35% “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed”). Although almost half of police and civil staff believed that institutional support for PCSOs had been good, interviews with police officers carried out around five months after initial deployment suggested

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Table 17.1 “At my police station PCSOs are fully accepted as part of the police team” Agree or Strongly Agree % Belgravia Police/Civilians Charing Cross Police/Civilians Belgravia PCSOs Charing Cross PCSOs

Neither Agree Nor Disagree

Disagree or Strongly Disagree

Don’t Know

Dec 2002

Sep 2003

Dec 2002

Sep 2003

Dec 2002

Sep 2003

Dec 2002

Sep 2003

49

22

22

27

25

37

5

14

37

32

28

27

22

38

14

3

93

47

5

24

2

29

0

0

85

57

4

23

8

20

4

0

that the appropriate balance had not yet been achieved. One sergeant’s comment summed up the views of others: “they [PCSOs] were very poorly supported by the firm [in respect of officer safety training and equipment]”. The significant fall in the proportion of PCSOs feeling that institutional support had been “good” over the two surveys is probably a result of their increased awareness of and exposure to these problems. Respondents were also asked about the support PCSOs received from team colleagues. At Charing Cross more than a half of police/civilians and more than four-fifths of PCSOs gave an affirmative response, in both surveys, to the statement “At my police station MPS support for PCSOs has been good”. At Belgravia, however, the later survey showed a marked reduction in affirmative responses from both police/civilians and PCSOs alike; fewer than half of PCSOs “agreeing” or “strongly agreeing” with the statement and as many police/civilians “disagreeing” or “strongly disagreeing” with it as “agreeing” or “strongly agreeing”. In a related question respondents were asked about the acceptance of PCSOs within the “police team” (see Table 17.1). In the first survey a substantial majority of PCSOs and a significant minority of police officers and civilians believed PCSOs to be fully accepted as team members. Nine months later, with the exception of police and civilians at Charing Cross a marked reduction had occurred in affirmative responses. These figures seem to suggest a growing alienation between PCSOs and their team colleagues. However, Table 17.1 should be interpreted cautiously. The high level of affirmative answers given by PCSOs in the December 2002 survey might reflect unrealistic expectations on their part about the working environment they had just entered. Later reductions in affirmative answers should therefore be interpreted in this light. Furthermore, in view of the problems the Westminster stations faced in absorbing 200 new personnel into the workforce, the fact that around half of PCSOs at both stations still felt fully part of the team might be considered a mark of success rather than a measure of failure. Undoubtedly, as the table suggests, much more integrative work needed to be done at both stations, but it does not necessarily justify unduly pessimistic conclusions about the long-term prospects for integration. That conclusion would seem to be confirmed by evidence from an internal survey of PCSOs undertaken at Belgravia during November 2003 (MPS, 2003c). While a third thought there was still “scope for improvement”, 43% described their level of integration with police


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officers as “very good”, a figure comparable to the 47% who expressed the view that PCSOs were “fully accepted as part of the police team” in the September survey (see Table 17.1 above). In the same internal survey more than four-fifths of PCSOs at Belgravia felt that the level of integration had improved over time. Nevertheless, almost three-quarters still felt that the police officers on their teams could do more to increase the level of integration by “gaining a better understanding of the role of the PCSO” and by “making efforts to be more friendly/supportive”. A key factor in integration is effective supervision. In Camden, PCSOs were attached to Sector Teams and allocated a dedicated supervising Sergeant thus enabling supervisors to identify and respond to the short-and long-term needs of PCSOs. Much early emphasis was also placed on debriefs. As a supervising sergeant from Holborn Police Station put it: I want to know what they have done, what problems they have had, where they have been and who they have seen. For one thing, it shows that you are interested in what they have done. . . and it gives them the opportunity to ask questions that they might not otherwise ask.

By contrast, the repeated influx of large numbers of PCSOs into Belgravia and Charing Cross posed major problems for supervision. Comments such as “I am supervising thirty this afternoon . . . it’s impossible” and “supervision really is just head-counting” were common. Shortage of sergeants led to supervision being delegated to Acting Sergeants, many of whom had only just completed probation; while routine oversight of PCSOs was undertaken by PCs, many of whom were still probationers. The knock-on effect was that it was not only PCSOs who went unsupervised: There aren’t enough PCs to do mentoring. When they came here it was shown on the duties that a PC would be “walking” a PCSO but in reality it never materialised because the PC had been posted elsewhere . . . if you as a supervisor have twenty PCSOs and five PCs plus the paperwork you have very little time to check all of your personnel. It is the PCs who get neglected. (Acting Sergeant)

These conclusions were replicated in the internal Belgravia Survey (MPS, 2003c) where almost three-quarters of PCSOs claimed never to have patrolled with a supervising officer; around a half described the level of supervision received as “poor”; and four fifths said that the reporting officer (responsible for their appraisal) had never patrolled with them. Overall, during the16 months following initial deployment, progress on integration was mixed. While the two Westminster stations struggled to absorb 200 PCSOs within a restricted timescale, Camden made good progress in integrating its 30 PCSOs. However, integration is a long-term project requiring structural and cultural reform. This is affirmed in later research, Cooper et al. (2006) pointing to several obstacles impeding integration: that police officers and PCSOs enjoy different employment status and disciplinary procedures; that most resistance to PCSOs comes from police officers who do not work closely with them; and, crucially, that much of the goodwill and acceptance of PCSOs remains dependent on the numbers of police officers remaining stable. For that reason, Cooper et al., (2006) emphasize the need for PCSOs to be “embedded” within forces’ organizational structures.

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PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF PCSOs In this section we draw upon primary survey data6 to consider public attitudes towards PCSOs in London, comparing this, where appropriate, with other recent research on PCSOs. Public perception of PCSOs is an important issue given their centrality to the Government’s “reassurance policing” agenda: the attempt to enhance public reassurance by the provision of visible street patrol. Before summarizing these results it is important to emphasize the differences between the operational roles of PCSOs in Westminster and Camden. Westminster’s 200 “Security PCSOs” were deployed on anti-terrorist patrols, their primary function being to look out for suspicious individuals, vehicles and packages and to seek information from, and give information to, members of the public. In contrast, Camden’s 30 “Community PCSOs” were deployed on a much wider range of community duties including crime prevention (e.g. leafleting premises); liaising with the local authority (e.g. in respect of illegal traders) and helping to disrupt local drugs markets (e.g. by checking out drug caches). It is important to recognize that these role differences, combined with the implementation problems experienced in Westminster, might have affected both public reception and public perception of PCSOs in the two boroughs. In particular, it might be expected that Camden’s communityoriented PCSOs would be better received by the public than Westminster’s security-oriented ones. In fact that expectation was confirmed by our survey results. PCSOs certainly provide a visible uniformed presence on the streets. Around four-fifths of respondents in both boroughs were aware of PCSOs, two-thirds of those from Westminster and three-quarters of those from Camden having become aware as a result of seeing them on the streets. In both boroughs more than 9 out of 10 people who were aware of PCSOs had seen them patrolling in the area. Around a quarter of respondents in each borough had had direct contact with PCSOs, a majority of whom (two-thirds in Westminster, three-quarters in Camden) declared the experience satisfactory. Overall, three-quarters of Westminster residents and almost nine-tenths of those in Camden thought the employment of PCSOs was “a good idea”.7 Table 17.2 shows that seven-tenths of people in Camden declared themselves “more reassured” by the presence of PCSOs on the streets. By comparison around half of Westminster respondents declared themselves “more reassured”, with slightly less than half feeling “neither more nor less reassured” by the presence of PCSOs.8 In both boroughs a clear majority of people felt that the presence of PCSOs increased their feelings of personal safety. In Westminster around three-fifths of respondents claimed that PCSOs made them feel “a lot” or “a little” more safe both during the day and in the evening/after dark. Slightly more than a half of Camden respondents said they felt “a lot” or “a little” more safe during the evening/after dark. Most striking, however, was the fact that almost three-quarters of Camden respondents said that the presence of PCSOs during 6

7

8

Questionnaires were distributed to 1,300 residents and business people in the Covent Garden area during October 2003. This area was chosen because it included respondents from both Camden and Westminster boroughs. The 312 returned questionnaires produced a response rate of 24%. Research undertaken in West Yorkshire produced similar findings. There, 40% of respondents reported seeing PCSOs at least once a day in Leeds/Bradford and 30% of the sample identified PCSOs (compared to police, street wardens and traffic wardens) as the uniformed body most often seen in city centres. Around one-fifth (21%) of respondents had had contact with a PCSO of whom 96% said that the officer had responded well to their approach or request (Crawford et al., 2004, p. 64). In the West Yorkshire research 64% of respondents said that the visible presence of a police officer (including PCSO) served to reassure them about their personal safety (Crawford et al., 2004, p. 65).


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Table 17.2 “Does the presence of PCSOs on the streets make you feel: r More reassured about your safety? r Neither more nor less reassured about your safety? r Less reassured about your safety?” % More reassured Neither more nor less reassured Less reassured Don’t know

Table 17.3

Westminster

Camden

52 46 1 1

70 29 1 0

PCSOs and the public’s demand for police presence Strongly agree

% “Community Support Officers provide an effective way of meeting the public’s demand for a greater police presence on the street”

Agree

Camden

Westminster

Camden

Westminster

13

8

41

13

the day enhanced their feelings of safety. Doubtless, this was due to the highly visible community role undertaken by PCSOs in the borough. For example, the fact that 44% of Camden respondents believed that there had been a reduction in “people using or dealing drugs in public” since the deployment of PCSOs was undoubtedly linked to their active involvement in anti-drugs work (e.g. collecting information from local traders, confiscating drug caches, etc.).9 Next, people were asked to reply to the statement “Community Support Officers are responding well to the needs of local people in this area”. In this case there was more consistency between the boroughs, slightly less than one-third of Camden respondents, and around one-quarter of those from Westminster, “agreeing” or “strongly agreeing” with the statement. However, two things are noteworthy. First, 31% of Westminster respondents (compared to only 7% in Camden) “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed” with the statement. Second, no less than 41% of Camden respondent (compared to only 6% in those in Westminster) gave “don’t know” responses. This would indicate that opinions about PCSO’s ability to meet the needs of local people were more polarized in Westminster than in Camden where around two-fifths of people had not yet made their minds up on the matter. Table 17.3 shows that more than a half of Camden respondents, compared with only one-fifth of those from Westminster, “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the statement that “PCSOs provide an effective way of meeting the public’s demand for a greater police presence on the street”. 9

The National Evaluation of PCSOs reported “strong evidence from two case study areas, where the CSOs were well known by name to the community, that the residents and businesses felt that CSOs had made a real impact in their areas . . .” (Cooper, 2006, p. 1). Evidence from focus groups with residents and businesses suggested that, in areas where the presence of CSOs was apparent, they had improved feelings of safety in the community (Cooper et al., 2006, p. 39).

380


Table 17.4 PCSOs, the public and the police Strongly agree % People value Community Support Officers because, when patrolling the streets on foot, they are directly accessible to the public. Community Support Officers provide an important link between the local community and the police.

Agree

Camden

Westminster

Camden

Westminster

24

2

43

17

19

2

44

16

It seems possible, therefore, that the relatively small complement Community PCSOs in Camden was better able to meet local demands for a greater police presence on the street than the substantially larger body of Security PCSOs in Westminster. Evidence from the MPS’s quarterly, borough-based, Public Attitude Surveys (MPS, 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b) seemed to support this conclusion. In that survey people were asked how satisfied they were with the number of police on foot patrol in their borough. For the period covering April 2002 to September 2003, Westminster respondents reported no increased levels of satisfaction. The situation in Camden was rather different. Here, in the quarter following initial PCSO deployment, satisfaction levels rose from 18% to 33%, an increase that was sustained into the following quarter. In the absence of base-line data, however, it is necessary to treat this evidence with caution. Further longitudinal research on the extent to which PCSOs can help to meet public demands for a greater police presence on the streets is thus called for.10 Finally people were asked to comment on two statements concerning the accessibility of PCSOs and their capacity to provide a link between the police and the public (Table 17.4). Again, there were some striking differences between the boroughs. More than twothirds (67%) of Camden respondents compared to one fifth (19%) of those in Westminster believed PCSOs to be valued because of their public accessibility. A similar differential occurred with regard to the second statement. In this case, almost two-thirds (63%) of Camden respondents, compared to around one fifth (18%) of those in Westminster, thought PCSOs provided an important link between the local community and the police. Subject to the same caveats as before, these responses might suggest that Community PCSOs in Camden were better integrated with and, therefore, more highly valued by the public than were Security PCSOs in Westminster. Certainly, interview and observational evidence from Camden suggested that the borough’s PCSOs were able to gather much routine “street-level” information.11

10

11

In the West Yorkshire study more than two-thirds of respondents said that the number of officers patrolling the city had increased in the last 12 months, with almost one-third (29%) saying the increase had been significant (Crawford et al., 2004, p. 66). The following quote from a focus group member interviewed during the National Evaluation mirrors similar comments made by residents interviewed in Camden and Westminster: “If it’s a choice we would prefer to have more police patrolling. . . If we can’t have more police I’d say the alternative is to have these community officers” (Cooper et al., 2006, p. 36). The National Evaluation found that “CSOs were seen as more accessible than police officers by some members of the public who were, therefore, more likely to report issues to them that they would not ‘trouble’ a police officer with. The public was also more likely to pass on information to CSOs” (Cooper, 2006, p. 1).


