That’s in a Name: Concerning the ASA Career Award (2008)

That’s in a Name: Concerning the ASA Career Award Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net Published as an ASA Forum letter in Footnotes, the ASA Newsletter, 36(3):8, March 2008. Also available via the ASA website. Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2008. “That’s in a Name: Concerning the ASA Career Award.” ASA Forum Letter. Footnotes, ASA Newsletter, 36(3):8.

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Not Lester Ward, Albion Small, Franklin H. Giddings, Charles Horton Cooley, William Graham Sumner, Robert Park, Talcott Parsons, Pitirim Sorokin, William Thomas, Dorothy Thomas, Everett Hughes, Robert K. Merton, Erving Goffman, C. Wright Mills, Peter Blau, or Lewis Coser. There is a long list of names not chosen; instead the ASA career award now carries the name W.E.B. DuBois, the noted racial activist and Pan-Africanist. Another, albeit it less comfortable act of publicity on behalf of a professional association, the name change reveals more than it is purported to denote. How else could one account for the appropriation of the name of a person who, even by admission of the advocates of adding the name to the ASA career award, did not make a contribution to the development of the profession and discipline of American sociology that would be singularly more noteworthy than those of many others whose names remain unspoken. Yet, despite a longstanding ASA policy that awards should be identified by the reason of the award alone, the name change of the career award was voted by a majority of the membership (see November 2006 Footnotes, p. 1). I therefore wholeheartedly support the idea that the addition of the name of DuBois to the ASA career award be observed with all due ceremonial grandeur at the ASA Annual Meeting (see January 2008 Footnotes, ASA Forum). Such a celebration would serve to mark and honor, plainly and clearly, the very essence of the standing of contemporary sociology and its practitioners. It is a tragic and sad irony, of course, that the many significant contributions DuBois made, intellectual and otherwise, could not be done greater injustice than by having his legacy reduced to the self-serving needs of the ASA’s voting majority. Mathieu Deflem, University of South Carolina

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www.mathieudeflem.net

Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism Approaches (2008)

Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism Approaches Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net This is an electronic version of an article published in the Encyclopedia of Social Problems, edited by Vincent N. Parrillo. Sage Publications, 2008. Also available in print-friendly pdf format. Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2008. “Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism Approaches.” Pp. 929-931 in Encyclopedia of Social Problems, edited by Vincent N. Parrillo. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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Terrorism is a complex phenomenon with many dimensions which vary in intensity and scope across time periods and have varying degrees of impact and significance in different regions of the world. Counter-terrorism approaches, in consequence, are likewise multifaceted in kind to offer appropriate responses to the threat and reality of terrorism on a local, national, and international level. Although political objectives lie at the heart of most terrorist violence, enactment of counter-terrorism strategies not only occurs at the government levels of nation states and their international unions, but also extends to many other institutions and organizations. International Law and Politics Historically, counter-terrorism strategies have at least two important precursors. First, in the middle of the 19th century, autocratic political regimes in Europe responded to political dissent of a more or less violent nature by organizing national and international police and surveillance practices. Among these efforts were police activities involving covert surveillance practices as well as cooperation activities, on a bilateral and multilateral scale, to exchange information on wanted political opponents of established autocratic regimes. Police institutions conducted these activities and, in the course of their activities, gradually gained professional expertise and autonomy to focus attention towards more distinctly criminal rather than political enforcement objectives. Second, developments in the area of international law occurred to outlaw and institute appropriate practices against politically motivated violent activities. Most distinctly, in the late 19th and early 20th century, governments signed treaties that led to organized international efforts against anarchist movements. Similarly, the first international treaty specifically dealing with terrorism was in 1937, when the League of Nations drafted a convention on the ‘Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism’. However, only one country, India, ratified the agreement, testifying to the ideological difficulties within and across nations to enact measures and foster collaboration on a matter as politically volatile as terrorism. During the remaining decades of the 20th century, government policies and legislative actions against terrorism evolved slowly and in piecemeal fashion, typically focusing only on specific violent and criminal activities often associated with terrorism, such as hijackings and bombings, rather than on terrorism as such. For instance, the United Nations adopted a convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons in 1973 and on the Taking of Hostages in 1979. Similar international treaties against terrorism were adopted by other international governing bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States, as well as at the bilateral level between nation-states. International treaties, however, could not lessen terrorism as an often contentious issue in the global field of international relations. In the United States, legal and policy efforts against terrorism developed even slower than in the international arena, primarily because of a prevailing view that terrorism was a foreign problem. During the Reagan administration emerged the Act to Combat International Terrorism (1984) and an Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act (1986). Yet, it was not until certain high-profile terrorist incidents, such as the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, that the Clinton administration stepped up legislative efforts against terrorism, leading to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The Centrality of September 11 Despite the gradual increase in legislative and political responses to terrorism during the late 20th century, the enormous impact of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on counter-terrorism approaches was unpredictable as counter-terrorism efforts expanded considerably both on the national and international levels. The United States took the lead in passing the USA PATRIOT Act, allowing the detention and trial of terrorist suspects in military tribunals, and creating a new department, the Department of Homeland Security, specifically designed to respond to the terrorist threat. Furthermore, counter-terrorism measures expanded to the military field when the United States and selected NATO nations undertook military operations in October 2001 against the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which was offering support to al-Qaeda members. The military invasion in Iraq in March 2003 was politically incorporated in the so-called war on terror, thereby giving that expression more than mere metaphorical meaning. Although revelations about the decision to invade Iraq showed it less clearly related to the terrorist threat, ongoing conditions in Iraq as well as the internationally contentious struggles over the war’s relationship with terrorism have influenced the debate over the proper response to terrorism. Most remarkable is that many nations across the world and a variety of international governing bodies instituted new legislative and political policies similar to those implemented in the United States. For instance, new anti-terrorist laws expanding policing powers against terrorist suspects passed in many nations also considered under the threat of international terrorist groups. International governing bodies, such as the United Nations and the European Union, similarly adopted new measures to ensure international cooperation against terrorism. What these developments show is a trend towards the treatment of terrorism as an issue of national and global security. Dimensions of Counter-Terrorism In spite of the growing significance in counter-terrorism of matters related to security, warfare, and military might, counter-terrorist activities are comprised of a multitude of political, legal, military, economic, and cultural efforts, which are not always in complete harmony with one another. Most conspicuous at the level of formal state institutions are the extended counter-terrorist powers granted to law enforcement institutions. Strikingly, police organizations conceive of terrorism as a distinctly criminal enforcement problem requiring response with technically sophisticated means of policing. Police counter-terrorism responses, both within nations and at the international level, thus demonstrate the relative autonomy of police to determine the proper means and to specify the objectives of their counter-terrorism activities. The reorganization of police power under conditions of an intensified concern with terrorism may lead to structural adjustments that will have effects long after the more immediate repercussions of the terrorist threat have faded. Moreover, police institutions might pay relatively less attention to other enforcement tasks and thus exacerbate criminal conditions unrelated to terrorism. Furthermore, because police organizations are not alone in conducting counter-terrorism activities, they increasingly confront the counter-terrorism operations of other state institutions, such as rival police organizations (e.g., the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Department of Justice, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security), intelligence organizations, and military institutions. For example, police and intelligence efforts in counter-terrorism do not always neatly harmonize, as policing activities focus on suspects in criminal cases, while intelligence work involves the routinized collection of information irrespective of a criminal incident. The new realignments of police, intelligence, and military brought about by the intensified focus on terrorism pose important problems of jurisdictional authority, the appropriate methods and means of inter-agency cooperation, and the relationship between civilian police and military power from a functional and organizational point of view. Besides inter-agency cooperation within nations, moreover, the international nature of the current terrorist threat also places a premium on international counter-terrorism cooperation. The centrality of international cooperation applies to various levels of counter-terrorism, including treaties of international law, diplomatic efforts, police cooperation among nations and participation in international police organizations such as Interpol and Europol, coalitions in military operations, and the imposition of economic sanctions against nations that harbor or support terrorist groups. Interestingly, growing international cooperation in matters of terrorism has not yet fostered a truly global climate of counter-terrorism inasmuch as national interests, concerned with the more locally confined implications of terrorism, remain paramount. Again showing the multifarious nature of counter-terrorism, international counter-terrorism activities also include attempts to build public support against terrorist groups and practices and, relatedly, to foster the spread of democratic values across the globe. Presumably not unimportant in this respect are also the efforts taken in the academic research community to study the mechanisms, causes, and effects of terrorism and counter-terrorism as well as the activities undertaken by civic groups to ensure a climate to obtain a sufficient degree of effectiveness in counter-terrorism strategies without sacrificing civil liberties and human rights. See also PATRIOT Act; Terrorism; Terrorism, Domestic Spying; Surveillance Further Readings Deflem, Mathieu, ed. 2004. Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Criminological Perspectives. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Deflem, Mathieu. 2004. “Social Control and the Policing of Terrorism: Foundations for a Sociology of Counter-Terrorism.” The American Sociologist 35(2):75-92. Deflem, Mathieu. 2006. “Global Rule of Law or Global Rule of Law Enforcement? International Police Cooperation and Counter-Terrorism.” The Annals 603:240-251. Heymann, Philip B. 2003. Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning Without War. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Pious, Richard M. 2006. The War on Terrorism and the Rule of Law. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury.

