Chapter 3 The police intelligence division-of-labour

This article describes the police intelligence division-of-labour. It is argued that police organisation gains overall coherence in relation to the ‘police métier’; a rationale that allows protagonists in the police world to make sense of an irrational workplace structure where personal loyalty, trust and honour (not formal organisational logic) form the basis of action and compliance. The concept of the police métier is defined in terms of the police professional concern with the mastery of surveillance and coercion in the reproduction of order, the making of crime and the governance of insecurity, and it is the polestar of the police mindset. The article describes the police intelligence division-of-labour paying specific attention to four different aspects of intelligence activity: the acquisition of intelligence or information; the analysis of information in the production of intelligence; tasking and co-ordination on the basis of intelligence ‘product’; or being tasked on that same basis. The descriptive analysis presented here is useful in several respects. Firstly it provides a basis for the comparative study of police intelligence work and its configuration within broader processes of security governance. Secondly, it provides a prototypical organisational map useful understanding the orientation of particular units – the organisational elements of policework (e.g. of drug squads, primary response, public order and homicide investigation units) – within the broader police division-of-labour. Lastly, it provides a complex view of issues concerning democratic governance of ‘the police’ as they are configured as nodes within broader networks of security governance

Chapter 3 The police intelligence division-of-labour

This article describes the police intelligence division-of-labour. It is argued that police organisation gains overall coherence in relation to the ‘police métier’; a rationale that allows protagonists in the police world to make sense of an irrational workplace structure where personal loyalty, trust and honour (not formal organisational logic) form the basis of action and compliance. The concept of the police métier is defined in terms of the police professional concern with the mastery of surveillance and coercion in the reproduction of order, the making of crime and the governance of insecurity, and it is the polestar of the police mindset. The article describes the police intelligence division-of-labour paying specific attention to four different aspects of intelligence activity: the acquisition of intelligence or information; the analysis of information in the production of intelligence; tasking and co-ordination on the basis of intelligence ‘product’; or being tasked on that same basis. The descriptive analysis presented here is useful in several respects. Firstly it provides a basis for the comparative study of police intelligence work and its configuration within broader processes of security governance. Secondly, it provides a prototypical organisational map useful understanding the orientation of particular units – the organisational elements of policework (e.g. of drug squads, primary response, public order and homicide investigation units) – within the broader police division-of-labour. Lastly, it provides a complex view of issues concerning democratic governance of ‘the police’ as they are configured as nodes within broader networks of security governance

Investigation of policing policy in relation to 'domestic violence' in London in the 1980s.

This thesis is an examination of the social construction of the social response to a social problem. The social problem is refered to as 'domestic violence' and the social response refers to the police response. The first chapter of the thesis constructs a theoretical approach grounded in the sociology of knowledge. Drawing on some of the classical sociological literature, the ideas of historians and philosophers of science, political philosophy and current social theory the concept of 'linguistic-authority-structure' is synthesized. Subsequent chapters apply the theoretical framework that this concept implies to illuminate the unfolding history of the issue of domestic violence. The versions of the social problem as they were articulated on different institutional sites (including the Women's Refuge Movement, social science, the law, the police and several others relevant) from the late-1960s to the mid-1980s are traced in the second third and forth chapters. The thesis documents the international trade in information about the issue. Of cenral importance is the importation of a deterrence paradigm emergent from an experimental project conducted by police researchers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The importation of these ideas was partly instrumental in persuading police policy makers in Great Britain to announce policy changes regarding the policing of doemstic violence. This formation of a paradigmatic police response to domestic violence is located at a historically low ebb in the legitimacy of British Policing. The fifth chapter charts the history of post-war British Policing. Drawing on sociological accounts of operational policing, and the relevant criminological literature, this chapter illuminates the emergent political contestability of the police institution. The sixth chapter shows how, in this context, the policy regarding the policing of domestic violence was generated. Two chapters, seven and eight, are concerned with the actual police response to calls for service regarding interpersonal violence and in particular violence between cohabiting partners. These chapters make use of semi-structured interviews with police officers and an analysis of police paperwork procedures to illuminate police practices with regard to these calls for service. The two remaining chapters continue the historical analysis up to the end of the 1980s

Le problème de la responsabilité et de l'action policière sous tous ses aspects. Pour une cartographie générale de la responsabilité en matière de police à l'ère post-moderne

Cet article passe systématiquement en revue le champ de l'activité policière afin de mettre en lumière les difficultés qu'y rencontre la définition d'un schéma d'ensemble de la responsabilité, aux niveaux transnational et autres . Il montre que ce champ ne consiste plus en un ensemble de pratiques inscrites dans l'État-nation, mais qu'il s'est transnationalisé et profondément différencié . C'est un domaine fragmenté, symptomatique en cela de la condition post-moderne . Sa complexité pose des problèmes aigus de responsabilité, auxquels on ne saurait répondre facilement en appliquant les principes traditionnels du contrôle de constitutionnalité.This paper systematically surveys this policing field with a view to spotlighting the difficulties in conceiving an accountability framework for policing, transnational and otherwise . It argues that policing is no longer a set of practices embedded in the sovereign nation-state, but rather has become transnationalised and greatly differentiated . Symptomatic of the postmodern condition, the policing field is a fragmented terrain . Its complexity poses acute accountability problems that cannot easily be answered by reference to traditional models of constitutional control

What's in a Name? Shifting Identities of Traditional Organized Crime in Canada in the Transnational Fight against the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta

The Italian antimafia authorities have warned Canadian law enforcement about the risks and the growing concerns for the infiltration of clans of the Calabrian mafia, known as ‘ndrangheta, in Eastern Canada. The alarm linked to the rise of the ‘ndrangheta challenges the paradigms of traditional organized crime in Canada, because the ‘ndrangheta is presented as traditional but also innovative and more pervasive than other mafia-type groups. Through access to confidential investigations and interviews to key specialist law enforcement teams in Toronto and Montreal, this article investigates today's institutional perception of mafia – the ‘ndrangheta in particular – in Canada when compared to Italian conceptualizations. I will argue that the changes in narratives in Canada can be read in relation to changes in the Italian identity in the country, moving towards regionalization and specialist knowledge of ethnic differences