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UNRESOLVED ISSUES We now consider various unresolved issues regarding the future development of PCSOs. Consider, first, the issue of funding. Earlier we noted the Home Office’s (2004) pledge to recruit a further 20,000 PCSOs over a three-year period. This initial commitment has now been amended, the Government saying it wants police forces to recruit only 16,000 PCSOs across England and Wales by the end of April 2007, not the 24,000 originally envisaged (Bebbington, 2006).12 This decision has proved controversial. The Government justifies it by claiming that neighbourhood policing can be delivered by fewer people than originally anticipated. Yet, there is concern in areas that are particularly dependent on PCSOs (e.g. rural communities) that the quality of policing will be compromised (The Politics Show, BBC 1, broadcast on 2 December 2006). Despite this decision, questions are already being asked about the savings that police forces might accrue by employing PCSOs rather than regulars. Bob Quick, Chief Constable of Surrey and ACPO lead on workforce modernization, has calculated that in his force, 1.3 CSOs could be appointed for every regular officer: It can be as high as two for one in some areas, but for high skill CSOs then it is 1 to 1.3 . . .We worked out how much of officers’ time is spent on doing routine repetition (sic) tasks . . . Clerical and admin tasks take up 30 per cent of their time, 60 per cent is high volume [crime] and they only use their high level skills [for] 10 to 15 per cent of the time. We want to build the status of the officer. CSOs do a narrow role and we want to keep that role in the confines of what they are now doing. (cited in Marchant & Bebbington, 2006)

If, as the rationale of workforce modernization suggests, the balance between regular officers, PCSOs and other police staff is to change significantly, the issue of integration will become ever more pressing. Here a comment from the National Evaluation, referred to earlier in the chapter, is particularly noteworthy: “It was clear that much of the goodwill and acceptance of CSOs was dependent on the numbers of police officers remaining stable” (Cooper et al., 2006, p. 67). That issue is, in part, related to continuing debates about the scope of the PCSO role. ACPO guidance defines the fundamental role of PCSOs as contributing to neighbourhood policing through visible patrol for purposes of enhancing reassurance, increasing orderliness in public places and being accessible to communities. Though it is emphasized that the powers required to fill this role will vary from place to place, the guidance adds: While we would encourage the development and expansion of the role of PCSOs, we believe it should always remain within the framework of neighbourhood policing with an emphasis on engagement as opposed to enforcement and, for the sake of clarity, distinction should be made between the role of a PCSO and that of a sworn police officer. (ACPO, 2005, para. 3.8)

While these aspirations are laudable, evidence suggests that role expansion has, so far, tended to generate both role “drift” (leading to confusion) and role tension (leading to possible conflict). Consider an example. The National Evaluation Report refers to a recent MPS initiative aimed at responding to low-level incidents without taking PCSOs away from patrol and community engagement. This project was set up in Bexley and employs 12

The provisional police grant for the coming year allocates £315 million to fund Community Support Officers and Neighbourhood Policing over 2007–8. This money provides 75% of funding for capped PCSO salaries, the remainder to be provided through partnership funding and council tax.

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10 “deployment support” PCSOs who work with response teams to lead on the 33% of command and control calls that do not demand an emergency response, but which do require a service response. In order to differentiate between the two, PCSOs and CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) staff are required to draw upon a fixed list of call codes (Cooper et al., 2006). However, a recent internal review of PCSOs in the MPS found very little use of this list, either by PCSOs or by relevant staff in control rooms: This is another indication that the PCSO role is not clearly understood. In discussion with PCSOs about CAD calls it was quite clear that they were deployed to calls that the policy list did not support as suitable for PCSOs . . . The MPS pilot at Bexley has had favourable results. However the response role has led to concerns that role drift is a risk when PCSOs are deployed in this way. Some PCSOs have reported that pressure to take calls has led to them attending incidents that are beyond their capability. (Wynnick & Calcott, 2006, p. 8)

The Review also comments on the “perceived (sic) lack of clarity for the PCSO’s role that exists within the MPS”. Referring specifically to the tension between the enforcement and engagement (including “reassurance”) roles of PCSOs, the authors note This review has found that there is reluctance, both internally and externally, to accept that a PCSO does not have the same powers as a police officer (nor the same employment status, support and welfare mechanisms). This is not a new discovery and has previously prompted a Special Police Notice (03/05). However compliance with the policy is still variable. (Wynnick & Calcott, 2006, p. 5)

However, role confusion and role conflict are by no means the only difficulties. Three other problems are also worthy of note. First, the tension between the enforcement and reassurance roles of PCSOs is exacerbated by unresolved debate regarding the precise meaning of reassurance. As Herrington and Millie (2006) point out, there is a marked difference between the definition of “reassurance” employed by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (reassurance as an outcome of a style of policing) and that invoked by the National Reassurance Policing Project (reassurance as a style of policing designed to deliver neighbourhood security). In that regard, one can only affirm the view of a recent Home Office Study that “there remains no agreed and consistently applied definition of the concept . . . [which] has come to mean a number of different things to policy makers, practitioners and academics alike (Singer in Dalgleish & Myhill, 2004, p. i). It is hardly surprising, then, that Herrington and Millie’s (2006) analysis of neighbourhood policing found little difference, in practice, between reassurance policing and traditional community policing. Second, there is possible tension between the reassurance functions of PCSOs (however they are defined) and their role in local information gathering. The positive role of PCSOs in information gathering has been noted in both the MPS study (Johnston, Donaldson & Jones, 2004) and the National Evaluation (Cooper et al., 2006). The following comments from police officers are typical of several noted in the latter report (cited in Cooper et al., 2006, p. 10): Their offender intelligence is brilliant – they often know more than the cops – have intimate knowledge of whereabouts of offenders – what they are wearing, their name, where they live – can take months to build up that level of knowledge. They are a massive strand of our intelligence gathering – they enable us to micro target below the level of NIM – they get emerging problems and emerging trends. Some of that community intelligence, such as where the youths are currently congregating, where the


383

dens are, isn’t necessarily criminal intelligence, doesn’t necessarily need to be fed into a formal system, but informal passing of information, exchange of information during the course of the joint parades and things of that nature.

Likewise, in the MPS study, Camden’s Community PCSOs were found to provide a valuable intelligence function within the “police extended family”. In Camden Town and Bloomsbury there were periodic “hot spot” meetings involving the Town Centre Managers, representatives from Community Safety, the Warden Managers, the local Sector Sergeants and the heads of the major businesses. At street level things worked more informally, PCSOs engaging routinely with local authority wardens to exchange information on a daily basis. Such informal interaction was illustrated in the following comment from a Camden Warden. We have a good relationship with the PCSOs. Any information we get we will pass on to them and vice versa. We use the same radio system so we can hear them on the street. Obviously, they have police radios as well, so will be privy to information that we won’t hear. But they’ll tell us what they hear and see on the street. (cited in Johnston, Donaldson & Jones, 2004, p. 80)

The same interviewee noted that while formal meetings were held between PCSOs and Wardens every fortnight, such meetings were more or less redundant since the information they covered would already have been imparted informally to the members . . .most of the information is passed on when we meet on the street. We tell whoever we bump into . . . and ask them to pass it on to the relevant persons. In fact, there’s not much that comes out of the formal team meetings that we don’t know already because of the street contact. (cited in Johnston, Donaldson & Jones, 2004, p. 80)

Yet, as research on the efficacy of foot patrol shows (Sherman & Eck, 2002), the most effective deployment of PCSOs for information-gathering purposes would be to have them tasked through the National Intelligence Model, something that the National Evaluation found to occur only amongst 14% of PCSO’s interviewed (Cooper et al., 2006). Were that to happen, however, a balance would need to be drawn between the reassurance functions of PCSOs and their deployment in an intelligence role. A third and final issue also relates to information, though this time at the organizational level rather than on the street. If PCSOs are to make a meaningful contribution to knowledgebased policing through the collection of local information, it is axiomatic that the police organizations which employ them have both the capacity to collect, collate and analyse that information; and also have mechanisms in place to assess PCSO performance. Though the National Evaluation (Cooper et al., 2006) said little about these matters, it is worth noting that an unanticipated problem faced by the researchers in the MPS study was the dearth of quantitative data collected by the organization about PCSOs. During interviews with members of the PCSO Project Team one of the researchers asked what systems were in place to collect data for monitoring PCSOs, both before and after the scheme’s implementation? One interviewee responded as follows: There’s nothing beyond the monitoring that goes on in quality assurance units, such as sickness, discipline, appraisals and the [other] usual things such as arrests, detention, quality of CRIS [Crime Recording System] reports, quality of intelligence, amount of intelligence, etc. . . I think an assumption was made that there were systems in place to collate data already – be it through PIB [Performance Information Bureau] or Quality Assurance or Intelligence Units . . . I think PCSOs have caught boroughs by surprise and . . . data has not been captured like it should have been. (Johnston, Donaldson & Jones, 2004, pp. 4–5)

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Our experience confirmed this conclusion to be entirely accurate with one added proviso: that some of the basic (“bean counting”) data referred to in the quotation was, itself, often unavailable. In one police station, for example, a new management team arrived to find that its predecessors had failed to collect any management data relating to PCSOs for the previous six months; and in Westminster the research team made repeated, and often unsuccessful, attempts to elicit data on matters such as PCSO appraisals, sickness rates and the quality of CRIMINT [Criminal Intelligence] reports. Evaluation of the quality of CRIMINTS submitted by PCSOs was particularly difficult. The quality of CRIMINTS was normally assessed by supervisors and/or BIU [Borough Intelligence Unit] staff though, again, our efforts to gain quantitative information on this matter were unsuccessful. One further factor was that while Camden PCSOs were trained to input CRIMINT reports directly, CRIMINT training was not given to Westminster PCSOs on grounds of cost. Instead, in Westminster, PCSOs submitted hand-written intelligence reports to police officers for subsequent inputting. Effectively, as we learned from supervisors at Charing Cross, this meant that PCSO CRIMINTS would be paper-sifted by uniformed sergeants and “binned” if they were not up to scratch. The extent to which this constituted an effective means of tracking quality over time was questionable. As the following four examples from the recent MPS Review (Wynnick & Calcott, 2006, pp. 10–11) suggest, it seems that the quality of evaluative data remains patchy: PCSOs make use of powers to request name and address for anti-social behaviour and record the action as an intelligence report. However unless their work is closely monitored intelligence reports will be measured as total numbers and not in relation to use of power. There are no databases from which to access data on the number of FPNs [Fixed Penalty Notices] issued by PCSOs. An area of concern discovered by this review was the data supplied from the stops database. This showed a considerable number of entries where a PCSO appears to have carried out a search. There are possible explanations for this such as incorrect inputting, PCSOs filing search reports on behalf of police officers when working together or errors in recording the power used when searches are under terrorism laws. This is an example of the low levels of understanding of PCSO powers . . . There is no quality assurance or evaluation of the way PCSOs use their powers or are deployed to incidents. As mentioned previously in this report, there is limited understanding of the PCSO role and information that PCSOs are carrying out their role in ways that may be inappropriate or counter to guidance on risks.

PCSOs offer much potential as “information workers” in knowledge-based policing networks. For that potential to develop, however, the component elements of the PCSO role need to be better integrated and robust organizational mechanisms need to be developed for assessing the quality of PCSOs’ work.

CONCLUSION While “the jury is still out” on the long-term impact of PCSOs, evidence from this chapter shows that the initiative has produced some significant benefits while also posing some major challenges to police organizations. In closing, however, it is important to place these


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developments in their wider context. The first thing to say is that the PCSO initiative is part of a wider “reinvention” of community policing, this time recast as “neighbourhood policing”. Operationally, this involves the deployment of dedicated “neighbourhood policing teams” – called “Safer Neighbourhood Teams” in the MPS – composed usually of one sergeant, two constables and three PCSOs. The Government insists that this new development should not be confused with old-style community policing, the shortcomings of which were described earlier. Thus, rather than being preoccupied with the manufacture of a spurious consensus, neighbourhood policing teams aim to identify and address local priorities through the cultivation of local intelligence: They will take an intelligence-led, proactive, problem-solving approach to enable them to focus on and tackle specific local issues. They will involve their local community in establishing and negotiating priorities for action and in identifying and implementing solutions. They will ensure a two-way flow of information with the community to build trust and co-operation to help them deal more effectively with crime and anti-social behaviour. Police and their partners providing useful and meaningful information on how a community is being policed will encourage and empower individuals to work with the police, feeding community intelligence into crime prevention, detection and reduction. (Home Office, 2004, p. 7)

As was suggested earlier, however, neighbourhood policing is also linked to a second project: that of reconsolidating the police’s authority over street-level policing. This is part of a wider strategy to re-impose state sovereignty over security networks that are made up, increasingly, of plural nodes (Johnston & Shearing, 2003). Significantly, the methodology that underpins the Neighbourhood Policing Project, the “signal crimes perspective”, employs “control hub” principles to construct a “total policing model” that eschews “nodal” models of security governance: These control hubs will be locally based. At the centre will be the police constable, who will be responsible for identifying the problems that are impacting upon levels of neighbourhood security through engagement with residents and other key stakeholders. They will then seek to develop solutions to these problems through engaging the resources of various partners. These might include Community Support Officers and local wardens; community groups; other public agencies . . . and even private security agencies . . . The control hubs model . . . provides an alternative conception to the model of ‘nodal governance’. (Innes, 2004, p. 165)

If the neighbourhood/total policing model is to re-establish police sovereignty over security, several issues will have to be resolved. First, neighbourhood policing teams will need to be well integrated if they are to function as effective conduits in a knowledgebased policing system. In particular, effective working will require both role-specificity and operational flexibility within teams, a balance that police organizations have traditionally found it difficult to achieve. Second, neighbourhood policing is premised upon the delivery of localized (non-standardized) services by officers who are broadly representative of the neighbourhood being policed, and who are backed by local partner agencies which participate fully in decisions. The extent to which such diverse aspirations can be made to conform with the extreme centralizing tendencies of the Government’s police reform programme remains to be seen. Finally, and most critically, will the “police extended family” (in this case, neighbourhood policing teams and their partners) be able to deliver “total policing” through the application of the signal crimes method or will police organizations, driven by central government, merely aim to revert to the status quo ante? So far, evidence is limited though

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Herrington and Millies’ (2006, p. 154) comments on the implementation of the National Reassurance Policing Programme give little cause for optimism: . . . if local residents identify key “signals” that differ from Home Office priority crimes, which takes precedence? . . . The upshot is that the central premise of the NRPP and signal crimes – that the direction and future of local policing must be in the hands of local residents – is fulfilled only to the point where governmental objectives and BVPIs [Best Value Performance Indicators] take over.

Given the degree of historical inertia in police organizations, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the application of “control hub” principles will be used to justify the attempted resuscitation of old-style (top-down) community policing practices. The difference is that in an increasingly nodalized security environment these practices will become more and more untenable.

