Police inc., une entreprise à responsabilité non limitée ? Sécurité, gouvernance civile et bien public

Cet article soulève les questions suivantes : peut-on parler d’une activité policière excessive dans nos sociétés contemporaines ou, plus précisément, d’une police qui aille à l’encontre de la jouissance/production de liberté et de sécurité ? C’est dans le contexte de deux tendances intimement liées, discernables dans les relations entre l’activité de police (le policing), la sécurité et la gouvernance civile, que ces questions sont explorées. Ces deux tendances sont les suivantes : en premier lieu, l’intrication croissante des institutions de police (et du discours sécuritaire) avec un plus grand nombre d’organismes gouvernementaux et leurs programmes d’intervention ; en second lieu, l’avènement de réseaux au maillage plus ou moins lâche constitués d’organisations institutionnelles, commerciales ou bénévoles engagées dans la gouvernance de la sécurité. Je m’efforce de montrer que l’État se doit de tenir encore et toujours un rôle de premier plan dans la gouvernance (provision/réglementation) du champ de la sécurité, surtout parce qu’il est le plus à même de véhiculer une activité de police équitable et démocratique, seule susceptible de cultiver et protéger les libertés tant positives que négatives de tous les citoyens.This paper addresses the following questions: can contemporary societies be over-policed, or, more specifically, policed in ways that are injurious to the production of liberty and security? These questions are raised against the backdrop of two related tendencies that are discernible in relations between policing, security and civic governance. First, the deepening entanglement of policing institutions (and securitizing discourses) with agencies and programmes of government. Second, the advent of loosely coupled networks of state, commercial, and voluntary agencies involved in the governance of security. The paper argues that the state should continue to hold a prominent role in the governance (provision/regulation) of security, not least because it offers the most plausible vehicle for delivering equitable and democratic policing in ways that nurture and protect the negative and positive freedoms of all citizens

Youth, policing and democratic accountability: a study in applied critical theory

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between young people and policing. It draws upon the resources of contemporary social and political theory, and interviews with young people (aged 15-23) and police officers in Edinburgh, in order to explicate the possibility of democratic communication between youth and the police, and analyse the consequences of its absence.Theoretically, it delineates an applied reformulation of Jurgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action that can expedite a grounded investigation of the relationship between youth, crime and policing. In this regard, Habermas’ work (i) shapes the elucidation of a prefigurative methodological approach to the relevant substantive issues, and (ii) serves as a standpoint from which to review the existing sociological literature on both youth culture and policing. In this latter context, it specifically informs the generation - through a reconstruction of subcultural theory - of an original theoretical framework within which to make sense of the accounts constructed in interviews with young people and police officers.Using this framework, the substantive research explores the ways in which young people and police officers communicate their respective experiences and dispositions. In particular, it moves beyond the conventional criminological focus on juvenile delinquency, and expounds the various ways in which young people experience and apprehend crime in public places. Conversely, it assesses how police officers understand and relate to youth social practices (whether in terms of pedagogic promotion or control). In both cases, the analysis is further solicitous to the impact that different post-school economic trajectories have upon youth practices and the policing of them. Finally, the substantive enquiry examines both the possibilities of communication between young people and police officers, and some of the obstacles that stand in its way.The thesis concludes by drawing together the conceptual and substantive dimensions of the enquiry in order to think anew about the vexed question of police accountability. It endeavours, in particular, to redeem an interest in the question of democratic accountability by (i) articulating a number of questions that, it is argued, any proposals for police accountability must address, and (ii) outlining a series of institutional proposals that, if enacted, might resolve some of the existent tensions in police-youth relations in ways that involve the discursive negotiation of both the police and the policed

Reasonable hopes:Social theory, critique and reconstruction in contemporary criminology

We argue that one abiding weakness of many attempts by criminologists to come to gripswith distinctive and often alarming aspects of contemporary realities is a limitedunderstanding of politics, and in particular of political theory, The increasing institutionalization of criminology as a ‘discipline’ often serves to exacerbate this tendency.We refer to themes in the work of Tony Bottoms as exemplifying benefits of seeking out a wider range of conceptual resources, including those provided by normative theoretical work.The work of Bottoms and colleagues on problems of legitimacy is a case in point that illuminates central aspects of criminal justice and their relations to problems of contemporary democracies. We go on to argue that the pragmatist tradition in democratic theory has much to offer students of crime and justice, especially with regard to the complex relations between expert knowledge and programmatic social change. We discuss these claims in light of Dewey’s conception of ‘inquiry’ and Unger’s arguments for ‘empowered democracy’

Recognition and Redemption: Visions of Safety and Justice in Black Lives Matter

In this paper, I recover and appraise the principal ways in which movements motivated by the ideal of racial justice have sought to transform how questions of police and punishment are imagined and acted upon. The focus of the enquiry is the visions of safety and justice found in Black Lives Matter. I offer an interpretive reconstruction and appraisal of the core claims found with the Black Lives Matter movement and their ideological lineage and affinities. The paper seeks to understand those claims anthropologically, from the inside, trying to offer a best‑case rendition of their contexts and appeal. It also seeks to situate these claims politically (while recognizing diversity and avoiding the imposition of some spurious unity) with a view to grasping the normative character of the alternative plausible world that Black Lives Matter projects and seeks to usher into being. My claim is that one finds in Black Lives Matter a tension between a politics of self‑determination and a wider politics of transformative redemption

Private security as a moral drama:A tale of two scandals

This article explores the phenomenon of scandals as they unfold in the private security industry. We begin by outlining our theoretical understanding of scandals, before tracking the key phases of two recent events - one in Sweden, the other in Britain. Scandals, we suggest, are best viewed as moral tales which dramatize a host of societal norms and values about private security and criminal justice, prompting a great deal of normative conflict. The wider point we draw from the analysis is that when market actors enter the field of policing and criminal justice, they not only re-shape that field, they are also re-shaped by it. Private security cannot, in other words, escape the moral dilemmas and conflicts that inescapably attend practices of policing and punishment

Grudge Spending: The Interplay between Markets and Culture in the Purchase of Security

In the paper, we use data from an English study of security consumption, and recent work in the cultural sociology of markets, to illustrate the way in which moral and social commitments shape and often constrain decisions about how, or indeed whether, individuals and organizations enter markets for protection. Three main claims are proffered. We suggest, firstly, that the purchase of security commodities is a mundane, non-conspicuous mode of consumption that typically exists outside of the paraphernalia of consumer culture – a form of grudge spending. Secondly, we demonstrate that security consumption is weighed against other commitments that individuals and organizations have and is often kept in check by these competing considerations. We find, thirdly, that the prospect of consuming security prompts people to consider the relations that obtain between security objects and other things that they morally or aesthetically value, and to reflect on what the buying and selling of security signals about the condition and likely futures of their society. These points are illustrated using the examples of organizational consumption and gated communities. In respect of each case, we tease out the evaluative judgements that condition and constrain the purchase of security among organizations and individuals and argue that they open up some important but neglected questions to do with the moral economy of security. The article is co-authored with Ian Loader and Angelica Thumala