Policing In Europe Research Articles

Conditions, Actions and Purposes (CAP): A Dynamic Model for Community Policing in Europe

AbstractDespite its popularity as a policing method and evidence of its positive affect on communities, community policing has defied attempts to establish a clear definition and replicable form. Often regarded as an Anglo-American policing method in origin, community policing is now found across the world and is growing in influence. The need for differentiated local implementation raises important questions regarding the core features of community policing to guide the work of practitioners. Integrating insights from the existing literature and a trans-European project involving 323 interviews with community members and police officers across eight countries, we propose a dynamic model for community policing. In this original model, we differentiate between the conditions, actions and purposes of community policing (CAP) and describe how these core components are required for effective community policing, interrelated, and flexible enough for local implementation. Accordingly, we show how the CAP model is adaptable while at the same time retaining a sense of what makes ‘community policing’ a unique and identifiable policing method. We conclude our study with a discussion of the implications for research and practice internationally.

All cops are trusted? How context and time shape immigrants’ trust in the police in Europe

ABSTRACT The relationship between police and ethnic minorities has been the subject of increasing interest in many Western societies in recent years. We examine first-generation immigrants’ trust in the police in Europe from a comparative and longitudinal perspective. Based on roughly 20,000 immigrants observed in 22 countries over 13 years in the European Social Survey, results show that initially high levels of trust in the police among immigrants tend to erode with the length of their stay in the host country. We show that two simultaneous processes drive this pattern: a fading reference effect (downward assimilation) and an increasing discrimination effect. Cross-national comparisons show that, on average, immigrants in countries with more police trust the police less. However, there is no effect of police size within countries, mostly because police numbers hardly change over time. We discuss implications for future research and policy development based on our findings.

Information sharing in community policing in Europe: Building public confidence

The literature on the importance of procedural justice in policing is extensive. Using the context of information sharing in community policing, this paper argues that interactional, procedural and distributive justice are salient in interactions between the police and the public, both online and face-to-face. Structured interviews ( n = 161) were conducted with members of young minority groups and intermediaries (who work with minorities and police agencies) across nine countries in Europe. Our analysis of barriers and facilitators to sharing information with the police highlights processes of interactional, procedural and distributive justice in building public confidence. We highlight theoretical and practical implications of relevance to policing internationally. Our findings show that demonstrating aspects of interactional justice (attitude and behaviour, accessibility and communication, personal contact and relationships); procedural justice (responsiveness and efficiency, data protection and security); and distributive justice (outcomes and effectiveness, equity in distribution of policing services) have a role in building public confidence and facilitating information sharing with police online and face-to-face. We conclude that in addition to micro-level interactions, meso-level social processes (e.g. community policing models and data protection and security procedures) can be useful in enhancing public confidence.

Selection of Police in Europe: Comparing the Hungarian and Polish Systems

Over the past few years, due to the growing needs of personnel, the Hungarian police has faced recruitment challenges. Although there is a high demand for new recruits, the standards of the entry requirements are relatively strict and difficult to meet. The question is whether the requirements are still serving the needs of the organisation. The objective of this study was to learn a different practice by comparing the Hungarian and Polish selection methods to assist in improving and to find applicable methods for the selection procedure of the Hungarian police.There are many similarities between the two countries, and following from this, it was assumed that the selection of police is also similar, and therefore the attributes could be compared. To analyse the topic, for contextual purposes, as they determine the mentioned characteristics, both the organisational and the educational attributes were studied as well. Researching the topic, the relevant literature was analysed. Data that could not be collected from the literature was collected by a questionnaire sent to Cepol and to a liaison officer, and an interview was also performed with a Polish police officer who volunteered for the study. The research indicates that both forces apply physical, medical and psychological requirements in the same regard, but with territorial and policing-cultural specifics. It was found that Poland and Hungary struggle with the number of fit applicants, but neither country uses modern selection methods that could have a positive effect on selecting the new recruits.

Cyrille Fijnaut: a pioneer from the low countries

ABSTRACT Inspired by American pioneers in the field of police research like Jerome Skolnick, Cyrille Fijnaut resigned in 1969 as a police lieutenant from the police force in the city of Tilburg, the Netherlands in order to create the opportunity to study criminology and philosophy at the KU Leuven in Belgium. At the same university, he wrote in the years 1974–1978 his Ph.D. dissertation on the political history of policing in Europe since the Napoleonic Era. This thesis became the starting point of a rich career as a professor of criminology and criminal law at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the KU Leuven, Tilburg University and NYU Law School (Global Law School Programme). Over the years, he became an internationally renowned expert in the fields of police and judicial cooperation, organized crime and terrorism, and the transatlantic history of criminology and the criminal justice system. In these and other fields he wrote some 50 books and edited some 50 volumes, and published more than 400 articles in academic and professional journals. In addition, he was one of the founding fathers of the Belgian journal of criminology and criminal law Panopticon and the European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. He also served as an expert in some of Dutch and Belgian committees of inquiry, e.g. the committee that investigated the safety and security problems of Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician who was killed in May 2002. The Dutch government rewarded him with a Knighthood in the Order of the Dutch Lion, and the Belgian government appointed him Commandeur in the Crown Order.

