James Sheptycki

Organizational Pathologies in Police Intelligence Systems Some Contributions to the Lexicon of Intelligence-Led Policing

During the 1990s serious and organized crime moved to the top of the agenda for policing internationally. This shift took place during the same period that new information and communications technologies were being adopted across the policing sector in most European countries, a shift known in some places as the rise of ‘intelligence-led policing’. Discussion of intelligence-led policing against serious and organized crime has tended to focus on formal models of intelligence systems. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the vocabulary of intelligence-led policing by providing the terms for describing the organizational problems that bedevil the organization of police information systems. It is based on original empirical research in the United Kingdom and a number of other countries and provides a lexicon of 11 organizational pathologies. The paper ends by arguing that strategic intelligence forecasts about future trends in organized and serious crime that emanate from the police sector are not as strategic or as comprehensive as they appear to be.

From Detection to Disruption: Intelligence and the Changing Logic of Police Crime Control in the United Kingdom

This article identifies an important contemporary shift in the governing logic of police crime control strategies in the United Kingdom. It is observed that organized crime has become more central to police work and that, with regard to this type of crime, police interventions are increasingly designed to “disrupt” ongoing criminal activity. Drawing on qualitative data from two separate studies conducted in the U.K., the article connects this shift to an increasing reliance on the use of intelligence data in police organizations. The article looks at how “intelligence” has been conceived, considers some of the limitations of the changes that are taking place, and examines the wider ethical and social implications that might follow from these shifts. It is concluded that, although there are a number of currents of change occurring in the contemporary U.K. police sector, the accenting of intelligence-led policing, and the accompanying shift to disruption as a tactical or strategic intervention, is one of the more dramatic changes. Finally, the article calls for further study of the consequences of this shift, especially because it may be associated with transnational effects.

ACCOUNTABILITY ACROSS THE POLICING FIELD; TOWARDS A GENERAL CARTOGRAPHY OF ACCOUNTABILITY FOR POST-MODERN POLICING

This article systematically surveys the policing field with a view to spotlighting the difficulties in conceiving an accountability framework for policing, transnational and otherwise. It argues that policing is no longer a set of practices embedded in the sovereign nation-state, but rather has become transnationalised and greatly differentiated. Symptomatic of the postmodern condition, the policing field is a fragmented terrain. Its considerable differentiation heteronymy poses acute accountability problems that cannot easily be answered by reference to traditional models of constitutional control.

Policing Political Protest When Politics Go Global: Comparing Public Order Policing in Canada and Bolivia

This article compares series of political protest events in Bolivia and Canada using the “Flashpoints model” as the framework of comparison. It provides a detailed account of events leading up to the ouster by popular protest of Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in October of 2003. The article situates the events of 2003 by reference to specific features of Bolivias positioning in the global system; notably the effects of International Monetary Fund policies, international drug prohibition, and the consequences of economic liberalization for management of the countrys assets. It also pays special attention to the affects of police development aid on the Bolivian police system. A summary narrative about a series of anti-globalization protests in Canada, based on existing academic accounts, is provided as the basis for comparative analysis. The comparison is used to test an hypothesis that currently holds sway in the literature concerning public order policing that suggests a trend away from “escalated force” towards “negotiated management”. While the evidence regarding the policing of political protest in Bolivia and Canada does not reveal a conspicuous convergence in policing tactics for crowd control between the two countries, the plausibility of this hypothesis is severely tested in each case. The evidence reviewed here suggests the opposite and is revealing of the undemocratic character of policing in the emerging global system. The article ends by calling for more comparative research on this topic, especially in non-OECD countries and places that are more peripheral to the global system.

The Accountability of Transnational Policing Institutions: The Strange Case of Interpol.

Interpol is the most widely recognised ‘brand name’ in transnational policing, but to whom, or what, is it accountable? In the democratic countries of the West, debates and discussions about accountability frameworks for policing agencies have typically focused on organisations that have a legally defined and narrowly circumscribed jurisdiction, referred to in this paper as the ‘standard paradigm’ for policing accountability. There is a lacuna in this literature which has to do with those few agencies that operate transnationally and which, in important but ill-understood ways, are only partially bound by the jurisdictional purview of sovereign nation-states. This paper examines the accountability framework of Interpol, with particular reference to its historically questionable status as an Intergovernmental Organisation (IGO). It looks at Interpols modus operandi and explains why its workings can potentially become the subject of hot political contestation. It considers some of the important articles of the organisations constitution and reflects upon the agencys changing role in policing the globe subsequent to the 9–11 attack. The nature of Interpols accountability will be analysed by reference to a typology that includes internal, external, formal and informal accountability mechanisms. It is argued that a fundamental challenge for transnational institutions is how to create and maintain the lines of democratic accountability that render them legitimate.

