Mathieu Deflem Publications Blog

Welcome

2012-02-01T02:01:00.001-05:00

This blog contains online copies of my publications, as a back-up to my website which is maintained at the URL www.mathieudeflem.net. You can visit my website for more information about my work. This blog is searchable via the Google link in the sidebar. A list of my publications is provided below.

Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu

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PUBLICATIONS LIST

The linked titles in the list below are available on this blog. All writings are single-authored by Mathieu Deflem unless mentioned otherwise. For more information about other sources and other aspects of my work, go to my website www.mathieudeflem.net.

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BOOKS

2010 The Policing of Terrorism: Organizational and Global Perspectives. New York: Routledge. See www.polterror.net.

2008 Sociology of Law: Visions of a Scholarly Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See www.socoflaw.net.

2002 Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. See book info page. Available as pdf!

Check my YouTube Channel for related videos.

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EDITED BOOKS

2011 Economic Crisis and Crime. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Includes Introduction: Criminological Perspectives of the Crisis. Pp. ix-xii.

2010 Popular Culture, Crime, and Social Control. Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance, Volume 14. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Includes: "Introduction: The Criminology of Popular Culture" (pp. ix-xi).

2008 Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond. Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance, Volume 10. Bingley, UK: Emerald/JAI Press. Includes: “Introduction: An Eye on Surveillance and Governance” (pp. 1-8).

2007 Sociologists in a Global Age: Biographical Perspectives. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Includes: “Introduction: Sociologists in a Global Age” (pp. 1-11).

2006 Sociological Theory and Criminological Research: Views from Europe and the United States. Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance, Volume 7. Amsterdam: Elsevier/JAI Press. Includes: “Introduction: The Bearing of Sociological Theory on Criminological Research” (pp. 1-6).

2004 Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Criminological Perspectives. Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance, Volume 5. Amsterdam: Elsevier/JAI Press. Includes: “Introduction: Towards a Criminology of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism” (pp. 1-6).

1996 Habermas, Modernity and Law. London: Sage Publications. Includes: “Introduction: Law in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action” (pp. 1-20). Available online!

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ARTICLES & CHAPTERS

2011 Policing the Modern City: Local Counterterrorism in the United States. Pp. 261-267 in Counter Terrorism in Diverse Communities, edited by Siddik Ekici. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

2011 The Sociological Discourse on Human Rights: Lessons from the Sociology of Law. (with Stephen Chicoine). Development and Society 40(1):101-115.

2011 Policing Afghanistan: Civilian Police Reform and the Resurgence of the Taliban. Pp. 114-124 in The Routledge Handbook of War and Society: Iraq and Afghanistan, edited by Steven Carlton-Ford & Morten G. Ender. London: Routledge.

2010 “Police and Counter-Terrorism: A Sociological Theory of International Cooperation.” Pp. 163-172 in Emerging Transnational (In)security Governance: A Statist-Transnationalist Approach, edited by Ersel Aydinli. London: Routledge.

2010 “International Law Enforcement Organizations.” (first author, with Shannon McDonough). Pp. 127-148 in Comparative and International Policing, Justice, and Transnational Crime, edited by Sesha Kethineni. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

2009 “Policing Katrina: Managing Law Enforcement in New Orleans.” (first author, with Suzanne Sutphin). Policing 3(1):41-49.

2008 “Policing the Pearl: Historical Transformations of Law Enforcement in Hong Kong.” (first author, with Richard Featherstone, Yunqing Li, and Suzanne Sutphin). International Journal of Police Science and Management 10(3):349-356.

2007 “Is the United States Ready for Future Catastrophes? Estimating the Effectiveness of Organizations for Hazard Mitigation Since 9/11.” (third author, with Aytül Kasapo?lu and Dennis S. Mileti). Journal of Homeland Security, September 2007, online.

2007 “Alfred Hitchcock and Sociological Theory: Parsons Goes to the Movies.” Sociation Today 5(1), online.

2007 “International Police Cooperation Against Terrorism: Interpol and Europol in Comparison.” Pp. 17-25 in Understanding and Responding to Terrorism, edited by H. Durmaz, B. Sevinc, A.S. Yayla, and S. Ekici. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

2006 “Jurisprudencia sociológica y sociología del derecho” (Spanish: Sociological Jurisprudence and Sociology of Law). Opinión Jurídica 5(10):107-119.

2006 “Policing Post-War Iraq: Insurgency, Civilian Police, and the Reconstruction of Society.” (first author, with Suzanne Sutphin). Sociological Focus 39(4):265-283.

2006 “Europol and the Policing of International Terrorism: Counter-Terrorism in a Global Perspective.” Justice Quarterly 23(3):336-359.

2006 “Global Rule of Law or Global Rule of Law Enforcement? International Police Cooperation and Counter-Terrorism.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 603:240-251.

2006 “Revisiting Merton: Continuities in the Theory of Anomie-and-Opportunity-Structures” (second author, with Sanjay Marwah). Pp. 57-76 in Sociological Theory and Criminological Research: Views from Europe and the United States, ed. by M. Deflem. Sociology of Crime, Law, and Deviance, Volume 7. Amsterdam: Elsevier/JAI Press.

2006 “Law Enforcement and Computer Security Threats and Measures.” (first author, with J. Eagle Shutt). Pp. 200-209 in The Handbook of Information Security, Volume 2: Information Warfare; Social, Legal, and International Issues; and Security Foundations, edited by Hossein Bidgoli. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.

2005 “‘Wild Beasts Without Nationality’: The Uncertain Origins of Interpol, 1898-1910.” Pp. 275-285 in The Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice, edited by Philip Reichel. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2005 “Interpol and the Policing of International Terrorism: Developments and Dynamics since September 11.” (first author, with Lindsay C. Maybin). Pp. 175-191 in Terrorism: Research, Readings, & Realities, edited by Lynne L. Snowden and Bradley C. Whitsel. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

2005 “Whose Face at the Border? Homeland Security and Border Policing Since 9/11.” (second author, with J. Eagle Shutt). Journal of Social and Ecological Boundaries 1(2):81-105.

