Police Bodies Research Articles

Addressing role and value in policing: toward a sustainable policing framework

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the sustainability of policing organizations and propose approaches to enhance their sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses an action research approach involving the researchers and partners from the main national policing bodies in Canada and six police service research sites. Findings – This paper presents a Sustainable Policing Framework (SPF) intended to enhance the sustainability of policing services. Practical implications – The SPF the authors present can be implemented by police service organizations to assist with organizational development as the external environment changes. Originality/value – No other approaches to police sustainability that involve a framework similar to the one that is presented are known. This paper provides specific tools for police services to deploy to address their sustainability concerns.

Does Size Matter in the Field?: Female Police Bodies in Online Television

The purpose of this study is to investigate how female officers’ body sizes are depicted on the TV show, “Police Women of Broward County.” Little literature examines the media’s depiction of bodies belonging to women who are involved in traditionally masculine professions. However, feminist and masculinist literature, along with biophysical literature, tends to suggest that women are smaller and weaker than men or are perceived that way in society. It stands to reason that media may portray female officers this way or portray women attempting to overcome this stigma personally and professionally to appeal to viewers or as a reflection of mainstream attitudes or ideas. Using a record-review case study methodology, the researcher examined free snippets and numerous online episodes of the TLC Network show, “Police Women of Broward County.” The show, which includes fieldwork and interviews, contained quotations about size, and scenarios in which size appeared to be relevant to policing. Overcoming the stigma was a recurring theme, but it was not the only theme. Some comments were positively associated with female officers’ sizes insofar as police seemed tenaciously motivated by their smaller stature. However, some comments that connected size, gender, and professionalism seemed to be negative or to suggest diminution. Some comments discussed size differences within the female police population but the comments were neither negative nor positive because they were merely factual or informational.

Typologies of partnership policing: case studies from urban South Africa

In the contemporary pluralised landscape of policing, partnerships between public and private policing bodies are often the norm, rather than the exception. This is particularly the case for South Africa, where partnering between the state police and private security industry has a long history. Through focusing on different types of partnerships between the state police and the private security industry in urban South Africa, this article shows that the generally applied ‘junior-partner’ model does not reflect the complexity and diversity of public–private policing partnerships. Through an analysis of unstructured and structured interactions between private security officers and police officers in different operational settings in three South African cities (Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban), this article shows how various forms of partnering – ranging from competitive and collaborative – simultaneously take place due to a range of different factors, such as the nature of information-sharing, personal perceptions and networks. This article thereby emphasises the diversity of partnering in contemporary urban South Africa that often maintains and challenges the ‘junior-partner’ model.

Visibility and the Policing of Public Space

From studies of ‘panoptic’ CCTV surveillance to accounts of undercover police officers, it is often mooted that visibility and invisibility are central to the policing of public space. However, there has been no comprehensive and critical assessment of this axiom. Drawing on the practices of a variety of policing providers and regulators, and the work of geographers, criminologists and other social scientists, this paper examines how and why visibility underpins the policing of public space. We begin by considering the ways in which policing bodies and technologies seek to render themselves selectively visible and invisible in the landscape. The paper then moves on to explore the ways in which policing agents attempt to make ‘incongruous’ bodies, behaviours and signs variously visible and invisible in public space. We then offer a sympathetic critique of these accounts, arguing that more attention is needed in understanding: (i) how other senses such as touch, smell and sound are socially constructed as in and out-of-place and ‘policed’ accordingly; and (ii) how the policing of undesirable bodies and practices is not simply about quantitative crime reduction, but conducted through qualitative, embodied performance. The paper concludes by pinpointing key areas for future research.

The pluralization of policing and the rise of private policing in China

Policing in China has undergone tremendous change during the economic transformation of the past three decades. This paper describes the plural policing bodies that have existed during pre- and post-reform periods in China. In the pre-reform period the policing bodies were generally public in nature with the public security police playing an important role in providing professional guidance to the other policing bodies. In the post-reform period, there has been a transition from a monopoly of public policing to an integration of public/private policing, with the public security police still playing a leading role in the policing network. Apart from the emergence of private policing (the security service industry), there is also a trend towards privatizing some previously public policing bodies in line with the movement toward strengthening the rule of law and towards privatization in general.

'Enkel en alleen in dit geval'. Pleidooien voor de vrijlating van voormalig collaborateurs na de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Nederland

‘Only and Exclusively in this Case’. Pleas for the Release of Former Collaborators after the Second World War in the NetherlandsAfter the Second World War ended in the Netherlands, more than 100.000 people suspected of collaborating were arrested. It was long argued that during and after the war the (former) national socialist families who were ‘in the wrong’ stood isolated against the ‘good’ Dutchmen. This article examines the mentality of the population by making use of the letters of support which were written by family, friends or neighbours to the police and judicial bodies in defense of those who were accused of collaboration. No political arguments were given in the letters, the social-psychological elements of collaboration were put first. The guilt was reduced by for example pointing at the restoration of the family, a poor education, bad social and economic circumstances and poor intellectual development. In this way, the suspects were individualized and disconnected from the group that was seen as being ‘in the wrong’. This article is part of the special issue 'A New Historiography of the Collaboration'.

