Mainstream Policing Research Articles

Theorising and illustrating plural policing models in countering armed banditry as hybrid terrorism in northwest Nigeria

Banditry constitutes about 40% of national insecurity in Nigeria. It is a composite crime manifesting in wanton killing, cattle rustling, kidnapping for ransom, levying of illegal tax on farming communities, sexual violence and trafficking of arms and drugs. Through qualitative and quantitative research methodology, this article attempts to theorise and illustrate policing models aimed at countering armed banditry in northwest Nigeria. Coordinates of attacks by bandits are georeferenced to show their spatial distribution and pattern. As Nigeria continues to experience the shocks of banditry, the national and subnational governments are providing counter measures to lessen the striking capability of the bandits through four distinct but complementary models of policing. The article offers direction on the policing imperatives for combatting armed banditry in Nigeria. It proposes a multilevel policing framework which encompasses the mainstream policing, hybrid policing and the joint task force models with the state police as the new layer on the existing security architecture. This is well suited to respond to the conceptual, practical and strategic dimensions of policing in Nigeria to combat armed banditry and other criminalities that envelop the country.

Police Effectiveness and Procedural Justice as Competing Public Values: Moving Beyond the Instrumental-Versus-Normative Model of Police Legitimacy

Abstract This study argues that the dichotomy of instrumental-versus-normative motives in mainstream policing literature can mislead the ways in which police effectiveness and procedural justice shape people’s judgments about the police. Effective policing may be important even for individuals who do not directly benefit from it, while procedurally just policing can bring instrumental benefits, particularly for underprivileged social groups. We propose an alternative framework that characterizes police effectiveness and procedural justice as competing public values, of which the salience depends on political dynamics that vary across time and space. We explored the South Korean case where advocates for effective crime control and procedural justice are vying without one side decisively outweighing the other. Analysis of a representative cross-sectional survey shows that people’s perceptions of police effectiveness and procedural justice are both positively associated with trust in the police which, in turn, is positively associated with willingness for voluntary compliance and cooperation. Broader implications for theory and policy are discussed.

Women’s Motivations for Becoming a Police Officer: A Chinese Case Study on Women in Policing

This article presents a qualitative study that examines the reasons why women want to be a police officer in the mainland of the People’s Republic of China. It aims to explore females’ entry into the police organization, policewomen’s occupational roles and positions, the perceived nature of policing and, to a lesser extent, local police culture. The article argues that China does not need a creative strategy to attract females to join the police. Instead, if structural changes are not possible for now, it needs to change mindset, to scrap the quota that restricts women’s entry and allow female officers more choices and to be more actively engaged in mainstream policing if they so wish. Through the case study, the article accentuates variations in different social environments in comparative criminal justice studies and gender policing in particular. It thus also promotes Southern criminology and Southern Theory for contributions to knowledge production.

Deepening the Conversation: Feminism, International Policing and the WPS Agenda

ABSTRACTScholarship on international police reform and Women, Peace and Security (WPS) has flourished in the last decade and the potential for engagement across these two bodies of literature is promising. Given the increased use of police personnel in international peace missions and emphasis on gender mainstreaming policies, the need for assessing the impact of these two trends has never been greater. Thus, this paper seeks to bridge gaps between the mainstream policing scholarship and feminist scholars focused on post-conflict peacebuilding police reforms. We explore how feminist scholars can engage with policing literature’s technocratic language and ‘in the field’ experience as well as how policing scholars can interact with feminist scholars to transform traditional approaches to security in the context of the WPS Agenda. We demonstrate the benefits of increased dialogue and interaction by highlighting the common and diverging challenges in both fields in three areas: the design, implementation, and evaluation. Finally, to illustrate the dynamic intersection of these areas of study and practice, we examine the transnational policing efforts to gender mainstream the Liberian National Police (LNP) in the context of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).

Normalizing covert surveillance: the subterranean world of policing

In this article, I draw on data derived from an ethnographic field study of covert policing in the United Kingdom to demonstrate that the deployment of covert surveillance has become normalized, both in policing thought and operational practice. In a break with earlier patterns, the methods of covert surveillance are used extensively and are no longer regarded as a tactic of last resort. Covert policing is well anchored within organizational arrangements, empowered by a series of internal rationales mobilized to justify the expansion of covert tactics over and above more traditional, overt forms. The building of intrusive and exceptional policing practices within mundane contexts, I argue, is one of the ways the police have adapted to a broader policing environment characterized by public scepticism and distrust. Policing relies on the invisibility and low profile that comes with covert work, in order to govern contemporary concerns of crime and insecurity without the conflicts which can accompany - and trouble - overt policing practices. As mainstream policing becomes an increasingly extroverted enterprise, introverted forms of policing have come to the fore.