What were the medical police?

The article presents new ways of interpreting the concept "medical police," which was used in the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alternative understandings of the medical police in Europe, distinct from those offered by George Rosen and Michel Foucault, the preeminent twentieth-century thinkers on the topic, were derived by studying related treatises written in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Portugal. Records indicate that these treatises were not an exclusively German phenomenon nor did they constitute State regulation of the medical profession alone. Rather, they were broad-ranging treatises on how the State should manage public health in each location, according to its specific features and demands, whether institutional or political in nature.

Killing Fields: Explaining Police Violence against Persons of Color

AbstractThis concluding article situates the police violence against persons of color in an historical context, suggesting that the current wave of killings replicates historical trends. A social science explanation is proposed to better understand the antecedents and consequences of police violence. A major strength of the articles in this volume is their delineation of causes of police violence and their consequences. The underlying and recurring explanation for police violence is stereotypical racial attitudes and their behavioral consequences. Effects of police violence extend beyond immediate victims to include communities of color. Comparisons with European police suggest that while lethal actions by police in Europe are far fewer, patterns of brutality and its justification mirror the U.S. context. The problem of police violence against persons of color is multidimensional and complex. This article concludes that there is no easy overarching solution or “fix” to this violence. Rather, each facet must be carefully examined—as this volume has done—and approaches focused on causes and consequences of specific problems should be developed and pursued.

Plural policing in Europe: relationships and governance in contemporary security systems

ABSTRACTReferences to ‘plural policing’, ‘policing beyond the police’ and the ‘extended policing family’ are now commonplace in many discussions of policing in late modern societies. There is a danger that claims about the dynamic and changing nature of plural policing themselves become a new orthodoxy and begin to lose a sense of local nuance and recognition of the importance of place-based specificity and context in understanding the particularities of policing. It is this need to unpack the complex ways in which contemporary plural policing is now configured at a local level within different national political environments that provides the underpinning rationale for this Special Issue. Focussing on aspects of relationships and governance in six jurisdictions across northern and western Europe, it provides important insights into how the policies, practices and narratives around plural policing reflect the influence of particular histories and geographies. The first three articles are focused primarily on the relationships which have emerged in the public sector through its own processes of pluralisation, in particular, through the introduction of policing auxiliaries or municipal policing in Scotland, England and The Netherlands. The fourth article considers both relationships and governance in pluralised policing in Paris, France. A detailed analysis of the governance of safety and security is taken up in the final two articles, examining the cases of Austria and Belgium. These articles clearly demonstrate that experiences of pluralised policing vary widely within Europe and call into question the assumed dominance of neo-liberal forces in this area.

The analysis and containment of organized crime in Europe: an interview with Cyrille Fijnaut

This email interview with Cyrille Fijnaut was conducted during 2013 and 2014. It discusses Fijnaut’s background, influences, career and current thinking and activities from his early career in the Dutch police in the 1960s, through to his work as a criminologist for academia and governments. His main research interests are related to organized crime and terrorism, international police and judicial cooperation, comparative criminal procedure and police law, the history of European and American criminology and of policing in Europe, and police and judicial cooperation in the Benelux. In these fields he has written and edited some 75 books and published hundreds of articles in national and international journals and edited books. In 2004 he edited together with Letizia Paoli, Organized Crime in Europe: Concepts, Patterns and Control Policies in the European Union and Beyond. In addition he has worked in the last 20 years as an expert for a number of governmental and parliamentary committees of inquiry in Belgium and the Netherlands with regard to organized and professional crime problems and in relation to security issues. Currently he is working on a book on the future of police and judicial cooperation in the framework of the internal and external security policies of the European Union.