REFERENCES ACPO [Association of Chief Police Officers] (2005). Guidance on Police Community Support Officers. ACPO: London. (Originally drafted 2002; reviewed and amended June 2005.) Bayley, D. & Shearing, C.D. (2001). The New Structure of Policing. Washington: The National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. Bebbington, S. (2006). Police grant gives no future guarantees. Police Review, 29 November. Bennett, T. (1994). Recent developments in community policing. In M. Stephens & S. Becker (eds), Police Force, Police Service (pp. 107–30). London: Macmillan. Blair, I. (2002). Patrol partnership. Police Review, 110 (No. 5670), 30–31. Cooper, C. (2006). A National Evaluation of Community Support Officers, Findings 271. London: Home Office. Cooper, C., Anscombe, J., Avenell, J. et al., (2006). A National Evaluation of Community Support Officers. London: Home Office Research Study 297. Crawford, A., Blackburn, S., Lister, S. & Shepherd, P. (2004). Patrolling With a Purpose: An Evaluation of Police Community Support Officers in Leeds and Bradford City Centres. Leeds: Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, University of Leeds. Cunningham, S. & Wagstaff, M. (2006). Reflecting London: Diversity of Police Community Support Officer Recruits Compared to Police Officer Recruits in the Metropolitan Police Service. London: Metropolitan Police Authority. Dalgleish, D. & Myhill, A. (2004). Reassuring the Public – A Review of International Policing Interventions, Home Office Research Study 284. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate. Herrington, V. & Millie, A. (2006). Applying reassurance policing: is it ‘business as usual’? Policing & Society, 16, 146–63. HM Government (2004). Cutting Crime, Delivering Justice. A Strategic Plan for Criminal Justice 2004-08, Cm 6288. London: HMSO. Holdaway, S. (1996). The Racialization of British Policing. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Home Office (1999). Dismantling Barriers to Reflect the Community We Serve. The Recruitment, Retention and Progression of Ethnic Minority Officers. London: Home Office. Home Office (2003). Policing: Building Safer Communities Together. London: Home Office. Home Office (2004). Building Communities, Beating Crime: A Better Police Service for the 21st Century, Cm 6360. London: HMSO. Innes, M. (2004). Reinventing tradition? Reassurance, neighbourhood security and policing. Criminal Justice, 4, 151–71. Johnston, L. (1997). Policing communities of risk. In P. Francis, P. Davies & V. Jupp (eds), Policing Futures: The Police, Law Enforcement and the Twenty First Century (pp. 186–04). London: Macmillan.


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Johnston, L. (2003). From ‘pluralisation’ to the ‘police extended family’: discourses on the governance of community policing in Britain. International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 31, 185–204. Johnston, L. (2006). Diversifying police recruitment? The deployment of Police Community Support Officers in London. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 45, 388–402. Johnston, L. & Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security, London: Routledge. Johnston, L., Donaldson, R. & Jones, D. (2004). Evaluation of the Deployment of Police Community Support Officers in the Metropolitan Police Service. Final Report, University of Portsmouth (unpublished). Klockars, C. (1991). The rhetoric of community policing. In C.B. Klockars & S.D. Mastrofski (eds), Thinking About Policing (pp. 530–42). New York: McGraw-Hill. Marchant, C. & Bebbington, S. (2006). Double your workforce with half-price CSOs. Police Review, 29 November. Mastrofski, S.D. (1991). Community policing as reform: a cautionary tale. In C.B. Klockars & S.D. Mastrofski (eds), Thinking About Policing (pp. 515–29). New York: McGraw-Hill. [MPS] Metropolitan Police Service (2002a). Public Attitude Survey (Quarters 1–4) Camden Borough. [MPS] Metropolitan Police Service (2002b). Public Attitude Survey (Quarters 1–4) City of Westminster. [MPS] Metropolitan Police Service (2003a). Public Attitude Survey (Quarters 1–4) Camden Borough. [MPS] Metropolitan Police Service (2003b). Public Attitude Survey (Quarters 1–2) City of Westminster. [MPS] Metropolitan Police Service (2003c). PCSO Survey Results: Belgravia, December (unpublished). Osborne, D. & Gaebler, T. (1993). Reinventing Government. New York: Plume. Sherman, L. (1983). After the riots: police and minorities in the US 1970–1980. In N. Glazer & K. Young (eds), Ethnic Pluralism and Public Policy (pp. 212–35). London: Heinemann. Sherman, L. & Eck, J. (2002). Policing for Crime Prevention. In L. Sherman, D. Farrington, B. Welsh & D. Mackenzie (eds), Evidence-Based Crime Prevention (pp. 295–329). London: Routledge. Singer, L. (2004). Community Support Officer (Detention Power) Pilot: Evaluation Results. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate. Wynnick, C. & Calcott, S. (2006). Review of Police Community Support Officers in the Metropolitan Police. London: MPS. TPHQ Safer Neighbourhood Unit. Unpublished.

CHAPTER 18

Integrated Security: Assembling Knowledges and Capacities Julie Berg and Clifford Shearing University of Cape Town, South Africa

INTRODUCTION Policing refers to intentional activities intended to shape the flow of events in ways that will promote security. This requires both a conception of security and the activities that are intended to promote this state of affairs. This requires both knowledge and capacity as well as resources to enable this knowledge and capacity to be enacted. Within this conception all policing is by definition knowledge-based. The ways in which policing has been realized in practice all reflect (and enact) an understanding of what knowledge and capacity can and should be mobilized to promote security. Institutions of policing facilitate particular ways of mobilization of knowledge and capacity to promote security. Each set of policing institutions thus has embedded within them understandings (which may not be entirely consistent) of how knowledge and capacity can be used to create security – both as a present condition and as an expectation that this condition will continue (Johnston & Shearing, 2003; Loader & Walker, 2007). Within those parts of the world thought of as “western” there has been over several centuries, and continues to be, a remarkable degree of consensus as to what knowledge and capacities should be mobilized and just how this should be done. This agreement has been rooted in a remarkably persistent and widespread vision or dream of state-centric governance set out with remarkable clarity by Thomas Hobbes in the mid-1600s. For Hobbes (1968 [1651]) only a legitimate and powerful central government that could act for all citizens would be able both to establish a legitimate vision of security and to see to it that this vision was realized. For Hobbes security constituted a foundational order that was required for any other orders to exist. Without security there could be no commerce, no manufacture, no agriculture, no health care and so on. This dream of a centralized sovereign dedicated to the welfare of the many, and not just the few, has captured the imagination of countless generations across the world and it continues to do so today. The appeal of this dream has rested both in its appeal to collective The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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unity and harmony – to peace rather than to war – as well as in the intuitive appeal of its central premises. One of the implications of this dream of a Leviathan as a single source of governmental authority – a single auspice – has historically been the associated idea that governments should establish within themselves the knowledge and capacity necessary to govern security effectively. Police are a central mechanism that has been established to accomplish this. Central to this vision is the idea of police as an organization of professionals who together will embody the knowledge and capacity required to successfully promote public security. In the case of the police established in England at the turn of the 19th Century there were two versions of this idea. A domestic version that provided the dream for the London Metropolitan Police, in which police were seen as rooted in the ancient system of citizen policing. The idea here was of professionalized citizens who would become a police body. This new body – Sir Robert Peel’s “New Police” – would be citizens in uniform. They would professionalize citizen’s knowledge. Citizens would support these new police (the contrast is to the old police who were citizens) by providing them with local knowledge that they could use as professionals to solve problems. The key feature of the new police was that they would provide what Radzinowicz (1968) termed an “unremitting watch”. Professionals were to acquire local knowledge themselves by constantly watching over communities so that they knew everything that happened in them. The colonial version of this, which was first established in Ireland and later became a more general colonial model, was based on the same principles but without the legitimating gloss of police being “just” ordinary citizens in uniform – they were the “eyes and ears” of the colonial masters. Their focus too was an unremitting watch that would provide the Leviathan with local knowledge. Colonial police were to find ways of gaining the support of citizens, although the methods of doing so would likely be different. While the dream of a professional police has become a reality, the idea that the police could do the job alone (albeit with public support) has never been fully realized. And it certainly is not a reality today. While the police have become a crucial part of security governance – and while governments, the police themselves and citizens alike have often sought to make the dream of a police monopoly of the governance of security come true – today security governance is a fractured, polycentric business. While there is much discussion as to the pros and cons of this the fact remains that this was never true and is most certainly not true today (Loader & Walker, 2007). It is clear that polycentric security governance presents normative difficulties with respect to the promotion of an order that promotes the well-being of the many rather than the few. These difficulties are certainly not new and they are not limited to polycentric forms of governance. Many histories of police have presented the emergence of state governments (be they democratic or not) as mechanisms that have enabled particular classes to exercise considerable influence, and indeed control, over what order is to be considered the public order (see, for example, Storch, 1976). This literature often presents public order as private orders masquerading as peaces that work for the many rather than the few. In particular, states are envisaged as being captured by partisan interests – be they the interests of a very few or of a sizable few. What much of this literature is agreed on is that security is understood as accomplished when those who a society has marginalized – often termed the dangerous classes – are effectively controlled (Bittner, 1975). In this chapter we will not address the normative arguments to which we have just referred directly. In particular, we will not be addressing the dominant view that, despite

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the difficulties with realizing state governance that genuinely promotes “public goods” and despite the fact that governance has become decidedly polycentric, the best way of promoting security as a public good is finding ways of realizing a state monopoly of security governance (Loader & Walker, 2001).1 Rather what we intend to consider is what has happened as the dream of a police monopoly of security governance has come to be juxtaposed with a reality of polycentric policing. Our concern here will not be to document that this has been happening – there is much research and writing on this already – but rather to look at this proliferation of governance auspices and providers from the point of view of what it has meant for the sources of knowledge and capacity that are being mobilized and deployed in security governance. We will then consider what this has meant for the question of whose order is being promoted. In considerations of developments in security governance scholarly attention has, for obvious reasons, been firmly fixed on the societies in which the majority of criminological scholars live – namely, western countries, or what has now come to be thought of as the “global north” as the globe has come to be reconceptualized on a latitudinal rather than a longitudinal basis. In this chapter we want to focus on the “global south”, a term pertaining to poorer or developing countries, and to use a South African experience as an example to engage and develop northern-based analyses (Braveboy-Wagner, 2003).

RELOCATION OF PROFESSIONALISM As is now well known a central feature of the redistribution of policing knowledge and capacity has been the growth of a new set of security professionals within what has come to be called “the private security industry”. Here the dream of a professional police has effectively been retained but, has been uncoupled from the Hobbesian dream of a Leviathan as an auspice. This development has found its motivation, not in a dream of a new police, but in a set of pragmatic considerations. Fundamental to these, it has been argued, is a shift in property relations which has had the effect – given state property law – of creating new auspices of governance with the authority to govern security within novel “feudal-like” domains of “mass private property” (Shearing & Stenning, 1983). Two motivations for taking up these governance possibilities are particularly important (for a review see Hermer et al., 2005). First, a desire by corporate auspices to govern security in their own corporate interests, rather than in accordance with wider public interests. (Since corporate entities often constitute corporate communities with common objectives and concerns, these corporate interests may be thought of as “common interests” – see Shearing and Wood, 2003a.) This parallels the developments within many states, especially democratic states, of multiple levels of state governance responsible to different levels of constituencies – for example, national, regional and local. It is important to acknowledge this parallel as it compels a recognition that the polycentric features of corporate governance are not as radical as they might first appear; and that indeed the idea of a single Leviathan is not as central to conceptions of state governance as the Hobbesian vision suggests. What differentiates these different versions of multiple governments, as many critics of these developments have noted, is that within polycentric state governance, at least within 1

Loader and Walker’s (2007) recent book Civilizing Security provides an eloquent examination of these normative arguments and a passionate (and equally eloquent and sophisticated) argument in favour of such a Hobbesian solution.

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democratic states, each level of government is conceived of as representing a territorial constituency and as being appointed through an electoral process. A second motivation for the emergence of private governments, noted in the literature, has been dissatisfaction with the police as a security resource. There are several reasons cited for this including the unwillingness of police to promote corporate definitions of order and concerns on the part of these corporate auspices with the way in which police go about maintaining security. (Very often this is expressed in terms of both their availability and as regards the effectiveness of their actions and those of their criminal justice partners when they do get involved.) These developments, while clearly at odds with the idea of a state monopoly of security governance, so fundamental to the Hobbesian dream of the state as Leviathan, have taken place with state authorization, and in some cases with active state support. Active support has taken place through an umbrella idea of “responsibilization” (O’Malley & Palmer, 1996), which encourages non-state entities of all sorts to take care of their own governance and to be less reliant on the state. This is nicely illustrated in the South African case by the active encouragement apartheid governments gave to this idea with a view to freeing state resources to release them to engage in maintaining the architecture of apartheid and quelling resistance to it (Shaw, 2001). A related but different set of developments has been the use by states of private security to assist states in fulfilling their responsibilities as security governors (Singer, 2004). This certainly challenges a pure conception of the Hobbesian dream where the Leviathan is both the monopoly governance auspice and provider. Here states continue to act as security auspices but no longer define themselves as having to be the sole providers of state services. This is consistent with a widespread development across a variety of domains of governance (that has come to be associated with the sign “neo-liberalism”) in which states contract with the private sector to provide state services. A current example of this would be the use of private military companies by states in conflict situations – for example, the use of private military firms by the United States government in its war in Iraq (Avant, 2005). From the perspective of knowledge and capacity these developments have followed closely the pattern established within state police of creating a security occupation with expert knowledge and capacity. The expertise within this development is often, but not always, somewhat different from that found within police organizations. Private security’s expertise, while it often parallels that of state police (something that the industry’s hiring of ex-state police officers supports) is often considerably broader – private security’s toolbox typically has more tools in it than the police toolbox which is more force-focused: more and larger hammers but fewer other tools. Security cameras constitute a contemporary feature of security that harks back to Peel’s dream of an “unremitting watch” (Radzinowicz, 1968). For Peel an unremitting watch was to be accomplished by placing policemen across the city. The beat system that has now become such a central part of policing, and that has gone through many different iterations, was initially conceived as a way of distributing policemen across an entire terrain so that their eyes (and with it their knowledge and capacity), would be spread across all public places. This dream of an unremitting watch proved to be very hard to realize if for no other reason than because placing policemen across all public places proved to be very expensive. One needs a lot of policemen to accomplish this and no country has ever been able to hire that many police officers. Security cameras are providing a means of closing the gap between the dream and reality. While such a professional unremitting watch is still

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a long way off, the enormous growth in the use of security cameras has changed our reality considerably.