2005 “Governmentality and the War on Terror: FBI Project Carnivore and the Diffusion of Disciplinary Power.” (third author, with Holly Ventura and J. Mitchell Miller). Critical Criminology 13(1):55-70.

2004 “Social Control and the Policing of Terrorism: Foundations for a Sociology of Counter-Terrorism.” The American Sociologist 35(2):75-92.

2004 “The Boundaries of International Cooperation: Problems and Prospects of U.S.-Mexican Police Relations.” Pp. 93-122 in Police Corruption: Challenges for Developed Countries—Comparative Issues and Commissions of Inquiry, edited by Menachem Amir and Stanley Einstein. Huntsville, TX: Office of International Criminal Justice.

2003 “Anomie and Strain: Context and Consequences of Merton’s Two Theories.” (second author, with Richard Featherstone). Sociological Inquiry 73(4):471-489.

2003 “The Sociology of the Sociology of Money: Simmel and the Contemporary Battle of the Classics.” Journal of Classical Sociology 3(1):67-96.

2002 “Technology and the Internationalization of Policing: A Comparative-Historical Perspective.” Justice Quarterly 19(3):453-475.

2002 “The Logic of Nazification: The Case of the International Criminal Police Commission (‘Interpol’).” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 43(1):21-44.

2001 “International Police Cooperation in Northern America: A Review of Practices, Strategies, and Goals in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.” Pp. 71-98 in International Police Cooperation: A World Perspective, edited by Daniel J. Koenig and Dilip K. Das. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

2001 “Comparative Criminal Justice.” (first author, with Amanda J. Swygart). Pp. 51-68 in Handbook of Criminal Justice Administration, edited by Toni DuPont-Morales, Michael Hooper, and Judy Schmidt. New York: Marcel Dekker Publishers.

2000 “Bureaucratization and Social Control: Historical Foundations of International Policing.” Law & Society Review 34(3):601-640.

1999 “Warfare, Political Leadership, and State Formation: The Case of the Zulu Kingdom, 1808-1879.” Ethnology 38(4):371-391.

1999 “Ferdinand Tönnies on Crime and Society: An Unexplored Contribution to Criminological Sociology.” History of the Human Sciences 12(3):87-116.

1998 “The Boundaries of Abortion Law: Systems Theory from Parsons to Luhmann and Habermas.” Social Forces 76(3):775-818.

1998 “The Democratic Deficit Revisited: Considering the Politics of Criminal Justice.” Pp. 111-117 in Politique, police et justice au bord du futur: Mélanges pour et avec Lode Van Outrive, edited by Y. Cartuyvels and others. Paris: L’Harmattan.

1997 “Surveillance and Criminal Statistics: Historical Foundations of Governmentality.” Pp. 149-184 in Studies in Law, Politics and Society, Volume 17, edited by Austin Sarat and Susan Silbey. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

1996 “International Policing in 19th-Century Europe: The Police Union of German States, 1851-1866.” International Criminal Justice Review 6:36-57.

1996 “The Myth of Post-National Identity: Popular Support for European Unification.” (first author, with Fred C. Pampel). Social Forces 75(1):119-143.

1996 “Profit and Penality: An Analysis of the Corrections-Commercial Complex.” (second author, with J. Robert Lilly). Crime and Delinquency 42(1):3-20.

1996 “Discourstheorie, Strafrecht, en Criminologie.” Panopticon 16(1):86-96.

1995 “Théorie du Discours, Droit Pénal, et Criminologie.” (French: Discourse Theory, Criminal Law, and Criminology). Déviance et Société 19(4):325-338.

1995 “Corruption, Law and Justice: A Conceptual Clarification.” Journal of Criminal Justice 23(3):243-258.

1994 “Social Control and the Theory of Communicative Action.” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 22(4):355-373.

1994 “Law Enforcement in British Colonial Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Imperial Policing in Nyasaland, the Gold Coast, and Kenya.” Police Studies 17(1):45-68.

1994 “La Notion de Droit dans la Théorie de l’Agir Communicationnel de Jürgen Habermas.” (French: The Notion of Law in Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action). Déviance et Société 18(1):95-120.

1993 “Penologie en Profijt: Een Exploratief Onderzoek naar de Bestraffingsindustrie.” (Dutch). Delikt & Delinkwent 23(6):511-527.

1992 “Jürgen Habermas -Pflegevater oder Sorgenkind der abolitionistischen Perspektive?” (German: Jürgen Habermas -Foster Parent or Problem Child of the Abolitionist Perspective). Kriminologisches Journal 24(2):82-97.

1992 “The Invisibilities of Social Control.” Crime, Law and Social Change 18(1/2):177-192.

1992 “De Communicatie-Theoretische Benadering van het Recht: Fundamenten en Kritieken van de Rechtssociologie van Jürgen Habermas.” (Dutch: The Communicative Theory of Law: Foundations and Criticisms of Jürgen Habermas’s Sociology of Law). Recht en Kritiek 18(3):235-258.

1991 “Ritual, Anti-Structure, and Religion: A Discussion of Victor Turner’s Processual Symbolic Analysis.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30(1):1-25.

1991 “Kritische Theorie, Misdaad en (De)Criminalisering: Jürgen Habermas als Criminoloog?” (Dutch: Critical Theory, Crime, and [De]Criminalization: Jürgen Habermas as a Criminologist?). Panopticon 12(4):330-351.

1991 “Sociologie en Sociale Controle: Politie, Undercover, en Technologie.” (Dutch: Sociology and Social Control: Police, Undercover, and Technology). Panopticon 12(5):475-482.

1989 “From Anomie to Anomia and Anomic Depression: A Sociological Critique on the Use of Anomie in Psychiatric Research.” Social Science and Medicine 29(5):627-634.

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ESSAYS

forth. “Interpol.” In The Encyclopedia of Global Studies, edited by Mark Juergensmeyer & Helmut Anheier. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, in press.

2011 Elite-Engineered Moral Panics. (with Stephen Chicoine). In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.

2011 International Drug Policies: International Cooperation. (with Stephen Chicoine). In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.

2011 International Drug Agencies. (with Shannon McDonnough). In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.

2010 “Author’s Response: Writing the Sociology of Law.”Pro Bono, Newsletter of the SSSP Law & Society Division.