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This is an electronic version of a print publication. Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2008. “Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism Approaches.” Pp. 929-931 in Encyclopedia of Social Problems, edited by Vincent N. Parrillo. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. www.mathieudeflem.net

Terrorism, Domestic Spying (2008)

Terrorism, Domestic Spying Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net & Lisa Dilks University of South Carolina This is an electronic version of an article published in the Encyclopedia of Social Problems, edited by Vincent N. Parrillo, pp. 931-933. Sage Publications, 2008. Also available in print-friendly pdf format. Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu, and Lisa Dilks. 2008. “Terrorism, Domestic Spying.” Pp. 931-933 in Encyclopedia of Social Problems, edited by Vincent N. Parrillo. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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Domestic spying is a cultural construct that is used, especially among civil libertarians and the media, to refer to internally directed surveillance programs initiated by a variety of formal agencies of social control and intelligence. In the current U.S. context, domestic spying primarily refers to the debate that erupted following several revelations about surveillance programs set up, without court approval or congressional oversight, to aid in the fight against terrorism. Although the debate on domestic spying is recent, internal surveillance programs have considerable historical antecedents. Domestic Surveillance Programs U.S. domestic surveillance programs date back to the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt secretly ordered the Bureau of Investigation (renamed Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935) to investigate the American Nazi movement. On September 6, 1939, three days after the British and French declaration of war on Nazi Germany, Roosevelt formally placed the FBI in charge of all surveillance activities relating to espionage, sabotage, subversive activities, and violations of U.S. neutrality laws. During World War II, the FBI was responsible for all domestic intelligence work and foreign intelligence in South America, while the Office of Strategic Services was the leading intelligence agency for all other regions. Domestic surveillance in the United States remained primarily in the hands of the FBI after the war. Most distinct amongst these efforts was the Bureau’s COINTELPRO or counterintelligence programs from the 1950s onwards that acted against Communist groups and a wide range of other organizations, including leftist groups, civil rights organizations, and the Ku Klux Klan. In the early 1970s, COINTELPRO was formally abolished, leading to passage of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, which permits electronic surveillance within the United States on foreign agents and international terrorists on the condition that a judge in a specialized FISA court issues a warrant. Presently, several partly interacting and overlapping surveillance agencies handle domestic intelligence duties, including the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and various federal and local law enforcement agencies. In the current context of counter-terrorism, domestic spying debates erupted following several revelations reported in the popular media about domestic surveillance programs, conducted by the National Security Agency, that were secretly authorized by the President following the terrorist attacks of September 11. In addition to these NSA surveillance programs, debate also raged over the expanded opportunities afforded to the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community under provisions of the PATRIOT Act, a federal bill passed in 2001, which broadened police powers against terrorism. In November 2005, the Washington Post disclosed a rapidly growing practice of domestic spying under the provisions of by the PATRIOT Act by the FBI seeking information on the basis of so-called ‘national security letters.’ Such letters enable the FBI to secretly review the private telephone and financial records of suspected foreign agents. However, the letters program also included U.S. citizens and residents who were not suspected of any wrongdoing. Most important in the recent debate on domestic spying, the New York Times on December 16, 2005 reported on a secret domestic surveillance program conducted by the NSA. This so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, initiated in early 2002 on the secret authorization of President Bush, allows the NSA to intercept, without a court-approved warrant, communications that involve one overseas and one domestic party or at least one party suspected of holding ties to al-Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist group. The response to this revelation was intense. In January 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed lawsuits, arguing that the NSA eavesdropping program violated Americans’ civil rights. That same month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a class-action lawsuit against the telephone company AT&T, accusing it of providing the NSA with unfettered access to customer phone calls and internet communications in violation of the Fourth Amendment, as well as federal wiretap and communication laws. On a political level, two Senate Judiciary hearings held in February 2006 discussed the status of the NSA program. Another revelation about contemporary domestic surveillance programs came when the newspaper USA Today reported in May 2006 that the NSA had kept logs of billions of domestic calls, a program that began, without court approval, soon after 9/11. The Domestic Spying Debate The debate on domestic spying contains important considerations of both a legal and normative nature. From the legal viewpoint, the Bush administration insisted that it had the power to authorize the wiretapping program under both the U.S. Constitution and the congressional resolution of the Authorization of Military Force that authorized use of wartime powers against those responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The constitutional powers of the U.S. President as commander-in-chief would allow President Bush to pursue, without explicit congressional permission, any enemy operating inside the U.S. Additionally, the wartime powers of the President would allow him to bypass the courts to spy on Americans without warrants, a Presidential power that not even Congress can restrict, as the President not only has the authority but also the duty to protect the nation. It is further argued that the Congressional resolution on the Authorization of Military Force that passed shortly after 9/11 also granted the President the right to use all ‘necessary and appropriate force,’ thereby effectively suspending the FISA requirements which are considered outdated and inappropriate in view of the contemporary war on terror. When President Bush in a televised address admitted that he had authorized domestic, warrant-less monitoring of calls involving an overseas party, he defended his actions as crucial to national security. Opponents argue that the President’s expansion of executive power violates constitutionally framed mandates for judicial and congressional oversight. Congress and the courts have a constitutional right and obligation to provide a check against extra-legal activities in the executive branch. The uncovered domestic spying programs, they claim, violate Fourth-Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure. The Supreme Court has likewise held that most surveillance by government agencies must be based on a judicial finding of probable cause of criminal wrongdoing. Other arguments against domestic spying invoke concerns over two specific federal acts. First, critics say the program violates provisions of the 1978 FISA Act which requires warrants. The PATRIOT Act only allows for the collection of data for up to 72 hours before a warrant must be requested from the courts, and the Authorization of Military Force resolution does not give the President the power to bypass this law. Second, because only eight members of the House and Senate were briefed about relevant developments, the NSA program violates the National Security Act of 1947 which requires that intelligence oversight committees of Congress be kept informed of U.S. intelligence activities. Absent such congressional approval, prosecutions of captured terrorists may be jeopardized by defendants’ claims that the evidence against them was collected illegally. In August 2006, a U.S. District Court ruled the NSA surveillance program to be unconstitutional. At this writing, an appeal is still pending. Underlying the legal debate on domestic spying are conflicting positions about its normativity. On the one hand, proponents suggest that special surveillance programs are necessary because of the severity and nature of the current terrorist threat and, moreover, that they have effectively prevented other terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Under present-day circumstances, they claim, most Americans would agree that some of their rights have to be sacrificed in order to preserve national security. On the other hand, opponents argue measures implemented against terrorist groups should not curb civil rights, which are an essential part of a free and open society. Making exceptions on constitutional restrictions on presidential power in the area of counter-terrorism might lead to wrongly justify other special provisions, such as on the use of torture and the indefinite detention of citizens. Modernizing the rules of counter-terrorism surveillance in the United States could allow for the use of new means but only within proper limits that prevent innocent citizens from being investigated. Given the continued anxieties over the terrorist threat and the likewise persistent concerns over civil rights, the debate on domestic spying is likely to stay in the public consciousness for some time in the foreseeable future. See also Civil Rights; PATRIOT Act; Police; Terrorism; Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism Approaches; Surveillance Further Readings Keller, William W. 1989. The Liberals and J. Edgar Hoover: Rise and Fall of a Domestic Intelligence State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Morgan, Richard E. 1980. Domestic Intelligence: Monitoring Dissent in America. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Posner, Richard A. 2005. Remaking Domestic Intelligence. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Risen, James. 2006. State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. New York: The Free Press. Wong, Katherine. 2006. “The NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Harvard Journal on Legislation 43: 517-534.

