Policing: National Security

National security policing is a term that brings together two elements of the modern security state. First, it designates a “type of policing.” As a result, it draws upon the traditional founts of police analysis as well as the various organizational and institutional strategies and problems of such a field. For example, it deals with issues of proper training and recruitment as well as the most effective hierarchy. Policing of the traditional sort, however, is a purposely visible and dramatized social institution. In contrast, national security policing largely seeks to be invisible and out of the public eye. This does not mean, however, that national security policing agencies do not dramatize and engage with public opinion. It simply means that they approach the whole issue ...