Jarrett Blaustein, Speaking truths to power: Policy ethnography and police reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina
| Author | Kerry Carrington |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865816661808 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2017, Vol. 50(1) 146–151
Book Reviews
! The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865816661808
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Jarrett Blaustein, Speaking truths to power: Policy ethnography and police reform in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2015; 272 pp. ISBN 978-0-19872-329-5, £65.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Kerry Carrington, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Where globalisation has been a focus of criminological theorising, it has been too readily
assumed that northern trends (like neoliberal punitiveness, community policing, etc.)
have global reach. The neoliberal thesis on penality (Lacey, 2013) is a classic piece of
metropolitan theorising, embedded most strongly in the work of Wacquant (2013). This
thesis assumes the rest of the world simply followed United States punitive trends. It is
mistaken, however, to conceive neoliberalism as a transnational political project of a
uniform character (O’Malley, 2014; Sozzo, 2015). This is why Jarrett Blaustein’s (2015)
Speaking Truths to Power is so refreshing. His ethnographic study contrasts two case
studies of liberal state building and ‘policing for democracy’ in the territories of the
former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). In this post-conflict setting, trans-
national policing programs sponsored by the European Union and the international
community involved rolling out top-down policy transfer from so-called ‘best practice’
policing models. The underpinning assumption was that ‘a ‘‘democratic’’ model of
policing was necessary for re-establishing general order through BiH and for ultimately
establishing and sustaining liberal democratic governing institutions’ (p. 58).
Blaustein’s case studies illustrate, however, that policy translation of concepts like
Safer Communities, Community Policing, policing through partnerships, policing for
democracy and so forth, are mediated...
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