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This is an electronic version of a print publication. Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu, and Lisa Dilks. 2008. “Terrorism, Domestic Spying.” Pp. 931-933 in Encyclopedia of Social Problems, edited by Vincent N. Parrillo. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. www.mathieudeflem.net

Introduction: An Eye on Surveillance and Governance (2008)

Introduction: An Eye on Surveillance and Governance Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net Published in Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond, edited by Mathieu Deflem. Bingley, UK: Emerald/JAI Press, 2008. Also available in print-friendly pdf format. Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2008. "Introduction: An Eye on Surveillance and Governance." Pp. 1-8 in Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond, edited by Mathieu Deflem. Bingley, UK: Emerald/JAI Press.

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Abstract This volume presents recent insights in the sociological study of surveillance and governance in the context of criminal justice and other control strategies in contemporary societies. The collected chapters provide a varied set of theoretical perspectives and substantive research domains on the qualities and quantities of some of the most recent transformations of social control as well as their historical precursors in diverse social settings. Drawn from several quarters of the world, the contributors to this volume testify to the increasing relevance of surveillance and governance across the globe and, at the same time, demonstrate the cross-national spread of scholarly ideas on the study thereof. Surveillance is not a conceptual invention of recent social-science scholarship. In fact, the term has a very long history that appears more closely related to the multitude of policy functions that historically were increasingly monopolized by the state, including matters pertaining to health, deviance, poverty, geography, and economy (e.g. Forrest, 1896; Langmuir, 1965). Surveillance is, in its origins, a concept of power. The term, however, has also acquired the status of a concept in social-science scholarship, and it is here that the contributions in the present volume are situated to ponder on the patterns, dynamics, and implications of the social practices and institutions involved with the observing and monitoring of behavior and the collection of information thereon. Yet, even as a concept, surveillance has undergone changes in meaning and has, consequently, been applied in a variety of contexts. Surveillance can probably be less clearly defined and is better experienced when we see it, or when it is discovered to have violated our sense of trust and privacy when we did not. Further indicating conceptual and theoretical complexities there has been the more recent introduction in social science of the concept of governance, itself a term going back hundreds of years to its origins in the world of politics and policy. At a general level, governance can be defined as the administrative or application-oriented components of government, the latter broadly defined with respect not only to politics but power more generally, including other spheres of conduct, notably private and corporate action. Evidently, the study of social control in terms of both or either surveillance and governance introduces further complexities about their relations and meanings. The authors contributing to this volume have many intelligent things to say, in theoretical and empirical respects, about surveillance and governance. In order to briefly situate these varied discussions, I wish to clarify a few broad strokes of the study of surveillance and governance on the basis of the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Of course, modern surveillance scholars have made much effort in recent years to move beyond Foucault, and in many instances they surely have done so successfully (e.g., see the contributions in Haggerty & Ericson, 2006; Lyon, 2006; Zurawski, 2007). However, it remains instructive, also, just as much as we sociologists habitually remind ourselves that we are anchored in the 19th century, to briefly situate recent developments in the study of surveillance and governance with reference to Foucault’s work. This review can be useful, minimally, for strategic reasons aimed at uncovering the historical centrality of Foucault’s terms of discipline and governmentality in the development of what is now sometimes called the sub-disciplinary specialty of ‘surveillance studies’ (see Contemporary Sociology, 2007). Conceptually, furthermore, a case can be made that Foucault’s twin notions correspond to surveillance and governance, respectively, and have informed central aspects of their study in the social and human sciences. OF DISCIPLINE AND GOVERNMENTALITY Foucault discussed the theme of surveillance, in his now famous work on the birth of the prison (Foucault, 1977), in a manner that ignited the sociological imagination to devote increasing attention to a variety of mechanisms and technologies of control. A study on the transformation of punishment in the modern era, Foucault’s investigation is centrally involved in analyzing the disappearance of punishment as a public and violent spectacle centered on the infliction of pain (public torture) and the emergence of a meticulous surveillance of the soul. Since the second half of the 18th century, Foucault suggests, reform proposals were introduced in matters of punishment that proposed leniency only to enhance intervention and efficiency. Although the prison system originally did not fit this model, detention would become the most typical form of punishment. This peculiar development makes sense, according to Foucault, in terms of the spread of a new form of punishment called discipline. Oriented at the production of docile bodies, discipline involves a series of techniques of surveillance which emphasize a continuous supervision, examination, and normalization of behavior. Like other theatres of disciplinary power (the school, the clinic, the factory), the modern prison has the Panopticon as its most prototypical expression to economically keep and oversee the subject. Modern prisons (unlike the dungeons of the dark) bring its inhabitants to light: the prisoners are seen and overseen and subject to a normalization (through penitence rather than rehabilitation) on the basis of models of medical, economic, and political expertise. The human sciences legitimize and contribute to disciplinary power. Discipline is both discourse and practice. Summarizing the characteristics of discipline, it is a form of power that is productive and useful. Punishment should benefit both the offender and society. It should be useful economically, politically, and socially. Discipline does not come in the typical form of power that excludes and is negatively enforced (as a prohibition). Discipline does not prohibit; instead, it prescribes proper modes of conduct. Disciplinary power is also pervasive throughout society as the Panopticon becomes articulated in multiple institutions outside of the prison as a generalized function of panopticism. The panoptical formula of power through transparency permeates the social body. The relations of disciplinary power cannot be captured in a dichotomy of dominators and dominated: discipline is a machine in which everyone is caught. And power is always related to knowledge which justifies power. Yet, discipline is not the one master-concept of power in the modern age. Instead, power relations today are multiple, of various kinds. The procedures of power today are more diverse than only the disciplinary type, and there remains a trace of torture. Finally, there is also always resistance against power. Disciplinary power is omnipresent but not omnipotent; modern society is disciplinary but not disciplined. Also developed by Foucault and especially widely applied by contemporary post-Foucauldian scholars, the concept of governmentality broadens the perspective of discipline to focus on the objectives of modern power (Foucault, 1991). Governmentality is defined as “the way in which the conduct of a whole of individuals is found implicated, in an ever more marked fashion, in the exercise of sovereign power” (Foucault, 1991, p. 101). Central to Foucault’s notion is that power does not exclude people but that, on the contrary, governmental power centers on the population and its truth by presupposing, measuring, and evaluating individuals in their conduct as living subjects. Especially in 19th-century Europe, Foucault explains, instead of a justification of power in terms of a centered state, power was conceived in terms of an efficient economy directed at furthering the fertility of territories and the health and movements of the population. Governmentality thus broke with any form of state-sanctioned legalism. According to Foucault, governmental power relies in its effectuation on a triple alliance of criminology, statistics, and police (Foucault, 1980, 1984; 1991; see also Deflem, 1997). Indeed, in order to concretize the governmental form of political technology, it was critical to know the population. With respect to criminality, it was criminology which, as the science of the criminal species, provided this knowledge, while criminal statistics uncovered the relevant regularities in the population. Police is understood, not in the contemporary sense as law enforcement, but as “a program of government rationality... to create a system of regulation of the general conduct of individuals whereby everything would be controlled to the point of self-sustenance, without the need for intervention” (Foucault, 1984, p. 241). Corresponding to the objectification of the lives of delinquents in systems of criminological knowledge, governmental policing is targeted at a society of living beings outside and beyond the context of law. This extra-legality does not imply that the practice of police would not be influenced by political and economic developments. However, Foucault maintains, “the type of power that it exercises, the mechanisms it operates and the elements to which it applies them are specific” (Foucault, 1977, p. 213). Clarifying and extending the concepts of discipline and governmentality, the burgeoning scholarly move towards the study of surveillance and governance can be