Heavy Police Research Articles

Retribution for tribal sovereignty: Settler colonial policing and civil justice impacts

Unique among marginalized groups, American Indians are both citizens of the United States and citizens of sovereign tribal nations, as recognized (but not granted) by federal Indian law. However, even as tribal nations exert increasing economic and political power, criminal legal outcomes for tribal members—who interface with an array of tribal, local, state, and federal law enforcement and justice systems—remain detrimental or are worsened. These outcomes also include increased contact with state courts and the delegitimization of tribal courts, which uniquely implicate the civil justice context. We use the settler colonial framework to investigate how tools of state criminal law, such as heavy policing and disparate punishment, may impact the civil justice needs of Indigenous people, and more broadly, the very sovereignty these policies aim to protect. Drawing on interviews and observations in tribal and county-level courts, we examine the experiences of American Indians and other stakeholders in Indian country. We identify how enforcement practices, surveillance of space, and the complexities of layered policing within a “jurisdictional maze” contribute to the deterioration of tribal sovereignty. We contextualize our findings by considering the historical, cultural, and socio-economic factors that influence the experiences of American Indians in the criminal justice system, and by examining the civil justice implications.

COVID‐19 stigma, Australia and slow violence: An analysis of 21 months of COVID news reporting

AbstractThroughout the peak periods of Australia's COVID‐19 pandemic experience of 2020–2021, some lower socioeconomic areas with high migrant populations in Sydney and Melbourne were subjected to strict lockdown enforcement that included heavy police surveillance not experienced in the more affluent areas of these cities. Analysis of four major newspapers' COVID‐19 coverage from January 2020 to September 2021 reveals their reporting focussed on aspects of individual behaviour that inferred people from lower socioeconomic areas had a heightened risk of exposure to COVID‐19. We argue this media portrayal of severe lockdowns and policing measures played a prominent role in exacerbating previously existing stigma as it compounded the stigma levelled at those communities. It further contributed to an “us and them” mentality that aligned with persistent structural inequality to compound existing stigma to develop a slow violence of COVID‐19‐related stigma. The lens of slow violence allows us to track incremental stigmatising processes, often imperceptible when viewed in isolation. Axiomatic violence adds a complementary perspective to slow violence, highlighting the role of crisis and disciplinary behaviours in embedding structural violence into the social norms of daily life.

Being and Pub

Despite the politically oppressive period of Normalization that followed the Prague Spring in the late 1960s and 1970s in Czechoslovakia, performance artists had to find a way of creating despite the heavy policing of cultural spaces. Křižovnická škola čistého humoru bez vtipu (Crusaders School of Pure Humour with No Jokes) found their creative sanctuary by making works in the semi-public spaces of pubs. The group of artists, performers, poets, philosophers, and photographers conceptualised of their meetings in pubs as a form of artistic practice. Their core materials became meeting, community, alcohol, and the pub atmosphere which they utilized to create often impromptu and satirical performance works. Their works such as Fando, nezlob se (Don’t Be Angry, Fando, 1969), which was an alcoholic version of ludo that the group regularly played, or Křižovnický kalendář (Crusader Calendar, 1972), in which the group met on the last Friday of every month to meet and capture themselves on camera, used meeting in the pub and drinking as both the site and the material for their performances. The group conceived of their meetings in the pub through phenomenology - drinking together in a pub functioned as an experiential epistemology for the group. The-pub became a stand-in for Heideggerian Da-sein and being-in-the-world was replaced by being-in-the-pub. This formulation anticipates pub as a prerequisite and a method for exploration of meeting. Their pub meetings were for them a free arena of artistic expression that relied on communal artmaking. As opposed to “the meeting” that defined the official sphere, Crusaders’ pub “meetings” were of the people – chaotic, loud, disorderly, and fuelled by alcohol. Crusaders’ shared practice illustrates how meeting can be a potent political and artistic tool to create and exercise freedom under political oppression.

The Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections

The Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections

Research on the construction of social stability early warning model based on TOPSIS and entropy weight method

This paper selects the data of 20 developing countries and developed countries from 2012 to 2021 as samples, and constructs a social stability early warning model based on TOPSIS and entropy weight method. The evaluation results of the social stability early warning model are divided into five grades from high to low: no police, light police, middle police, heavy police and huge police. Choose belarus as a case, the use of social stability early warning model determine belarus belongs to the police countries, combined with the model through political, economic, social and other factors four aspects points out the cause of the color revolution failure, and judge in addition to the future social stability from the police to heavy police trend, based on this to belarus from political, economic, social and other aspects. This paper has some reference significance for preventing color revolution and promoting social stability.

Declining opportunities for speaking out: The impact of Vietnam's new leadership on grassroots collective action

This article examines how Vietnam's 13th Politburo elected in 2021 affects citizens’ willingness to raise their voices about policy issues through extra-institutional channels such as protests, petitions, and social media. I argue that an exceptionally high number of public security figures in the Politburo reflected the concerns of the Communist Party's Central Committee over regime-destabilizing grassroots activism. Using an online survey experiment administered to 1500 Vietnamese citizens, which manipulates the information on the repressive nature of the public security institution and police representatives’ backgrounds, I find that a heavy police representation in the 13th Politburo makes respondents less likely to sign petitions, share their concerns on social media, and take to the streets to voice their discontent with the government. My findings suggest that single-party regimes can reverse democratic development, particularly the participation dimension, through strategic leadership arrangements.

State-Embedded Actor Syndrome and Organized Crime Trends in Africa

Organized crime is any serious crime committed by an organized criminal group within a state or across international borders for economic gain. State-embedded actor syndrome exists where state officials commit organized crimes. There is a trend in Africa whereby states with high resilience to organized crime simultaneously record high organized criminality. While arguing that high resilience should result in low criminality, this paper seeks to ascertain whether the state-embedded actor syndrome is responsible for the high-criminality and high-resilience organized crime trends in Africa. Accordingly, the question underlying this research is: Is state-embedded actor syndrome responsible for the high-criminality and high-resilience (HC-HR) organized crime trends in Africa? The objectives of the study are to ascertain whether state-embedded actor syndrome is responsible for the HC-HR trends in Africa and recommend ways of reversing or averting the trend. The paper uses quantitative and qualitative methods as well as a non-experimental design. Data for the research are collected from secondary sources and manipulated by quadrant analysis. The paper finds that state-embedded actor syndrome negatives state resilience and that is why criminality increases despite high resilience. The paper recommends that African states should avoid holding onto the heavy police approach to combating organized crime, but adopt a comprehensive policy response that will boost state resilience and check organized criminality.

A qualitative comparison of how people who use drugs' perceptions and experiences of policing affect supervised consumption services access in two cities.

Police presence near Supervised Consumption Services (SCS) and other harm reduction services has been shown to hamper access to these critical facilities for People Who Use Drugs (PWUD). However, few studies document the empirical nuances of these contextually dependant police-PWUD relationships, and how PWUD' experiences and perceptions of policing near harm reduction services shape SCS access. If the goal is to increase SCS uptake, understanding the complexities of PWUD-police relations near SCS is imperative for guiding both formal policy and informal best-practices. We report findings from a larger qualitative study on PWUD' experiences with SCS in two Canadian cities. Data were collected through 75 face-to-face interviews and observations with street-involved PWUD near local SCS in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta. Participants' perceptions of and experiences with policing varied across jurisdictions. Participants in Calgary reported concentrated police presence in and near SCS, in addition to harassment, negative encounters, fears about getting arrested, and experiences of being displaced from the area. Participants in Edmonton, despite also reporting heavy police presence near SCS, reported feeling relatively safe from police intervention and harassment, within SCS and the surrounding area. Rather than the presence/absence and quantity of policing near SCS, our findings show that the quality of policing experienced in the community shapes PWUD' perceptions, experiences, and willingness to access SCS.