Implementing national policing agendas and strategies for fraud at local level

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to assess, since the 2006 Fraud Review, recommendations, strategies and consequential organisational and other changes at national, regional and local levels relating to fraud, using the Northeast as a case study. It also notes that implementation may have been influenced by institutional changes and related emerging governmental policy agendas and institutional changes relating to organised crime, terrorism and cybercrime.Design/methodology/approachThe research for the paper was undertaken by desk reviews of primary and secondary material. The paper also involved face-to-face interviews with personnel from the regional fraud unit and the three North-east police forces’ fraud units. The interviews were semi-structured and were conducted on grounds of anonymity for the personnel and the forces involved, with a focus on trends and issues. The personnel were invited to comment on a draft of the paper in terms of accuracy of the information they provided; no revisions or additions were proposed. Interpretation of that information is the sole responsibility of the author.FindingsThe paper finds that, despite the decade since the Fraud Review, issues of effectiveness or relevance of national fraud strategies, absence of incentives and identifiable benefits and continuous influence of competing agendas on police priorities continue to marginalise fraud as a mainstream police function and limit the level of resource committed to what also continues to be a rising area of criminality.Research limitations/implicationsThe research looks at the recommendations, strategies and consequential organisational and other changes at national, regional and local levels through implementation by four policing units in the North-east. It also notes that implementation may have been influenced by institutional changes and related emerging governmental policy agendas and institutional changes relating to organised crime, terrorism and cybercrime. While the research is limited in that, it draws on the experience of three local and one regional fraud unit; its findings support further research about the implementation of strategies and agendas in practice on the ground.Practical implicationsThe research validates many of the findings by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and supports the need to review national strategies to ensure effective implementation at local level for what also continues to be a rising area of criminality.Social implicationsThe research raises important issues concerning public concern over fraud where majority of frauds are of high volume, low value with low levels of recovery and usually targeted at individuals but where the policing responses are targeted elsewhere.Originality/valueThe research is the first study on the local implementation of national strategies on fraud and raises positive and less positive aspects of how far national strategies and intentions are addressed on the ground.

'If Those Old Women Catch You, You're Going to Cop It': Night Patrols, Indigenous Women, and Place Based Sovereignty in Outback Australia

Night Patrols (‘patrols’) are a uniquely Indigenous Australian form of community self-policing. Patrols do not fit neatly into established paradigms of ‘policing’ emanating from the Global North. They are not part of the apparatus of the state police, nor do they offer commodified private security services and, unlike mainstream police, they cannot legitimately call on a reservoir of coercive powers to ensure compliance. In this article we sketch out what we describe as the ‘contested space’ of Indigenous self-policing, as represented by patrols, through a post-colonial lens, paying particular attention to the role of Indigenous women’s agency in creating, nurturing and sustaining night patrol work within an Indigenous ethics of care and notions of well-being. Drawing on international critical post-colonial scholarship we tease out the links between patrol work and broader expressions of sovereign power embedded in Indigenous law. Our key contention is that there are learnings from the Australian experience for other post-colonies, where there are kindred debates regarding the balance between Indigenous and colonial systems of justice and policing. We highlight the experience of patrols in the Northern Territory (NT) where the policing of Indigenous space and place have become a key priority for the Australian Government after a major focus on issues of child abuse and family violence.

The landscape of forensic intelligence research

Criminology, forensic science and policing scholars have a significant role to play in exploring new developments and directions in modern policing. Yet while the concept of forensic intelligence has caught the attention of a number of policing agencies around the world, it has yet to become a mainstream undertaking. In part this is an artefact of a pragmatic policing culture that only institutes new practices based on demonstrable, research and practice-based effectiveness. Here, we seek to draw attention to efforts in the scholarly community to accumulate a body of evidence on the efficacy of forensic intelligence. The article describes the international landscape of research pertaining to the development of forensic intelligence. We outline the key use of digitised, triangulated data on biometrics, scene of crime and illicit substances. In doing so, we draw attention to the challenges remaining for scholars and professionals to further understand and advance the use of forensic intelligence in mainstream policing.

CAJ Policing Report (The Policing You Don't See)

Covert policing - the practices of communication interception, surveillance, the use of informants and undercover operations - was used extensively during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Covert policing is argued to have prolonged the conflict and did lasting and immense damage to the rule of law. After the signing of the peace agreement, the Northern Ireland police service undertook large-scale reforms which were designed to prevent the recurrence of such abuses. Yet the secret Security Service – implicated in past abuses – has not yet undertaken such reformation but has been put in charge of a highly important area of mainstream policing. MI5 maintains primacy in covert ‘national security’ policing and gives ‘strategic direction’ to the PSNI in this area. Despite its large role in policing and its lack of reform, governmental oversight of MI5 is limited and ineffective. Limited additional accountably measures were promised in the St Andrews Agreement but some of the most significant commitments, such as those to publish policy frameworks, have not been honoured. Instead, MI5 has been given control of one of the most sensitive areas of policing in Northern Ireland, operating undercover, without having been reformed, and without an accountability structure. This report develops a human rights based framework from international standards and the Patten Report and uses it to analyse past and present covert policing practice. This report reflects on evidence of the involvement of police informants in serious criminality, which led to recommendations to improve legality and accountability of covert policing. However, since primacy in ‘national security’ policing was given to MI5 five years ago (2007), the research finds that there is a growing “accountability gap” over a large part of policing. This report explains that the UK level oversight of MI5 is plainly inadequate and that the local mechanisms that hold the PSNI to account are evaded by the Security Service. It argues that this situation falls woefully short of international standards and has the capacity to undermine confidence in policing as a whole.

