Purple vests. The origins of plural policing in Belgium

This article increases the body of knowledge on the origins of plural policing in a continental setting, more specifically in Belgium. Compared to other European countries, Belgium occupies a unique position, which can be explained by its particular constitutional setting. While non-police public actors execute police surveillance tasks in the public space, private security companies have no more competences than any ordinary citizen. Today maintenance of social disorder in the public space presents itself as a municipal patchwork, delineated by municipal autonomy and by political choices against privatisation. In this article we formulate an answer to the central research question “How did plural policing processes in Belgium originate and what is the current situation?” By means of a multiple case study with triangulation of methods, 27 years of security policy (1985-2012) are analysed. Contrasting with neo-liberal policies in the UK from the 1970s on, Belgian policy was shaped by the powerful presence of socio-democrats who occupied key ministry positions in the federal government, such as the minister of the Interior and the minister of Big Cities, throughout the entire time period. Political bargaining processes explain the ongoing investment in prevention and in “purple vests,” and the choice to exclude private actors in the public space

Plural policing in Western Europe: a comparison

One of the almost undisputed findings of contemporary policing studies is that the past few decades have witnessed a far-reaching pluralization of policing. Many countries, in different regions of the world, were confronted with the rise of new non-police providers of policing services. Increasingly, the myth of one organization (the public police) with a monopoly on policing lost its power of persuasion as a valid description of reality. Generally, the new agencies of policing concentrate on the management of petty crime and social disorder in public places. With this new situation, multiple providers, both public and private, have become involved in the prevention and management of crime and social disorder. It is often assumed that this development of the past three decades created a more or less quiet revolution (or what Bayley and Shearing (1996) called a ‘watershed’) in the systems of crime control and law enforcement. Although this claim has been disputed, also in the Anglo-Saxon world (Jones & Newburn, 2002), the proposition of the pluralization of policing often seems to have reached the status of a universal, world-wide trend. Until recently, however, outside the Anglo-Saxon world there has been a lack of empirical studies on plural policing. With the exception of the collection edited by Jones and Newburn (2006), the recent study by Terpstra, Van Stokkom & Spreeuwers (2013), and the volume edited by Edwards et al. (2014), there were no other international comparative studies of this issue. As a result, until now the claim of a universally similar trend of plural policing has remained largely uncontested. In fact, the absence of international comparisons implied that theories and explanations of plural policing were based only on a limited (Anglo-Saxon) sample of countries. As a consequence, there was an unanswered question concerning the extent to which descriptions and explanations of plural policing were also relevant to understanding recent changes elsewhere. For example, one question that must be asked is if there is something like a Western-European style of plural policing? Or are the differences between these European countries so great that the developments in policing cannot be gathered under a single conceptual label

Local strategies for glocal challenges. Comparing policing agendas in Amsterdam and Rotterdam

In this chapter we analyze the politics of policing, with a specific focus on policing agendas in the two largest cities in The Netherlands: Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Both metropolises are considered metropolises facing ‘glocal’ challenges related to multicultural populations in urban areas, social inequalities in terms of household income, international harbors, crime and disorder. The term ‘glocal’ refers to the interlinkages between global challenges and local communities. In order to get an understanding of the tendencies towards divergence and convergence in urban policing in the metropolises under study we start with a summary of general trends in policing in the Netherlands in the second section. In the third section national, regional and local governmental constitutional arrangements, discretionary powers and public police management are presented. The remainder of the chapter compares and contrasts policing agendas in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and concludes with an overview of their regimes and possible explanations for convergence and divergence in the politics of policing in these metropolises. The search for the regimes in the background of policing agendas in these two embedded case studies reveals both convergence and divergence towards the national agenda and between the agendas in both metropolises. Possible explanations for these trends could be found in the political ‘circuits of power’ (Devroe, Edwards, Ponsaers, this volume) of the municipal ruling coalition and in wider institutional arrangements in place

La création d'une culture de controle? Les intentions politiques derrière la genèse des Sanctions Administratives Communales