(Re)Claiming our Crowns

Black women’s hair has long been a pillar of Black culture and community. However, hairstyles worn by Black women and girls are vilified by society and forced to conform to white, hegemonic standards of beauty. This has translated directly into educational spaces where Black girls experience heavy policing by school and district-wide policies that negatively impact their views of themselves and their hair. The push for, and subsequent stall of, the CROWN Act to be passed in US states has revealed just how deeply rooted hair discrimination is in society and schools. This editorial affirms and celebrates the role of hair in the Black community and its importance in educational institutions.

Border Control and Undesirables in Britain and Australia

‘Undesirables’ explores the various border control practices employed against migrant communities that have been branded as undesirable by the authorities, including exclusion, deportation, monitoring and detention. The contemporary approaches to undesirable migrant groups have deep historical connections. This special issue offers evidence that current policy and practices are products of a long-term historical recourse. This proposed issue explores how certain migrant groups (on the grounds of race, gender, ethnicity, political ideology, and perceived criminality) were identified as ‘undesirable’ by the authorities of the state and subjected to various border and policing practices. This often involved the exclusion of ‘undesirable’ migrants at the border or the deportation of individuals if found to be ‘undesirable’, but also included the surveillance, arrest and detention of undesirables from migrant groups by police and intelligence agencies once they had settled in the destination country.This special issue shows that border control practices extended far beyond the physical border and that as well as using border practices to reject or expel ‘undesirable’ migrants, the state highly monitored those ‘undesirable’ migrants who had been allowed to enter the country. This builds on Paddy Hillyard’s (1993) theory of the ‘suspect community’, which described the heavy policing of the Irish community in Britain during the 1970s-80s. While some studies have looked at how some community groups have replaced others in the contemporary government’s security agenda (Pantazis and Pemberton 2009), this special issue showcases that the ‘undesirability’ concept has historical origin that still influences current approaches to policies, hence it warrants a more comprehensive investigation and reflection.

‘It’s on my head’: Risk and accountability in public order policing

Heavy policing remains ‘a chronic feature of public order operations’ (Waddington PAJ (1994) Liberty and Order: Public Order Policing in a Capital City. London: UCL Press), both in the form of officer numbers and in the proportionality of tactics employed. This paper argues that at the heart of this lies the assessment of threat and risk and how police commanders perceive, predict and manage the potential for disorder. It reports on the findings of a mixed-methods study, combining data from observations of three separate public order events, with in-depth interviews of seven high-level, police public order commanders from five different UK police forces. Analysis suggests that commanders construe ‘risk’ in very broad terms, seeking to mitigate not only physical harm but also abstract consequences such as reputational damage and loss of public confidence. Structured models central to the task of threat and risk assessment give the appearance of a quantitative and objective process. However, the actual appraisal of threat and risk, both before and during public order operations, is almost entirely heuristic. Furthermore, the analysis suggests commanders’ decision-making is acutely affected by the pressure of accountability. It is argued that at a tacit level, their threat and risk assessments reflect this and a direct consequence is the deployment of additional police resources. At a time when the police service is under intense pressure to do more with less, this paper discusses how refining the assessment of threat and risk may prove to be a critical factor in the delivery of cost effective and proportionate public order policing.

Evaluating a citizen security pilot in Honduras: The economic benefits of a much reduced murder rate