conceptualized, at its most general level, as referring to the instrumental and goal-directed components of modern manifestations of social control, respectively. Importantly, the concept of social control has thereby come to be understood in an increasingly broadened meaning that is no longer tied up exclusively with crime and deviance, but that is applied in a more general sense to a nation, a world, a society of beings. Sometimes, even, scholars have in this direction altogether abandoned the very idea of social control in order to move away from an implied functionality in surveillance and governance towards an observing attitude in terms of risk and suspicion. Not surprisingly, a tendency of postmodernism, implied or explicit, can often be detected in contemporary surveillance studies. AN OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTERS Traditionally, sociologists have contemplated power in terms of the institutions of politics and its modern apex, the state. Yet, because of many of the contemporary changes affecting the institutions and practices of surveillance and governance, it can be argued that social control today is less a domain of the nation-state alone. At the same time perhaps, never before has the state been involved with social control as much as today. Surveillance and control also are no longer an exclusively local or regional affair but extend beyond national boundaries to take up the sphere of the global order. Yet, at once, much control is localized and continues to go “down to the finest grain of the social body” (Foucault, 1977, p. 80). Also, many of the new technologies that a decade ago led to analytical reflections of the highest order today have become banal in their everyday application and routine diffusion. What can sociologists intelligently say about these developments in both empirical and theoretical respects? It is from this perspective that the authors of the present volume were invited to contribute a chapter in which they could freely explore any facet of the broader constellation of contemporary surveillance and governance strategies with respect to both crime control and related developments that push social control processes beyond the concerns of crime and deviance. Based on their research efforts, the contributors were encouraged to offer provocative and thoughtful reflections that can stimulate our theoretical thinking about relevant issues. As this review will make clear, the authors yield the very rich variety that exists in contemporary sociological thinking about surveillance and governance. Part I of this volume brings together contributions that primarily focus on the boundaries that modern surveillance practices attempt to break and the spaces they are applied to. In a study of the Minuteman Project at the southern border of the United States, James Walsh offers a penetrating analysis of the history, ideology, and practices of a peculiar form of citizen surveillance. Walsh argues that such non-state projects, in fact, represent an effort by citizens to align themselves with the surveillance apparatus of the state. In the Canadian context, Kevin Haggerty, Laura Huey, and Richard Ericson analyze the political contests that waged about the installing of CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) surveillance systems in the city of Vancouver. On the basis of interviews, the authors show that the application of such camera systems is not always embraced despite the often propagated attractiveness of such systems. Turning to the city of New York, Kirsten Christiansen examines the intrusion of systems of surveillance and control in large public spaces. She concludes that public urban space greatly impacts our understanding of rights to free speech and assembly, which affects the health of the contemporary democratic process. Taking us on a journey to France, Fabien Jobard and Dominique Linhardt scrutinize the control systems at the international airport of Orly, south of Paris, and in the housing projects in the town of Dammarie-lès-Lys. They draw illuminating comparisons between these very different spaces of surveillance that particularly indicate a strong difference in the intensity of surveillance. Extending the analysis to the international level, Thomas Mathiesen scrutinizes various transnational systems of surveillance, especially in the context of the European Union. This global order, Mathiesen argues, presents a system of control without a state. The chapters in Part II focus on the technological and strategic elements of surveillance and governance. William Staples and Stephanie Decker examine the techniques of house arrest as they are applied in a Midwestern town in the United States. The authors use ethnographic interview data to contemplate on the implications of house arrest for the person’s sense of self in view of the objectives of docility. Scott White also takes on a formal means of social control by investigating the practices enacted by the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) to control activities in the academia. What White’s analysis brings out is the centrality of the extraction of information in modern systems of surveillance. FBI activities are also at the heart of the chapter by David Cunningham and John Noakes in their analysis of counter-intelligence programs. What the authors particularly focus on are the implications of such activities for the course and outcome of social movement activities and, by extension, the lessons thereof for social movements theorists. Focusing on the much discussed CCTV systems, Michael McCahill contemplates on the formation of a plural policing system, extending beyond the confines of formal policing activities. Plural policing, McCahill shows, is blurring the traditional divides between public and private systems of control in a multitude of respects. Part III contains chapters that contemplate on the objectives as well as the counter-objectives of surveillance. Janet Chan examines what she calls the new lateral surveillance, especially as it took place since the events of September 11, that centers on the involvement of citizens in reporting suspicious behavior and people. In this new constellation of state and public collaboration, Chan argues, a new culture of suspicion is formed that, like the high policing efforts of old, is both dangerous and political. Karen Glover centers her analysis on racial profiling strategies that are aimed at racial minorities in the United States. Glover argues that such systems of hyper-surveillance instill in minorities a sense of double-consciousness that separates them from the dominant groups in society. Turning to counter-objectives, Benoît Dupont notes without irony that modern technological systems can also be turned against surveillance strategies. Specifically focused on the use of the internet, Dupont argues that a democratization of surveillance takes place whereby the categories of those who watch and those who are being watched can interchange and shift. Kevin Stenson contemplates on changes including, but also extending beyond, the internet to argue that surveillance scholars ought not to make claims that the nation-state would be disappearing. Instead, Stenson argues, many advanced practices of surveillance are to be seen as extensions of the powers of the sovereign state. In Part IV, finally, a group of chapters examines systems of surveillance that are not primarily focused on matters of crime and deviance. John Gilliom discusses the surveillance aspects of recent educational programs in the United States that have been designed to test the progress of children. Gilliom argues that these educational policies will particularly affect lower-income schools and their students, who are subjected to sanctions and shaming as expressions of power oriented at shaping institutions and those who inhabit them. Nathan Harris and Jennifer Wood also focus on the younger members of society by discussing child-protection programs. Theoretically, the authors raise important matters related to responsive regulation, regulatory theory, and nodal governance. Finally, Minas Samatas examines the curious development in Greece, since the Olympic games were held there in 2004, that implied a movement against the installation of CCTV in matters of traffic control and other surveillance systems. Even though the use of CCTV to secure traffic control and prevent car accidents is widely accepted, the people of Greece are generally opposed to systems because of the burdens posed by the authoritarian political past of the country. Covering analyses that cover surveillance and governance from a plurality of perspectives and centered on a multitude of important components, the chapters in this book collectively show the vibrancy of serious scholarship on the nexus of surveillance and governance. ACKNOWLEDGMENT I am grateful to the authors who contributed to this volume in such exemplary fashion. All who are interested in important theoretical and empirical puzzles surrounding surveillance and governance can learn much from their efforts. I also thank Shannon McDonough for her kind assistance in preparation of this volume. REFERENCES Contemporary Sociology. (2007). A symposium on surveillance studies. Contemporary Sociology, 36, 107-130. Deflem, M. (1997). Surveillance and criminal statistics: Historical foundations of governmentality. In A. Sarat & S. Silbey (Eds), Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Volume 17 (pp. 149-184). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Forrest, J.D. 1896. Anti-monopoly legislation in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 1, 411-425. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977, edited by C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault reader, edited by P. Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds), The Foucault effect (pp. 87-104). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Haggerty, K.D., & R.V. Ericson (Eds). (2006). The new politics of surveillance and visibility. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Langmuir, A.D. 1965. Developing concepts in surveillance. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, 43, 369-372. Lyon, D. (Ed.). (2006). Theorizing surveillance: The Panopticon and beyond. Devon, UK: Willan Publishing. Zurawski, N. (Ed.). (2007). Surveillance studies: Perspektiven eines Forschungsfeldes. Opladen, Germany: Budrich.

