Legitimate Force in a Particularistic Democracy: Street Police and Outlaw Legislators in the Republic of China on Taiwan

This article explores a “particularistic” concept of legitimacy important to Taiwanese democracy. This form of legitimacy, I suggest, has been instrumental for Taiwan's successful democratic consolidation in the absence of the rule of law. As evidence, I combine ethnographic observation of neighborhood police work with historical consideration of a type of political figure emergent in the process of democratic reform, which I call the “outlaw legislator.” I focus my analysis on the institutional and ideological processes articulating local policing into the wider political field. The center of these processes is a mode of popular representation that positions the outlaw legislator as a crucial hinge articulating the particularistic local order with central state powers. By analyzing the cultural content of the dramaturgical work used to reconcile low policing with higher‐level state operations, this article shows how a particularistic idiom of legitimacy helps hold Taiwanese democracy together.     

The commemoration of death,organizational memory,and police culture

Police scholars document that although there is fragmentation of the so‐called “monolithic” police culture, historically consistent features of the occupational culture of police exist. By drawing on ethnographic observations in three U.S. police departments, I describe how one consistent feature of police culture—the preoccupation with danger and potential death—is maintained by the commemoration of officers killed in the line of duty. Through the use of commemorative cultural artifacts, officers and departments construct an organizational memory that locally reflects and reifies the salience of danger and potential death in policing. Furthermore, commemoration of fallen officers is not restricted to a department's own; the dead of other departments are commemorated by distant police organizations and their officers, maintaining broad, occupational assumptions of dangerous and deadly police work that transcend a single department and its localized organizational memory. Implications for the study of police culture, inequalities in policing, and police reform are considered.     

Neither Confirm nor Deny: Secrecy and Disclosure in Undercover Policing

Recent scandals in U.K. undercover policing have prompted a public re-examination of the basis for continued secrecy with respect to cases in which serious historical misconduct is suspected. As part of its approach to balancing the competing demands of secrecy and accountability, the current legal process requires the police to provide case-by-case risk assessments of the harm to policing threatened by disclosure. This article considers the role of risk assessments in this process. It critically examines two arguments put forward by police in support of their claim that such assessments will nearly always support a refusal to disclose and thus a “neither confirm nor deny” response to requests for information about undercover policing. It argues that these arguments apply in fewer cases and/or less conclusively than police routinely suppose, and that their obligation to provide detailed case-by-case risk assessments therefore cannot be thereby evaded.     

Public Experiences of Police Violence and Corruption in Contemporary Russia: A Case of Predatory Policing?

“Predatory policing” occurs where police officers mainly use their authority to advance their own material interests rather than to fight crime or protect the interests of elites. These practices have the potential to seriously compromise the public's trust in the police and other legal institutions, such as courts. Using data from six surveys and nine focus groups conducted in Russia, we address four empirical questions: (1) How widespread are public encounters with police violence and police corruption in Russia? (2) To what extent does exposure to these two forms of police misconduct vary by social and economic characteristics? (3) How do Russians perceive the police, the courts, and the use of violent methods by the police? (4) How, if at all, do experiences of police misconduct affect these perceptions? Our results suggest that Russia conforms to a model of predatory policing. Despite substantial differences in its law enforcement institutions and cultural norms regarding the law, Russia resembles the United States in that direct experiences of police abuse reduce confidence in the police and in the legal system more generally. The prevalence of predatory policing in Russia has undermined Russia's democratic transition, which should call attention to the indispensable role of the police and other public institutions in the success of democratic reforms.     

Hong-Kong-style community policing: a study of the Yau Ma Tei fruit market

This paper explores the policing of a traditional wholesale fruit market located in a densely populated neighborhood of urban Hong Kong. Based on ethnographic and historical research, we outline the political arrangements that govern the discretionary arrangements of police power at the market. A historically developed system maintains an informal status quo against various pressures to change. We identify crucial features in the contemporary policing system that emerge from a fusion between the democratic ethos of community policing ideals and non-democratic aspects of local administration in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. These features of this historically developed mode of order-maintenance, we suggest, might be seen as broadly characteristic of a “Hong Kong style” community policing.     