AbstractMotivationDuring the 2010s Honduras reported some of the highest rates of violent urban crime anywhere in the world. Before the 2010s, the government tried to control crime using heavy policing and sentencing (la mano dura), but with little apparent effect on alarming and rising rates of urban crime. This led to a switch to working with communities to make urban spaces safer, to change attitudes among young people vulnerable to perpetrating and suffering violent crime, and to encouraging secondary school students to remain in school.PurposeThe article assesses the success of the 2013–2019 pilot, Ciudades Seguras (Safe Cities), in three large municipalities. The project aimed at integrating crime prevention, social investment and municipal capacity building across the national and subnational administrations.Approaches and methodsThe project was designed with no regard to impact evaluation, without an adequate baseline, without controls. Hence, we develop a simple ex‐post cost–benefit analysis (CBA) that updates an ex‐ante CBA. Our approach has two advantages: (1) it provides rigorous estimates of the project’s impacts from assessing counterfactuals, data, and plausible individual and social benefits; and (2) it helps assess the quality of the original ex‐ante CBA estimates.FindingsReliable data on project impact is incomplete. Two findings, however, are striking. In the three cities, homicides fell dramatically from more than 850 per annum to below 500, against a projection of rates rising to 900 per annum. The other is that, contrary to programme plans, school dropout rates actually increased. The value of fewer murders outweighed disappointments on school retention. The benefit–cost ratio is estimated to be 1.75, higher than the ex‐ante estimate of the project. The value of the pilot remains unchanged when we include calculations from incomplete and/or unreliable data on sexual violence, injuries, thefts, and school dropout.Policy ImplicationsTwo conclusions can be drawn from this article. First, that Ciudades Seguras achieved great success in reducing murder rates, showing how working with communities to make cities safer and changing attitudes and expectations can work, when heavier policing does not. Second, that it is possible to assess the economic benefits derived from such programmes, even when adequate measures for subsequent evaluation were not included in the design of the pilot. [Correction added on 20 May 2021, after initial online publication: Abstract section has been updated in this version.]

Football in Turkey during the Erdoğan regime

ABSTRACT Since Islamist-conservative Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took over power in Turkey, the country has gone through a massive social transformation. Football, the quintessential form of entertainment in Turkey which has always had its ties with politics, has also been affected by this change. Especially after the Gezi Protests, in which the supporters of three major Istanbul clubs participated, to express their discontent over Erdoğan’s autocratic tendencies and interventions on secular lifestyles, the ruling party’s intervention in football accelerated. The new regime employed heavy policing, a controversial e-ticket scheme, and criminal court cases to suppress dissent in the stadiums, and also sponsored two pro-regime teams of its own that reached success but not popularity. The regime’s every move concerning football has been contested by the middle-class, secular football fans of Istanbul’s pro-opposition neighbourhoods. This paper discusses the historical and sociological origins of Erdoğan’s recurring defeats in the football field versus Stambulite fans.

ЛГБТ ОСОБЕ У СРБИЈИ: ИЗМЕЂУ ФОРМАЛНОГ ПРИХВАТАЊА И НЕФОРМАЛНОГ ОДБАЦИВАЊА

Generally speaking, Europeanization is defined as “a process in which states adopt EU rules”. As Serbia is getting closer to the EU, this process is gaining on the momentum, but running far from smoothly. Formal endeavors aimed at the change of the social status of the LGBT persons in Serbia are a case in point, as they are linked to the idea of Europeanization. In accordance with the EU conditions, a number of laws aimed at fighting discrimination of LGBTs were passed, programs with the same goal were implemented, and several Pride Parades took place without major incidents (as Belgrade was “besieged” by heavy police forces). At the same time, high state officials publicly manifest their reluctance toward non-heterosexuals, with the police practicing indirect resistance toward organizing the Pride.The LGBT affirming actions were characterized by short time-span and superficiality, and this is what makes this case a paradigmatic one of the Serbian Government’s attitude to Europeanization: the formal obligations (as imposed) are fulfilled, while simultaneously enormous (informal) efforts are undertaken in order that no changes occur in society. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the aforementioned. Attempts to diffuse EU rules and regulations seem to be of no avail if local adaptation, interpretation and appropriation of these norms and resistance which they spawn, is not taken into account.

Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies ed. by Michelle D. Bonner, et al.