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This is an electronic version of a print publication. Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. Deflem, Mathieu. 2008. "Introduction: An Eye on Surveillance and Governance." Pp. 1-8 in Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond, edited by Mathieu Deflem. Bingley, UK: Emerald/JAI Press. www.mathieudeflem.net

Internet Extortion and Information Security (2008)

Internet Extortion and Information Security Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net & Brian Hudak University of South Carolina This is an online copy of a chapter published in Organized Crime: From Trafficking to Terrorism, edited by Frank G. Shanty, pp. 289-292. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008. Also available in print-friendly pdf format. Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu and Brian Hudak. 2008. "Internet Extortion and Information Security." Pp. 289-292 in Organized Crime: From Trafficking to Terrorism, edited by Frank G. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

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In the current age of computers and the internet, crimes can also take on forms that are digital in kind. Cybercrimes include attacks on computer security threatening the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of digital data, or they involve the execution of traditional offenses, such as theft and fraud, by means of computers and computerized networks (Deflem and Shutt forth.; Grabosky and Smith 2001). Among the latter kind of cybercrime is internet extortion (also referred to as digital extortion or cyber extortion). Extortion refers to the making of a particular demand on a person under threat of causing harm (Bednarski 2004; Grabosky, Smith and Dempsey 2001). The object of the extortion demand is often of a monetary nature but can also include non-financial considerations, such as sexual favors or discretionary actions. Extortion activities are typically directed at wealthy individuals or at organizations that have considerable assets. Most nations across the world have laws against extortion, with punishments varying with the degree of seriousness of the circumstances of the offense. Types of Internet Extortion At least five types of internet extortion can be identified (Bednarski 2004; Grabosky, Smith and Dempsey 2001). First, an information system or digital technology, such as the internet or a computer network, can be used as a medium of extortion. For example, in the mid-1990s, a case was exposed whereby a man visited an online chatroom posing as a woman to engage in sexual banter with other visitors. The man would then also pose as the woman’s husband and threaten the other visitors with bodily harm should they not pay a certain amount of money. Because the extortionist did not hide his identity, he was easily discovered and brought to trial. Other such internet extortion schemes involve deliberate attempts to hide one’s identity and the source of communications, for instance by looping and weaving messages through various servers or by establishing email accounts that are anonymous or based on fraudulent credit card information. An extortionist can also use encryption methods to communicate in secrecy with the targeted victim on public forums such as a computer bulletin board. Second, in other extortion plots, the digital technology may become the target of the threat. The technology itself may be valuable to the victim because of the information and data that it contains or, as in the case of the websites, because it is a source of income or represents an important element in a person’s or organization’s public image. Extortion threats have been reported whereby the owners of websites were threatened to have their posted information deleted. On other occasions, the webpages were already disabled after which a threat was made to have the website restored. Another manifestation of this form of internet extortion is website defacement, whereby a website is transformed into pages that contain obscenities or a weblink pointing to a competing organization. A related method of internet extortion is a denial-of-service attack that makes websites unusable. In February 2004, for example, such attacks were launched against the website of the Recording Industry Association of America with a demand to stop prosecuting people who share music on the internet. When the demand was not met, the website became temporarily inaccessible. Internet gambling sites have been among the preferred targets of denial-of-service attacks. A few years ago, for example, some individuals emailed the operator of the Bet Costa Rica International Sportsbook website, which receives about $2 billion in bets every year. The emailers demanded $40,000 under threat of disabling the site. In a third form, the digital technology can be used as a medium for the disclosure of embarrassing or harmful information about the victim. The word-wide popularity of the internet has made it possible for information about people and institutions to be available to a global community of spectators. Extortion cases are known whereby celebrities were threatened to have embarrassing pictures posted online unless payments were made. Fourth, a digital information system can be used as a means of enabling payments or for concealing payments that are part of an extortion plot. In traditional forms of extortion, the moment that payment is made typically exposes the extortionist to the victim, who might have solicited the help of law enforcement authorities. With the internet, however, online payments can be made that involve electronic transfers to various accounts in multiple jurisdictions. And, fifth, digital technologies can be used as additional instruments in an extortion scheme. The internet contains a lot of information about people, oftentimes posted without their knowledge, and such information can be easily gathered with the help of search engines and software packages. It is relatively easy for an extortionist to so find out embarrassing details about a potential victim. Characteristics of Internet Extortion Internet extortion schemes are observed in many parts of the world (Bednarski 2004). Especially at a more organized level, internet extortion has been repeatedly discovered in the Eastern European countries that have only relatively recently seen their economies move to a free market model. The resulting enhanced opportunities of legitimate economic conduct have also brought about new means for illegitimate enterprises. In most advanced-capitalist nations of the world, however, these opportunities have long existed and fueled an individualist culture that besides many legitimate actions also facilitates extortion. Internet extortion is thus a truly global phenomenon. The perpetrators of internet extortion can be singular individuals as well as organized crime groups. For example, a group of hackers who had unsuccessfully tried to extort the credit card company Visa, demanding several million dollars in return for credit card information they had stolen, upon their arrest turned out to be a relatively small group of people in their late teens and early twenties. Similarly, the members of a Russian extortion gang, which had demanded several thousands of dollars from owners of gambling websites, were discovered to be just three people, one of whom was a 21-year old college student. On a more organized level, some cyber extortionists function as ‘information merchants,’ who conduct a veritable business in the sale of information and extortion schemes to obtain substantial monetary profits (Bednarski 2004). The response to extortion threats by the targeted victims also differs. When few years ago a gambling website received an extortion threat a week before a major sport event, the company that owned the site decided not to pay the extortionists, resulting in a two-day period of denial-of-service attacks that disabled the site. But other site owners have given in to the extortion demands. The gambling site MVPsportsbook, for instance, paid extortionists a sum of money that was asked for, because it was judged financially beneficial to do so relative to losing revenue from a disabling of the site. Regulation and Enforcement Policies Like other cybercrimes, internet extortion has been subject to legal regulation and law enforcement control (Grabosky, Smith and Dempsey 2001). Existing laws on extortion can be applied to internet extortion schemes, but many countries have passed separate laws concerning extortion involving digital technologies. In the United States, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1996), for instance, criminalizes any act of extortion involving computerized means. Other legal means to suppress extortion involve the application of regulations related to extortion cases, such as by means of copyright laws that protect information and on the basis of confidentiality clauses that prohibit to reveal certain kinds of information. From a policy viewpoint, the popularity of the internet and its spread across the globe pose special problems of law enforcement related to the technological sophistication and international nature of many cybercrimes (Deflem and Shutt, forth.; Grabosky, Smith and Dempsey 2001). Many nations have developed explicit criminal codes against cybercrimes. Accompanying these new laws, law enforcement units specializing in cybercrimes and other high-technological offenses have been set up within the police and security services of many nations. International cooperation among these law enforcement units in extortion cases can rely on Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties that specify cooperation in various aspects of investigation and prosecution. An important challenge for law enforcement in the case of internet extortion is to retrieve the identity and location of the perpetrator. Encryption of electronic messages enhances the difficulties in tracing the source of internet extortion. And, as is the case with all forms of extortion, the victims of internet extortion schemes are not always willing to report the offense and reveal their vulnerability. Preventive measures are therefore in order to protect against potential extortion schemes in cyberspace. Bibliography Bednarski, Gregory M. 2004. “Enumerating and Reducing the Threat of Transnational Cyber Extortion against Small and Medium Size Organizations.” InformationWeek (September 2004). Available online at: http://www.informationweek.com/1005/report.htm (Date of access: February 16, 2005). Deflem, Mathieu, and John E. Shutt. Forth. “Law Enforcement and Computer Security Threats and Measures.” In The Handbook of Information Security, edited by Hossein Bidgoli. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, forthcoming. Denning, Dorothy E. and William E. Baugh, Jr. 2000. “Hiding Crimes in Cyberspace.” Pp. 107-131 in Cybercrime: Law Enforcement, Security and Surveillance in the Information Age, edited by Douglas Thomas and Brian D. Loader. London: Routledge. Grabosky, Peter and Russell G. Smith. 2001. “Telecommunication Fraud in the Digital Age: The Convergence of Technologies.” Pp. 29-43 in Crime and the Internet, edited by David S. Wall. London: Routledge. Grabosky, Peter, Russell G. Smith, and Gillian Dempsey. 2001. Electronic Theft: Unlawful Acquisition in Cyberspace. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu and Brian Hudak. 2008. "Internet Extortion and Information Security." Pp. 289-292 in Organized Crime: From Trafficking to Terrorism, edited by Frank G. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. www.mathieudeflem.net