The “thinning” blueline: a Bourdieuian appreciation of police subculture

The notion of a recalcitrant “police subculture” is pervasive in the literature on policing, often invoked to explain many of the ills linked to police misconduct and corruption. This article argues that the failure of reform efforts is the result of interventionist strategies which had sought to change police subculture “head-on” without a corresponding change in the structural conditions in which the policing role is so located, and that these efforts, theoretically, have been informed by a conceptualisation of police subculture as homogenous, monolithic, and static. Using the Bourdieuian concepts of the “habitus” and “field”, the view of a “recalcitrant” subculture will be challenged in this article. Using the Singaporean experience as a case in point, it will be shown how changes in the field of policing can bring about changes, intended or otherwise, in the occupational habitus of the police: refashioning the informal repository of knowledge guiding police work.     

‘Catching’ and ‘Targeting’: Risk‐Based Policing,Local Culture and Gendered Practices

The aim of this article is to explore cultural and practical aspects of the growing use of information and communication technology (ICT) in policing. By using empirical research on policing in Norway, the focus will be on how ICT is used as a crime prevention instrument in everyday police work and culture. The transition, which the new technologies mediate, will be explored by focusing on concepts of risk and materialization of risk‐based policing at the practice level in two cases: 1) a special unit fighting serious and organized crime utilizing proactive policing methods, police informers, crime profiling and databases, and 2) a police station focusing on low‐level crime by using a problem‐oriented policing model, transmitting responsibility for personal security onto identified ‘problem‐owners’.1 ‘Problem‐owner’ is a notion used by the police in the two cases. It is referring to the POP‐model, and whom they identify as important to participate in the risk‐management. According to Wright (: 121): “Partnership refers to a purposeful relationship between the police and the public or between the police and other agencies in the field.” Based on an examination of risk phenomena as contextual, embedded in practice and cultural settings, various stories about risk management will be told. The stories reflect different control strategies in the crime control discourses, and point to how risk‐based technologies are shaped and adapted in occupational culture and practice. The article illuminates the importance of studying the empirical complexity ICT is used in, and looks towards, to paraphrase O'Malley and Palmer (), ‘firewalls of resistance’ in the local occupational culture, that are preventing full integration of risk tools.     

Becoming “Copwise”: Policing,Culture, and the Collateral Consequences of Street‐Level Criminalization

Over the last four decades, the United States has witnessed a historic expansion of its criminal justice system. This article examines how street‐level criminalization transforms the cultural contexts of poor urban communities. Drawing on five years of fieldwork in Los Angeles’ Skid Row–the site of one of the most aggressive zero‐tolerance policing campaigns to date–the study finds that residents develop and deploy a particular cultural frame–“cop wisdom”–by which they render seemingly‐random police activity more legible, predictable, and manipulable. Armed with this interpretive schema, “copwise” residents engage in new forms of self‐presentation in public, movement through the daily round, and informal social control in order to deflect police scrutiny and forestall street stops. While these techniques allow residents to reduce unwanted police contact, this often comes at the expense of individual and collective well‐being by precluding social interaction, exacerbating stigma, and contributing to animosity in public space.     

The Effect of Paramilitary Protest Policing on Protestors' Trust in the Police: The Case of the “Occupy Israel” Movement

The use of paramilitary methods in civil policing tasks has become common in Western police agencies. Despite propositions that such methods should undermine the relationship between the police and the public, the effect of paramilitary policing on public trust in the police has not been empirically tested. In the present study, we examine this question in the context of protest policing, which has become a major concern for Western police agencies. Using a survey of 470 protesters who participated in “Occupy” protest events in Israel in 2012, we find that the perceived use of paramilitary methods has an independent and negative effect on trust, stronger than that of police effectiveness and the “neutrality” component of procedural justice. In‐depth interviews suggest that the significance of paramilitarism may be the result of a sense of alienation and criminalization it elicits among protesters who generally perceive themselves as law‐abiding citizens.     