Understanding the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002: Cash Seizure and Frontline Policing

AbstractRecent shifts in modes of criminal justice have precipitated a startling expansion of police powers in England and Wales (Brownlee 1998; Reiner 2007). The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) (as amended) is an example of a growing trend towards the use of hybrid civil‐criminal legislation. The Act can be situated within a criminal justice paradigm, often referred to as the ‘new penology’ of risk, or ‘actuarial justice’ (Feeley and Simon 1992, p.449). Part 8 provides frontline police officers with additional, extensive and far‐reaching cash seizure powers for the disruption and frustration of serious, often organised, acquisitive crime. Though laudable in its aims, the legislation is susceptible to manipulation by officers wanting to secure broader social and disciplinary objectives, often pertaining to the organisational subcultural norms of rank‐and‐file police officers. Its provisions have become part of mainstream policing powers. An exploration of the broader implications of mainstreaming the cash seizure powers into frontline policing has, therefore, become timely. In this article, I conduct such an examination, concluding by setting out an agenda for more critical research than has been undertaken to date.

The Confiscation Investigation: Investigating the Financial Benefit Made from Crime

The court-ordered confiscation order is the primary means of recovering a defendant's financial benefit from crime. Whilst becoming more prominent within the police service, little is known about the role of the financial investigator and the operational processes which lead to a confiscation order. This paper examines the role of the financial investigators in confiscation proceedings along with their day-to-day tasks, training, status and profile within the police service. It identifies how cases are selected for financial investigation, distinguishing between proactive and reactive referrals. It sets out the powers that financial investigators have to investigate defendants’ financial affairs and the information that they draw on in practice. The paper examines the difficulties in integrating confiscation investigations with mainstream policing activities, highlighting the role of competing targets, the performance management regime and potentially perverse incentives. The paper ends with a call for the development of a proactive rather than reactive asset recovery regime.

‘Crime Shouldn'T Pay’

This article focuses on the development and implementation of ‘proceeds of crime’ in policing and crime control, and places this against a backdrop of recent policing strategies and philosophies. It is argued that the latter may have reached their ceiling in terms of efficacy, and that much greater attention should now be turned towards targeting criminal asset recovery; this, it is hoped, will serve to reduce the ‘pull’ of much criminal activity (that is, financial and material gain). The article considers the impact of the Proceeds of Crime Act (2002), and work of the Metropolitan Police Service in tackling criminal assets. Whilst generally there are clear signs of progress, there is still much to be done in terms of interweaving a ‘proceeds of crime’ approach into mainstream policing.

Eyes wide shut: the police investigation of safety crimes

This article reports the results of an empirical research project on the police investigation of harms caused by occupational safety crimes in Finland. It begins with a theoretical discussion of how those harms are excluded from mainstream criminal justice discourse by a range of obscuring mechanisms and the role that policing plays in maintaining and constituting a social order that marginalises safety crime. The paper uses an empirical study of safety crimes reported to the police in Finland. The study, located in a rare case of a jurisdiction in which safety crimes are the responsibility of mainstream policing agencies, will be used to explore the possibilities for stretching the legitimate parameters of criminal justice intervention. In order to do so, the analysis explores features of the ‘structural’ readiness of the state and the ‘conceptual’ readiness of police officers to criminalise those harms. The paper concludes on the value of those findings for understanding how safety crimes might be mainstreamed into policing systems more generally.

Road watch [automatic number plate recognition system

This paper describes the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system used by the UK police to fight crime and terrorism. Originally used for enforcing traffic rules, the ANPR has evolved into a mainstream policing tool, culminating in the formation of a national intelligence-gathering network that can monitor and record almost every journey of every vehicle in Britain. Despite the many benefits of the ANPR system, there are concerns over the possibility that the system could undermine hard-won civil liberties. Further, the chances that errors will be made are much higher with a surveillance system that relies on multiple government databases. Public confidence in ANPR, which in turn will determine the system's effectiveness in fighting crime, will ultimately depend on keeping such errors to an absolute minimum.

Policing Terrorism: A Threat to Community Policing or Just a Shift in Priorities?