Reviewed by: Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies ed. by Michelle D. Bonner, et al. J. Patrice McSherry Bonner, Michelle D., Guillermina Seri, Mary Rose Kubal, and Michael Kempa. Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. The ambitious theoretical goal of this book is to deepen and complicate narrow, procedural political science concepts of democracy by incorporating the phenomenon of police abuse. Analysis of such abuse, the editors argue, is absent in most of the discipline's literature on democracy. But police abuse can corrode democratic regimes and enforce exclusionary concepts of citizenship, impoverishing the nature of democracy. Police and police abuse are a form of governance, the book shows: they define and delimit the rule of law at the ground level and impact the lived experience of democracy for large populations. Moreover, the editors contend, police abuse is not solely a legacy of authoritarian states. It is present in democratic regimes and is not simply an "aberration" that can [End Page 443] be overcome through better training or technical fixes. The book locates policing at the center of processes "through which the state imposes order and governs the population's access to rights" (11). The editors introduce three major categories that are identified with democracy but are profoundly affected by policing and police abuse: citizenship, accountability, and socioeconomic (in) equality. The editors point out that "police officers make discretionary decisions by distinguishing between citizens deserving protection and others perceived as suspect and as a threat to the former" (14). Populations made up of the marginalized or the poor, ethnic or racial minorities, immigrants, or anti-government protesters may find themselves "dismissed, criminalized, or subjected to violence" (14). The book's linkage of socioeconomic stratification and structural analysis with the function of policing is a particularly welcome contribution. As author M. M. Müller puts it, "Even in 'consolidated' democracies, the main function of the police has always been the (re)production of order—including its underlying divisions along class and ethnic lines" (224). Several other chapters add solid case studies that substantiate this theoretical link, analyzing police violence against "the dangerous classes" as a means of preserving and advancing the political and economic interests of the state and the upper classes. The authors analyze a range of case studies in France, the United States, South Africa, Canada, India, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina. Some scholars point to colonial legacies and others to police use of counterinsurgency-style methods to exercise social control. I mention here, for reasons of space, only a few chapters. Comparing India and Argentina, G. Seri and J. Lokaneeta emphasize the unique prerogatives of police, including the power of life and death. Deadly abuse exposes the role of the police "in reinforcing societal inequalities and inscribing citizenship's boundaries" (58). R. Squillacote and L. Feldman analyze citizen-based forms of vigilance over the police, such as Cop Watch in the United States. They argue that "citizen participation in government accountability is at the heart of Cop Watch's democratic nature … [and] its adversarial nature" (153). They believe that earlier forms of citizen involvement, such as community control and civilian review boards, did not succeed because of their limited input into policy and significant resistance by police departments (148). In their chapter, C. Davenport, R. McDermott, and D. Armstrong find that the race of US police, protesters, and observers is a key variable affecting attitudes toward dissent, policing, and responsibility. Race—long a central [End Page 444] fissure in U.S. history and politics—shapes the opinions and perceptions of those who observe police-protester confrontations. M. Clarke shows that in post-apartheid South Africa, police violence continues to be disproportionally aimed at poor black communities. Extreme poverty and inequality persist there and aggressive police crime-fighting methods target those who protest these conditions, participate in strikes, or challenge the neoliberal project. Thus, the police "reinforce the continued socioeconomic exclusion of a large percentage of society" (197). Müller's chapter on Brazil demonstrates that police adapted new counterinsurgency-style methods learned in Colombia and Haiti to conduct armed "pacification" in Rio de Janeiro. Selective application of the law resulted in heavy police intervention in the favelas...

Safety and operational impacts of setting speed limits below engineering recommendations