Confidence in the police: Balancing public image with community safety – A comparative review of the literature

Examining the evolution of British and Australian policing, this comparative review of the literature considers the historical underpinnings of policing in these two countries and the impact of community legitimacy derived from the early concepts of policing by consent. Using the August 2011 disorder in Britain as a lens, this paper considers whether, in striving to maintain community confidence, undue emphasis is placed on the police's public image at the expense of community safety. Examining the path of policing reform, the impact of bureaucracy on policing and the evolving debate surrounding police performance, this review suggests that, while largely delivering on the ideal of an ethical and strong police force, a preoccupation with self-image may in fact result in tarnishing the very thing British and Australian police forces strive to achieve – their standing with the public. This paper advocates for a more realistic goal of gaining public respect rather than affection in order to achieve the difficult balance between maintaining trust and respect as an approachable, ethical entity providing firm, confident policing in this ever-evolving, modern society.     

Initiating customer/police interaction in the UK: Early insights from research

Policing does not exist in a social, political or economic vacuum. As the task of policing becomes ever more complex, policing in the UK should explore innovative ways to remain effective. The notion that the public are the ‘customer’ is relatively new within the policing world and there is an increasing emphasis to ensure that the police maintain and preferably increase the public’s perception of the organisation. In the main, the public contact the police for some form of service and in times of austerity; police services across the country are attempting to align their service and organisational structures to customers’ needs in order to provide an economic and efficient service. In order to do this, the needs of those who receive the service need to be considered as the first step in this process. This article, based on recent research explores how customers engage with and contact the police and by better understanding the dynamics and intricacies of such contacts, may allow the police service in England and Wales to better understand customer preferences.     

Repairing the Divide

Abstract

In this paper, we use responses from a 1998 Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) survey to investigate how the concept of community policing and the individual strategies associated with this public safety policy shape African American, Latino, and white perceptions of police officers. Community policing exerted differential effects on Latino, African American, and white perceptions of the police. Despite intentions to improve police-minority relations, community policing most strongly and positively affects whites' perceptions of neighborhood police. Both the public pronouncement and actual tactics of community policing had a greater impact on white perceptions of the police than they did for Latino and African American views toward the police, even though community policing also fulfills its promise to reduce tensions between the police and racial and ethnic minorities. Understanding the differences among African Americans, Latinos, and whites is critical to the evolution of community policing policies. Recognizing the importance of these differences, instead of adopting a “one size fits all” approach, puts the police and community members in a position to better realize the potential benefits of community policing.     

Does police patrol in large areas prevent crime? Revisiting the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment

Research Summary

The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (KCPPE) was seen by its developers to have produced “consistent evidence of the lack of effects of any consequence on crime,” a conclusion that was to have a strong impact on assumptions about police patrol for almost half a century. We identified the original official crime data from the KCPPE, and reanalyzed outcomes focusing on a comparison of the “proactive” versus “control” beats (“reactive beats” were criticized because of violations of treatment integrity); examining broad categories of crime (to increase statistical power); and using count regression models. Our findings are not unequivocal, but point to modest impacts of police patrol on crime in police beats.

Policy Implications

Our findings suggest that lessons drawn for half a century from the KCPPE need to be revisited. The KCPPE does not show that police patrol in large areas has no influence on crime, and this finding is consistent with several more recent studies. At the same time, we note that the effects of patrol in the KCPPE using our analysis strategy, and those found in other studies of preventive patrol in larger areas, are about half that found in hot spots policing studies. This suggests that police agencies ideally should invest in focused hot spots policing initiatives. However, absent an ability to manage such initiatives, or the crime analysis capabilities to identify crime hot spots routinely, simpler preventive patrol schemes to utilize uncommitted patrol time can be seen as potentially effective in preventing crime.     

Viewing Things Differently: The Dimensions of Public Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

Legitimacy (or “the right to exercise power”) is now an established concept in criminological analysis, especially in relation to policing. Substantial empirical evidence shows the importance of legitimacy in securing law‐abiding behavior and cooperation from citizens. Yet adequate theorization has lagged behind empirical evidence, and there has been a conflation of legitimacy with the cognate concepts of “trust” and of “obligation to obey the law.” By drawing on the work of Beetham (1991) and others (e.g., Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012 ), this study tests the hypothesis that the contents of the multiple dimensions of police legitimacy comprise procedural fairness, distributive fairness, lawfulness, and effectiveness. The study also investigates the relative influence of legitimacy and feelings of obligation on citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police. Using data from London, the results substantiate the hypothesized dimensions of police legitimacy. In addition, legitimacy was found to exhibit both a direct influence on cooperation that is independent of obligation and an indirect influence that flows through people's felt obligations to obey the police. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Theorizing police response to domestic violence in the Singaporean context: Police subculture revisited

