The enforcement turn in plural policing? A comparative analysis of public police auxiliaries in England and Wales, France and The Netherlands
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14773708211070203 |
| Author | Megan O’Neill,Jacques de Maillard,Ronald van Steden |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The enforcement turn in plural
policing? A comparative
analysis of public police
auxiliaries in England and
Wales, France and
The Netherlands
Megan O’Neill
University of Dundee, UK
Jacques de Maillard
Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin, France
Ronald van Steden
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands; Nederlands Studie centrum
Criminaliteit en Rechtshandhaving (NSCR), Netherlands
Abstract
This paper examines ‘auxiliary’police in three European countries and the extent to which they
continue to present a pluralisation of public sector policing. Examining findings from existing
empirical research, we will argue that despite different origins, systems of governance, formal
powers and levels of centralisation, the police auxiliaries in England and Wales, France and The
Netherlands have all experienced an overall trend towards becoming more ‘enforcement-orien-
tated’. This unique comparative analysis measures each agency’s powers, appearance, organisa-
tional dimensions and mandate and the associated drivers towards change, such as the
politicisation of law and order, large-scale institutional transformations and professionalisation
attempts. This analysis will have implications for pluralised policing scholarship as it questions
the extent to which auxiliary officers provide a true alternative to the standard or national public
policing mandate, which has historically highlighted the ‘law and order’function of the police.
It also highlights the lack of research on what ‘policing by government’(Loader, 2000) looks
Corresponding author:
Megan O’Neill, School of Social Sciences (Geography), University of Dundee, Tower Building, Nethergate,
Dundee, DD1 4HN.
Email: m.oneill@dundee.ac.uk
Article
European Journal of Criminology
2023, Vol. 20(5) 1681–1700
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14773708211070203
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like in practice and the need for further comparative research with these auxiliary state policing
actors.
Keywords
Auxiliary police officers, community policing, law enforcement, pluralisation, policing
Introduction
Policing scholarship has developed a wide body of literature on non-police agents in
recent decades (in a broad literature but see especially: Crawford et al., 2005; Jones
and Newburn, 2006; Terpstra et al., 2013). This work has considered the role and
significance of the private security industry and hybrid forms of policing with
varying degrees of connectedness to the state. This scholarship makes clear that
policing, as it ever was, is not a state monopoly (Churchill, 2017; Leloup and
White, 2021).
However, the styles of policing associated with this pluralisation have been poorly
analysed. On the one hand, and in line with the conclusions of Shearing and Stenning
(1983) for private security, processes of pluralisation can be seen as the promotion of
a more preventive policing than the traditional public police, based less on the tools of
the penal system and more on solving the problems of the public. On the other hand,
pluralisation can be seen as a reproduction of the characteristics of public police,
through mimicry, as officers seek to reproduce the image of the professional model
of the traditional and more prestigious public police, but with less concern for the
effectiveness of their outcomes. Our paper will address a gap in the current scholar-
ship by using empirical research of a particular cohort of pluralised policing actors to
consider trends in England and Wales, France and The Netherlands. We will focus on
‘auxiliary’police agents, that is, those policing actors who work in the public sector,
either for local public municipalities or for state police agencies, but who are not the
primary agents of state policing. These actors have a role in preserving safety and
security in their jurisdictions but have fewer powers and authority than the primary
agents of state policing. Our focus is therefore confinedtothepluralisedstate
sector, how it is developing in terms of what state police auxiliaries do and how
they appear, and what this tells us about wider social, economic and political pro-
cesses. Following the distinctions proposed by Loader on the different aspects of
plural policing (2000), we will focus here on ‘policing by government’,thatisthe
proliferation of policing services provided by public authorities.
England and Wales, France and the Netherlands represent different policing and
political contexts. These three jurisdictions were chosen as they each have an
auxiliary policing agency in the public sector, but these agencies oscillate around
two key points of difference. First, the auxiliary agents in France and The
Netherlands are employed by municipal governments while the one in England and
Wales work for the state police. Second, the auxiliaries in The Netherlands and in
England and Wales are staff, rather than police officers, whereas the agents in
France are municipal police, albeit with limited powers compared to those of the
1682 European Journal of Criminology 20(5)
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