'A Benevolent Institution for the Suppression of Evil': Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and the Limits of Policing

The study of law in literature stimulates critical reflection about law and the limits of its institutions by expanding contextual analysis to include the emotive discourses of fiction. This article starts from the premisses that the orthodox separation of literary expression from social scientific writing is not immutable and that different temporal settings are not barriers to exploring themes that traverse them. It uses Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent , a story of policing and anarchism in late nineteenth-century London, in order to discuss the limits of policing today. This novel is read in parallel with two modern police studies to show how it prefigures current concerns, portraying policing as an imperfect totem of security, immaterial to the individual's emotional crises, which, by extension, can be seen to illustrate the limits of law itself. This article thus raises methodological and theoretical issues of general interest to the study of law in society and suggests how reading literature can thicken' legal analysis by offering experience of the emotional beyond that law ignores.     

Policing serious fraud in New Zealand

The discovery of a serious fraud problem in New Zealand is very recent. Prior to the 1980s, there had been only three prosecutions for serious fraud in the history of the country, and penalties for those convicted were small. But a corporate boom in the 1980s, followed by the sharemarket crash of 1987, revealed extensive serious fraud. Initial attempts to combat the problem through the Commercial Affairs division of the Department of Justice failed. But in 1990 a Serious Fraud Office was established, with powers greater than those ever given before to a New Zealand law-enforcement agency. Three years later, the SFO had been notified of possible frauds totalling $ 2.5 billion. This represents many times what is reported stolen in all other property crime, but the SFO budget is only 1% of that devoted to ordinary policing. Since 1990, only one prosecution out of the seventeen completed has failed. Prison sentences of up to seven years and averaging almost four years, have been awarded. As the SFO nears the end of its third year, and its net gradually widens, its influence on illegal business activity continues to grow.Adapted from a paper presented at the 44th annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, New Orleans, 4–7 November 1992.     

警事治理:国家警事社会化的新定义

治理理论对国家与市民社会关系的认识思路是国家和市民社会相互"型塑"达致社会公共事务管理的"善治"。在国内外警务战略模式变革中成为潮流的"国家警事社会化"战略,是指在警察机关专业警务活动的同时,动员社会组织和社区公众共同参与防控违法犯罪、维护社会治安秩序活动的过程。显然,"国家警事社会化"寻求警察与社会组织及社区公众的互动合作基础上公共安全管理的改善。因为警察与国家的对应、社会组织及公众正是市民社会的具象,所以可以用治理理论作为分析"国家警事社会化"的框架,并将其定义为"警事治理"。     

一种新的当代警务机制——警务工程化

中国现实的粗放型警务实践亟须通过警务工程化制导转型升级。警务工程化的生成逻辑包括理论生成逻辑和实践生成逻辑。当代中国警务应主动地按照两条生成逻辑开展当代警务工程建设,以丰富警务品质,调整警务结构,控制警务运行,改善警务现状,提升警务功效,完成警务使命。     

Patterns of Policing and Policing Patten

In September 1999 the Independent Commission on Policing in Northern Ireland, chaired by Chris Patten, published its recommendations. This article examines the political context of policing reform, the contents of the report and the rejection of its core ideas in the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill published in May 2000. The central argument of the paper is that the Commission's radical model of policing – a network of regulating mechanisms in which policing becomes everyone's business – failed, because it gave insufficient attention, like much modern writing on policing, to the role of the state and the vested interests within policing. The overall outcome is that the Patten Commission has been effectively policed and Northern Ireland will be left with a traditional, largely undemocratic and unaccountable model of policing with most of the control resting with the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable.     

新时期社区警务战略的实践价值

社区警务是新时期警务体制改革的一个重要内容,利用社区资源,凝结社区力量,使警务中心正位,警务重点转移,警务重心下沉,加强社区的防控能力,是保证社区稳定的成功之路。     

Policing appearances

Cet article établit une distinction entre deux stratégies policières, respectivement dénommées police de relation et police d'intervention. La police de relation vise à modifier les perceptions et les sentiments du public à l'égard de sa propre sécurité ou à l'égard de l'image de la police. Cette stratégie repose sur la communication et la persuasion et elle est illustrée par ce qu'on appelle la police communautaire. La police d'intervention tente de modifier certaines situations extérieures comme l'occurence de désordres et les taux effectifs de criminalité et de victimisation. Elle se fonde sur l'usage de la force et correspond à la police réactive traditionnelle et à certaines formes plus récentes de police intensive. La distinction proposée est articulée à travers une discussion de la crise que traverse présentement la justice pénale, des remèdes qu'on tente d'y apporter au niveau de la police et des évaluations de l'efficacité de ces remèdes.     

