Willem de Lint

Security in ambiguity Towards a radical security politics

In this article we offer a reconceptualization of security that attempts to reconcile a post-critical and normative agenda. The article proceeds by unpacking features of the dominant security discourse and then resituating the question in a radical politics. We contend that moving forward on this question requires a rejection of the association between security, certainty and authority. Rather than following the classical realist view that security requires exceptions from politics, we choose to see security as dependent on political uncertainty. Borrowing from Häanninen’s idea that politics is ‘living with ambiguity’ and taking from post-Foucauldian thought against the violence of tyranny, we advocate the ongoing repoliticization of the security field informed by harm reduction. We offer ‘security in ambiguity’ as a conceptualization of this synthesis.

Community into Intelligence: Resolving Information uptake in the RCMP

Police now and then undergo radical mission adaptation. Yet, how events shape organizational police history, including the adoption of radically different missions, has largely evaded scholarship. Through a review of executive-level interviews and strategic leadership documents, we trace how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police turned from a community-policing mission to one which now highlights intelligence. We argue that while various programs and strategies to garner rank-and-file and public buy-in to the community-policing mission largely failed, problem-oriented policing nevertheless readied the ground for the next mission iteration: intelligence-led policing. The core problem underpinning the transition was not community service, but information uptake.

The Simulation of Crime Control A Shift in Policing

The authors argue that policing by consent is being displaced by policing by information control. This discomfiting adaptation in liberal democracies is possible in the shadow of asymmetrical, border-collapsing exceptionalism. It has also benefited from synoptic effects in which reference to the liberal democratic legacy substitutes for liberal democratic practices. Current technologies, as demonstrated in watch-listing, public relations operations, and fourth-generation training, exemplify ironic homage to a consent and democracy. These take for granted the loss of innocence: There is no “real” (democracy, order, control) but rather impressions, which require effective simulations. The article concludes with the contention that today it is control, not justice, that must be “seen to be done.”

Nineteenth century disciplinary reform and the prohibition against talking policemen

Police in liberal democracies are both free citizens and accountable public agents. They are under strong restrictions of accountability in their exercise of authority but also have a powerful right to make decisions about individual freedoms; while labouring under tight legal and administrative constraints, they are themselves individually free. The unique role of the public police officer in this balance between private freedoms and public constraints has been an accomplishment which has required pro‐active policy. Such policy has had to maintain the police officer in the public/private divide while adapting broad transitions of liberal governance. This paper examines nineteenth century disciplinary reforms in policing in Canada and the prohibitions on the discourse between the police and the public. It is contended that this prohibition acted as a mechanism in the maintenance of the balance of this divide in police professionalization. The prohibition is consistent with Foucaults view of discipline as...

Governmentality, Critical Criminology, and the Absent Norm

Dès la fin des années 1980, beaucoup de jeunes criminologues canadiens se sont tournés vers Foucault afin de se donner des fondements communs tant sur le plan théorique que sur le plan pratique. Or, cette nouvelle orientation n’a pas connu le même niveau de succès dans tous les milieux de la criminologie. Ainsi, en vue d’une analyse des rapports qu’on peut établir entre la criminologie critique et la gouvernementalité, l’auteur présente d’abord un survol des composantes de l’intégrité disciplinaire. Il examine ensuite les rapports entre le pouvoir et la subordination. En s’inspirant de la critique de Foucault établie par Fraser (1989), l’auteur prétend que, si la pratique de la gouvernementalité dissèque les politiques et les pratiques de la justice pénale afin d’en dévoiler les continuités et les ruptures, la profondeur de la dissection serait tributaire de postulats normatifs contradictoires ou sans fondement, ce qui entraverait l’évolution de la praxis criminologique.

The Simulation of Crime Control

The authors argue that policing by consent is being displaced by policing by information control. This discomfiting adaptation in liberal democracies is possible in the shadow of asymmetrical, border-collapsing exceptionalism. It has also benefited from synoptic effects in which reference to the liberal democratic legacy substitutes for liberal democratic practices. Current technologies, as demonstrated in watch-listing, public relations operations, and fourth-generation training, exemplify ironic homage to a consent and democracy. These take for granted the loss of innocence: There is no “real” (democracy, order, control) but rather impressions, which require effective simulations. The article concludes with the contention that today it is control, not justice, that must be “seen to be done.”

Simulating Control: A Shift in Policing?

The authors argue that policing by consent is being displaced by policing by information control. This discomfiting adaptation in liberal democracies is possible in the shadow of asymmetrical, border-collapsing exceptionalism. It has also benefited from synoptic effects in which reference to the liberal democratic legacy substitutes for liberal democratic practices. Current technologies, as demonstrated in watch-listing, public relations operations, and fourth-generation training, exemplify ironic homage to a consent and democracy. These take for granted the loss of innocence: There is no “real” (democracy, order, control) but rather impressions, which require effective simulations. The article concludes with the contention that today it is control, not justice, that must be “seen to be done.”