Monica den Boer (ed), Comparative Policing from a Legal Perspective, Cheltenham UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018, 496 pp, hb £185.00.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12429 |
| Published date | 01 July 2019 |
| Author | James Sheptycki |
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
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REVIEWS
Monica den Boer (ed), Comparative Policing from a Legal Perspective, Chel-
tenham UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018, 496 pp, hb
£185.00.
Police Studies has become a major field of social scientific and socio-legal
inquiry. Once a backwater of intellectual concern, arguably the politics of
policing has become the defining feature of a precarious twenty-first century
global ‘system’ teetering on the brink of uncer tainty and insecurity. The invi-
tation to review Monica den Boer’s edited research handbook on Comparative
Policing from a Legal Perspective is an occasion to think about the meaning of law
as it is evidenced in policing practice around the world. The politics of police
jurisprudence gives rise to vital questions. Of all the social and political actors
who have access to and use of legal power tools, police agents are the most
concerning because by definition ‘the police’ monopolise the coercive means
to enforce law. Without ‘the police’ the law has no force. Hegemonic norma-
tive frameworks are policed by agents who use legal instruments to organise
themselves in the task of reproducing social order. Absent the law, police are
unbridled oppressors. In a globalised world, normative frameworks are plural,
and competing authorities each make use of their own legal tool kits. Hence
the fundamental need for a comparative understanding of the politics of police
jurisprudence. Reaching a comprehensive understanding of these issues is an
enormous task. The twenty-two chapters and contextualising Introduction to
this volume offer a wide range of views from thirty different scholars working
on topics concerning the police and law. This variety speaks to the breadth and
depth of the field and raises challenges for theoretical synthesis and for practical
democratic politics.
From a global perspective we can see that, more often than not, the po-
lice now violate the conditions necessary for the maintenance of a democratic
society. Citing Gary Marx, the volume under review distils these conditions
to three pillars: first that police force is subject to the rule of law embodying
values respectful of human dignity (rather than the wishes of powerful polit-
ical actors); second, that police intervene in the lives of citizens only under
strictly controlled circumstances stipulated in advance by law; and third that
police action is accountable publicly (4). In his contribution to the volume,
Michael Head makes clear that ‘the escalating militarization of society and pub-
lic spaces has disturbing implications for civil and political rights, as well as for
civilian, democratic control over law enforcement and supposed security mea-
sures’ (343). Indeed, ‘it is necessary to go further and state unequivocally:
Genuine democracy is impossible, and freedom of political opinion and com-
munication a chimera’ (344). Simultaneously, the normalisation of undercover
policing is evidenced by attempts to craft legal regulations in many (if not all)
legal jurisdictions regarding the practice of covert police intelligence gathering.
C2019 The Author.The Moder n Law Review C2019 The Modern Law Review Limited. (2019)82(4) MLR 751–775
Published by JohnWiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 101 Station Landing, Medford, MA 02155, USA
Reviews
Elsewhere in the book, Clive Harfield argues that covert police intelligence
practices ‘are defined by the way in which undercover policing is regulated
in any given jurisdiction’ (158). Information and intelligence sharing and ex-
change are low-visibility decisions in police administration that preclude demo-
cratic transparency. The global policing web transgresses national boundaries,
and the boundaries between public and private law, and it presents a multi-
dimensional opportunity structure of formal and infor mal practice that police
agents mobilise using legal tools when they have to. Even when undertaken in
order to ‘protect democracy’, the normalisation of covert policing, along with
its militarisation, shapes the parameters of the politics of police jurispr udence
in decisive ways that undermine democratic and human rights values.
The situation is particularly lamentable in regards to the policing of the
new virtual social spaces of the Internet and the Darknet. In this domain
there is, according to Tine Munk, a ‘lack of consensus worldwide’, and the
lack of international and national harmonised leg islative frameworks obscures
transparency and accountability, while the legal relationships between public
and private actors remain undefined (248). For this reader, legal pluralism
gone wild in cyberspace suggests a variation on what Gr´
egoire Webber calls
‘legal lawlessness’ (G. Webber, ‘Legal Lawlessness and the Rule of Law: A
Critique of Section 25.1 of the Criminal Code’ (2005) 31 Queens Law Jour nal
122). The accountability vacuum is evidently exacerbated because of the over-
world/underworld relationship between the Internet and the Darknet which is
facilitated by encryption tools. It remains to be seen if the EU Data Protection
Law Enforcement Directive sets a global ‘gold standard’ that harmonises digital
policing practice, as Paul de Hert and Juraj Saifert hope (325), but given the
disruptive effects of advancing technologies this reviewer is doubtful. As Peter
K. Manning observes elsewhere in the volume, ‘the impact of new technologies
on policing is not known and cannot be predicted . . . much of this work is
either confidential, unavailable or hidden’ so the ‘impact of legal norms on
practice in Europe and North America is difficult to ascertain’ (305).
Policing the global money system, including the world of private ‘off-shore’
banking, presents major difficulties for financial and economic relations in the
twenty-first century, as revelations from the leaked ‘Panama Papers’ graphically
demonstrated. The meagre achievements of the global anti-money laundering
regime, according to Mo Egan, have been ‘hindered by political trends’ (226).
The complexity of the money system is perhaps greater than any other dimen-
sion of the global system generally, and it presents a vast opportunity structure
useful for both licit and nefarious purposes. Under the hegemony of global
neoliberalism in economic thinking it is systemically under-policed. Simultane-
ously, there is ‘widespread consensus among scholars that the “criminalization
of migration” . . . . has intensified’ (261). Migration policing is underpinned by
a complex institutional assemblage. It is positive, in the sense that it facilitates
the flow of people and the right of residence, and it is negative in repressing
the ability of other people to move and reside. The 1985 Schengen Agree-
ment is the legal cornerstone of an elaborate system for policing population
movement and citizenship rights in Europe (32-33; 268–269). Astute readers
will understand that, while capital is free to flow and can easily escape legally
752 C2019 The Author. The Modern Law Review C2019 The Modern Law Review Limited.
(2019) 82(4) MLR 751–775
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