Pre-crime and Policing of Migrants: Anticipatory Action Meets Management of Concerns
| Author | Helene OI Gundhus,Pia T Jansen |
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619873347 |
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619873347
Theoretical Criminology
2020, Vol. 24(1) 90 –109
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480619873347
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Pre-crime and Policing of
Migrants: Anticipatory
Action Meets Management
of Concerns
Helene OI Gundhus
University of Oslo, Norway; Norwegian Police University College, Norway
Pia T Jansen
Norwegian Defence Intelligence School, Norway; Norwegian Police University College, Norway
Abstract
In 2015 the Norwegian police initiated its first national intelligence project—Operation
Migrant. One central aim was to predict crime challenges related to increased migration
to improve future resource allocation. Based on qualitative interviews with those
managing the operation, this article foregrounds the question of how attempts to reduce
uncertainties and manage what is perceived as migration-related threats and risks, shape
not only ideas of risk in policing of migration but also influence the importance of
precautionary logic in regular policing. First, we analyse how knowledge production
built on risk management and sharing of risk intelligence products are co-produced
by intelligence staff and decision-makers. Thereafter, we discuss paradoxical outcomes
of a calculated and precautionary logic applied to policing migrants. Concretely, the
article focuses on how anticipatory knowledge practices seem to enlarge the space
for probabilities, making it even more complex and contested to reduce and control
uncertainty.
Keywords
Crises management, migration control, policing, pre-crime, pre-emption
Corresponding author:
Helene OI Gundhus, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo, PO Box 6706,
St Olavs plass, Oslo NO-0130, Norway.
Email: h.o.i.gundhus@jus.uio.no
873347TCR0010.1177/1362480619873347Theoretical CriminologyGundhus and Jansen
research-article2019
Article
Gundhus and Jansen 91
In the summer of 2015, nation states in Europe responded to the increase of migrants by
developing various interventions to combat irregular mobility, and territorial borders
were closed. Talk about a ‘crisis’ raised concerns about the security of nation states, amid
increased anxiety about terrorist attacks, and risks related to crime and public safety that
might result from the influx and the lack of identity checks. Intra-Schengen control
increased, and numerous control measures were more or less permanently introduced, on
the basis of risk analysis produced by Frontex, the European External Border and Coast
Guard Agency and national initiatives. Border control practices in Central and Western
Europe immediately became more protective and securitized.
This article will analyse how the Norwegian police dealt with the increased number
of migrants. This effort coincided with the release of the Norwegian police intelligence
doctrine and it was therefore decided that the focus on migration should be guided by the
intelligence doctrine and process. In the form of a request from the Police Directorate to
the National Crime Investigation Service (KRIPOS), Operation Migrant was launched as
the very first national intelligence project. The view that migration was a potential threat
and part of a ‘crisis’ encouraged worst-case scenario thinking that generated suspicion
and unease, especially among politicians, about potential criminal repercussions of this
increase of migration.
Based on interviews with those involved in the intelligence process in Operation
Migrant, this article explores policies and practices of the risk management of migration-
related threats, including potential crime, and their effect on everyday policing. In the arti-
cle we explore how the focus on threat perceptions and ‘crisis’ management shaped
migration policing, and how it influenced more broadly the importance of precautionary
and pre-emptive logic in regular policing (Anderson, 2010). This again ties in very neatly
with the central element of the intelligence doctrine, namely the need to support future
decision making by reducing decision-makers’ uncertainty about the future. Assessing
threats and harms is framed as an objective basis for decision making (Ratcliffe, 2016),
however, as this article shows, advisors make definitions that are negotiated and generated
in a political framework which also sees migrants as threats as regards potential crime. This
article therefore attempts to respond to the call made by Weber and McCullough (2018) for
different theoretical strands to be combined in criminological studies of borders, by empha-
sizing the importance of using insights from pre-crime literature to highlight shifts in the
policing of migrants. A focus of particular interest will be the shift towards anticipatory
actions such as precautionary logic, pre-emption and preparedness (Anderson, 2010), aris-
ing from the linking of migration to potential crises, disorder and crime.
The article is divided into three sections. We will first briefly sketch the contextual
aspects of policing migration in Norway, and our theoretical and methodological approach.
Second, using material from interviews with those involved in Operation Migrant, we
analyse how intelligence products were—for the first time—used to give decision-makers
a knowledge base to help inform their priorities. We explore the difficulties that arise
when decision-makers are expected to take into consideration, and trust, intelligence
products in which future assessment is based on historical data and on historical data and
patterns, and on what was important in the past—how can the future be determined by the
past? In the last section we discuss paradoxical outcomes of the precautionary and pre-
emptive logic applied to policing migrants, which reinforces a perception that criminality
is a marker of the difference between immigrant and native populations.
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