C’est le 3 mars 1999, en fin de législature, qu’est introduit par les ministres de la Justice et de l’Intérieur de l’époque Tony Van Parijs et L. Van den Bossche, le projet de loi sur les sanctions administratives communales[1] (connue sous le nom de «Loi SAC). La loi devait être votée et il y avait urgence. Les instigateurs du projet craignaient en effet que si la loi n’était pas votée très vite, tout le projet d’un traitement administratif des infractionsà la réglementation communale par le bourgmestre tomberait dans les oubliettes. Pour les partisans de cette loi SAC (les socialistes), c’était maintenant où jamais. Le 4 mai 1999, le gouvernement entrait en «affaires courantes». Au Conseil d’Etat est alors demandé de rendre un avis en extrême urgence, dans les trois jours. La loi est ensuite votée à grande vitesse et le 10 juin 1999, elle est publiée au Moniteur Belge. Cette loi permet aux autorités locales non seulement de maitriser des problèmes d’ordre public mais aussi de s’attaquer aux nuisances. Sans entrer dans les détails juridiques[2], on peut considérer que cette loi constitue une étape dans le développement d’un droit administratif armé.. L’autonomie du pouvoir communal, particulièrement importante en Belgique[3], en sort notamment renforcée. Ces dernières années, dans la perspective de l’adoption de la nouvelle loi de 2013, le débat sur les SAC rebondira fortement. Partisans et adversaires d’une extension de la loi s’affrontent dans l’arène médiatique et politique. Un regard serein sur l’origine de la loi de 1999 devrait fournir un cadre utile pour comprendre les tendances actuelles. Sur la naissance de la loi, tout comme sur le contexte politique et social de sa genèse, peu de choses ont été publiées. La loi a fait soudainement irruption. Les préparatifs et discussions ont eu lieu dans les coulisses du pouvoir; les média se sont à peine intéressés à cette phase préparatoire et, aujourd’hui, les motifs de la loi de 1999 sont toujours âprement discutés, alors qu’un certain nombre de ses présupposés ne sont toujours pas éclaircis

Waarom sanctioneren als het anders kan? De genese van het Belgisch overlastbeleid doorheen diverse staatshervormingen

Criminal Justice: Legitimacy, accountability, and effectivit

Toekomstige pluralisering van de politiefunctie? De kannibalistische reactie van de Belgische politie

Part of book or chapter of boo

Overlastaanpak in de steden Antwerpen en Luik: pleidooi voor een inclusief beleid

In een vorige bijdrage bespraken we het ontstaan van de wetgevingop de gemeentelijke administratieve sancties (1999) en de belangrijkeinvloed daarbij van de staatshervorming. In deze bijdrage bestuderen we de toepassing in twee Belgische steden. Uit wetenschappelijk onderzoek blijkt immers dat de overlastproblematiek vooral een stedelijk probleem vormt (Ponsaers & Van der Beken,2008). We hebben geopteerd voor de steden Antwerpen en Luik om een aantal redenen. De steden hebben een vergelijkbare grootte naar inwonersaantal en oppervlakte. Beide ondervinden al een aantal jaren een overlastproblematiek en pakken de overlast aan. De wet op de gemeentelijke administratieve sancties werd in Luik benut sinds 2001 en in Antwerpen sinds 2005. In beide steden bestaat voldoende ervaring en werden experts gevonden met een ruime kennis en ervaring over het onderzoeksthema.The politics and administration of institutional chang

Checks and balances in democratic control of public police. A case study of the Dutch national police after the reform

This paper researches the quality of democratic control of the public police in a democratic society. Governance structures tend to be complex, reflecting that in democratic societies the police perform a wide range of tasks, both (inter) nationally and locally. Given the variety of police authorities and consultations at different levels, is there room for adequate democratic oversight? In this article, a theoretical frame on democratic control is drawn up which is applied on the recently established Dutch system of national police. Based on an extensive multi-method field research the authors conclude that the governance of the Dutch national police is not multi-level, that centralist influences are strong, that the mechanisms for vertical integration of local concerns in national policies are weak, and that there is a democratic deficit within the Dutch police system