Book Review: Policing in Europe

Book Review: Policing in Europe

Environmental Crime and the Police in Europe: A Panorama and Possible Paths for Future Action

Environmental crime is one of the most lucrative forms of criminal activity. The illegal dumping of hazardous waste, trafficking of dangerous substances and smuggling of protected natural resources is estimated to be worth between EUR18 and EUR25 billion per year. The trafficking of endangered species generates the highest revenue of all types of environmental crime and is widely considered to be second in value only to drug trafficking. Environmental crime is believed to be expanding constantly. In spite of this, it is not currently a political priority, having taken a back seat to anti-terrorism measures since 11 September 2001. This article aims to show that environmental crime is one of the most serious forms of criminal activity - it threatens the very existence of mankind. In order to do this, the article begins by advancing a definition of environmental crime, which is intended to allow the reader better to understand its implications for our society. An attempt is then made to provide a financial estimate of the worldwide value of this criminal activity, in order to shed light on its scale and diversity. Next, the article examines various examples from European Union (?EU?) countries (Member States and candidate countries) in order to illustrate the ways in which police combat environmental crime. Examples of international cooperation in this field are also provided. Finally, the article proposes a number of possible paths for future action which might push environmental crime up the criminal law and crime-fighting policy agenda in EU Member States and EU policy as a whole. In this respect, the recent judgment by the European Court of Justice (?ECJ?) concerning European Community competence in criminal law provides interesting material for reflection.

The Place of Covert Surveillance in Democratic Societies: A Comparative Study of the United States and Germany

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, undercover policing has become an increasingly important law enforcement tool in the United States and in Europe. More frequent deployment of covert tactics has confronted democratic governments with difficult questions about these extraordinary operations should be controlled and conceptualized. How ubiquitous should covert tactics become, and how should regulatory systems respond to their increased importance? What are the challenges of taming the constantly changing and highly contested practices of undercover policing, which stubbornly resist oversight? Legal systems differ in their concerns about undercover surveillance and in their willingness to deploy covert agents and informants against a spectrum of perceived threats ranging from national security dangers like terrorism or political and religious extremism to organized crime, drug trafficking, and more ordinary forms of criminality. In most democracies, political elites, legal actors, and critics agree that undercover investigations are in some sense a evil. But national legal systems vary in what they mean by that. They have disparate conceptions of what makes covert investigations troublesome; of the proper goals of infiltration; and of the mechanisms by which undercover tactics should be legitimated and controlled. In short, legal systems forge different regulatory compromises and accord different degrees of legitimacy to the necessary evil of covert operations. Much of the scholarship about undercover policing in Europe has focused on doctrine. My study examines undercover policing empirically, through 89 qualitative, open-ended field interviews that I conducted with state and federal police officials, undercover agents, training and supervisory officials, control officers, prosecutors, and judges in fifteen of the sixteen German states. Through these interviews, I examined the ground-level strategies and practices of those who conduct, supervise, and evaluate covert operations. My empirical study examines German undercover policing as both a topic in its own right and as a contrast case that helps identify distinctive features of the American system of covert operations. The systems under comparison can, in Clifford Geertz's words, form a kind of commentary on the other's character. Each can suggest what is important and troubling about the other. Each can highlight features of the other that would seem less noteworthy if examined in isolation, without the benefit of comparison.

Convergence of Policing Policies and Transnational Policing in Europe

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Undercover: Police Surveillance in Comparative Perspective

The United States and Europe have recently experienced a significant expansion in the use of undercover police tactics and technological means of surveillance. In a democratic society, such tactics raise significant questions for public policy and social research. New and sophisticated forms of crime and social control (and their internationalization) represent an important and neglected topic. Realizing this, the leading scholars in this field created a European and American working group for the comparative study of police surveillance. This collaborative, landmark volume reports the results of their work. It is the first book ever devoted to the comparative study of the topic and includes articles on the historical development of covert policing in Europe and its spread to the United States (where it was extended and recently exported back to Europe), plus detailed accounts of the use of covert tactics in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Sweden, Canada and the United States. Audience: Social scientists, historians, policy makers, lawyers, and criminal justice practitioners.

Policing the health of London: the College of Physicians and the early Stuart monarchy.

While histories of public health sugggest that government intervention British is a product of the later nineteenth country, the work of George Rosen suggested that interventionist policies on behalf of the public good are to be associated with particular political outlooks. He pointed to the connection between ?absolutism? and medical police in Europe as the foundation for later public-health policies. with Rosen?s ideas in mind, we can see that under the early Stuarts there was indeed a growing association between government policy and medical police. While early Stuart medical police developed from ad hoc measures rather than a conscious programme, it was nevertheless premised upon principle of positive sovereignty on behalf of the public good that lay at the root of Stuary ideology. Working through the court physicians,(especially Theodore Turquet de Mayerne) and the London Copllege of Physicians, the monarchy supported or created policies to regulate medical practitioners and corporations, medicines and practices, and to help insitute plans for London to prevent or ameliorate plague eoidemics that helped stimulate plans for the New Incorporation. When opposition to monatchial polices took force in the early 1640s, measures for medical police were one of the grivances against the crown, and they were ended, not to be institured again until the nineteenth century.