Policing the Pearl: Historical Transformations of Law Enforcement in Hong Kong (2008)

POLICING THE PEARL Historical Transformations of Law Enforcement in Hong Kong Mathieu Deflem deflem@sc.edu www.mathieudeflem.net & Richard Featherstone University of Northern Iowa & Yunqing Li New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services & Suzanne Sutphin University of South Carolina This is an electronic version of an article published in International Journal of Police Science and Management, 10(3):349-356, Autumn 2008. Also available in print-friendly pdf format. Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu, Richard Featherstone, Yunqing Li, and Suzanne Sutphin. 2008. “Policing the Pearl: Historical Transformations of Law Enforcement in Hong Kong.” International Journal of Police Science and Management 10(3):349-356.

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ABSTRACT In this article we discuss historical patterns and dynamics of policing in Hong Kong since the formation of the first police force in the then British colony in 1844 until the handover to China in 1997 when a policy of ‘one country, two systems’ was implemented. We specifically focus on the changes that took place in the organisation of the police function and how these changes responded to shifting socio-structural conditions in political, economic and legal respects and, comparatively, to what extent institutional dynamics of Hong Kong police organisation and culture were responsible for dominant policing styles. We argue that the case of Hong Kong policing shows that internal developments of police culture and police management are, independently from broader societal developments, essential components to bring about changes towards the adoption of civilian police practices that enjoy both effectiveness and accountability. INTRODUCTION The institutions and practices of policing in Hong Kong have traditionally not received much attention in the professional literature. More recent years, however, have witnessed an increase in relevant research, which is no doubt a function of the peculiar history of Hong Kong (Jiao, 2002, 2007; Lau, 2004a, 2004b; Lo & Cheuk, 2004). The case is of special interest, indeed, because of Hong Kong’s peculiar status and transition from a British crown colony to a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. Under these conditions of societal change, a critical examination can be undertaken of the impact of political, economic and legal developments on policing, on the one hand, and the influence of institutional traditions and police management practices, on the other. A historical inquiry of the Hong Kong police can, in this respect, offer important insights towards establishing effective police practices that abide by standards of accountability. In this paper, we offer such an inquiry in view of theoretical questions concerning the dynamics of police behaviour as well as with respect to practical concerns of police management, especially in matters of police corruption. We begin our analysis by focusing on the organisation of policing in Hong Kong during the period of British rule. Subsequently, we will concentrate on the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, and discuss the importance of institutional dynamics relative to the changing societal context in the transformation of policing in Hong Kong. POLICING THE CROWN COLONY OF HONG KONG The Hong Kong Police (hereafter HKP) has often been described as possessing a paramilitary structure oriented at maintaining public order and suppressing public disturbances, rather than being engaged in the civilian police functions of crime control. The origins of the paramilitary functions of the HKP are not surprising as the first police forces in Hong Kong were part and parcel of British colonialism. Yet, scholars disagree on how long the HKP has remained a paramilitary force. Three positions can be distinguished: (1) the paramilitary nature of the HKP faded away during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the force adopted a focus on crime control (Gaylord & Traver, 1995; Traver & Gaylord, 1991); (2) the agency’s strict centralised command and control approach continued until the 1997 handover to China (Lo & Cheuk, 2004); and (3) the paramilitary traditions have remained influential in the HKP to this day (Jiao, 2002; Jiao, Lau, & Lui, 2005; Lau, 2004a). The paramilitary nature of the HKP is historically linked to the British control of Hong Kong after the First Opium War in 1842 (Gaylord & Traver, 1995; Jiao, 2007; Lau, 2004b; Vagg, 1994; see also the HKP official website at http:www.info.gov.hk/ police/). A police force was established in Hong Kong as early as 1844 with the primary function of securing law and order and suppressing protest against British rule. This initial stage of policing in Hong Kong Policing the Pearl: historical transformations of law enforcement in Hong Kong represented a makeshift enforcement of control, using a haphazard collection of misfits from the army. Because ethnic Chinese citizens were considered untrustworthy for the purposes of colonial enforcement, personnel were largely recruited from other British overseas territories. As a result of low pay and a high number of dismissals and resignations of police officers, the turnover among constables was great and the police force unstable. The HKP was therefore reformed after the model of the Royal Irish Constabulary and recruits from India were enlisted. The new force was more efficient, but it also appeared to the indigenous Chinese as an occupying army and therefore enjoyed very little legitimacy. Maintaining public order for a long time remained the HKP’s primary focus, while crime control was of relatively little concern. The paramilitary policing style implied a confrontational approach oriented at enforcing obedience through coercive means. Police squads were organised as military units and trained to respond forcefully to community disorder. Police stations were constructed like military fortresses, which citizens feared to approach. The ethnic make-up of the HKP was a matter of special concern. While some local inhabitants were recruited to serve on the police, especially as translators, they did not constitute the majority of constables until the late 1940s, when many Indian constables of the HKP chose to return to their home country which had been granted independence. Subsequently, local Chinese began to join the police and quickly made up about 75 per cent of the force. Yet, the majority of Hong Kong’s higher ranking officers remained foreigners. The first ethnic Chinese Commissioner of Police was not put in office until 1989. By 1990, 97 per cent of the Hong Kong police were ethnic Chinese, but as late as the mid 1990s, 60 per cent of the 500 top senior level officers were still expatriates. The separation between police and public that was created by the force’s ethnic composition was additionally reinforced by an undemocratic and tightly centralised control structure, whereby the police commissioner answered solely to the colonial governor and paid little attention to community residents. The HKP remained a quasi-military arm of the colonial government for at least 100 years. Scholars differ, however, as to whether or when the force transformed into a professional organisation dedicated to crime control and concerned with serving the public. One position, held by Gaylord and Traver (1995; see also Traver & Gaylord, 1991), is that by the early 1960s the HKP transformed into a crime-fighting force because an increase in public policies and ordinances had became irritating to the economically prospering Hong Kong population. Because police officers were the enforcers of unpopular rules, a public relations problem developed. To combat the police’s image problem and to lessen criticisms from the public, the HKP administration established a press section to control the flow and character of crime news and police information. The overarching goal of this new section was to convince the public that it needed to be protected from crime and disorder and that the HKP could fulfil this role. The Chinese Cultural Revolution created a serious crisis which put the HKP in a new and, ironically, opportunistic situation (Gaylord & Traver, 1995; Vagg, 1991, 1996). When the Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong began to take action against some of his political opponents in China, the devastating internal fight within China that ensued also spread into Hong Kong. In the latter half of 1967, pro- Communist groups operating in Hong Kong attempted to destabilise the colonial government by creating violent disturbances throughout the community. Police Deflem et al. Page 351 were called on to suppress riots, diffuse bombs and raid suspected terrorist groups. The aims of the pro-Communist groups backfired as the community resented the disruptions, while the police, in turn, received much support from the community and could improve its public image. In 1969, the police was officially named the Royal Hong Kong Police, a designation that remained in force until the handover. The HKP seized on its improved status by strengthening its public relations role and by launching a new anti-crime programme. In the early 1970s, a ‘Fight Violent Crime Campaign’ encouraged a partnership between the police and the community in combating personal and property offences. Thus, Gaylord and Traver (1995) maintain, the HKP began to undergo major transformations and moved away from its colonial past to become a more professional police force that was responsive to the