THE DE-OCCUPATIONALIZATION OF SECURITY GOVERNANCE Private security provides evidence of another development of the location of knowledge and capacity within the governance of security. This development, that we shall call deoccupationalization, has been largely “hidden” from both scholars and practitioners. The reason for this is that because our frameworks for seeing have been so fundamentally influenced by the professionalization of governance, we tend only to see governance when it is done by professionals. What this means in the case of the governance of security is that policing is only seen to exist and to be taking place if it is done by professionals. In speaking of the de-occupationalization of policing we do not wish to suggest that there are fewer police and private security officers or that policing is no longer being undertaken by specialized persons. On the contrary, these numbers have been constantly expanding worldwide. We have more specialized policing personnel than ever. What we mean is that policing should no longer be understood, exclusively or even primarily, as a specialized activity. It is now an activity that has been and continues to be embedded within social and physical architectures. To draw on Foucault’s (1976) discussion of power, security is now everywhere, not because it is exercised everywhere, as part of a Peelian dream of an unremitting watch, but because it comes from everywhere. One of the major developments within the governance of security has been the embedding of security in other functions. Shearing and Stenning (1987) provide an example of this with their analysis of the governance of security within Disney World. In the public spaces of Disney World there are remarkably few specialized security persons to be seen. On the basis of this lack of visible public presence of specialized security personnel one might think that there was little or no governance of security taking place within Disney World – no unremitting watch. But this would be a mistake, and very misleading. In fact the governance of security within Disney World is pervasive. There is considerable watching taking place there; and it is in spaces like Disney World that the dream of an unremitting watch perhaps comes as close as it has ever come to being realized within public spaces. Shearing and Stenning (1987) argue that security governance in Disney World is as pervasive as it is because it has been de-occupationalized. It has been embedded “everywhere”. This embedding has been possible because, in Disney World, security is not simply the business of a set of security officials but has been established as “everybody’s business”. Security, in Disney World, is everywhere, to refer to Foucault (1976) again, because it “comes from everywhere”. This feature of security as being everywhere because it has been embedded everywhere is a feature of contemporary security that Lawrence Lessig (Lessig, 1999) has drawn attention to in his analysis of cyberspace. For Lessig cyberspace epitomizes a regime of governance in which regulation is built into the architecture of life, rather than being separate from it. What Shearing and Stenning’s (1987) analysis of Disney World made clear was embedding security into the architecture of life means not only embedding it into physical features of environments but embedding it into functions, and these functions into other occupations.

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In Disney World every Mickey Mouse, every Donald Duck, every parking attendant, every gardener and so on has a security function. This de-professionalization and de-centralization of security, that has come about as the professional monopoly of security governance that is a vital part of the Peelian policing dream has been eroded, is by no means limited to what corporations like Disney have done. It has become an essential feature of contemporary security governance across auspices and providers of security (Bayley & Shearing, 2001). Justifications for this can be found, and have been found, in the Peelian vision itself. Both in Peel’s definition of police as citizens in uniform (that is, the professionalization of what had been an embedded function) as well as in the related idea that police, as professionals, need the support of citizens who should share their knowledge with them. It has been this latter idea in particular that has been drawn upon in the now decades old idea of “community policing”. Community policing has developed in various guises. A common theme that unites these various incarnations has been that community policing provides a mechanism that enables police to tap into the knowledge and capacities of citizens who should be mobilized to assist them. There are three principal ways in which community policing arrangements have sought to realize citizen assistance. The most conservative, in the sense that it does most to retain the idea of a police monopoly over policing, are institutional arrangements that invite citizens to share with police their policing priorities so that police can take these into account in setting their priorities. Similarly unchallenging are institutional arrangements that invite citizens to share information with the police about the presence of disorder and information required to respond to it. The most ubiquitous of these is the various dial-a-cop arrangements (911 in North America) that invite the public to call the police to invite them to respond to a policing disorder that has occurred. This has established the police as a 24-hour policing service. Over recent decades the police have sought to limit and focus these arrangements in various ways. Finally, there have been arrangements that encourage members of the public to get directly engaged in policing. For a while this idea was regarded with considerable suspicion by the police as likely to challenge their monopoly of policing but it has, especially under the impact of neo-liberal encouragements to “responsibilize” members of the public, gained increasing acceptance. Another development which has taken place on a larger scale has been the development of business improvement districts. It is this development that we will explore using South African data. Business improvement districts or BIDs have become influential sites of knowledge and reflect a fairly novel mechanism for merging state and non-state capacities. BIDs originated in Canada in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since the 1980s they have gained in popularity, particularly in the United States (Caruso & Weber, 2006). BIDs exist in various countries throughout the world and, although there is no general formula as to what a BID should look like – there are a number of variations of what a BID does and how it is structured – they are generally non-profit public–private corporations created to supplement local government services in localized, geographically-defined spaces. Their most common function is to revitalize inner city areas, especially in terms of economic and spatial development and, in doing so, to perpetuate a certain consumer-orientated “image” (Mor¸co¨ l & Patrick, 2006; Huey, Ericson & Haggerty, 2005). For instance, many BIDs will provide a range of services over and above those provided by a municipal government, such as marketing, advocacy, maintenance (including cleansing), parking control, security, social services, regulation of public spaces and so forth (Mor¸co¨ l & Zimmerman, 2006). They have, in other words, become “general-purpose governments” supplying many, if not all,

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of the services government is supposed to provide, including security and feelings of safety (Mor¸co¨ l & Zimmerman, 2006; Caruso & Weber, 2006). The creation of BIDs can be seen as originating from two sources – on the one hand from state governments (particularly, local municipalities) attempting to “responsibilize” the community as well as ensure the delivery of services and, on the other hand, from businesses and property owners protecting their interests by using BID structures and state authority to boost profits, through for instance, attracting visitors and investors and generally improving “the pedestrian experience” (Hoyt, 2006, p. 221). The use of BIDs aligns with neo-liberal thinking about the inefficiencies of “unwieldy” government departments, particularly in light of the urban degeneration experienced by many inner cities across the United States (Clough & Vanderbeck, 2006). The localism of BIDs has been seen as necessary for “efficient, innovative and responsive” service delivery (Ward, 2006; Caruso & Weber, 2006, p. 189). Although BIDs have been described as many things, including “quasi-governmental” structures, “private governments” and “parallel states” they are the product of, and tend to be accountable to, local state governments in the form of local municipalities (Mor¸co¨ l & Zimmerman, 2006). BIDs are regarded as a “tool of government” (Salamon, 2002) by some. Others, seeing them as something more, regard them as sites of “active networked governance” and active “participants in metropolitan governance” (Mor¸co¨ l & Patrick, 2006, p. 162). Though much controversy exists about the ideology, strategy and functioning of BIDs, this chapter focuses on a particular set of issues: the means by which BIDs become avenues for, and originators of, the streamlining and maximum utilization of resources, knowledges and capacities; and how, as a result, they can be regarded as sites or nodes of integrated and “active networked governance”. Detailed case studies of BID-type structures thus become useful for exploring the challenges and successes of what has come in South Africa to be thought of as integrated security governance. Drawing on experience from elsewhere, particularly the United States, various urban locations in South Africa have developed BID-type structures known as City Improvement Districts or CIDs. In this chapter we use the operation of one CID – the Cape Town Central CID – and its managing agent – the Cape Town Partnership – as a source of data. We use these cases to explore the ways in which polycentric governance arrangements have impacted on the sources of knowledge and capacity and what this has meant for social ordering.

CITY IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS AS A LOCUS OF KNOWLEDGE AND CAPACITY Background to the City Improvement District (CID) Initiative in Cape Town As with its international counterparts, the CIDs in South Africa were created as an economic strategy to revive deteriorating inner cities through the utilization of top-up levies paid by rate payers within a defined geographical space. These funds are usually directed at various services such as security and cleansing which literally top-up the municipal provision of these services. Thus, the municipality by means of a “service-level” agreement is committed

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to providing a certain level of service to which the CIDs contribute. With respect to security, CIDs will often employ private security guards to patrol CID areas and in a very real sense act as the “eyes and ears” of the state police – the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the metro police services. In Cape Town the development of the CID initiative was part of a broader urban renewal strategy. Following discussions in 1996 between the South African Property Owner’s Association, the Cape Regional Chamber of Commerce and the City of Cape Town, the City Council enacted a by-law for the Establishment of City Improvement Districts in March 1999 (City of Cape Town, 1999). The purpose of CIDs, according to the amended 2004 by-law,2 is to: r Supplement municipal services r Facilitate investment r Facilitate a “co-operative approach between the City and the private sector in the provision of municipal services” r Contribute to the upliftment of areas and businesses r Promote economic growth and sustainable development. The managing body for the Cape Town CID, a non-profit company headed by a Board of Directors called the Cape Town Partnership, was created in 1999 to spearhead the regeneration of the central city. In 2000, the Cape Town Central City Improvement District or CCID was created. The top-up levy collected from within the CCID area is approximately 15 million Rand per annum (currently this amounts to about US$ 2 million), most of which is collected from businesses. About half of this levy is allocated to security needs within the CCID, with the remainder allocated to cleansing, social development and marketing. As mentioned, notwithstanding the controversies around the use of CIDs in local and international debates, since the establishment of the CCID there has been a visible difference within Cape Town in terms of improved cleanliness, revival of cultural events, influx of small, medium and large businesses, rising property values, an increased security presence on the streets and, related to this, a reduction in the number of street children and homeless persons living on the streets of the city. The Cape Town Partnership is not a purely private organization. It is, rather, a non-profit entity funded on a 50/50 basis by government and private sector. Its activities are overseen by a Board with representatives from both the public and private spheres. It is accordingly a private–public partnership that relies for its existence on “buy-in” by both the private and the public sectors. The operation of the Cape Town Partnership and the CCID clearly demonstrates a particular way of mobilizing knowledge and capacity to promote the delivery of services – particularly the delivery of security in the City and surrounding areas. What follows is a closer look at the functioning of these two bodies insofar as it demonstrates the manner in which knowledge and capacity is utilized for a particular style of policing.3

2 3

City of Cape Town (2004) City of Cape Town: City Improvement District By-law. Provincial Gazette 6118, 26 March 2004, section 1(2)(a)–(e). The following information is based on research conducted by one of the authors on plural policing accountability in the City of Cape Town. This research project, running from January 2006 to May 2007, under the auspices of the Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town and funded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, included in-depth interviews with a number of state and non-state organizations involved in policing in the City as well as policing oversight.

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Securing the Central City – The Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) The CCID, established in November 2000, is run by a Board but the Cape Town Partnership, as mentioned, is its “managing agent”.4 The CCID employs a Chief Operations Officer, a Security and Deputy Security Manager, four precinct managers (assigned to four grids of which the CCID is made up), a social development coordinator and marketing staff.5 Whereas Disney relies predominantly on embedded security, the CCID relies on embedded security through the “opening up” of spaces to the public as well as visible security. To this end the CCID have employed the services of two private security companies and these security officials, who operate within the CCID-allocated space (and sometimes beyond this space), are clearly visible as they wear reflective bibs and drive clearly marked vans. The security function that the CCID employs is fundamentally preventative. Private security within the CCID is directed by the security managers and is deployed as and when they see fit – they have shown no hesitation in dismissing them when there is evidence that they have transgressed the law. What the deployment of approximately 70 foot patrols and other units has meant is that the source of knowledge and the knowledge-base has been greatly broadened within the CCID and has been extended to the state policing structures. As they are seen as private persons who do not have the authority to directly enforce the law, they rely on the state police to enforce incidents that violate state law and municipal ordinances. The CCID does not function in isolation from, or outside of, state policing. For instance, although security personnel may make citizen arrests,6 they still need the state police (SAPS) to process these arrests. Also, security personnel within the CCID cannot issue fines to those contravening traffic laws, thus in this instance a municipal police officer is called in to process a by-law infraction. As a “force multiplier”, CCID security personnel are often involved in joint operations with the police (which the CCID, at times, may initiate) and participate in weekly crime prevention forums and planning sessions. The CCID radio is heard in the SAPS control room. These and other related mechanisms enable CCID security and the police to discuss problems. CCID security is frequently utilized by police to address problems when additional resources are required – for instance to deploy security personnel on a 24-hour basis at an identified “hot spot” of criminal activity. Since the CCID has, to some extent, greater control over their personnel in terms of street-level deployment,7 the CCID has become a locus of knowledge in terms of basic street-by-street activities, information reported to it by the public and close liaison with other CIDs – whether it be in identifying a hot spot of parking infringements within a particular alley or a gap in security provision in a city block. What is clear is that the state police do not embody all knowledge and capacity required to successfully ensure the safety, security and, most importantly for the CCID, the smooth running of the City (see Loader & Walker, 2007). Security comes from everywhere, through CCID officers, parking marshals (employed by the City but managed by the CCID), CCID 4 5 6

7

CCID Annual Report 2005 available online at http://www.capetownpartnership.co.za/files/ccidar 05.pdf [Accessed on 27 March 2007] Details of the CCID available online at http://www.capetownpartnership.co.za/ [Accessed on 27 March 2007] In South Africa the private security industry derives its powers mainly from the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 which allows private security personnel to perform a number of “policing” duties such as arresting without a warrant, using force, if necessary, to affect this arrest, breaking open premises and so forth. The contract with the private security companies under the employ of the CCID is regularly reviewed and the CCID opens the contract to tender on an annual basis.