2009 “Ending the War on the War on Terror.” Review essay of Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad: How to Be a Counterintelligence Officer, by William R. Johnson; and Under Construction: Making Homeland Security at the Local Level, by Kerry B. Fosher. Contexts 78(4):76-78.

2009 “Terrorism.” Pp. 533-540 in 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook, edited by J. Mitchell Miller. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2009 “Police.” In The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, edited by Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

2009 “Interpol.” Pp. 179-181 in The Sage Dictionary of Policing, edited by Alison Wakefield and Jenny Fleming. London: Sage Publications.

2009 “Bureaucratization." Pp. 14-16 in The Sage Dictionary of Policing, edited by Alison Wakefield and Jenny Fleming. London: Sage Publications.

2008 “Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism Approaches.” Pp. 929-931 in Encyclopedia of Social Problems, edited by Vincent N. Parrillo. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2008 “Terrorism, Domestic Spying” (first author, with Lisa Dilks). Pp. 931-933 in Encyclopedia of Social Problems, edited by Vincent N. Parrillo. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2008 “Interpol.” Pp. 198-199 in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, edited by Peter N. Stearns. New York: Oxford University Press.

2008 “Internet Extortion and Information Security” (first author, with Brian Hudak). Pp. 289-292 in Organized Crime: From Trafficking to Terrorism, edited by Frank G. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

2008 “International Money Laundering Control: Law Enforcement Issues” (first author, with Kyle Irwin). Pp. 243-246 in Organized Crime: From Trafficking to Terrorism, edited by Frank G. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

2007 “Useless Tilly (et al.): Teaching Comparative-Historical Sociology Wisely.” Trajectories, Newsletter of the ASA Comparative & Historical Sociology section, 19(1):14-17.

2007 “Het Criminele Denken” (Dutch: Criminal Thought). Karakter: Tijdschrift van Wetenschap 18:22-24.

2007 “Crime, International Response to.” Pp. 330-331 in Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives, edited by David S. Clark. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2007 “Sociological Theories of Law.” Pp. 1410-1413 in Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives, edited by David S. Clark. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

2007 “International Policing.” Pp. 701-705 in the Encyclopedia of Police Science, Third Edition, edited by Jack R. Greene. New York: Routledge.

2007 “Policing.” Pp. 970-973 in Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by Roland Robertson, and Jan Aart Scholte. New York: Routledge.

2007 “Legal Profession.” Pp. 2583-2584 in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by George Ritzer. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

2007 “Anomie.” Pp. 144-146 in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by George Ritzer. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

2007 “Public Sociology, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet.” The Journal of Professional and Public Sociology (inaugural issue), online.

2006 “Extradition, International” (first author, with Kyle Irwin). Pp. 352-354 in Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties, edited by Otis H. Stephens, Jr., John M. Scheb II, and Kara E. Stooksbury. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

2006 “Federal Bureau of Investigation." Pp. 360-361 in Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties, edited by Otis H. Stephens, Jr., John M. Scheb II, and Kara E. Stooksbury. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

2006 “Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act” (first author, with Brian Hudak). Pp. 407-408 in Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties, edited by Otis H. Stephens, Jr., John M. Scheb II, and Kara E. Stooksbury. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

2005 “Tribal Modernity? Reflections on Mounira Charrad’s States and Women’s Rights.” Political Sociology: States, Power, and Societies, ASA Political Sociology section newsletter, 12(1):6-8.

2005 “Author’s Preface: Policing World Society Before and Since September 11,” and “Author’s Response: The Sociology, Law, and Politics of International Policing.” Part of a symposium on my book Policing World Society. Law Enforcement Executive Forum 5(4):63-65, 78-81.

2005 “Response to the Discussants.” Symposium on ‘Book (Author) Meets Dissertation (Authors): Policing World Society by Mathieu Deflem.’ Amici, ASA Sociology of Law section newsletter, 12(2):6-8.

2005 “Reading Terrorism and Terrorists.” Review essay of The New Jackals by Simon Reeve, In Bad Company by Mark Hamm, and Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction by Charles Townsend. Theoretical Criminology 9(2):231-236.

2005 “International Police Cooperation —History of." Pp. 795-798 in The Encyclopedia of Criminology, edited by Richard A. Wright and J. Mitchell Miller. New York: Routledge.

2005 “International Policing —The Role of the United States.” Pp. 808-812 in The Encyclopedia of Criminology, edited by Richard A. Wright and J. Mitchell Miller. New York: Routledge.

2005 “Southernizing Social Forces.” The Southern Sociologist, Newsletter of the Southern Sociological Society, 36(3):12-15.

2004 “The Ends of the State: Anarchy, Terror, and Police, 1851 to 9-11.” Comparative & Historical Sociology Newsletter, ASA Section newsletter, 16(1):3-5.

2004 “The War in Iraq and the Peace of San Francisco: Breaking the Code of Public Sociology.” Peace, War & Social Conflict, Newsletter of the ASA section, November issue, pp. 3-5.

2004 “Theory, Abortion, Policing, Terrorism.” Perspectives, ASA Theory Section newsletter, 27(2):6, 25-27.

2002 “Law Enforcement 9-11: Questioning the Policing of International Terrorism.” Pro Bono, Newsletter of the SSSP Law & Society Division, 9(1):5-9.

2002 “Teaching Criminal Justice in Liberal Arts Education: A Sociologist’s Confessions.” ACJS Today, Newsletter of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, 22(2):1, 3-5.

2001 “cybertheory.htm: Sociological Theory on the Internet.” Perspectives, ASA Theory Section Newsletter, 23(3):5-6,8.

2001 “Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936).” In the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, edited by Edward Craig. London: Routledge. Online: http://www.rep.routledge.com.

2001 “Smuggling.” (first author, with Kelly Henry-Turner). Pp. 473-475 in the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior, Volume 2: Crime and Juvenile Delinquency, edited by David Luckenbill and Dennis L. Peck. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner-Routledge.