交通管理现代警务模式选择

警务模式是警务工作效率的关键，信息时代道路交通安全管理警务模式应因地制宜，建立以交通管理社区警务模式和信息主导警务模式并重，以信息主导警务模式为发展目标的当代警务机制。在交通安全管理实践中需要树立信息化理念，提高信息应用水平；突破技术难题，加快警务相关信息的大融和；创新警务管理机制．提升警务行动效率。     

Diversity in Policing

Abstract

Police and minority relations have received much interest among public and academic audiences, yet little is known about policing in Latino communities. As Latinos emerge as the largest minority group in the United States, researchers and police agencies are increasingly concerned with the experience of Latinos in the criminal justice system. One strategy for improving police and community relations is to enhance the diversity of law enforcement agencies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the ethnic composition of law enforcement agencies in major U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2000. Using data from the U.S. Census and the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey, it appears that the growth in the U.S. Latino population has been met with an increase in the percentage of Latinos as sworn full-time police officers. Further, the degree of enhanced diversity varies by the ethnic composition of the community served. Implications of findings for improving relations between police and the Latino community are discussed.     

Policing the homeless

Research Summary Police officials across the United States are increasingly relying on place-based approaches for crime prevention. In this article, we examine the Safer Cities Initiative, a widely publicized place-based policing intervention implemented in Los Angeles's “Skid Row” that focused on crime and disorder associated with homeless encampments. Crime reduction was the goal. The police division in which the program was undertaken provides 8 years of time-series data serving as the observations for the treatment condition. Four adjacent police divisions in which the program was not undertaken provide 8 years of time-series data serving as the observations for the comparison condition. The data are analyzed using a generalized additive model. On balance, we find that this place-based intervention is associated with meaningful reductions in violent, property, and nuisance street crimes. There is no evidence of crime displacement. Policy Implications This study provides further evidence that geographically targeted police interventions can lead to significant crime prevention benefits, with no evidence that crime is simply displaced to other areas. Criminologists and the media have given the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) little credit for major reductions in crime that have occurred during the past 5 years following a number of major policy reforms. We suggest that researchers should look more closely at the targeted interventions the LAPD has undertaken for evidence-based examples of effective policing. Importantly, this work suggests that crime associated with homeless encampments can be meaningfully reduced with targeted police actions. However, law enforcement actions do not address the roots of homelessness nor most of its consequences. Getting tough on the homeless should not be confused with policies or programs that respond fundamentally to the social and personal problems that homelessness presents.     

Policing organized crime

Conclusions Recent criminological research in the Netherlands underscores the fact that organized crime is embedded in society and the overall picture makes it clear that police emphasis on a crime fighting model of the police, based solely on criminal law will not be entirely effective. Therefore, the Twente police force developed a new strategy of policing organized crime in their region. This strategy is based on criminological knowledge and on the approach of community policing: preventive, pro-active and integrated actions taken by various partners of the police in order to reduce illegal activities of organized crime groups. This strategy, however, can only succeed when two conditions are satisfied. First, this approach can only function in an open democratic society in which numerous public and private organizations and the public feel responsible for the emergence of organized crime in their environment. Secondly, the police force and their partners must be (relatively) free of corruption. This implies that this strategy can only be effective in societies in which organized crime has not deeply penetrated democratic institutions and business organizations. Respectively Commissioner of Police and head of the Division Organized Crime of the Twente Police force and Professor of criminology and director of the International Police Institute (IPIT) at the University of Twente. PO Box 217, 7500 EA Enschede, The Netherlands. We would like to thank Alexis Aronowitz of the IPIT for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for her grammatical corrections, as well as the members of the editorial committee for their suggestions for improvements.