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cleaning staff,8 members of the public complaining to the variety of complaints mechanisms within the City, owners of buildings commenting on security needs, CCTV cameras and so forth. In a sense, community policing has manifested itself in a particular way in the CCID. The CCID has encouraged the public to contact it to make complaints, report on (perceived) criminality and so forth. Considering general public mistrust of the SAPS, the CCID may be serving a surrogate role to that of the SAPS in terms of developing favourable relations with the public and then passing pertinent knowledge to the relevant role-players. For instance a complaint about traffic violations will be passed onto the metro police, a complaint about street children may be passed on to the CCID’s own Social Development Programme and/or the SAPS social crime division, a complaint about suspected street corner drug dealing will be passed on to SAPS exclusively, and so forth. As mentioned, the functioning of the CCID is completely dependent on the buy-in of the state structures and, through perseverance, the CCID has created a working relationship with the state police and also with the array of state and non-state role-players involved in various developmental activities within the City. In terms of security activities, the CCID considers itself to be accountable to the SAPS – it acknowledges the SAPS as the primary role-players in terms of securing the City. However, the CCID has the capacity to enhance SAPS accountability to the public – the CCID has the capacity and legitimacy to share information with oversight bodies and with SAPS upper level management structures. Policing entails a certain degree of secrecy (Brodeur & Dupont, 2006), yet the level of information required for visible policing is not a stumbling block for cooperation. In terms of the sharing of information, the CCID is not concerned with undercover investigations, for instance. Information sharing between SAPS and the CCID is reciprocal. For instance, the CCID have developed their own mapping system by means of the complaints received by it from a variety of sources at its 24-hour control room and they have passed this knowledge on to the SAPS. On the other hand, although there is a moratorium on the release of crime statistics at present (the statistics are only released annually to the public) the SAPS at station level share crime statistics with the CCID. Similarly, the SAPS, through their interaction with the CCID, can tap into “local knowledge” and “the diverse needs and policing challenges of the locality” (Crawford et al., 2005, p. 39) thus extending the knowledge and capacity of the SAPS for visible policing in the City and promoting arrest rates for the SAPS in the CCID. Confirming the findings of Crawford et al. (2005, pp. x and 49) in their study of plural policing, the SAPS ironically “play a more significant role . . . as the repository of crime-related data and as information advisors and facilitators in collective local security-related endeavours” – that is the SAPS have become “information-brokers” as they share incidences of criminality and police operations (in retrospect) within City forums (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). This is supported by the SAPS-run forums taking place between various role-players within the City such as their weekly crime prevention forum, to which key policing personal and community members are invited. The level of cooperation between the CCID and SAPS is noteworthy in itself, as according to the CCID, it took four years to develop a workable relationship with, and “earn the respect” of, this notoriously “closed” institution.9 At the outset the SAPS were resistant to the CCID,

8 9

A manager of a private security company working in a neighbouring CID, when interviewed, commented on the fact that most of the observations and information on criminality came from the cleaning staff employed by that particular CID. Interview conducted with a member of the CCID, March 2007.

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believing that security players were usurping their role as the primary providers of policing within the City. The SAPS is a single police agency with a single line of command from its National commissioner through multiple levels of management to the police constables on the ground. Nothing interrupts this line of command, although we have seen that at the local level, community police fora may make their concerns known through persuasion and discussion, and that at the provincial level, politicians charged with safety and security can engage in a similar practice . . . In South Africa, the current system is too centralised, with little provision made for significant and structured community inputs into the process of policing. (Shaw, 2002, pp. 143–144)

The CCID it seems has, to some extent, infiltrated this line of command insofar as it has been concerned with visible policing in the central City. This has primarily taken place through the CCID demonstrating its desire to be a support rather than a hindrance to the SAPS and also due to open-minded personalities within SAPS and within the CCID. The Community Police Forum (CPF)10 in the City may have lent legitimacy to the CCID. Yet, on the other hand, it may be the case that without CCID input at Cape Town’s CPF, the CPF would not be as legitimate and functional as it currently is (considering the fact that many Community Police Fora in other neighbourhoods are malfunctioning). In other words, the CCID may have legitimized the CPF rather than the other way around. It is perhaps ironic that the one mechanism – that is, CPFs – meant to promote community policing and accountability over the SAPS as conceptualized in a certain way has largely failed, apart from a few neighbourhoods (such as the City), whereas CIDs – never intended to specifically promote some form of community policing – have flourished and have been successful in promoting, in an indirect fashion, SAPS links to the community. The formation of the CIDs was in large part perpetuated by the state, in the form of local government – the Department of Provincial and Local Government developing the relevant policy: The White Paper on Local Government recommends that municipalities look for innovative ways of providing and accelerating the delivery of municipal services. The Municipal Service Partnership (MSP) Policy aims to provide a clear framework within which to leverage and marshal the resources of public institutions, CBOs [community-based organizations], NGOs [non-governmental organizations], and the private sector towards meeting the country’s overall development objectives. (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 2004, p. 1)

In fact all the activities undertaken by the CCID and other CIDs are well within the ambit of the law and conform to and support the styles of policing and security adopted by the prevailing policing and political authorities. In a sense, the development of the CCID has broadened the role of the police by becoming an extension of their activities and offering a visible presence and style of policing reflected in a Hobbesian, and for that matter, a Peelian vision of the state. In simpler terms, the CCID “makes them [SAPS] stronger” through increasing their resources and sharing information and knowledge.11 In some sense then the state is fulfilling its duty to provide an all-encompassing security presence, simply allocating 10

11

Community Police Forums, mandated through Chapter 7 of the South African Police Service Act, 68 of 1995, were created to perform a number of functions in the promotion of community policing by being a site of liaison between communities and the SAPS and thus facilitating cooperation, joint “problem solving” and generally partnership policing. Another function the CPFs were meant to perform was that of watchdog in terms of the community (represented on the CPF) holding the SAPS accountable and transparent. The South African Police Service Act 1995 available online at: http://www.info.gov.za/acts/1995/a68-95.pdf [Accessed on 27 March 2007] Interview conducted with a member of the Cape Town Partnership, March 2007.

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this duty to resource-rich players but still retaining a meta-regulatory role with the right to veto any decisions and actions taken on its behalf. However, what is clear from developments within the CCID is that the co-ordination of duties and responsibilities amongst the various policing players – the SAPS, metro police, CCID security officials – has taken place and is still taking place, as a result of bottom-up developments and understandings rather than any national government input. In other words, the various players on the ground have, over time, developed workable policing networks and solutions.

The Cape Town Partnership: Coordinating the “Big Players” Although concerned with security issues, the Cape Town Partnership – as managing agent for the CCID and consultant to some of the 15 other CIDs in and around Cape Town – has taken on a much broader development mandate in which security has become just one of the issues to be addressed. The success of the CCID has largely been as a result of the functioning of the Partnership in its role as a hub of information and knowledge, consultant, networker and facilitator of partnerships between the main players within the state and the private sector for particular projects and needs, especially where gaps in service delivery have been identified. The Partnership itself is not necessarily a powerful player in terms of its resources but it mobilizes role-players who are powerful and who do have the capacity and resources to impact on the development of the City – particularly where the meeting of private and state players on a particular project would be more beneficial than if one player were involved. In other words, the Partnership aims to maximize the utilization of all knowledge and resources – be they state or non-state – as well as providing a “translation service” between the public and private.12 As new development challenges have been identified within the City so more and more governmental and private sector players have become members of the Cape Town Partnership Board (to which the Cape Town Partnership is answerable) and/or become involved in various City improvement projects through the promptings of the Partnership. Using a “nodal” understanding of governance, the Partnership may be understood as being the centre of a node of governance drawing in an array of governance entities from the state (provincial and local government structures), non-governmental organizations and civil society bodies, parastatals and state-owned enterprises as well as private for-profit businesses all geared towards City development in some form or the other – whether it be through the City’s new Energy programme, the development of transport infrastructure or planning around the Soccer World Cup to be hosted in South Africa in 2010. The Partnership, as the centre of one governance node, may be completely excluded from, or only serve a peripheral function to, other nodes such as state police accountability and managements structures, or joint private sector business initiatives, but it does belong to a network of governance in terms of the running of the City. It also engages with various levels of state and private sector governance – there is multi-level interaction from street-level engagement with City Council workers to strategic meetings with the City Mayor. Similarly with all the other role-players in the City – daily interaction takes place with SAPS officers and the SAPS station commissioner in the City centre in terms of operational issues but there may also be the need for meetings with the Provincial Commissioner of police in terms of strategic issues. It seems as if this fluidity 12

Interview conducted with member of the Cape Town Partnership, March 2007.

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of interaction between the Cape Town Partnership and various levels of governance may be unique to the Partnership. In other words, the Partnership draws on any player who is potentially useful for the optimal functioning of the City at whatever level in the chain of command. Although care must be taken in attempting to use the term “network”, what seems to have taken place is a node of governance directed by the Partnership providing definite links between other nodes of power, knowledge and capacity, where those nodes would probably not have interacted before, into a network of City governance. This network may be far more “complex and ambiguous” than anticipated but it is nevertheless an identifiable network with identifiable players (Brodeur & Dupont, 2006, p. 12). Those involved in the network may change but there are constant players – the Partnership, the SAPS, the City, and so forth, whose exclusion will result in this particular network no longer functioning. Yet, it must be noted that although “these arrangements might very well become entrenched for considerable periods in many places, this should be regarded as an empirical state of affairs rather than an analytical constant”; nodal formations may fall apart for a variety of reasons particularly when momentum is driven by individual personalities, for instance (Shearing & Wood, 2003b, p. 404; Crawford et al., 2005). Some nodes are stronger than others – for instance the City Council “node” of governance has the authority to disband the CIDs and the Partnership. The SAPS “node” of governance is connected to a broader base of knowledge and capacity that extends throughout the country due to its centralized, hierarchical nature and also extends far beyond visible street-level policing in such a localized area. The Partnership is also a site for knowledge transfer, for instance, advising non-CID areas on potential solutions to their development or security problems particularly in areas where the resources to create and manage a CID are low. The Cape Town Partnership together with the City has recently launched the Cape Town Business Areas Network, a forum for information sharing, aimed at “bringing together organizations and associations involved with managing and developing business areas across the Metropolitan Region into a learning network”.13 This “bringing together” epitomizes what the Partnership primarily does in Cape Town and is one of a number of networks/affiliations to which the Partnership belongs. Other affiliations include membership to the SA Cities Network14 and the International Downtown Association – a national and international network respectively. What is noteworthy about the Partnership’s activities is that, along with the CCID, it has complied with a particular type of policing suited to its specific aims and objectives. Yet over the years as the inadequacies of this type of policing have become apparent – for instance, simply removing homeless persons off the street will not solve long-term problems – the Partnership has become a veritable development agency. This has prompted a multinodal vision of City management, in which physical security is just one aspect – hence the inclusion of not so obvious role-players in the Partnership’s Board such as the Table Mountain National Park, Eskom and Metrorail (the latter two are parastatals responsible for national electricity supplies and transport respectively). The Partnership’s focus on the City has also proved to be limited as greater needs beyond the City have been identified; hence the inclusion of a representative from the Provincial Government on the Partnership’s Board. In this sense the Partnership, although accountable to SAPS in terms of its security provision, has also moved well beyond SAPS jurisdiction and oversight – understanding 13

14

Press Release: Cape Town Business Areas Network is launched By the City of Cape Town and the Cape Town Partnership, 20 September 2006. Available online at: http://www.capetownpartnership.co.za/default.aspx?pageid=a37dd79d-e348-421d999e-db1dc5440663 [Accessed on 27 March 2007] See http://www.sacities.net/ [Accessed on 2 April 2007]

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“security” perhaps in a more inclusive and broader way than the criminal justice system; hence the inclusion of Eskom on its Board which denotes a focus on energy security. In some respects, then, the Partnership works both within (through advocating visible patrols) and completely outside “‘the narrow little box’ of community policing” (Mopas, 2005, p. 122) by adopting a range of integrated styles and methods for diverse “security” needs. Where there is a focus on “community policing”, this has manifested itself in a particular way; one very different from how the state understands and implements it. For the CCID, community policing is “inextricably linked to definitions of space and citizenship” and more particularly, involved in a “reconceptualization of how power is exercised” (Mopas, 2005, p. 134). A lot of the functioning of the CCIDs/Partnership and the state’s interaction with it involves the devolution, sharing and re-manifestation of power in different contexts.

CONCLUSION Rhodes (1997, p. 3) quotes Luhmann (1982) in writing about the fact that society has become “centreless” with many centres or sites of government, from local to supranational. Government, in turn, has become intertwined in many layers and levels of governance as new auspices and providers (Bayley & Shearing, 2001) of security and other services share power and control but “resist central direction” (Rhodes, 1997, p. 3). Further to this, Rhodes (1997) lists a number of usages of the term “governance”, one of which aptly describes the nature and functioning of what has been termed “new governance” arrangements: governance as a socio-cybernetic system. In terms of this understanding of governance as a socio-cybernetic system, the outcomes of government policy (for instance, policy sanctioning the use of CIDs): . . . are not the product of actions by central government . . . it is not imposed from on high but emerges from the negotiations of the several affected parties. So, all the actors in a particular policy area need one another. Each can contribute relevant knowledge or other resources. No one has all the relevant knowledge or resources to make the policy work. The socio-cybernetic approach highlights the limits of governing by a central actor, claiming there is no longer a single sovereign authority. In its place there is: the multiplicity of actors . . . Governance is the result of interactive social-political forms of governing. (Rhodes, 1997, pp. 50–51)

What Wakefield (2003, p. 13) terms the “segmentation of state control” has become embedded, as demonstrated by the functioning of the CCID and Cape Town Partnership; but the state has allowed this to happen, and in fact welcomes the activities of the non-state sector in the furtherance of what are actually and originally state duties. As mentioned, this fits into the concept of “new governance” where a public–private approach to governance and the creation of “alternative institutional structures” are advocated (Wolf, 2006, p. 53). BIDs are a part of this new approach, particularly in a metropolitan setting, where governments are not the centre of governance but are part of a “new process of governing” (Wolf, 2006, p. 54). However, although new processes of governing may be effective in terms of, for instance, developing synchronized relations and, in the BID context, making cities clean and safe, controversy remains: not least that the tendency for BID-like structures to represent “club” interests rather than “public” interests may offset this utopian ideal of effective, efficient service provision through the sharing and maximum utilization of resources, knowledges and capacities (Shearing & Wood, 2003b). Also there is a tendency for BIDs, (admittedly not

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unlike their police counterparts) to attempt to control the “dangerous classes” or at least those perceived to be dangerous based on presumptive characteristics. A possible solution could be the utilization of the police as representatives of the public interest to promote various role-players in a “guardianship capacity” (Shearing, 2006, p. 67). To some extent they play this role in the CCID already, but do so jointly with the Partnership. They could take on this role wholeheartedly through “the identification, facilitation and coordination of . . . wider systems of guardianship” (Shearing, 2006, p. 67). In this way, resources, knowledges and capacities can be utilized to their full potential by a range of guardians but any tendencies to represent communal rather than public interests may be controlled by the fact that the police play the main role in facilitating this guardianship function. However, the capacity and institutional motivation to undertake such a role, particularly in South Africa and other developing countries, is something that needs to be considered. Yet, there is a possibility that a tailored method of state– non-state involvement in policing – such as a guardianship model – could solve many of the persistent problems associated with understandings and applications of “community policing”.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work is based upon research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and therefore the NRF and DST do not accept any liability with regard thereto.