2000 “University4Sale-dot-com: The Educational Cost of Free Notes on the Internet.” Footnotes, ASA newsletter, 28(4):6-7. Revised op-ed versions: “The Educational Costs of Free Online Lecture Notes,” The Stanford Review 23(2), October 1999; “University4Sale.com: The Educational Cost of Posted Lecture Notes on the Internet,” AFT On Campus (April 2000); “Dot-Coms in Our Lecture Halls,” The Harvard Crimson (March 9, 2000).

1999 “Teaching Theory For Sociology Students: Junior Notes.” Perspectives, ASA Theory Section Newsletter 21(2):7-8.

1999 “The Global Reach of Law Enforcement: Implications for Practicing Social Problems Theory.” Social Problems Theory Division Newsletter (April 1999):1-3.

1998 “International Criminal Justice on the Internet.” Inter-Section, Newsletter of the International Section of the ACJS (Summer 1998):1-4.

1997 “Policing International Society: Views from the United States.” Review essay of Cops Across Borders by Ethan A. Nadelmann, and Crime and Law Enforcement in the Global Village edited by William F. McDonald. Police Forum 7(3):6-8.

1997 “The Globalization of Heartland Terror: Reflections on the Oklahoma City Bombing.” The Critical Criminologist, Newsletter of the ASC Critical Criminology Division (Fall 1997):5.

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UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS

2007 "The Concept of Social Control: Theories and Applications." Presented at the conference on "Charities as Instruments of Social Control in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Université de Haute Bretagne (Rennes 2), Rennes, France, November 22-23, 2007.

2007 "Comparative and Historical Sociology: Lecture Notes." Unpublished paper.

2000 "University4Sale.com: The Educational Cost of Free Lecture Notes on the Internet." Unpublished paper.

1999 "Classical Sociological Theory." Unpublished paper.

1999 "Resisting the Commodification of Education: University Policies Against Commercial Lecture Notes Companies." Unpublished paper.

1999 "Power/Knowledge, Society and Truth: Notes on the work of Michel Foucault." Unpublished notes.

1998 "An Introduction to Research Design." Unpublished paper.

1997 "On the Methodology of Historical Sociology: Scattered Notes." Unpublished paper.

1993 "Rap, Rock, and Censorship: Popular Culture and the Technologies of Justice." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, Chicago, May 27-30, 1993.

1988 Processual Symbolic Analysis in the Writings of Victor W. Turner. Unpublished M.A. dissertation, The University of Hull, England.

1986 Anomie als Sociologisch Probleem. Unpublished M.A. Thesis (Licentiaatsverhandeling), Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven.

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BOOK REVIEWS

2010 The Vertigo of Late Modernity, by Jock Young. Unpublished book review. Available exclusively online.

2010 The Sociology of Deviance: Differences, Tradition, and Stigma, by Robert J. Franzese. Teaching Sociology 38(4):392-393.

2010 The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener. Global Change, Peace and Security 22(1):152-153.

2009 The Judge in a Democracy, by Aharon Barak. The European Legacy 14(6).

2009 Controlling Crime, Controlling Society: Thinking about Crime in Europe and America, by Dario Melossi. Contemporary Sociology 39(1):65-66.

2009 Punishment and Culture, by Philip Smith. Social Forces 88(1):481-482.

2009 The Character of Harms: Operational Challenges in Control, by Malcolm K. Sparrow. Contemporary Sociology 38(5):481-482.

2009 The Rewards of Punishment: A Relational Theory of Norm Enforcement, by Christine Horne. International Review of Modern Sociology 35(2):333-335.

2009 Women, Crime and Social Harm: Towards a Criminology for the Global Era, edited by Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe. Law & Politics Book Review 19(8):587-589, August 2009.

2009 Governing Through Globalized Crime: Futures for International Criminal Justice, by Mark Findlay. Contemporary Sociology 38(2):153-154.

2009 The Technology of Policing: Crime Mapping, Information Technology, and the Rationality of Crime Control, by Peter K. Manning. American Journal of Sociology 115(1):255-257.

2009 Surveillance, Crime and Social Control, edited by C. Norris & D. Wilson. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 51(1), online.

2008 Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics, by John Torpey. American Journal of Sociology 114(1):256-258.

2008 Terrorism and the Limitation of Rights: The ECHR and the US Constitution, by Stefan Sottiaux. Law & Politics Book Review 18(7):673-676.

2008 “Our Small Global World.” Review of Ethnicities and Global Multiculture: Pants for an Octopus, by Jan Nederveen Pieterse. International Studies Review 10(1):134-136.

2008 Crime, Police and Penal Policy: European Experiences 1750-1940, by Clive Emsley. British Journal of Criminology 48(1):102-104.

2008 Terrorism as Crime: From Oklahoma City to Al-Qaeda and Beyond, by Mark S. Hamm. Contemporary Sociology 37(1):62-63.

2007 Police Stories: Building the French State 1815-1851, by John Merriman. Journal of Social History 41(2):507-509.

2007 In the Common Defense: National Security Law for Perilous Times, by James E. Baker. Law and Politics Book Review 17(9):727-730.

2007 Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between the Wars, by Clifford Rosenberg. International Review of Social History 52(2):303-305.

2007 Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency, by Richard Posner. Law and Politics Book Review 17(3):205-207.

2007 Citizens, Cops, and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community, by Steve Herbert. Law and Society Review 41(1):255-257.

2006 The War on Terrorism and the Rule of Law, by Richard M. Pious. Law and Politics Book Review 16(10):860-862.

2006 Protecting Liberty in an Age of Terror, by Philip Heymann and Juliette Kayyem. Contemporary Security Policy 27(2):355-357.

2006 Lessons From International/Comparative Criminology/Criminal Justice, edited by John Winterdyk and Liqun Cao. International Criminal Justice Review 16(1):45-46.

2006 The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict, by Yoram Dinstein. Law and Politics Book Review 16(3):195-197.

2005 The Cultural Realm of European Integration: Social Representations in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, by Antonio V. Menéndez-Alarcón. American Journal of Sociology 111(3):948-950.

2005 “A Global Perspective on Globalization.” Review of Globalization: People, Perspectives, and Progress, by William H. Mott, IV. International Studies Review 7:337-339.

2005 Framing Europe: Attitudes to European Integration in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom, by Juan Díez Medrano. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 11(2):291-294.