International Trends in the Facilitation of Witness Co-operation in Organized Crime Cases

This article surveys the existing literature on the facilitation of witness cooperation in the USA and a variety of European countries. It highlights trends in the evolution of the legal landscape concerning the use of criminal informants and witnesses as the central approach to the investigation and prosecution of organized crime. It also looks at the use of plea-bargaining, witness immunity, and criminal informant and undercover police testimony. It provides comparisons in the development of these techniques and it does so by reference to the narrative histories of practice and legal debate about the efficacy of these measures in various countries. The article concludes that, although significant moral hazards are associated with these developments, and although the efficacy of these techniques has not been fully demonstrated by solid empirical research, they are likely to remain in force for the foreseeable future.

Guns, crime and social order A Canadian perspective

Canada has undergone intensive public debate concerning firearms over the past two decades, much of which has concerned the effectiveness of gun control legislation. Since about 2005 public discourse has focused increasingly on an upsurge in gun-crime perpetrated by street-level criminals. The article examines the projection of these concerns within the Canadian mass media and through official statistics. It shows that gun control legislation appears to have had a positive effect on gun-related crime in Canada, but that a residuum of gun-crime has remained. Evidence suggests that a process of pistolization is ongoing in some places, but that it is not a dominant strain. The article also looks at some examples of grassroots resistance to pistolization in Canada in some communities that are worst affected by street-level gun crime.

Political culture and structures of social control: Police‐related scandal in the low countries in comparative perspective

Comparative studies of police have been a staple of the criminological tradition in Britain at least since Michael Bantons pioneering work on the sociology of the police organisation in the early 1960s. This paper focuses on cases of police‐related scandal in the Low Countries as a way of illustrating the importance of the political‐cultural component in comparative policing. It begins with an historical overview of the polities of the Netherlands and Belgium and examines the structural evolution of the police system in those countries. An account of some police‐related scandals is then given. Such scandals provide particularly good data for understanding the political and cultural embeddedness of policing, since such scandals are reflective not only of police practices, but are also constituted within culturally relevant terms of political discourse which help shape the machinery of governance, including police. The lessons that can be drawn from this case study are twofold. On the one hand, this paper ...

Police Co-operation in the English Channel Region 1968-1996

This chapter shows that, in English Channel region, 1992 was but another moment in an ongoing process of cross-border police development. It draws on data gathered between 1994 and 1996 in Kent, Belgium, France and the Netherlands concerning transnational police work in northwestern Europe. One key set of documents are the complete records of the Cross-Channel Intelligence Conference (CCIC) an organisation established in 1968 to foster regional cross-border policing. These annual meetings (in some years biannual) established personal connections between key officers operating in this region who built the infrastructure for cross-border policing that exists today. The chapter also draws upon these data in order to shed light on the development of transnational policing in this region from the mid-1960s until the present. The developments described in the chapter offers a strong incentive to articulate a post-modern jurisprudence. Keywords:cross-border policing; Cross-Channel Intelligence Conference (CCIC); English Channel region; Europe; transnational policing

Global Policing and Transnational Rule with Law

This paper advances the ‘rule with law’ concept. After a brief overview of the global policing field and its relationship with law, we use socio-legal theories of policing to examine four examples of law in action: (i) the global money system, (ii) transnational mobility, (iii) intellectual property, and (iv) high policing. These examples illustrate how legal instruments become tools in the hands of public and private social actors operating in the transnational sphere. The paper advances three arguments. First, we argue that global policing practices exemplify rule with law not rule of law. Second, we argue that attempts to codify transnational (criminal) law and procedure must recognise the distinction between ‘law in the books’ and the ‘living law’ as revealed in the practice of transnational policing. Third, we argue that the study of transnational policing should not be restricted to the response to transnational organised crime or defined as coterminous with transnational criminal law. Global policing practices deploy many kinds of public and private law as power tools in the governance of the global system.