REFERENCES Avant, D. (2005). The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bayley, D.H. & Shearing, C. (2001). The New Structure of Policing: Description, Conceptualization, and Research Agenda. Washington DC: National Institute of Justice. Bittner, E. (1975). The Functions of the Police in Modern Society. New York: Jason Aronson. Braveboy-Wagner, J. (2003). The Foreign Policies of the Global South: Rethinking Conceptual Frameworks. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Brodeur, J-P. & Dupont, B. (2006). Knowledge workers or ‘knowledge’ workers? Policing & Society, 16, 7–26. Caruso, G. & Weber, R. (2006). Getting the max for tax: An examination of BID performance measures. International Journal of Public Administration, 29, 187–219. City of Cape Town (1999). By-law for the Establishment of City Improvement Districts. Provincial Gazette 5337, 26 March. Clough, N.L. & Vanderbeck, R.M. (2006). Managing politics and consumption in Business Improvement Districts: The geographies of political activism on Burlington, Vermont’s Church Street Marketplace. Urban Studies, 43, 2261–2284. Crawford, A., Lister, S., Blackburn, S. & Burnett, J. (2005). Plural Policing: The Mixed Economy of Visible Patrols in England and Wales. Bristol: Policy Press. Department of Provincial and Local Government (2004). The White Paper on Municipal Service Partnerships. Pretoria: Government Printer. Ericson, R. & Haggerty, K. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. (1976). The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. Transl. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin.

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Hermer, J., Kempa, M., Shearing, C., Stenning, P. & Wood, J. (2005). Policing in Canada in the 21st Century: Directions for law reform. In D. Cooley (ed.), Re-imagining Policing in Canada (pp. 22–91). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hobbes, T. (1968 [1651]). Leviathan. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hoyt, L. (2006). Importing ideas: The transnational transfer of urban revitalization policy. International Journal of Public Administration, 29, 221–243. Huey, L.J., Ericson, R.V. & Haggerty, K.D. (2005). Policing Fantasy City. In D. Cooley (ed.), Reimagining Policing in Canada (pp. 140–208). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Johnston, L. & Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security: Explorations in Policing and Justice. London: Routledge. Lessig, L. (1999). Code and other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books. Loader, I. & Walker, N. (2001). Policing as a public good: Reconstituting the connections between policing and the state. Theoretical Criminology, 5, 9–35. Loader, I. & Walker, N. (2007). Civilizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mopas, M. (2005). Policing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside: A case study. In D. Cooley (ed.), Re-imagining Policing in Canada (pp. 92–139). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mor¸co¨ l, G. & Patrick, P. (2006). Business Improvement Districts in Pennsylvania: Implications for democratic metropolitan governance. International Journal of Public Administration, 29, 137– 171. Mor¸co¨ l, G. & Zimmerman, U. (2006). Metropolitan governance and Business Improvement Districts. International Journal of Public Administration, 29, 5–29. O’Malley, P. & Palmer, D. (1996). Post-Keynesian policing. Economy and Society, 25, 137–155. Radzinowicz, L. (1968). A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, Vol. 4: Grappling for Control. London: Stevens and Sons. Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997). Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press. Salamon, L.M. (ed.) (2002). The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance. New York: Oxford University Press. Shaw, M. (2001). Profitable policing? The growth of South Africa’s private security industry. In W. Schärf & D. Nina (eds), The Other Law: Non-State Ordering in South Africa (pp. 208–225). Cape Town: Juta. Shaw, M. (2002). Crime and Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Transforming under Fire. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers. Shearing, C. (2006). Who should the police be in an age of plural governance? Policing symposium: Securing the future: Networked policing in New Zealand. Proceedings from a multi-disciplinary discussion co-hosted by New Zealand Police and Victoria University, 22 November (pp. 63–68). Wellington: New Zealand Police. Shearing, C. & Stenning, P. (1983). Private security: Implications for social control. Social Problems, 30, 493–506. Shearing, C. & Stenning, P. (1987). Say ‘Cheese!’: The Disney order that is not so Mickey Mouse. In C.D. Shearing & P.C. Stenning (eds), Private Policing (pp. 317–323). California: Sage. Shearing, C. & Wood, J. (2003a). Governing security for common goods. International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 31, 205–225. Shearing, C. & Wood, J. (2003b). Nodal governance, Democracy, and the new ‘Denizens’. Journal of Law and Society, 30, 400–419. Singer, P. (2004). The Private Military Industry and Iraq: What have we Learned and Where to Next? Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) Policy Paper. Storch, R. (1976). The policeman as domestic missionary: Urban discipline and popular culture in Northern England, 1850–1880. Journal of Social History, 9, 481–509. Wakefield, A. (2003). Selling Security: The Private Policing of Public Space. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. Ward, K. (2006). ‘Policies in motion’, urban management and state restructuring: The trans-local expansion of Business Improvement Districts. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30, 54–75. Wolf, J.F. (2006). Urban governance and Business Improvement Districts: The Washington, DC BIDs. International Journal of Public Administration, 29, 53–75.

Conclusion to the Handbook No one who has studied policing can help but acknowledge the inexorable rise and hegemony of forms of community policing since the 1960s. As Tilley has pointed out, “The term ‘community’ itself is notoriously slippery and the ‘community’ in ‘community policing’ is elusive and may in many cases be illusory” (Tilley, 2003, p. 315). An additional problem adding to this slipperiness of concept is that there is no unifying doctrine of what community policing is, and variants like problem-oriented policing, intelligence-led policing and reassurance policing may be identified. Another surprising feature is that the fundamental questions raised by Eck and Rosenbaum regarding its efficiency, effectiveness and equity remain (Eck & Rosenbaum, 1994), causing some critics to question whether the main principles of community policing stand up to analysis or are simply unrealistic and alluring myths (Robin, 2000; Brogden & Nijhar, 2005). The evidence from our small sample of countries examining community policing operating under different types of political economy is that the practices of community policing have many similarities. All are still in the grip of a 19th Century business model which is human resource intensive, bureaucratic, low in technology and as a result low in being able to leverage the kind of knowledge about demand and consumers that are common in contemporary business models. Where technology is being embraced it is often narrowly focused on arrest and conviction with little awareness of the potential for smarter technologies to provide new ways of opening up community policing to the growing importance of a cluster of concepts that stem from the notion of information, such as meaning, intelligence, knowledge, information technology and data mining. Ericson and Haggerty (1997) see the police as “knowledge workers” as a result of these developments. But are they really knowledge workers? A cautious note is struck by commentators who have examined the implementation of intelligence-led policing, as the cultural resistance to these new approaches from a traditional and conservative workforce has meant they have not been embraced with open arms, and in this volume Ratcliffe reminds us that moving forward with analysis as the dominant tool for decision making is likely to be a slow process with no guarantee of success (Ratcliffe, Chapter 9). Lemieux found that some organizations have a closed mind when it comes to embracing new methods, and there can be competition between individuals and their organizations concerning their respective status, which creates a lack of trust and restricts the exchange of information (Lemieux, Chapter 10). If community policing is not a unitary paradigm of policing with versions taking various forms, it is not without challenge from other policing and policy paradigms. Harder edged paradigms such as zero tolerance policing and New Public Management with its centrally driven government targets for key performance indicators driven especially, in neo-liberal The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Policing: Current Conceptions and Future Directions. C 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Edited by Tom Williamson.

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economies, by a crime control rhetoric, have skewed community policing from what it might have been. Responding to targets often takes officers out of the community, and attempts to engage with the community take place in a bureaucratic manner at a level of geography which is unlikely to provide the basis for effective networking within a community. There are therefore real problems being experienced by the countries in our sample in implementing effective community policing models. This is not to say that progress cannot be made and where the political climate permits we see that the paradigm is slowly adapting in order to respond to social and technological change. An observation that was common to all our sample countries is that the mindset of police practitioners, policy makers and politicians is still narrowly focused on “the police” as the agents of the state and despite heightened public concerns about risk, there is little sense of an understanding that policing in the 21st Century will involve not one but many actors and providers of policing services, including private policing. One increasingly dysfunctional manifestation of this that was found by our contributors was that the police almost always create a role for themselves as primus inter pares. There was little understanding of networks and how they could be mapped and managed to leverage additional resources, often overlooking key individuals within the network who were particularly influential, although not always visible (see Innes and Roberts’ description of “mavens”, Chapter 11, and case studies by Stephenson, Chapter 15). Intriguingly, in the final chapter, Berg and Shearing describe a network which both “makes the [state] police stronger” and begs the question of what role the state police might play in helping to regulate the dysfunctions generated by such market-based solutions. If communities are to be empowered, in line with the rhetoric of community policing, the evidence from our studies of networks reveals that greater humility must be shown by the police. Much as it goes against the cultural grain, they must learn the skills of working within networks and handing over power. This is not without its risks, but it may just be one means of doing implementation better than the police-led approaches that have characterized community policing models so far. One reason why problem solving through networks is difficult is because of a lack of trust. If community policing is to become truly network-based in the 21st Century it will require an acknowledgement from those in leadership positions that new forms of governance are required, and that these will be based on trust and reciprocity. Such a transformation will require a new generation of leaders who have been educated and skilled to manage networks. New metrics will need to be devised to replace the crude indicators that are a feature of CompStat and NPM approaches. As Stephenson points out the concept of “public value” may provide a better vehicle for this approach that would be acceptable to politicians. Because we live in a world characterized by an ambient sense of risk, it would be unrealistic to think that politicians are not going to respond to concerns from citizens, amplified by the media, that crime and disorder are out of control. They cannot abdicate their responsibility or accountability and if they are to be expected to release the reins of NPM to allow de-centralized, networked approaches to develop, they will rightly demand tools that provide them with some strategic oversight, and identify the areas which will be prioritized to which resources will be targeted. This could lead to a creative tension between the centre of government and what is happening on the ground. A symbiotic relationship would be ideal; the danger is of two systems, with little synergy, crashing against each other. Community policing is faced therefore with two challenges: that of better engaging with communities and then, if this is achieved, ensuring that these new arrangements can be

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regulated effectively. In achieving either of these it is clear that there will be a need for new mindsets. If “community” and “community policing” remain slippery concepts, perhaps one of the problems may lie in the terminology. The police organizations studied by Lemieux (Chapter 10) which had developed intelligence-led policing modes of operation had realized that the fight against serious crime requires a de-centralized decision-making structure to be composed of individuals from a variety of organizations and occupations working together to reach common objectives. Terrorism, trans-national and organized crime all have a community basis and the inability to implement community policing effectively may well jeopardize desired “high policing” outcomes. Knowledge-based policing has the potential to provide a unifying theme embracing “high” and “low” paradigms that allows community policing to grow out of its ghetto and transform itself as it responds to social and technological changes in the 21st Century. This volume has examined the progress of community policing in a range of different countries and has documented the various iterations of the model as police organizations have attempted to respond to the new set of challenges facing policing in the early 21st Century. Rather than provide an answer as to how best to meet these challenges it concludes with a question, “What paradigm or paradigms of policing are most appropriate for policing in the early 21st Century?” Given the reluctance of politicians, policy makers and senior police officers to think paradigmatically, it is not going to be easy to answer that question. Yet, as the contributors to this volume have shown, it is the most important question we could ask and one which merits our serious consideration above all others.

REFERENCES Brogden, M. & Nijhar, P. (2005). Community Policing. National and International Models and Approaches. Cullompton, Devon. Willan. Eck, J. & Rosenbaum, D. (1994). The new police order: effectiveness, equity, and efficiency in community policing. In D. Rosenbaum (ed.), The Challenge of Community Policing (pp. 3–23). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ericson, R.V. & Haggerty, K. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Robin, D. (2000). Community Policing: Origins, Elements, Implementation, Assessment. Lampeter, Dyfyd: Edwin Mellen Press. Tilley, N. (2003). Community policing, problem-oriented policing and intelligence-led policing. In T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (pp. 311–339). Cullompton, Devon: Willan.

Index

academics intelligence-led policing, 236 trust in, 82 accountability, data digitization, 210–11 accountability management community policing, 38, 55, 149–50, 151 development, 211 alcohol-related harms, 143, 144, 146 Algerian War of Independence, 81–2 ambient policing, 258–60 see also community policing; problem-oriented policing; reassurance policing antisocial behaviour, 245, 246, 266 collaborative networks, 334–5 neighbourhood classification, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295 see also restorative justice, youth agency; signal crimes and disorders applied knowledge, 11, 17 assertive patrolling, 72 Australia community policing, 41, 139–53 school safety, 267, 271–2, 273–5 youth-directed safety promotion, 201, 264, 269, 270–5, 276 crime problem prioritization, 345 intelligence-led policing, 223–4, 228, 229 International Crime Victims Survey crime prevention, 181 fear of crime, 177, 178 satisfaction with the police, 179, 180, 181 victimization rate, 176 awards, Australia, 143 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, 121–2, 134 Belgium crime problem prioritization, 204, 348–60 intelligence-led policing, 223–5, 227, 231

belief, knowledge and, 10, 13 Bichard report, 28, 224 Britain community policing, 40, 95–113, 150, 200–1, 306–7 crime-linked resource allocation, 309–18, 319 crime reduction partnerships, 99, 101, 102, 306–7, 308, 318–19 neighbourhood classification, 279–302 neighbourhood policing, 100, 101, 102, 112, 280, 384–5 PCSOs, 365–6, 369–86 politicized crime statistics, 308 reassurance policing, 99–100, 101, 102, 113, 201, 242–60, 307–8, 382 school safety, 266 evidence-based policy, 344, 345 heterarchies, 329, 333–5 history of policing, 206–7, 306 information sharing, 25, 28 integrated security, 390 intelligence-led policing, 212, 213, 214–15 cross-cultural comparison, 223–4, 227, 228, 229, 231, 233 International Crime Victims Survey crime prevention, 181 fear of crime, 177, 178 satisfaction with the police, 179, 180, 181 old knowledge, 206–7 problem-oriented policing, 74, 113, 212 public service reform agenda, 280 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, 3 restorative justice, 268–9 young offenders, 268–9 see also Northern Ireland British Crime Survey (BCS), 291–4, 295–6, 308 broken windows model, 46, 72, 245 bullying, 274