2005 The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity, by Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber. Social Forces 83(3):1302-1303.

2004 Punishment, Places and Perpetrators: Developments in Criminology and Criminal Justice Research, edited by Gerben Bruinsma, Henk Effers, and Jan de Keijser. Law and Politics Book Review 14(9):716-718.

2004 Comparative Criminal Justice, by Francis Pakes. British Journal of Criminology 44(5):821-823.

2004 Criminal Justice and Political Cultures, edited by Tim Newburn and Richard Sparks. Law and Politics Book Review 14(7):534-537.

2003 Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity, by Niklas Luhmann. American Journal of Sociology 108(5):1168-1170.

2003 Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning Without War, by Philip B. Heymann. Law and Politics Book Review 13(12), December.

2003 The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America, by Katherine Becket and Theodore Sasson. Contemporary Justice Review 6(2):205-206.

2002 Informers: Policing, Policy, Practice, edited by Roger Billingsley, Teresa Nemitz, and Philip Bean. International Criminal Justice Review 12:143-144.

2002 Terrorism Today, by Christopher C. Harmon. Journal of Contingencies & Crisis Management 10(1):50-51.

2001 Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest, by Michael Welch. American Journal of Sociology 106(6):1822-1824.

2001 Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society, edited by Kevin Anderson and Richard Quinney. Contemporary Sociology 30(4):400-401.

2001 Les Prisons de la Misère, by Loïc Wacquant. Punishment and Society 3(2):307-309.

1999 The Future of Anomie Theory, edited by Nikos Passas and Robert Agnew. Social Forces 78(1):364-366.

1998 International Law as Law of the United States, by Jordan J. Paust. European Journal of International Law 9(4):765-767.

1998 Police, Drugs and Community, by Mike Collison. SSSP Newsletter 29(1):33-35.

1997 Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe v. Wade, by Carole Joffe. American Journal of Sociology 103(3):808-809.

1996 A Theory About Control, by Jack P. Gibbs. Contemporary Sociology 25(4):571-572.

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OTHER (notes, letters)

2009 “Frans in Genk”. Letter (in Dutch). Het Belang van Limburg (Belgium), June 12, 2009, p. 63.

2008 “That’s in a Name: Concerning the ASA Career Award.” ASA Forum Letter. Footnotes, the ASA Newsletter, 36(3):8.

2007 “Preface” (with Huseyin Durmaz) and “Closing Remarks.” Pp. v, 395-397 in Understanding and Responding to Terrorism, edited by H. Durmaz, B. Sevinc, A.S. Yayla, and S. Ekici. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

2006 Letter to the Editor (In response to “Why Sociology Does Not Need To Be Saved,” by Neil McLaughlin, Lisa Kowalchuk, and Kerry Turcotte). The American Sociologist 37(1):81-82.

2006 “Single-Issue Voting Tactic?” Public Forum Letter. Footnotes, the ASA Newsletter, 34(5):12. Followed by a comment by Christine E. Bose and Catherine Zimmer, “ASA Candidates: Reply to Deflem,” Footnotes, 34(6):8; and Response by Deflem: “Response to SWS,” Ibid.

2006 “Police Classifications Don’t Fit in Media.” Letter. The Gamecock, March 22, 2006, p. 8.

2005 “Sociologists, One More Effort! A Propos Goodwin.” Comparative & Historical Sociology, ASA Section newsletter, 16(2):4-6. With a response by Jeff Goodwin (ibid. pp. 6-7).

2005 Preface to Narratives from the 1971 Attica Prison Riot: Toward a New Theory of Correctional Disturbances, by Richard Featherstone, pp. i-iii. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.

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1999-2000 Letters related to my “Free Education Now!” campaign.

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More information via www.mathieudeflem.net.

The Sociological Discourse on Human Rights: Lessons from the Sociology of Law (2011)

2011-08-19T17:03:00.002-04:00

The Sociological Discourse on Human Rights:
Lessons from the Sociology of Law
Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
&
Stephen Chicoine
University of South Carolina

This is an online copy of a print publication in Development and Society 40(1):101-115, June 2011.

Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu and Stephen Chicoine. 2011. "The Sociological Discourse on Human Rights: Lessons from the Sociology of Law." Development and Society 40(1):101-115.

Abstract

Since when, how, and why have sociologists discussed human rights in their work? In which forms of theoretical and empirical inquiry have such investigations been conducted, and what are some of their consequences for the praxis of sociology as well as for our understanding of human rights? We focus on the manner in which sociologists have conceptualized human rights and approached the topic from a number of analytical perspectives. In general, human rights have only recently begun to move sociologists in any noteworthy degree. This paper traces the difficult birth of a sociology of human rights relative to the place of the notion of rights in the sociology of law. This paper also ponders on the enthusiastic turn towards human rights in more recent times and criticizes some the reasons for this generous embrace of human rights. This critique is intended to enable rather than impede a truly sociological sociology of (human rights.

Introduction

In recent decades, the topic of human rights has taken on a more prominent role than ever in the discipline of sociology. What are the conditions and consequences of this adoption into sociology of a subject matter that for the better part of the development of the discipline was absent from its core as well as its periphery? In this paper, we will focus on some lessons for the sociology of human rights from the viewpoint of the sociology of law and the treatment, in this specialty area, of rights and human rights.

We begin our observations by briefly and no doubt incompletely reviewing certain key issues in the contemporary sociological literature on human rights, especially focusing on the programmatic statements that have been formulated in order to make sense of the newly emerging specialty of the sociology of human rights. Such a programmatic framework is necessary for research and additionally, one might hope and suspect, could contribute alongside of other disciplinary approaches to the study of human rights. We then confront the key elements of the sociological human rights program with insights from the sociology of law. Finally, we extend the discussion on the proper role of sociological knowledge, which underlie much of the sociological debate on human rights, in order to formulate some thoughts on the prospects for a veritable sociology of human rights.

