Theories of Policing

Requirements for a Definition

There are at least five international or global types of policing: Islamic-traditional, authoritarian, democratic, Asian, and continental (Bayley, 1996). The Anglo-American democratic police are the focus of this entry. Although all nation-states have security police that are linked to the protection of sacred people, places, and buildings, and these police have, in theory, rather wide powers, democratic societies have sought, except in times of extreme crisis, to limit police powers.

A definition of democratic policing should place the features of the police, their violence, their constraint, their ordering and self-serving functions, as well as their “natural” dramatic potential and actuality in the context of the politics of the modern democratic state. The drama of policing, it seems, requires both opposition and negation. A useful listing of what is needed (desiderata) is provided by Liang (1992, p. 2). He argues that democratic policing should be legalistically guided; focus on individuals, not groups and their politics; eschew terrorism, counterterrorism, and torture; and strive to ensure minimal damage to civilians. In addition, he argues that marginal types of policing highlight and sustain what is wanted from democratic policing. These are at the fringe of his definition and include high or political police who focus on state security in various facets (Brodeur, 1983), self- or voluntary policing, and counter- and parallel policing (such as private security and regulatory agencies). Liang argues persuasively, based on historical evidence, that it is through the resistance of parallel and counterpolice forces that the need for a democratic police is sustained. These fringe forms sustain the tension that permits the general strategies of democratic (at least European) police, potential violence, divide and conquer, threat of force, violence and deceit, and sustaining myths to work over long periods of time (Liang, 1992, pp. 14–17).

Consider this definition of police:

Having advanced this definition, it is also true that it raises issues.

• Many agencies act as police, but few are authoritatively coordinated, that is, bureaucratically structured to ensure compliance with command.
• Police legitimacy, or the mandate, is a negotiated acceptance of the scope of the occupation's claim, not an absolute or unchanging matter.
• “Standing ready” echoes sociologist Max Weber's terms, meaning that the threat of violence awaits and is there to be imposed if proffered solutions of the police are not embraced by the citizen.
[Page 461]
• The specification of political territory is itself a problematic issue in practice, but in theory, it is used to define the domain of police forces. The trends to transnational policing—in the form of agreements, task forces, and ad hoc “policing actions” as in Kosovo, Bolivia, Colombia, and Haiti—are with us (Scheptycki, 2000).
• “Ordering” is a political matter at root. By narrowing the scope of analysis to isolated items of performance such as arrests, interactions, or complaints, social scientists obscure the broader questions of authoritative ordering, for whom collectively and by whom, and certainly obviates the central question of organizational loyalty and its sources. “Political ordering” has no fundamental, acontextual, ahistorical definition. As Bittner (1972) correctly points out, any action or group from which resistance might be imagined can be the target of policing.
• The police, even democratic police, are not neutral, nonpolitical forces absent their own motivations, interests, ideological readings of events, and self-serving actions. When the occasional police scandal emerges, police become defensive, and media tend to elaborate and embellish the “official line” or narrative voice of the police. Thus, the broader question of police interests is obscured or enveloped in allegations, individual corruption, or malfeasance.
• The police are loyal, but to what and to whom? To whom do the police owe their loyalty in a democratic society? Although the answer is perhaps clearest in the United Kingdom, with loyalty to the Crown well understood, it is not so clear elsewhere in the Anglo-American world. Various notions such as “the law,” sloganeering such as “to serve and protect” (what?), local icons, seals and symbols on the car, uniforms, and buildings all suggest clarity of purpose while obscuring the locus of obligation and accountability. This is, of course, increased by the local funding of the some 50,000 police agencies in the United States.

Police and Policing

Police organizations do policing, but a theory of police connotes an organizational and sociolegal analysis, whereas an analysis of policing suggests a concern for the patterns of recognition, sanctioning, and processing that exist and are associated with police organizations. As Loader and Mulchay (2003) argue very persuasively, the most comprehensive study of policing would examine the degree of fit between policing as a practice and organization with the sociocultural milieu in which it is embedded. In a useful turn of phrase, they call this the study of policing cultures. As this suggests, it is virtually impossible to isolate an explanation of what police do from what they are meant to do—the moral and political context in which they operate.

...