410 bureaucracy, 19–20 community policing Australia, 148, 153 decentralization, 52 France, 81, 85–6, 88, 91 Netherlands, 62 intelligence-led policing, 231, 232, 233 burglary crime problem prioritization, 355, 356, 358 ecological fallacy, 313 Japan, 169, 176, 177, 190 network analysis, 333–4 prospective mapping, 314, 315–16 reassurance policing, 246–7 business improvement districts (BIDs), 366–7, 394–5, 402–3 see also City Improvement Districts Canada counterterrorism, 25, 26–7 fear of crime, 177 homicide investigations, 20 intelligence-led policing, 223–4, 228 knowledge work, 20, 21–3, 25, 26–7 police informants, 21–3 restorative justice, 270 satisfaction with the police, 179, 180, 181 school safety, 267–8 Cape Town, 366, 395–403 car patrols, 44, 83, 87, 162 career movements, 230–1 centralization/decentralization community policing, 46, 52–4, 55, 61, 407 Australia, 148–9, 153 France, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85–6, 87–8, 90–2, 93 Irish Republic, 131 Netherlands, 60, 64, 65, 70, 71–2 PCSOs, 385–6 integrated security, 389–90, 393–4 matrix organizations, 231 centralized societies, 39–40 see also France change, 59–60, 74–5 Dutch Antilles police, 332–3 intelligence-led policing, 215–16 in the Netherlands, 60–7, 68–9, 70, 74 Northern Ireland policing, 121–6, 131–2, 133–4 policing in France, 82–6 Chicago, 19, 38, 47–8, 49, 50, 52, 53–4, 255, 257–8 child protection, Japan, 163 see also schools, pupil safety; young people chuzaisho see koban/ chuzaisho system

INDEX citizen involvement community policing Australia, 143, 146–7, 152–3, 270–5, 276 Britain, 100, 103, 104–6, 110–11, 112, 113 France, 81, 83, 86, 91–2 Irish Republic, 130–1 Japan, 164 key individuals, 253–5 Netherlands, 70–1, 75 Northern Ireland, 123, 134 polycentric policing, 394 reassurance policing, 242, 248, 253–60 USA, 46, 47–50 youth-directed safety promotion, 263–4, 268–76 City Improvement Districts (CIDs), 395–403 civil liberties, 104 civilian staff, 215, 235, 236 Collaborative Excellence (CE), 323–4, 330, 332, 333, 337–8 collaborative working, interagency see interagency cooperation collective efficacy, 38, 48 Colombia, 223–4, 225, 226, 228 COMMTEL, 249–55 communication technology see information and communication technology (ICT) community, defining, 101–2, 111–12, 297, 305, 307, 405 see also neighbourhood classification community beat officers (CBOs) Britain, 100, 101, 102 Netherlands, 67–8, 70–1, 72, 73 community classification, 202, 279–302 community crime prevention movement, 45 community dynamics, 105 community intelligence, 18–19, 201, 241–2, 249–55, 259–60, 382–3 community involvement see citizen involvement community-oriented policing see community policing community policing, 37–42, 43, 241, 305–9 Australia see Australia Britain see Britain crime-linked resource allocation, 308–18, 319 crime prediction, 202–3, 313–18, 319 crime reduction partnerships, 99, 101, 102, 306–7, 308, 318–19 France, 39–40, 79–93 future of, 54–5, 405–7 intelligence-led policing, 217 Japan, 41–2, 157–72, 175–92 knowledge and, 17–18 see also knowledge-based policing neighbourhood classification, 279–302, 312 Netherlands, 39, 59–75, 267

INDEX Northern Ireland, 40–1, 117–35, 269–70 police centrism, 257–8, 270 public–private partnerships, 366, 394–403 school safety, 264–8, 271–2, 273–5 USA see USA youth-directed safety promotion, 263–4, 268–76 community relations units, 44–5 Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs; NI), 125, 127, 131 comparative analysis, 223–37 compartmentalization intelligence services, 22–3, 26–7 work units, 230 complaints, Northern Ireland, 129, 130 CompStat accountability management, 55, 150, 211 computer technology see information and communication technology (ICT) confessions, 188, 189 conflict resolution, 19, 40–1, 117–35 conservative corporatism, 37 France, 80, 84 see also Netherlands contested settings, 40–1, 117–35 cooperative working, interagency see interagency cooperation co-production of neighbourhood order, 242, 255–60 see also citizen involvement; interagency cooperation corporatism, 37 policing in France, 80, 84, 88, 90–1 counselling services, koban system, 164, 165, 187 counterterrorism, 23–7, 73 crime analysis intelligence-led policing, 208, 209–11, 212, 213–17 predictive, 202–3, 313–18, 319 see also criminal analysis; geodemographic profiling Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (CDA; UK), 99, 150, 268, 307 Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs), 99, 101, 102 crime intelligence, definition, 249 crime mapping Japan, 170, 172 prospective, 202–3, 314–18, 319 see also geodemographic profiling crime prediction, 202–3, 313–18, 319 crime prevention community policing Australia, 142–7, 151, 152 Britain, 97, 98–9, 104–5

411 France, 87 Japan, 159–60, 162–3, 164, 170 Netherlands, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71–2 Northern Ireland, 126 USA, 45, 47, 49, 51–2 see also young people crime victim surveys, 181–2 detective work contrasted, 207 crime problem prioritization, 204, 341–61 crime rates, 307–8 drivers of, 308–9 France, 85, 86 Japan, 41, 42, 158, 166–9, 175, 176–83, 186, 191–2 resource allocation, 309–18, 319 see also crime statistics; crime victim surveys crime reduction partnerships, 99, 101, 102, 306–7, 308, 318–19 crime risk, mapping, 314–18, 319 crime signals, 99–100, 244–55, 256–7, 259–60 crime statistics confusion caused by, 308 geodemographics, 280–4, 287–8, 291 crime victim surveys, 42, 168, 176–82, 190, 291–4, 295–6, 308 criminal analysis, 222 see also crime analysis criminal intelligence, 213–17, 223 cross-cultural comparison, 223–37 definition, 249 see also old (offender-centric) knowledge criminal intelligence (CRIMINT) reports, 384 criminal investigation Japan, 188–9 knowledge work, 19–21, 206–9 informant handling, 21–3 information overload, 23–4 criminal justice case for community policing, 96–7 drivers of crime, 308 France, 85–8 Japan, 175, 186–7, 188–9 Netherlands, 62, 64, 65, 69–70, 73–4 Northern Ireland, 120 criminal law enforcement, 17–18 France, 86–8, 89, 90, 91, 92 cross-cultural comparison, ILP, 200, 221–37 culture Australia, 147–8, 149, 151 Dutch Antilles police, 332–3 heterarchies, 329 intelligence-led policing, 200, 215–16, 217, 221–37 Japanese police, 186–8 Los Angeles Police Department, 331–2 PCSOs, 373–4

412 DARE programme, 266 data digitization, 209–11, 214, 384 see also crime statistics data protection, 227 databases, 24, 209–11 decentralization see centralization/decentralization decision making crime problem prioritization, 204, 341–61 decentralization, 52, 70, 148–9, 231–2 delators, 21, 22 see also police informants de-occupationalization, security governance, 393–5 deprivation indices, 283–4 link with crime, 312 detectives, power of knowledge, 206–7 see also criminal investigation digitization, police data, 209–11, 214, 384 see also crime statistics discourse, 28–9 Disney World, 393–4 disorderly conduct, 245 see also broken windows model; signal crimes and disorders dispute resolution, 19, 40–1, 117–35 District Policing Partnership Boards (DPPBs; NI), 124, 125 District Policing Partnerships (DPPs; NI), 125, 126–8, 131 diversity, 370, 371–5 domestic violence, 328, 333 drug trafficking, 224, 225, 355, 356, 358–9 drug use police–school cooperation, 266, 267–8 reassurance policing, 246, 249 Dutch Antilles Police Force, 332–3 ecological fallacy, 312–13 education, 11, 17 effectiveness of policing see evaluation of programmes embedded security, 393–4, 397 emergencies, 54, 105, 162, 163, 165 England see Britain environmental contingencies, 224–8, 232 environmental criminology, 210 epistemology, 10–14 ethnic minority communities see minority communities Europol, 223–4, 227, 229, 231

INDEX evaluation of programmes community policing, 38–9, 54, 55, 405 Australia, 141, 149–50 Britain, 104 France, 84 intelligence-led policing, 237 reassurance policing, 242–3 evidence-based policy, 343–5 family conferencing, 269 fascist governments, 185–6 fear of crime analysis, 244–7 community intelligence, 249–55, 259–60 geodemographic profiling, 298–300 International Crime Victims Survey, 177–8 Japan, 158, 168–9, 170–2, 175, 177–8, 190–1 reduction see fear reduction fear reduction Britain, 99–100 Japan, 170–1, 172 reassurance policing, 243–4, 247–9 USA, 45–6 firms, theories of, 325–6 folk theories of crime, 104–5 France community policing, 39–40, 79–93 International Crime Victims Survey, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181 funding see police funding gendarmerie, France, 81, 88 general policing, 16–19 see also low policing geodemographic profiling, 202, 279–302 geographic information systems (GIS), 170, 172, 281–2, 314 geography area–individual confusion, 312 defining ‘community’, 101–2, 297, 307 Global Intelligence Working Group (GIWG), 216–17 Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement, 121–2, 134 governance of policing, 2, 203, 323–39 Australia, 148, 149, 151, 153 integrated security, 366, 389–403 Irish Republic, 129–31 Northern Ireland, 118, 122–5, 126–9, 130, 131–5 PCSOs, 365–6, 369–70 polycentric, 366, 390–403 grassroots feedback, community policing in Australia, 146–7, 153 see also citizen involvement

INDEX Great Britain see Britain group membership, strength of ties, 106–12, 113 guardianship systems, 403 gun crime, 246 heterarchies, 203, 323, 327–39 hierarchies, 325–6 community policing Australia, 148–9, 151 decentralization, 52, 53, 55, 61, 70 ˆılotage in France, 83 Japan, 161 Netherlands, 70 public–private security, 399–400 information hoarding, 328 power games, 230 high policing, 2–3 counterterrorism, 23–7 Hobbes, Thomas, 389 home visits, koban system, 163, 166, 183–4, 186 Homelands Partnership, Australia, 143–5 homelessness, Australia, 144 homicide investigations, 20–1 reassurance policing, 246, 257–8 honesty, police, 110 hostile environments, 225–6 human capital, 338–9 human intelligence (HUMINT) counterterrorism, 26–7 informants, 21–3 human rights, 122 ilotage system, 39, 80, 82–4, 85, 87, 89 immigrants France, 82, 88, 92 Netherlands, 66, 73 incivilities thesis, 245 see also broken windows model; signal crimes and disorders Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), 283–4 informants, 21–3, 133 information, 3–4 crime problem prioritization, 347–8 knowledge and, 9, 10, 11–14, 19, 23–6, 28–9, 205 intelligence-led policing, 212, 213–16 new knowledge, 209 old knowledge, 208 PCSOs’ role, 382–4, 385 information and communication technology (ICT) community policing, 405 CRIMINT reports, 384

413 data protection, 227 database storage, 24 digitization of police data, 209–11, 214, 384 France, 87 geodemographics, 202, 279–302 geographic information systems, 170, 172, 281–2, 314 intelligence-led policing, 213–14 Japan, 170, 171, 172 networks, 1–2, 5–6, 16 private sector partnerships, 199 randomness bias, 25–6 information hoarding, 328 information networks, 16 information overload, 23–4 information sharing, 24–5, 28 counterterrorism, 27 heterarchies, 329–30 intelligence-led policing, 212–13, 215, 216–17, 224 cultural constraints, 215, 233–6 data protection, 227 organizational constraints, 229–36 koban system, 164 polycentric policing, 394, 398, 400 informers, 21–2 see also police informants i-NSI, 250–3 integrated security, 389–403 integration, London PCSOs, 375–7, 381 intelligence community, 18–19, 201, 241–2, 249–55, 259–60, 382–3 definition, 208, 249 intelligence-based neighbourhood security interview (i-NSI), 250–3 intelligence compartmentalization counterterrorism, 26–7 informant handling, 22–3 intelligence function, PCSOs, 382–4, 385 intelligence-led policing (ILP), 405 cross-cultural comparison, 200, 221–37 definition, 17 knowledge and, 9, 10, 13–14, 28, 200 combining old and new, 211, 212–16 counterterrorism, 23–7 criminal investigation, 20 informants, 21–3 management, 18 organizational contingencies, 200, 214–15, 216–17, 229–36 specialization, 17–18 see also community intelligence; geodemographic profiling Netherlands, 65 problem-oriented policing, 113, 212

414 interagency cooperation community policing, 51 Australia, 143–6, 152–3, 270–5, 276 Britain, 99, 100, 106, 110 crime reduction, 318–19 France, 84, 89, 90–1 Netherlands, 70–1, 72 school safety, 267–8, 271–2, 273–5 strength of ties, 110 intelligence-led policing, 231–2 reassurance policing, 242, 255–8 see also heterarchies International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS), 42, 168, 176–82, 190 Interpol, 223–4, 227, 229 Irish Republic, 129–31, 390 Jacobinic political system, 80, 81, 90, 92, 93 Japan community policing, 41–2, 157–72, 175, 182–92 crime victim surveys, 42, 168, 176–82 job differentiation, 235 Joint Policing Committees (JPCs; Eire), 130–1 juvenile crime, 268–70 see also young people knowledge-based policing, 3–7, 28–9, 199–204, 205–6 concept of knowledge, 9–14 counterterrorism, 23–7 crime prediction, 202–3, 313–18, 319 crime problem prioritization, 204, 341–61 criminal investigation, 19–21, 206–9 cross-cultural comparison, 200, 221–37 general policing, 16–19 geodemographic profiling, 202, 279–302 governance mechanisms, 323–39 integrated security, 366, 389–403 intelligence-led policing, 200, 211, 212–17, 221–37 see also community intelligence new (crime-centric) knowledge, 205, 209–11, 213–14, 216, 217 old (offender-centric) knowledge, 205, 206–9, 213–14, 216, 217 PCSOs, 365 police informants, 21–3 reassurance policing, 201, 241–60 youth-directed safety promotion, 201, 263–4, 268–76 knowledge networks, 16, 365 knowledge workers, 3–4, 9, 10, 11–13, 17, 28, 29, 405 koban/chuzaisho system, Japan, 41–2, 157–72, 175, 182–92