This study quantifies the operational and safety impacts of setting posted speed limits below engineering recommendations using field data from rural roads in Montana. Vehicle operating speeds and historical crash data were collected at multiple sites with posted speed limits set equal to engineering recommendations and sites with posted speed limits set lower than engineering recommendations. Linear, quantile and logistic regression models were estimated to predict mean operating speed, 85th percentile operating speed and speed limit compliance, respectively, as a function of various roadway characteristics and level of speed enforcement. The Empirical-Bayes before-after approach was also used to develop crash modification factors (CMFs) that describe the expected change in total and fatal + injury crash frequency when setting posted speed limits lower than engineering recommendations. Because safety data were collected over a long time period, temporal adjustments were incorporated to account for yearly changes in crash reporting, traffic characteristics and other variables. The results revealed that speed limit compliance worsened as the difference between the engineering recommended and posted speed limits increased. The presence of verified heavy police enforcement reduced both mean and 85th-percentile operating speeds by approximately 4 mph and increased speed limit compliance. The safety analysis found a statistically significant reduction in total, fatal + injury, and property damage only (PDO) crash frequency at locations with posted speed limits set 5 mph lower than engineering recommendations. Locations with posted speed limits set 10 mph lower than engineering recommendations experienced a decrease in total and PDO crash frequency, but an increase in fatal + injury crash frequency. The safety effects of setting speed limits 15 to 25 mph lower than engineering recommendations were less clear, as the results were not statistically significant, likely due to the small sample of sites included in the evaluation. Overall, the results suggest that setting posted speed limits 5 mph lower than the engineering recommended practice may result in operating speeds that are more consistent with the posted speed limits and overall safety benefits.

Are There Women Out There?

Are There Women Out There?

Inherent Vice? Maltese Men and the Organization of Prostitution in Interwar Cardiff

This article explores concerns over Maltese men and the organization of prostitution in interwar Cardiff and reveals the central role of masculinity in shaping both perceptions and the social experiences of this marginalized group. Maltese cafés became connected to prostitution as a result of a shipping downturn, the exemption of the Maltese from “aliens” restrictions, and heavy policing of street prostitution that encouraged more clandestine methods. However, links between some Maltese and prostitution were extended to Maltese men as a whole. Drawing on imperialistic discourses of sexual behavior and “race,” this connection was used by Cardiff's chief constable to denote racial difference for the Maltese. The chief constable's rhetoric—amplified by the local and national press, and the actions of his force—had a lasting impact on Maltese seafarers and how they were perceived, and drew international attention from the Maltese Imperial Government, which became concerned over the impact the narratives had on the ability of Maltese sailors to obtain work on ships. This case study, which sheds light on an overlooked minority group in twentieth-century Britain, demonstrates that racialization is an active process, formed in specific contexts in response to localized concerns. As such, it also reveals that historians need to pay close attention to local and regional settings in order to pick apart the complexities, continuities, and contradictions of the production of racial difference.

Examining Racial Disparities in Drug Arrests

The War on Drugs popularized a set of policies and practices that dramatically increased the number of drug arrests, particularly for low-level drug offenses. The War’s tactics have affected Americans of every race; however, minorities have been most dramatically affected. There are several explanations for the observed racial disparity in drug arrests, but relatively little research directly tests these explanations. In this study, we test three common explanations of racial disparities in drug arrest rates. We find that racial disparities in drug arrests cannot be explained by differences in drug offending, nondrug offending, or residing in the kinds of neighborhoods likely to have heavy police emphasis on drug offending. Our findings are most consistent with explanations focusing on racial bias in drug sanctions.

Learning From New York

Problem, research strategy, and findings: High-rise public housing has been entirely discredited in the United States as a legitimate affordable housing planning strategy because of notorious failures in large cities such as St. Louis and Chicago. Missing from the planning literature is the long-term achievement record of America's largest operator of high-rise public housing, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which still operates 2,600 buildings primarily in modernist tower-in-the-park superblocks for 403,995 authorized tenants. This article assembles and analyzes historical and contemporary materials to create a portrait of functioning American tower-block public housing. The article discusses both contextual factors (New York's transit network, density, and diversity) and successful long-term management in three areas (daily operations, tenant selection, and lobbying) as key to the NYCHA's preservation of public housing. Takeaway for practice: In operations, NYCHA has maintained large front-line staffing on project grounds that play a critical role both in maintenance and social order. In tenant selection, administrators for decades have maintained greater social mixture and better finances by recruiting and retaining working families and, at the same time, enforcing social control through heavy policing. In politics, NYCHA has successfully lobbied for additional federal and city support. Long-term challenges to project preservation and current challenges in New York are also discussed. The findings raise the possibility of high-density urban towers for low-income residents in strong market cities, provided that sufficient attention is paid to design, tenancy, financing, and social control. Research support: None.