The politics of policing a pandemic panic
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865820925861 |
| Author | James Sheptycki |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
The politics of policing
Criminology
2020, Vol. 53(2) 157–173
!
a pandemic panic
The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865820925861
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James Sheptycki
York University, Toronto, Canada
Abstract
This essay was completed in early April 2020 and begun during the first week of the official
pandemic panic in Canada. The world-wide plague caused by the COVID-19 virus precip-
itated the first global police event presenting an occasion for researchers and scholars to
apply existing theory and empirical understanding to extra-ordinary circumstances.
Consideration of the politics of the police during the plague reveals a tectonic shift in
the world system. The transnational and comparative study of police and policing reveals
the contours of the emerging system of world power all the more clearly in a moment of
crisis. The pandemic panic presents an historical moment during which, figuratively speak-
ing, policing power crystalizes and can be seen clearly. On the global stage, in response to
the pandemic panic authoritarian and totalitarian policing practices are demonstrated
alongside those in putative democracies. Emerging and observable practices of rule by
law are antithetical to democratic policing in the general social interest, and rule of law
rhetoric justifying militarized law enforcement action in many places continues to bring
police into further disrepute. The coming era will continue to be a time where, in most
places “the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must”—as the ancient
historian Thucydides observed in the aftermath of the fratricidal Peloponnesian War more
than two millennia ago. The pandemic panic shows in the starkest statistical numbers that,
where social justice is achieved, the outcome of the politics of the police is not the
command of the sovereign.
Keywords
COVID-19, globalization, police, law, surveillance, transnational, world system
Date received: 24 March 2020; accepted: 21 April 2020
Corresponding author:
James Sheptycki, York University, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada.
Email: jshep@yorku.ca
158
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 53(2)
Introduction
The first global police event is happening. For the first time in history, police in just
about every jurisdiction in the world have been mobilized at the same time due to the
same fundamental occurrence. The pandemic panic concerning the novel COVID-19
virus marks a watershed. The current moment can be viewed from the standpoint of
police studies as a massive global field experiment in how different practical manifes-
tations of police power are operationalized under different local social and political
contexts, and further with what consequence for human well-being the world over.
It is a natural experiment for transnational and comparative criminologists (Wardak
& Sheptycki, 2005). In simple terms, looking at what police do in different countries
during this crisis says a lot about the global system.
Drawing attention to thinking about policework in the context of a global pandemic
panic is not to say that what the police do is the most important aspect of the social
response to the spread of a disease. Foucauldian theories concerning the bio-politics of
populations and the anatomo-politics of individuals offer another possible window onto
this historical shift (Dean, 2010), if we think of those forms of power now being con-
stituted in a wired world. However, Foucauldian theory does not really help clarify the
point that the response to the pandemic panic is what it is: a global police event. That is
an event whereby the order of the global system is imposed by police methods across
multiple jurisdictions in response to the same world-wide occurrence. Here the emphasis
is on thinking about the trajectory of the politics of the police in a global context up to
the crisis moment of the pandemic panic in order to think beyond it. This presents a
challenge. Amidst the torrent of words expended during the crisis, what does the
research and scholarship about crime and policing have to contribute? Characterizing
the present moment as a pandemic panic is a reference to the distillation of a critical
frame of analysis concerning interactions between media, crime and police reaction first
articulated by Stanley Cohen, Stuart Hall and others in the 1970s (Bowling et al., 2019,
pp. 211–212). From that perspective, there is in the current crisis a phenomenon—“the
virus”—which seems to be a “suitable foe” that justifies police action. But the ensuing
societal reaction in the circumstances of the crisis can be expected to create self-fulfilling
prophecies since, on the basis of the need to control the phenomenon, are manufactured
culturally identifiable symbols which structure future situations and legitimize social
control. This view does not deny the real existential threat of the COVID-19 virus,
but instead it raises questions about the future consequences of the political and
social reaction to the immediate crisis as manifest in the politics of the police.
The study of the police and policing is very relevant to the current circumstances.
What follows is a consideration of the subject at the onset of a global panic surrounding
the COVID-19 pandemic, which will last for an indeterminate period. In placing the
politics of the police in the spotlight, this presumptive analysis draws on Bowling et al.
(2019, pp. 20–37). In the multitude of commentary being produced in these extra-
ordinary circumstances, it is important for specialist scholarship to contribute in a
targeted way to the discussion. This means that contributions should remain based
on existing empirical knowledge and tested theoretical notions and not become specu-
lative beyond those boundaries (Goldsmith & Halsey, 2020). What do we know about
the practices and politics of already existing policing around the world, and what might
Sheptycki
159
we expect as the pandemic panic passes and the virus becomes part of the global eco-
system? This essay sketches some insights and prognoses about an evidently momentous
juncture in the evolution of the global system that might be gleaned from existing
thinking and research concerning police practice. It suggests where scholarship and
thinking in this domain might ought to go in the coming period, and it is a record of
how things looked at the start of something new to one long-schooled in the politics
of the police.
Thinking about police and policing during a time of plague
It is useful to start with basic terminological issues. Who are the police? The police are
agents linked through a complex division-of-labor by a common metier (Sheptycki,
2017). The police metier has evolved as a set of institutional practices of tracking,
surveillance, keeping watch, and unending vigilance, and it remains ready to apply
force, up to and including fatal force, in pursuit of police organizational goals of
reproducing social order, making crime, managing risk and governing insecurity
(Bowling et al., 2019, p. 37). In this moment of rapid transition, the reproduction of
order is in question, the management of risk is tenuous and the governance of security
paramount. Because policing institutions are plural (Bowling et al., 2019, pp. 145–163),
and global (Bowling et al., 2019, pp. 185–206), scholars have suggested we look at this
effort in terms of a complex world-wide “policing web” (Brodeur, 2010).
A fundamental distinction has been made between “high policing” and “low
policing” in understanding the politics and practices of the police. The distinction
between high and low policing tells us about who policing is supposed to be for and
whether it is done covertly or openly. Drawing on Marenin (1982), low policing is for
the general good of society. In the circumstances, drastic policing measures are being
undertaken or considered in almost every police jurisdiction in the world and these are
being initiated on the expectation that they are for the general well-being of the popu-
lation. Policing is to governance as the edge is to the knife (Bayley, 1985, p. 189). Put less
metaphorically: policing is power. High policing denotes practices that are for the par-
ticular good of social, political and economic elites, and it connotes a degree of clan-
destine activity beyond the necessities of professional secrecy. Some of the means of high
policing—covert poisoning, as a use-of-force option, for example—could never be coun-
tenanced under the pretension that it is low policing for the general well-being (Bowling
et al., 2019, p. 191). The practice of divide-and-rule is central to high policing (Liang,
1992). We shall return to these considerations, but for now let us acknowledge that the
police will inevitably, for better and for ill, be part of the social response to phenomena
that are considered fundamental existential threats. The pandemic panic is such a situ-
ation. The distinction between low policing and high policing is essential if we are to
gauge the extent to which policing practices are open and transparent or secretive and
opaque, and are either for the general social good, or merely serve particular interests.
Police agents and the other institutional actors they work alongside, use legal tools to
symbolize, represent, justify, and undertake action (Bowling et al., 2019, pp. 22–24).
Socio-legal scholarship on policing is greatly attuned to the ways in which police agents
acquire and use the...
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