Private and public policing in the UK: a citizen perspective on partnership

This article addresses the relationship between public and private policing in a residential setting. It adopts a case study approach to explore the fabric of such relationships in a UK community. It draws on empirical research in a residential community with concurrent policing inputs from the public and private sector. Empirical research with the public and private police and subscribers and non-subscribers to a commercial security scheme is used to comment upon the status of interconnection between the two policing bodies. The potential for public and private police to work in partnership and for alliances to be formed to reinforce policing of communities is explored. The paper also addresses the public perception of possible collaborative partnerships between public and private police. In a climate of increasing pluralisation of community policing it provides a citizen perspective on such developments.

Life and death in party city

An experienced international correspondent, Kingstone returns from Afghanistan to report on the problems of the media there: “Neither the Government nor the public understands what freedom of the press means… The idea that it is the responsibility of the fledgling media to hold the Government accountable for its actions and also for the media to be held accountable for what it writes is unfathomable. Afghan journalists are intimidated and are vulnerable in ways that Western journalists can only imagine, so the independence, freedom and diversity are extremely fragile concepts.” And she concludes: “If Afghanistan’s journalism is to flourish – and it’s a big if – among the issues it has to look at are convincing the police and other law enforcement bodies that the media is something to be protected, not muzzled or manipulated… The Government has to improve its strategic communications and resist the temptation to blame the messenger. A credible public broadcaster needs to emerge, the funding and manipulation of media from abroad decreased, and a solid advertising market to emerge on the back of a flourishing private sector. In an insecure situation, the media faces a similar challenge to almost anyone and anything else in this country – simply to survive.”

Appropriating Guilt: Reconciliation in an Aboriginal Canadian Context

IF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAS, in Elie Wiesel's words, age of testimony, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries might be called age of forgiveness. In the last twenty years, forgiveness and have become part of an international discourse. South Africa's Truth and Commission (1995-98), Tasmania's apology the Stolen Generation (2006), and Britain's apology the Maori (1995) are just a few recent instances of across different national contexts. In Canada, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) represented a similar gesture as the country confronted its colonial past and awakened the insistence of that past in the present. Two years after RCAP released its 1996 report, the Canadian government issued a Statement of Reconciliation former occupants of residential schools, stating it was deeply sorry for the collective and personal damage of these institutions on indigenous communities (Statement). Shaped by global politics, these attempts at reflect a current sensibility of revisiting national history. More buried in these public attempts at are questions about their ideological underpinnings and the interests they serve. In what ways does function as a way for the nation re-imagine and perform itself--less, that is, as a deconstruction of national master-narratives than a reconstruction of one? To what degree does the process of satisfy wronged parties? Ten years before RCAP, the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Jr. Prosecution (1986-88) undertook a public inquiry into the wrongful conviction and eleven-year imprisonment of Donald Marshall (Mi'kmaq). (1) The Marshall Inquiry was not void of value: the commission and its subsequent report identified a crisis in the criminal justice system, particularly in its treatment of racial minorities. Beyond recognizing problems like cultural misunderstandings between defense counsel and clients, the foreignness of the courtroom defendants of different cultural backgrounds, and institutional racism in policing bodies and the courts, the commission made a number of larger structural recommendations. On a local as well as a national scale, the Royal Commission set the ground for constitutional reconsiderations and legal reform by sounding a call for self-government, respect for treaty rights, and the implementation of indigenous, community-based models of justice. (2) Yet, the Marshall Inquiry, like RCAP and other processes globally, can also be read as part of a national narrative. Baldly criticized as Canada's favourite substitute for action, (3) these commissions are often seen as offering only a discursive balm for historical injustices that have profound, and potentially unsettling, political implications. Arguably, the Marshall Inquiry was motivated more by the hope of restoring public faith in the federal government (epitomized by Brian Mulroney's election promise of a public inquiry and a million-dollar compensation package for Marshall) than by a willingness for various parties admit responsibility for the personal toll suffered by Marshall and his community. Some contend that the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Jr. Prosecution originated from the Nova Scotia government's desire to find scapegoats (Wall 20), redirect responsibility other parties. On one level, then, the commission elided notions of guilt and responsibility as federal, provincial, juridical, and policing bodies looked other places assign blame. In addition questioning its efficacy, one might also ask how the process violates the understanding of forgiveness as a reciprocal act. In determining the notion of reparation and change--indeed, in deciding what the appropriate response of the wronged party should be--how does reconciliation erode the wronged subject's agency? …

Social Worker and Counsellor Perceptions of Singapore's Domestic Violence Prevention System

From the perception of workers directly responsible for service delivery, this study examined strengths and weaknesses of the domestic violence prevention system in Singapore and respondents' own training needs. Recommendations included the evaluation of current offender treatment programmes, improved co-ordination with education, police and housing bodies, and the need for specialised training programmes for those working with adult and child victims and offenders.