The Abstract Police: A conceptual exploration of unintended changes of police organisations
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X18817999 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The Abstract Police:
A conceptual exploration
of unintended changes
of police organisations
Jan Terpstra
University of Nijmegen, Netherlands
Nicholas R Fyfe
University of Dundee, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland
Renze Salet
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen Faculteit der Rechtsgeleerdheid,
Nijmegen, Netherlands
Abstract
As a consequence of the 2013 police reforms in the Netherlands and Scotland, the police
in both countries have made a shift towards a fundamentally different kind of organi-
sation: the Abstract Police. The increasing abstract character resulted in changes in the
internal and external relations of the police. The police became more formalised and
dependent on rigid systems and system information. Citizens and communities became
more at a distance. Gradual and long-term processes may have similar consequences.
For that reason it may be expected that the increasingly abstract character of the police
may also be found elsewhere.
Keywords
Police, police reform, abstract police
Corresponding author:
Jan Terpstra, University of Nijmegen, Faculty of Law, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, PO Box
9049, 6500 KK Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Email: j.terpstra@jur.ru.nl
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2019, Vol. 92(4) 339–359
ªThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X18817999
journals.sagepub.com/home/pjx
This paper puts forward the thesis that over the past years the police in many Western
European countries have made a shift towards a fundamentally different kind of orga-
nisation, a change with far-reaching consequences, but which have remained unnoticed
until now. To understand this process, we introduce a new concept, Abstract Police. With
this concept we mean that, both internally and externally, the police have become more
at a distance, more impersonal and formal, less direct, and more decontextualised. The
abstract police are also less dependent on personal knowledge of officer(s), as this is
increasingly being replaced by ‘system knowledge’, framed within the ‘logic’ and cate-
gorisations of computer data systems (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997).
This break with traditional ways of organising the police can especially be found in
countries such as the Netherlands and Scotland, where police reforms in 2013 have
resulted in considerable organisational scale enlargement and highly centralised
national forces (Terpstra and Fyfe, 2014, 2015). The main arguments for these reforms
were to improve the effectiveness of the police (especially with regard to transregional
problems), partially also their efficiency, and to find solutions for problems of orga-
nisational fragmentation (Fyfe and Scott, 2013; Terpstra, 2013). As we try to show in
this paper, the rise of the abstract police can partially be seen as a significant unin-
tended outcome of these reforms. However, more gradual and long-term social devel-
opments have also contributed to this new kind of police organisation. Seen from that
perspective, the 2013 police reforms in the Netherlands and Scotland have mainly
strengthened and accelerated this process, making it more prominent than elsewhere.
This implies that it may be assumed that increasingly abstract police forces can also be
found in other Western European countries, perhaps as yet in more modest and rudi-
mentary forms.
We expect that in the future the abstract character of the police will gain in impor-
tance and have far-reaching consequences for the relations between members of the
police services, for police work, and for the relations with citizens and local commu-
nities. It may also have an impact on the dominating views about what is ‘good’ policing
and about police professionalism and leadership. For that reason we believe that the
abstract police is also an important concept for reflecting on future developments of
the police and about important challenges with which the police may be confronted over
the coming years.
The central aim of this paper is to explore the concept of abstract police and to show
its relevance for police and police research. We developed this concept in several of our
empirical studies on diverging aspects of police reforms in Scotland and the Netherlands.
Several findings of empirical studies in both Scotland and the Netherla nds (such as
Axiom, 2015; Fyfe, 2018; Hail, 2016; Salet and Terpstra, 2017, 2018; SIPR, WWS and
ScotCen 2017a, 2017b; Terpstra, 2017, 2018; Terpstra et al., 2015, 2016) are used here to
illustrate the increasingly abstract character of the police services.
The outline of this paper is as follows. First, we sketch two incidents to illustrate the
relevance of the concept. Then we briefly deal with a definition, followed by an analysis
of the most important internal and external aspects and consequences of the abstract
police. Next, we go into the underlying processes resulting in the increasing abstract
character of the police.
340 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 92(4)
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