INDEX leadership, heterarchies, 338 learning organizations, 226 legal frameworks information sharing, 24–5 intelligence-led policing, 226–8 Japan, 188–9 liaison councils, Japan, 164 liaison officers, Australia, 146 liaison schemes, school safety, 267–8 Licensing Accords, Australia, 143 litter neighbourhood classification, 292, 293, 294 reassurance policing, 246 local authorities (LAs) community policing in Britain, 99, 150 crime reduction partnerships, 318, 319 heterarchies, 327–8 polycentric policing, 395–6, 399, 400–1 local knowledge, 18–19 see also community intelligence local police (polices municipales), France, 90–2 London Metropolitan Police integrated security, 390 PCSOs, 365–6, 369–86 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), 331–2 low policing, 2–3 see also general policing management community policing Australia, 139–40, 148–52, 153 Japan, 170 Netherlands, 70 USA, 38, 52, 53–4, 55, 61 knowledge workers, 11, 18 management accountability see accountability management marginalized groups, 112 markets, 325, 326 matrix organizations, 231 mavens, 254 Meiji Revolution, 160, 185, 188 minority communities community policing, 48, 49 Australia, 144, 146 France, 81–2, 88, 92 Netherlands, 66, 72–3 PCSOs, 370, 371–5 reassurance policing, 247, 258, 259–60 multiagency cooperation see interagency cooperation multicriteria decision making, 350–61 National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan (NCISP), 216–17

INDEX National Intelligence Model (NIM; UK), 113, 212, 213, 228, 233, 383 national police security picture (NPSP; Belgium), 348, 349–60 National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP; England), 242–3, 247–8, 250–5, 259 neighbourhood classification, 202, 279–302, 312 neighbourhood order, reassurance policing, 241–60 neighbourhood policing, 100, 101, 102, 112, 280, 384–5 see also neighbourhood classification Neighbourhood Watch (NW) Australia, 142, 145 Britain, 98, 101, 102, 103 neo-liberal countries, 37 see also Australia; Britain; Canada; USA Netherlands community policing, 39, 59–75, 267 International Crime Victims Survey, 177, 179, 180, 181 school safety, 267 Netherlands Antilles Police Force, 332–3 network analysis, 330, 331–2, 333–4, 335 networked technology, 1–2, 5–6, 16 networks, 3–7, 9–10, 14–16, 29, 406 counterterrorism, 26–7 governance of policing, 323–39 intelligence-led policing, 212–13, 217 Northern Ireland, 118 PCSOs, 365 polycentric policing, 399–401 strength of ties, 106–12, 113 structured (heterarchies), 203, 323, 327–39 trust, 15–16 validation, 28 new (crime-centric) knowledge, 205, 209–11, 213–14, 216, 217 with old see intelligence-led policing New Public Management (NPM), 72, 75, 336, 337, 405–6 New Zealand, 269 Nexus Project, 271, 272–5, 276 nodal governance Northern Ireland, 118, 122–5, 126–9, 130, 131–5 PCSOs, 365–6 polycentric policing, 401 Northern Ireland community policing, 40–1, 117–35 restorative justice, 269–70

415 occupational culture see police culture old (offender-centric) knowledge, 205, 206–9, 213–14, 216, 217 with new see intelligence-led policing organization community policing in Australia, 139–40, 142, 147–52, 153 knowledge workers, 11, 18 organizational contingencies, ILP, 200, 214–15, 216–17, 229–36 organizational learning, 226 organizational strategy, community policing as, 38, 43–4, 46–54 organizational structure ILP, 230–3, 236–7 koban system, 158–64 organizational systems, networks, 323–39 organized crime Australia, 224 Netherlands, 64, 65, 72 oriental corporatist countries, 37 see also Japan paradigmatic thinking, 59–60, 61, 62, 63–4, 66, 70, 75, 407 paramilitary organizations, 120–1, 132–3 partnerships community policing Australia, 143–6, 148, 151, 152–3, 201, 270–5, 276 Britain, 99, 106, 110, 150, 306–7, 318 crime reduction, 99, 101, 102, 306–7, 308, 318–19 France, 88–90 Irish Republic, 130–1 Japan, 169–70 Northern Ireland, 123, 125, 126–8, 131 school safety, 267–8, 271–2, 273–5 youth-directed safety promotion, 263–4, 268–76 co-production of neighbourhood order, 242, 255–60 public–private security, 366, 394–403 strength of ties, 110 see also heterarchies; interagency cooperation patrol deployment Australia, 144, 145 France, 87 Japan, 161–3, 165, 172, 182, 184, 187 Netherlands, 67, 72 Northern Ireland, 120 prospective mapping for, 315, 317–18 USA, 43, 44, 51 Patten Report, 40–1, 118, 121–5, 126–7, 128–35

416 penal ideologies, 37 Japan, 187, 189–90 Netherlands, 64 performance assessment Britain, 280 segmentary systems, 329 see also evaluation of programmes performance management Australia, 149–50, 151, 153 development, 211 USA, 38, 55 perverse outcomes to policy, 328 Police Authority for Northern Ireland (PANI), 120, 123, 124 police box system, Japan see koban/chuzaisho system Police Community Consultative Groups (PCCGs), 98, 101, 102, 103 Police Community Liaison Officers, 146 police–community partnership building, 201–2, 270–6 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), 365–6, 369–86 police–community ties, 110–12, 113 police culture Australia, 147–8, 149, 151 Dutch Antilles force, 332–3 intelligence-led policing, 200, 215–16, 217, 233–6 Japan, 186–8 Los Angeles, 331–2 PCSOs, 373–4 police de proximité, 39, 79–80, 84–6, 89, 91–2 police funding Australia, 143, 144–5, 150–1 Britain, 104, 150, 381 crime-linked allocation, 309–18, 319 USA, 38, 53–5, 60 police informants, 21–3, 133 Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, 124–5 Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2003, 125 Police Ombudsman (NI), 122, 129 police sovereignty, 365, 370, 385–6 polices municipales, France, 90–2 Policing Board (NI), 123–4, 125, 126–7, 131 policing with the community model, 122, 123–4, 125, 126 policy making, crime problem prioritization, 341–61 political conflict, NI, 40–1, 117–18, 119–22, 129, 131–5 political economic systems, 37 France, 80, 81–2, 90, 92, 93

INDEX political policing, 3 see also counterterrorism politicians, 406, 407 policing in France, 79–80, 82, 84, 85, 86–7, 92 politicized crime statistics, 308 polycentric policing, 366, 390–403 power of knowledge, 206–7, 217 organizations with executive, 229 reassurance policing, 242 power games, 230 predicting crime, 202–3, 313–18, 319 preventing crime see crime prevention preventive patrols, 67 prioritization of crime problems, 204, 341–61 private sector Australia, 148 evidence-based policy, 345 high and low policing, 3 ICT networks, 199 New Public Management, 336 Northern Ireland, 118, 133 PCSOs, 370 polycentric policing, 366, 392, 393, 394–403 proactive policing, 222–3 see also intelligence-led policing problem analysis, 346–8 problem-oriented policing (POP), 50–2, 61 Britain, 74, 113, 212 crime-linked resource allocation, 309–18, 319 crime reduction partnerships, 306–7, 308, 318–19 France, 86 knowledge and, 17–18, 210, 211, 212 Netherlands, 62 origins, 45 weak community policing, 113 problem prioritization, 204, 341–61 professional bureaucracies, 231, 232–3 professional model of policing, 44–5, 53, 91 professionalism community policing, 69, 120 crime problem prioritization, 343 polycentric policing, 390, 391–3, 394 professionalization, of work, 230 progressivism, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 73–4 project groups, 232–3 Promothée decision making method, 350–4 prospective crime mapping (PROMAP), 202–3, 314–18, 319 proximity policing, 39, 79–80, 84–6, 89, 91–2 public attitudes to police see satisfaction with police

INDEX public service, 336–7, 339, 406 Public Value Model, 336–7, 406 punishment, attitudes to, 189–90 questioning of suspects, 188–9 racial harassment, 246, 247 racism, 82, 88, 374 randomness bias, counterterrorism, 25–6 rank structures, 52, 83, 161 reactive patrols, 67 reality, 12, 13 reassurance policing, 17–18, 241–2, 307–8 Britain, 99–100, 101, 102, 113, 201, 242–60, 382 reciprocity of exchange, 249, 326 record keeping, 209–11, 214, 384 recruitment Britain, 103, 113–14, 371–5 diversification, 371–5 French police, 81, 91 Northern Ireland, 126 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (UK), 3 regulation of policing see governance of policing repeat victimization, 312–13, 314 repressive–preventive dimension, community policing, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71–2 researchers, trust in, 82 resource allocation crime-linked, 308–18, 319 crime problem prioritization, 343 restorative justice, 264–5 Northern Ireland, 133 youth agency, 268–70, 274 results-based organizational structures, 230 riots Britain, 98, 306 France, 79–80, 82, 84, 88, 92 Los Angeles, 331–2 risk of crime, mapping, 314–18, 319 risk-oriented policing, 3, 4–5, 14 role conflict, PCSOs, 381–2 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), 119, 120, 121, 124, 133 safety and security community policing Australia, 143, 144, 145, 152 Britain, 103 case for, 96 France, 82, 85, 86–7, 90, 91 Irish Republic, 130–1 Japan, 158, 159–61, 163

417 London PCSOs, 365–6, 369–71, 375–7, 378–80, 385–6 Netherlands, 63, 66, 70–1, 72–3 Northern Ireland, 118, 119–21, 122–4, 125, 127, 128, 131–3, 134–5 schools, 264–8, 271–2, 273–5 USA, 45, 47 deliberative mechanisms, 260 integrated, 389–403 polycentric governance, 366, 390–403 problem prioritization, 204, 341–61 youth-directed promotion, 263–4, 268–76 see also fear of crime; reassurance policing satisfaction with police Japan, 178–81, 182–6, 190–1 London PCSOs, 378–80 reassurance policing, 247–9, 254–5 scholars, trust in, 82 School Resource Officers (SROs), 266, 271–2 schools pupil exclusions, 296 pupil safety, 264–8, 271–2, 273–5 secrecy, 14 counterterrorism, 24–5 informants, 21–3 power, 207 security see safety and security security cameras, 392–3 security services counterterrorism networks, 26–7 informants, 21, 22 information sharing, 24–5, 27 see also polycentric policing segmentary behaviour, 328–9 self-interest, 336 sentencing, attitudes to, 189–90 service orientation, community policing, 63, 80, 87–8, 95–6, 187 signal crimes and disorders, 99–100, 244–55, 256–7, 259–60 Singapore, 223–4, 225–6, 231 social capital community policing, 106 geodemographic profiling, 297, 298–300 measures, 339 social character community policing, 241 Australia, 143–4 France, 83–4, 85, 89–90, 91 Japan, 164, 187 Netherlands, 62, 63–6, 67, 70–1, 72, 73–4 reassurance policing, 201, 241–2, 244, 245–6, 248

418 social control case for community policing, 97, 241 co-production of, 255–60 France, 81–2 Japan, 187 social disadvantage deprivation indices, 283–4 link with crime, 312 neighbourhood typologies, 286 social networks key individuals, 253–5 new parochialism, 257–8 societal change, Netherlands, 62, 64, 65–6, 69–70, 72 socio-cybernetic systems, 402 sociology of knowledge, 12–14 South Africa dispute resolution, 19 polycentric policing, 366–7, 392, 395–403 sovereignty integrated security, 389–90 police, 365, 370, 385–6 specialization community policing, 61, 65, 71–2, 74 intelligence-led policing, 234–5 knowledge workers, 11, 17–18 polycentric policing, 366, 393 staff turnover, 230–1 standing committees, 232, 233 state, the community policing centralized societies, 39–40 Irish Republic, 131 Northern Ireland, 118, 119–20, 122–3, 127, 132–4 France, 80, 81, 84, 85, 90, 92, 93 high and low policing, 3 see also counterterrorism integrated security, 389, 390–403 koban as agency of surveillance, 161, 163, 185–6 London PCSOs, 365–6, 385–6 police as agents of, 406 strategic intelligence, 208, 215 strategic policy making, 341–61 strong community policing, 110 student riots, 82 substance abuse see alcohol-related harms; drug use supervision, London PCSOs, 377 surveillance, 5–6 cross-cultural comparison, 226–7 koban as agency of, 161, 163, 185–6 suspects, Japan, 188–9 SWAT teams, Los Angeles, 331–2 Switzerland, 223–4, 227, 228

INDEX task differentiation, ILP, 235 teachers, police officers as, 266–7, 275 team policing, 44 Britain, 100, 385 Netherlands, 67–70, 72 Northern Ireland, 123 see also police de proximité technology, France, 87, 91 see also information and communication technology (ICT) terrorism case for community policing, 96, 407 France, 81–2, 92 London PCSOs, 375, 378 Netherlands, 66, 72–3 see also counterterrorism; violence training, policing in France, 84, 91 transactional costs, 325–6 trust community intelligence, 19 community policing, 97, 132–3, 406 informants, 22–3 knowledge and, 14, 19, 22–3 networks of, 15–16, 337–8 occupational culture, 234–5 police–civilian staff, 215, 235 police–scholars, 82 reassurance policing, 248 see also collective efficacy UK see Britain; Northern Ireland USA community intelligence, 19 community policing, 38, 43–55, 60–1, 306 British policing compared, 112–13 community meetings, 255 influence in Netherlands, 61, 62, 63–4 Los Angeles, 331–2 new parochialism, 257–8 schools, 266, 267–8 counterterrorism, 24–5, 26, 27 crime rates, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182–3, 307–8 criminal intelligence sharing, 216 Department of Homeland Security, 329 Los Angeles Police Department, 331–2 validation, information, 13–14, 28, 29 Vichy regime, 81 violence Australia, 143, 144, 152 by police, 189 crime problem prioritization, 355, 356, 358, 359 domestic, 328, 333 France, 79–80, 84, 93

INDEX Northern Ireland, 40–1, 117–18, 119–22, 131–3 perverse outcomes to policy, 328 reassurance policing, 246 in schools, 265, 266, 267–8 see also terrorism Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act 1994 (USA), 38, 54, 60, 306 virtual organizations, 333–4 Vulnerable Localities Index (VLI), 283 watch schemes Australia, 142, 145 Britain, 98–9, 101, 102, 103 weak community policing, 40, 95, 106–12, 113–14 wholistic community policing, 140–1, 147–51, 153 workplace visits, koban system, 163, 166

419 young people community policing Australia, 145–6, 201, 264, 269, 270–5, 276 France, 82, 84, 88, 89, 92 Japan, 190 neighbourhood classification, 292, 295–6 school safety, 264–8, 271–2, 273–5 signal crimes and disorders, 246 weak community, 112 youth-directed safety promotion, 263–4, 268–76 problem-oriented policing, 51–2 youth citizenship, 265, 268 youth conferencing, 269–70 zero tolerance policing (ZTP), 72, 92, 405–6 Zwelethemba model, 19

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