A Sociology of the Sociology of Human Rights

It will be useful to clarify what it is we are discussing when evaluating the development and state of the sociology of human rights in order to highlight some of the problems and prospects identified with the sociological study of human rights as they have been articulated by the practitioners of this specialty. This review of the sociology of human rights cannot be said to be based on a well-developed expertise within this growing area of thought. Yet, focusing on certain influential programmatic statements on the sociology of human rights, certain central themes may nonetheless be detected that can be validly addressed from the viewpoint of the sociology of law.

The Sociological Tradition

In almost all programmatic statements about the sociology of human rights, the classical tradition of sociology is seen as generally inhospitable towards the adoption of human rights as a sociological subject matter (see Morris, 2006). Human rights sociologists such as Bryan Turner (1993, 2006, 2009) and Gideon Sjoberg (et al. 2001; Vaughan and Sjoberg, 1986) have argued that the classical social theorists declined to adopt rights as a legitimate area of study. This traditional resistance against taking up human rights in sociology is held to result from a purported positivistic tendency which would have been imbedded in sociology from the very start. By example, Bryan Turner (1993) argues that Emile Durkheim approached law and rights from a positivistic standpoint, focusing on legal norms as social facts, and thus demarcating the differing tasks of philosophy and sociology. Notions of just and unjust law and rights could in these terms only be approached as a matter of (dys)functionality. Turner criticizes Max Weber’s work along similar lines, as revealing a positivistic tendency to view modern law as a rationalized system that dispenses with questions on the universally valid normative foundations of law. Weber’s methodological orientation of value-freedom is also said to hinder the study of human rights.

Sociologists of human rights have likewise criticized the writings of Karl Marx, despite that body of work’s clear philosophical orientations. The reasons for concern are different than in the cases that are made against Durkheim and Weber. Rather than challenging Marx’s work with positivism, it is the Marxian critique of human rights that is being criticized. Marx argued that human rights, such as those expressed during the French Revolution, were essentially individual liberty rights rather than social equality rights. The discourse on human rights, according to Marx, operates as a facade to mask concrete conditions of economic inequality. Thus, as Anthony Woodiwiss (2009) suggests, Marx reduces human rights to their purported role in capitalist social life. Yet, while ignoring the value of (the study of ) rights in terms of an economic-deterministic model, it can be learned from Marx that the notion of human rights is a construct that is produced through social relations. For Marx, naturally, these rights are rights of freedom that not only do not entail, but explicitly run contrary to, social rights of equality, thus even exacerbating conditions of (economic) inequality. Related to the Marxian critique, R.W. Connel (1995) has argued that the hesitancy of sociology to engage in the study of human rights is due to the conflict between sociology’s holistic approach and the liberal individualism associated with the discourse on rights.

Institutionalized Human Rights

The liberal reading of rights, which sociologists of human rights argue to be one of the obstacles towards the development of a sociology of human rights, is already a specific interpretation and a concrete realization of rights in (Western) societies. Sociologists of human rights therefore suggest, as does Woodiwiss (2009), that it needs to be taken seriously that human rights and the discourse(s) on human rights take place within a specific socio-historical context. Rights always exist socially as concrete claims and institutionalized measures. Importantly, sociologists of human rights argue, these institutionalizations of human rights need not be restricted to legal norms. In fact, with respect to the legal institutionalization of human rights, sociologists of human rights often argue against the restricted idea that human rights must relate to legal protections. Law becomes a suspect category in the sociological discourse on human rights. For this reason, it can be assumed, Woodiwiss (2009) mentions the work of H.L.A. Hart as among the first explicitly formulated sociological perspectives of human rights. Yet, Woodiwiss argues, Hart developed a human rights approach that was based on a legal-positivistic framework.

Even some experts in the sociology of law have warned against certain perspectives on the legality of human rights. John Hagan and Ron Levi (2007) argue that when a scholarly approach is restricted to the institutional boundaries of human rights law, there is a danger of the analysis becoming confined to a technical arena of jurisprudence, which is not conducive to questions of substantive human rights justice. The language of law then becomes the predominant or even the exclusive means to communicate about human rights and human rights violations, not the needs and perceptions of those to whom human rights apply. As a result, it would become difficult to discuss human rights violations separate from law and the legal processes through which they are enforced.

As a correlate to the legality of human rights, other human rights sociologists have related human rights with the notion of citizenship. Bryan Turner (1993), most clearly, argues that citizenship has served as a substitute for the study of human rights. This substitution, however, has only displaced the problem of taking rights seriously in sociology because citizenship always involves rights. Besides, the human rights of the global era move beyond citizenship, because citizenship remains bound to nation-states. Turner (1993) therefore argues in favor of a perspective that recognizes the institutionalization of human rights as a central component of globalization, thus becoming more and more a fact of social life, whereby human rights are defined as (social) claims for institutionalized protection. Likewise shifting the focus away from (nation-state) law and citizenship, Connell (1995) treats rights in terms of the mobilization of rights in social movements.

The Boundaries of Sociology (as Practice)

Analyzing the slow development of the sociology of human rights, Margaret Somers and Christopher Roberts (2008) view the obstacles broader than the intellectual foundations of sociology and also consider the position and ideal role of sociology as a social practice. Thus, they argue that sociologists have avoided human rights because of a resistance to philosophical questions. In social research, consequently, human rights are often dispensed with in favor of citizenship studies. As another impediment, finally, human rights present a conceptual problem in terms of finding a widely agreed upon definition.

Somers and Roberts go a step further and in a different direction than Bryan Turner and other human rights sociologists by arguing that a sociology of human rights should entail a transcending, negotiating, or deconstructing of the obstacles of social sciences resistance to foundationalism and normativity. Additionally, the conflict between the universality and abstractness of rights, on the one hand, and the social and institutional characteristics of citizenship, on the other, must be overcome, as must the hierarchical privileging of civil and political rights over socioeconomic rights. Somers and Roberts thus discuss more fundamentally the professional boundaries and role of sociology. They suggest that a sociology of human rights need not be afraid to take up normative issues into its analysis. From a similar viewpoint, Gideon Sjoberg and colleagues argue that a sociological focus on the moral order, as a social reality, implies that moral inquiry in sociology is justified (Sjoberg et al., 2001). While sociologists typically have trouble approaching universal concepts, the authors argue, applying such universal principles to empirical situations would be illuminating.