The events of September 11 and the subsequent concern for national security have justifiably shifted the priorities of policing. However, in the so‐called ‘war on terror’ police services might be tempted to abandon (or diminish) community policing and revert to the traditional model of policing with its emphasis on paramilitarism. To do so would not only be counterproductive but would also arrest the progress policing has made over recent decades which has taken it to the high level of societal acceptance it now enjoys. In their haste to give public reassurance, politicians might expect a traditional model and as police commissioners face the challenge of retaining community policing there will be further tension from within the ranks as mainstream police culture is action oriented and likely to prefer a paramilitary approach. Rather than moving away from community policing, police services should look to its qualities and apply its fine principles which ultimately will be more effective than the traditional model. The traditional model of policing will, in fact, distance police from the rest of the community whereas a community policing relationship that is built on trust and mutual respect is much more likely to provide early warnings about terrorists acts.

Aboriginal community patrols in Australia: Self-policing, self-determination and security

This article emerges from research conducted across Australia on Aboriginal self-policing initiatives, generically referred to as "Community Patrols", "Aboriginal Patrols" or "Night Patrols". The study was intended to produce a national profile of Patrols, and similar services, around Australia. Our research reveals that Aboriginal people are actively engaged in a diversity of self-policing practices in urban, rural and remote communities across Australia. These policing practices differ markedly from those offered by the mainstream police and the private security sector in a number of crucial respects: the most obvious being that they are largely staffed by volunteers, operate without an arsenal of formal powers, and do not offer a commodified security service. Aboriginal Community Patrols are local initiatives by Aboriginal people evolved to intervene in situations where Indigenous people are at risk of enmeshment in the criminal justice system, or where they face multiple hazards associated with community disorder, alcohol, drugs and violence. Recent theorizing on the nature of contemporary policing, stressing some of the benefits of becoming linked to local security networks, provides a useful conceptual space for exploring the potential role of Indigenous self-policing, providing that principles of self determination are not sacrificed in the process.

Hi-Tech Crime is the “Real Thing”

Len Hynds, is head of the UK-based National Hi-tech Crime Unit in the UK. The Unit has been around since 2001 and is endeavouring to bridge the gap in information sharing between law enforcement and the security commmunity to eradicate hi-tech crime. The expression “Hi-Tech Crime” is a classic oxymoron. We are talking about cutting edge technology when we talk of matters “hi-tech” — conjuring positive, forward thinking, images. And then we link this term with “crime.” Little wonder then that my colleagues in mainstream policing assign it specialist status. And hardly surprising I suppose that IT security is rarely seen as a board level portfolio for the business community. We must recognize hi-tech crime for what it really is — if we are to combat it. It is every type of crime but with a component placing it in the digital environment. It is able to operate instantaneously, remotely, and with disregard for sovereignty and geography. It also becomes easier for criminals to target multiple-victims, hide assets, and cover the evidential trail.

Women in tribal policing: an examination of their status and experiences

This paper presents a portion of a study conducted from 1996 to 2001. The paper focuses on the role of women in tribal policing. The findings indicate that women are more highly represented in tribal policing than in non-Indian police departments. Five times more women hold positions of supervision and command in tribal police departments than in non-Indian departments. Of great significance is the lack of gender-based hostility perceived by women in tribal police departments. These findings contrast greatly with research conducted on the role of women in mainstream policing. There, studies have found that that female police officers are somewhat disconnected from the traditional power structure within mainstream policing, and are viewed by police administrations, and by themselves, as bringing different values and gifts to the role of policing. Research of mainstream police departments has also found that women are generally outside power structures within policing and consider themselves hampered in their chosen profession. This paper examines the differences in perception and achievement of women in tribal policing and explores possible explanations for these differences.

Women Police in a Traditional Society: Test of a Western Model of Integration

It has been argued that policewomen in traditional societies do not aspire to being fully integrated into mainstream policing, but may prefer a more restricted and segregated role. This thesis is examined in the context of policing in Tamil Nadu, a state of India. The present study uses data gathered through interviews and a standardized questionnaire, and focuses on the preferences expressed by women officers about roles and styles of policing. These preferences are compared with those of women interviewed in earlier research in India and other countries. It is concluded that, while progress to full integration in traditional societies may be slower, it seems to follow the same sequence of stages found in Western societies.

Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units

This paper examines overlooked developments in contemporary policing: the growth in the number of, and a significant shift in the character of. United States police paramilitary units (PPUs). A survey of all police departments serving cities of 50,000 people or more provides the first comprehensive national data on PPUs. Findings document a rise in the number of PPUs, an escalation in their level of activity, a normalization of these units into mainstream policing, and a direct link between PPUs and the U.S. military. These findings reflect the aggressive turn many law enforcement agencies are assuming behind the rhetoric of community and problem-oriented policing reforms.