community. This development, it is argued, continued during the 1980s, when a Public Information Bureau was set up to promote crime reports to the police from within neighbourhood communities and schools. Over hundreds of ‘Reporting Centres’ and ‘Neighbourhood Policing Units’ were opened to allow the public to report crimes to, or request information from, the police. According to Lo and Cheuk (2004), however, the late 1960s and early 1970s only signalled the early beginnings of a process that later led the HKP to abandon its paramilitary model of policing. While the authors agree that the unrests of the late 1960s were critical in starting the demilitarisation process, they suggest that it took the HKP another three decades, until the transition of Hong Kong to China in 1997, before the practices of colonial policing were finally left behind. Lo and Cheuk’s (2004) reasons for suggesting such a late transformation of the HKP are specifically based on their analysis of Hong Kong’s evolving community policing strategy. Between 1968 and 1973, the HKP mainly used community policing practices to relax tensions with the public, without an actual interest in crime control tasks. Not until the transfer to China in 1997 would the HKP actually have begun to work with the community to deter crime and improve police services. HONG KONG AFTER 1997: ONE COUNTRY, TWO SYSTEMS A third position on the paramilitary nature of the police in Hong Kong is defended by Raymond Lau and Allan Jiao (Jiao, 2002; Jiao, Lau, & Lui, 2005; Lau, 2004a, 2004b) and suggests that the HKP has not yet been able to move away from a paramilitary model, despite the fact that the handover to China has implied considerable political and legal changes. At the political level, the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 was formally agreed upon in the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, which set up the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Man, 2006; Mushkat, 1997; Tai, 1994). Summarised under the heading of ‘one country, two systems,’ the Basic Law grants Hong Kong autonomy in matters of legislative, executive and judicial powers, with the exception of foreign affairs and defence for which the Chinese Government remains the sole authority. The Chinese Government is also authorised to intervene in any disturbance that might turn Hong Kong against the mainland, for which reason a People’s Army force is stationed within Hong Kong’s borders. Hong Kong also retains a separate common law system in which the power of final adjudication is exercised through a Court of Final Appeal. This provision is noteworthy in light of the fact that laws in Communist China are ordinarily interpreted by the legislature, not by the courts Policing the Pearl: historical transformations of law enforcement in Hong Kong Page 352 (which are allowed only to enforce the law). Since 1997, the Hong Kong police has been formally renamed the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Police Force. On an organisational level, personnel changes were among the more immediate consequences of the handover to China. As British expatriates abandoned their senior positions, the organisation of the HKP underwent rapid restructuring, and many local ethnic Chinese middle-level officers were promoted. To deal with the concern that a close link with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security might undermine the autonomy of the HKP, Chinese officials have given formal assurance through a socalled three ‘No’s’ programme: there would be no retaliation against police who had engaged in anti-communist work, no change in the working conditions of the police service, and no interference from the People’s Liberation Army in the policing of Hong Kong. Police scholars Lau and Jiao argue against the notion that the paramilitary nature of the Hong Kong police has faded completely and maintain that it, instead, still provides an institutional impediment towards change. As evinced by the failure of recent efforts to institutionalise community policing in the socially and ethnically divided community of Hong Kong (Lau, 2004a), the HKP has made mostly superficial improvements in its organisation and practice. The function of law enforcement had in fact already begun to become a greater concern for the HKP in the early 1970s, when the colonial government began to address unfavourable opinion about the police among the public at large. In order to boost the legitimacy of the colonial government, then governor Murray Mac- Lehose initiated a proposal to create a professional police force with a primary focus on law enforcement. Lau (2004a) suggests that this effort was at least partly effective and that relations between police and public had improved. However, this relative improvement was primarily due to the government’s success at eliminating police corruption and not because of the HKP’s actual dedication to police–community relations. The HKP simply added crime control to its overall mission, while continuing to maintain public order by coercive means, in line with the long-standing paramilitary traditions. Offering support for the institutional position is the finding that community policing and public relations practices have not received wide support among members of the HKP (Lau, 2004a, 2004b). Most Hong Kong officers are provided very little formal training in managing conflicts which they may have with citizens. Also, the typical HKP officer values Police Tactical Units that focus on public order concerns more than Neighbourhood Police Units designed to promote positive relations between the police and the public. The prevailing attitude among most Hong Kong officers that serving the public is not a core police value is reinforced by the HKP’s emphasis on more traditional and coercive police activities. For example, ‘hard tactics’ such as random sweeps of night clubs are routine procedures regularly carried out by the HKP. According to Lau (2004b), the institutionalisation of the HKP’s paramilitary approach is the result of at least three factors. First, the historical experience has traditionally emphasised a separation between the police and the public. This orientation possesses its own inertia as indicated by a HKP officer’s contention that ‘police attitudes towards the public are very difficult to change’ (Lau, 2004b, p. 10). Second, police administrators encourage the continuation of paramilitary traditions. Operational protocol requires new recruits to go through a tour of duty with the Police Tactical Unit, which is highly militarised, Deflem et al. Page 353 emphasises riot control techniques and preaches the need for aggressive internal security. The HKP’s top management defends this unit and promotes its own flawed public opinion surveys to suggest that the public is highly satisfied with the police. Although external surveys, such as those conducted by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, indicate a very poor public impression of the HKP, the HKP administration sees little reason to change direction. A third reason for the continued relevance of the HKP’s paramilitary approach is that the public accepts the current situation because its presumed advantages to help Hong Kong maintain a stable and competitive economy. Essentially, the populace believes that the hard-line tactics of the HKP are necessary to protect it from potential disorder and criminal exploitation. More in-depth research is surely needed on the transformation and current conditions of policing in Hong Kong to enable a firm stance to be taken in the discussions on the paramilitary functions of the HKP. It is noteworthy, however, that although police scholars differ on the impact of paramilitary policing styles and the relevance of external and institutional dynamics, they agree that the HKP experienced significant changes during the 1970s. These changes were brought about by an independent investigation that was launched against police corruption. It is instructive to our analysis that the response to the corruption problem, more than any other issue, prompted a revolution in how the HKP was to function. The crackdown on police corruption in the 1970s was the driving force for wider policing reforms, even if not all of its paramilitary traditions were abandoned. To understand the dynamics of these transformations, a closer look at the history of police corruption in Hong Kong is required. THE CENTRALITY OF POLICE ORGANISATION: CORRUPTION AS A CATALYST FOR CHANGE In addition to using heavy-handed and military-style tactics, the HKP was historically steeped in corruption problems (Jiao, 2007; Vagg, 1991). Corruption among the HKP was primarily a result of the relatively widespread practice that Chinese magistrates and their representatives in the nineteenth century expected a certain amount of payoffs from their citizens. These cultural expectations passed over into Hong Kong society and there met with little opposition from the British rulers. Historically, also, Hong Kong police officers were poorly paid and therefore pursued supplementary income by protecting or operating illegal vice operations. Police corruption did not always escape official notice. In 1871, a quarter of the police force was dismissed for corruption, drunkenness, or incompetence. And in 1897, 76 members of the HKP, from the rank of inspector to constable, were dismissed or forced to resign due to corruption investigations (Vagg, 1991). As both a legal and public relations problem, corruption continued to plague the HKP into the twentieth century. Various mechanisms were implemented to deal with the problem (Lau, 2004b; Vagg, 1991, 1996). In 1948, a Prevention of Bribery Ordinance was created, but to little avail. In 1952, an Anti-Corruption Branch was formed within the HKP, but it was largely ineffective. In 1960, a commission was established independent from the HKP to investigate and resolve the problem, yet it made little headway. Police corruption had become an accepted part of Hong Kong society. It was not until the 1960s that more consequential action was taken against the growing menace of corruption among the HKP. A number of factors combined to make police corruption a problem simply Policing the Pearl: historical transformations of law enforcement in Hong Kong Page 354 too difficult to ignore. First, corruption among police officers became so widespread that victims of police extortion began to complain publicly about the situation. Second, citizens began to realise that the police were collaborating with the triads, threatening to delegitimise the entire criminal justice system. With public resentment mounting, the situation reached a boiling point in 1973 when a Chief Superintendent in the HKP, who was being investigated for corruption, avoided prosecution by using his police credentials to flee Hong Kong. In response, the governor of Hong Kong created an Independent Commission Against Corruption in February 1974. The commission was surprisingly effective in curbing the problem in a relatively short period of time. It is important to our analysis in this paper that the results of the corruption investigation in the HKP went far beyond the punishment of corrupt police officers and also transformed the force more fundamentally. Although the HKP had already become more sensitive to public relations management following the 1967 suppression of pro-Communist riots, the corruption scandal brought about an even more resolute commitment to improve the image of the police. The governor and the police commissioner not only pushed for an investigation into the problem of corruption among the police, they then also launched a new community policing initiative. Thus, rather than being driven by certain crime problems, Hong Kong’s community policing programmes of the 1970s were largely a result of the HKP seeking to establish its position and reputation among the public in the wake of the corruption scandal. Ironically, the anti-police corruption crackdown was also responsible for a subsequent increase in crime during the 1970s (Gaylord & Traver, 1995; Lau, 2004b; see also the HKP official website at http:// www.info.gov.hk/police/). The crime rate rose during this period, not so much because of an increase in criminal activity, but because the HKP was more engaged in the policing of criminality as a result of the increased focus on law enforcement and an accompanying decline in order maintenance tasks in the wake of the break-up of the alliance between police and triads. The HKP was now more professionally committed to adopting law enforcement skills to control both street-level and organised crime. Relatedly, the corruption scandal also pushed the HKP to change its command structure. While ethnic Chinese participation in the HKP had steadily increased since the late 1940s, most senior HKP administrators were, for a considerable period of time, not of Chinese origin. The gradual transformation in the ethnic makeup of the HKP gained momentum in the wake of the corruption scandal, when the police was criticised for being managed by foreigners. Hence, the corruption investigations of the early 1970s contributed to at least a partial demilitarisation of the HKP and its advancement towards becoming a professional crime-fighting force. CONCLUSION The case of the historical transformation of Hong Kong police is not only revealing in terms of the path of policing in a process of colonisation and decolonisation, it also has broader relevance regarding the relative weight of external pressures and institutional dynamics in the transformation of the police function and police organisation. Although police experts disagree on this matter, it is clear, at a minimum, that the paramilitary traditions that historically dominated the Hong Kong police constrained the institution’s move towards professionalisation. Evidence also suggests that whatever external pressures exist to bring about change towards professionalism, they need to be strong enough and sufficiently Deflem et al. Page 355 convincing to higher police administrators to overcome institutional obstacles effectively. In the case of the corruption crackdown in the Hong Kong Police during the 1960s and early 1970s, such momentous transformations were accomplished, specifically by launching community policing initiatives, an increased focus on crime control, and the promotion of ethnic Chinese officers to important administrative positions. What this analysis suggests is that important changes in policing styles cannot simply be expected to occur as a result of political, economic, or legal changes, but that police administrators need to work actively from within their institutions towards the creation of a responsive and responsible police organisation. REFERENCES Gaylord, M.S., & Traver, H. (1995). Colonial Policing and the Demise of British Rule in Hong Kong. International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 23, 23–43. Jiao, A.Y. (2002). Organizational Behaviors and Political Sensitivities: Policing Hong Kong After 1997. Public Administration and Policy, 11(1), 41–60. Jiao, A.Y. (2007). The Police in Hong Kong: A Contemporary View. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Jiao, A.Y., Lau, R.W.K., & Lui, P. (2005). An Institutional Analysis of Organizational Change: The Case of the Hong Kong Police. International Criminal Justice Review, 15(1), 38–57. Lau, R.W.K. (2004a). Community Policing in Hong Kong: Transplanting a Questionable Model. Criminal Justice, 4(1), 61–80. Lau, R.W.K. (2004b). History as Obstacle to Change: A Neo-Institutionalist Analysis of Police Reform in Hong Kong. International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 32(1), 1–15. Lo, C.W.-H., & Cheuk, A.C.-Y. (2004). Community Policing in Hong Kong: Development, Performance and Constraints. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 27(1), 97–127. Man, S.W. (2006). Law, Autonomy, and Politics: The Changing Socio-Political Roles of Law in Postcolonial Hong Kong. International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 34, 64–83. Mushkat, R. (1997). One Country, Two International Legal Personalities: The Case of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Tai, Y.-T.B. (1994). The Basic Law: Hong Kong’s Post-1997 Constitutional Framework. In M.S. Gaylord & H. Traver (Eds.), Introduction to the Hong Kong Criminal Justice System (pp. 173–184). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Traver, H., & Gaylord, M.S. (1991) The Royal Hong Kong Police. In H. Traver & J. Vagg (Eds.), Crime and Justice in Hong Kong (pp. 98–110). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Vagg, J. (1991). Policing Hong Kong. Policing and Society, 1, 235–247. Vagg, J. (1994). Crime and its Control in Hong Kong: Recent Developments and Future Prospects. In B.K.P. Leung & T.C. Young (Eds.), Twenty-Five Years of Social and Economic Development in Hong Kong (pp. 357–378). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Vagg, J. (1996). The Legitimations of Policing in Hong Kong: A Non-Democratic Perspective. In O. Marenin (Ed.), Policing Change, Changing Police: International Perspectives (pp. 107–134). New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc. Mathieu Deflem is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA. His research interests include counterterrorism, international police cooperation, abortion policy, and theory, amongst others. He is the author of Sociology of Law (2008) and Policing World Society (2002), and the editor of Surveillance and Governance (2008), Sociologists in a Global Age (2007), Sociological Theory and Criminological Research (2006), Habermas, Modernity and Law (1996), and Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (2004). Richard Featherstone is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Northern Iowa. His most recent research focuses on the connection between family process variables and juvenile delinquency. He is also working with local law enforcement on a crime mapping project in Black Hawk County, Iowa. Yunqing Li is a senior researcher of older adult health and ageing issues in New Jersey in the Center for Health Statistics, New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. She holds a doctoral degree in sociology with expertise in the area of health and ageing. Dr Li’s recent research on social integration and well-being of older adults appeared in Journal of Health and Social Behavior and Social Forces. Her current work focuses on a multi-level analysis of the association between acculturation and health risk factors among New Jersey immigrants. Suzanne Sutphin is an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests are in the area of social inequality, specifically, race, class and gender. Currently, she is involved in a qualitative study to examine the role of the police during Hurricane Katrina.

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This is an electronic copy of a print publication. Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu, Richard Featherstone, Yunqing Li, and Suzanne Sutphin. 2008. “Policing the Pearl: Historical Transformations of Law Enforcement in Hong Kong.” International Journal of Police Science and Management 10(3):349-356. www.mathieudeflem.net