From this review it is clear that sociologists of human rights have criticized the classical tradition of sociology because of its presumed impotence to study rights. As a more specific component of this critique, a focus on the legal institutionalization of human rights is seen as imposing an unwarranted constraint on the sociological study of human rights. We will argue that this dual critique is misplaced and suggest that sociology, in general, and the sociology of law, in particular, are the victims of a misguided criticisms by sociologists of human rights. Our arguments relate to both the sociology of law as it has emanated from the classics as well as to the broader role sociology should play, both intellectually as well as socially.

(Human) Rights: Lessons from the Sociology of Law

The first author of this paper has recently reviewed the history and systematics of the sociology of law in the form of a book-length study (Deflem, 2008). Although this work does not offer a complete review of all developments in this sociological specialty, the study was comprehensively aimed at laying bare the intellectual and institutional contours of the sociological study of law. Whatever the merits of the work, it is striking to observe that there are only three mentions of human rights in the book. Additionally telling is the fact that the term rights was mentioned well over 100 times. A brief discussion of these usages of human rights and rights in the sociology of law may reveal some essential characteristics of both the realizations and limitations of the development of a sociology of human rights from within the specialty of the sociology of law.

Human Rights and Law

In the sociology of law, the theme of human rights is discussed exclusively with respect to the globalization of law and the internationalization of law and justice. In her work on the development of the global prohibition regime against female genital cutting, for example, Elizabeth Heger Boyle (2002) observes that there are important variations in the processes whereby national legislations have been passed and, additionally, what the impact is of these laws on genital-cutting practices, despite the fact that the practice has in recent years universally been outlawed. Boyle argues that the movement to prohibit female genital cutting has been motivated by concerns over health, gender equality, violence against women and children, and human rights.

In the work of sociologist John Hagan, the theme of human rights is approached in terms of the development of an international criminal court (Hagan et al., 2006). Hagan argues that the prospects of such a globally recognized court can rely on a new global consensus on norms, especially with respect to human rights. Several concrete legal developments can be seen as institutionalizations of such a discourse. The successful operation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia shows that advances in a global spread of the rule of law may be possible as part of a trend towards the global diffusion of democratic norms and human rights. However, the prospects of a global court are not favorable in view of the inability (or refusal) of the international community to intervene in certain conflicts involving genocide and war crimes (e.g., Darfur). Additionally hindering the effective installation and implementation of a global legal regime is the refusal of some partners in the world community, especially those politically and economically strong nations whose positions can have ripple effects into other national contexts. There still exists today this thing called national sovereignty.

In the context of the sociology of law, mention should finally also be made of the fact that the globalization of law (as globalization in general) is often understood in highly normative terms which relate closely to a likewise normative discourse on human rights. Heinz Klug (2005), for instance, argues in favor of an emerging field of transnational human rights on the basis of an integration of the domains of (international) human rights, humanitarian law, and constitutional rights. Underlying this approach is a conception of law as being inescapably close related to normative concerns, whereby the globalization of law, specifically, is intimately tied to a global discourse on rights, which becomes almost unavoidably connected to human rights.

Law and Rights

In stark contrast with the underdeveloped discussions of human rights in the sociology of law stands a very elaborate tradition of a rights discourse and related research in this sociological specialty field. Restricting this discussion to some of the most poignant discussions of rights in the sociology of law, both classic and modern, some of the key characteristics of this tradition can here be reviewed.

While classical sociology was born out of the dual traditions of social philosophy (Europe) and social policy (United States) and from there sought to itself as an academic enterprise, there did not occur an expulsion of rights from the classical sociological discourse. Quite to the contrary, for classical sociology was deeply invested in seeing to contribute to the multiple discourses on rights on the basis of the accomplishments of sociological scholarship. Various classical scholars can be mentioned in this respect. William Graham Sumner, for instance, in his 1906 book Folkways argued that the customs of a society can turn into mores that become endowed with sanctions (Sumner, 1906). Embedded within these mores are rights, which Sumner conceives as ethical conceptions of justice. Importantly, Sumner argues that mores can also develop into laws, yet that laws can never fully or adequately express rights.

While other examples can be mentioned of classical scholars discussing rights within a scholarly framework (e.g., Ferdinand Tönnies, see Deflem, 2008), the work of Emile Durkheim stands at the apex of the classical sociology of rights. Particularly relevant in this respect are Durkheim’s lectures on professional ethics and civic morals (Durkheim, 1900). In this series of lectures, Durkheim devoted special attention to the role of the state in the creation of rights (see Deflem, 2008).

Durkheim conceives of moral and juridical facts as the observable expressions of morals and rights. In contemporary (organic) society, Durkheim argues, crimes against the person and against personal property arouse the greatest resentment and receive the harshest sanction because they violate a morality that places the qualities of the individual above all else. The rules concerning crimes against the person and against property extend beyond the boundaries of any particular society.

By example, Durkheim analyzes the evolution and nature of property rights as the basis for a sociological theory of contract and contract law. Private property, he maintains, is a right to possession that is exclusive, at least towards other individuals, as in some circumstances the state may still claim certain rights. The basis of this private property right is not the thing that is owned nor the sacred or divine blessing it has received, but society as such, for society endows property with an exclusive right. The social basis of this right is articulated in the contract.

The modern sociology of law has been more ambivalent towards a discussion of rights. In fact, most analyses on rights in the multidisciplinary field of law and society studies have taken place, and continue to take place, in jurisprudence and in the philosophy of law, not in the more specialized field of legal sociology. Looking at discussions on rights in the contemporary sociology of law of the past few decades, it is striking that the most conspicuous and intellectually challenging contribution has come from Jürgen Habermas, from a scholar, in other words, who essentially merges philosophical and sociological perspectives. In his historical work on the evolution of the juridification of rights, Habermas (1981) analyzes the development of welfare law in the context of the (European) welfare state. It is the gradual unfolding of individual and social rights in this development that is of special interest to the theme of this paper.