This article focuses on the well documented, yet potentially contested concept of rank-and-file police subculture to conceptualize police response to situations of domestic violence in Singapore. It argues that the utility of the concept to explaining police behavior is often undermined by an all-powerful, homogenous, and deterministic conception of it that fails to take into account the value of agency in police decision-making and the range of differentiated police response in situations of domestic violence. Through reviewing the literature on police response to domestic violence, this study called for the need to rework the concept of police subculture by treating it as having a relationship with, and response to, the structural conditions of policing, while retaining a conception of the active role played by street-level officers in instituting a situational practice. Using Pierre Bourdieu's relational concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘field,’ designating the cultural dispositions of police subculture and structural conditions of policing respectively, the study attempted to reconceptualize the problem of policing domestic violence with reference to the Singaporean context.     

Mapping Police Organizational Change: From a Mechanistic Toward an Organic Model

Community police organizations have been the focus of substantial research since the 1960s. Recommendations from this research have frequently suggested some degree of reform. This reform effort has been directed in part at the oragnizational design of police departments, emphasizing movement away from a mechanistic to more of an organic approach. This article describes mechanistic and organic model constructs and relates them to both continuum and matrix change perspectives and a change problem-intervention strategy typology. The matrix and typology are used to “map” the change process associated with team policing, which is one example of attempts to make police organizations more organic.     

Street justice: A moral defense of order maintenance policing

The conventional wisdom of liberal due process maintains that it is the primary function of the judicial system to provide for incapacitation, punishment, and or treatment of offenders. However, the reality is that police officers perform all of these functions as a community-based institution. Despite administrative and legal due process, superficial professionalism, and constant exhortations which deny the validity of these functions, i.e., “street justice,” it remains an important and essential role of the police institution. This article explores the functional role of “street justice” and the related factors which require this kind of policing.     

Strategies of police cooperation: comparing the Southern Chinese seaboard with the European Union

A number of police cooperation strategies have developed around the Southern Chinese seaboard, which encompasses the coastal provinces of Mainland China, Taiwan, and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Cooperation mechanisms in the region encompass intelligence sharing strategies and establishment of the Electronic Communal Information Sharing Platform (ECISP), common investigations, regular meetings, practitioner exchanges, and training. Although conducted on a regular basis, these cooperation strategies mostly lack a formally binding legal basis, relying purely on informal practitioner efforts at best supported by Memoranda of Understanding. Due to their historical independence all police forces involved in cooperation at the Southern Chinese seaboard have had to establish strategies to overcome legal, organisational and cultural differences. This region could therefore be compared to cooperation networks between sovereign nation-states in other regions. The historical development of Greater China’s highly informal, practitioner driven approach to cooperation is reminiscent of early forms of cooperation between the police agencies of states that are now members of the European Union (EU). This paper explores the development of both informal and formal strategies established among police agencies around the Southern Chinese seaboard and compares them with the EU to enhance the historical, political and legal understanding of the two regions.     

The “STICKINESS” of stigma: Guilt by association after a friend's arrest

Prior research has examined the consequences of one's police contact, but the consequences of vicarious police contact are not as well known. This study expands on labeling theory and the concept of “stickiness” by assessing whether a friend's arrest increases the likelihood of one's police contact. Using a sample of rural youth (N = 13,170), I find that a friend's arrest is associated with an increase in the likelihood of one's first arrest the next year after accounting for other predictors of police contact. Based on my theoretical framework, I interpret this finding as “guilt by association.” In addition, ending relationships with friends who have been arrested does not significantly impact this relationship. This study concludes that police contact may be harmful for a youth's social network and builds on the concept of stickiness by suggesting that stigma not only sticks from one individual to another but may also stay despite efforts to end one's association with the arrested individual. The study expands on preexisting research on the consequences of adolescent police contact by introducing a friend's police contact as a way in which an individual may be more likely to become involved in the justice system.