Historically, Habermas argues, four waves of juridification can be described. First, in the traditional bourgeois states of the absolutist regimes in Europe, the expansion of the capitalist economy was accompanied by the development of civil laws that grant liberal freedom rights and obligations to private persons engaged in contractual relations on the market. Second, with the development of constitutional states, the private rights of citizens to life, liberty, and property are constitutionally guaranteed over and against the political sovereign, who is now bound by law to not interfere with these rights. The right to participate in government is granted during a third juridification wave when, under the influence of the French Revolution, democratic constitutional states develop and political participation rights are granted in the form of an expansion of voting rights. Finally, during the twentieth century, the democratic welfare state develops and welfare regulations bridle the workings of the free-market system in order to ensure a modicum of economic equality.

Importantly, Habermas’s perspective on the evolution of (legally guaranteed) rights lays bare the development of individual (freedom) and social (equality) rights. This co-existence of rights is basic to, and indeed imbedded within, human rights, even when, or at least to the extent that, the discourse of human rights does not recognize this fundamental conflict.

Whatever the specific merits of the sociological treatment of rights, it is clear that rights have de facto received attention in sociology in a way that is not restricted to any so-called positivistic conception of sociology. The sociology of law has devoted attention —a decidedly sociological attention— to the study of rights within a broader framework of study oriented to the analysis of law. It is a mere function of the thematic orientation of the sociology of law that this understanding of rights always relates to law. More critically, from the viewpoint of building a sociology of human rights, the sociology of law shows that a sociology of rights is possible.

What sociologists of human rights in their criticisms fundamentally regret, we suspect, is not any inability on the part of sociology to study rights, and hence to study human rights (as rights), but the simple fact that sociology cannot by virtue of its disciplinary boundaries engage in philosophical ways to the analysis of (human) rights. Sociologists of human rights appear to regret to be sociologists. Their problem is not that sociology is not more than sociology but that sociology cannot be more than sociology. This understanding of the possibilities of a sociology of human rights relates, more broadly, to the fundamental tasks of sociology.

The Rights (and Obligations) of Sociology

The famous description by C. Wright Mills on the various roles of the sociologist remains one of the most explicit formulations of the rights (and duties) of the sociological profession. Mills (1959) differentiates the philosopher-king from the royal advisor and the social-science scholar guided by the sociological imagination. The philosopher-king represents the model of the social scientist who takes full command of the political agenda on the basis of acquired expertise and knowledge. The royal advisor bureaucratically recommends the most efficient means for whatever ends that are determined by the king. And in the role Mills advocates, finally, the sociologist unites private troubles and public issues and is directed at kings and publics alike. It is the role of this sociologist inspired by the sociological imagination that is also favored by many sociologists of human rights and that, in American sociology, has recently been adopted and promoted under the banner of so-called public sociology.

Human Rights Sociology as Public Sociology?

The background of the curious development of public sociology need not entertain us here (see Deflem, 2004, 2007). What is striking and relevant in the context of this paper is that many of the comments made by public sociology, especially concerning their discontents about sociology as it exists, harmonize with the criticisms raised by sociologists of human rights against traditional sociology. Public sociology “defines, promotes and informs public debate about class and racial inequalities, new gender regimes, environmental degradation, multiculturalism, technological revolutions, market fundamentalism, and state and non-state violence” (cited in Deflem, 2007). Public sociologists not only study these issues; they also seek to “challenge the world as we know it, exposing the gap between what is and what could be” (ibidem).

The normative orientation of public sociology is eerily reminiscent of some of the pleas made by sociologists of human rights. But there is an immediate problem with this perspective because it imposes a dual limitation. First, public sociology is limited to specific topics of research and, as we know from some advocates of public sociology, human rights is among the favored subject matters (e.g., Blau and Moncada, 2007; Burawoy, 2006). Second, the objectives of public sociology, like many of the programmatic proposals of a sociology of human rights, are not merely oriented at analyzing the social world; they additionally and importantly seek to challenge the world.

Transgressions of Human Rights Sociology

To the extent that the sociology of human rights is a manifestation of, or at least harmonizes with, public sociology, we argue, it is a fractioned and perverted sociology. Let us briefly consider some of the indicators of this distortion.

(1) The activism of human rights sociology. Quoting from the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre, Bryan Turner (2009) makes the unwittingly telling comment that MacIntyre put it “brilliantly” when he argued against value-freedom in social science by stating that one could never argue, from a value-neutral viewpoint, that a political regime collapsed because it was unjust or illegitimate. In truth, however, a sociological perspective committed to analysis rather than critique reveals that a political regime can fail when it is considered unjust or illegitimate. Rather than continuing to be immersed in a sociological regret, the sociology of human rights should have the courage to become sociological.

(2) The absolutism of the human rights discourse. Human rights sociologists typically position themselves as supporters of human rights to promote the development of ways to curtail human rights violations and find ways to institutionalize human rights protections. But who is or who can be against human rights? And if we cannot be against human rights, does it imply that we also must, rather than can, accept a human rights sociology? The normativity of human rights sociology at the least appears to demonize its opponents. A constructionist view instead would urge sociologists to focus on the cultural construction of human rights and on the social reality of human rights, including its use and violations thereof. Abandoning an essentialist understanding of human rights will enable an authentic sociology of human rights as much as the expulsion of natural law from the history of social thought enabled the development of the sociology of law.

(3) The krypto-legalism of human rights sociology. While critiquing the restricted vision of legalized human rights institutionalizations, sociologists of human rights rely on the law as an efficient instrument to prevent or respond to human rights violations (e.g., Blau and Moncada, 2007). This legalistic viewpoint is especially curious in light of the ample research that exists in the area of sociology of law and criminological sociology that shows the (potential) gap between the objectives and the consequences of law as well as the unintended consequences of criminalization practices. The understanding of law, criminal justice, police, and other legal institutions by human rights sociologists —as by many other non-insiders of the field of sociology of law, crime, and social control— is profoundly unsociological. Rather than assuming that the law is an effective instrument against human rights abuses, the discrepancies that may and often do exist between the functions and consequences of law must be taken seriously.

(4) The singularity of rights. Rights, it is often remarked in the sociological discourse on human rights, necessarily involve a social relationship because rights entail claims towards others. The right to be heard and the right to be left alone, for instance, entail an appeal that invokes obligations from others. Yet, human rights appear to have no such complement in a notion of 'human obligations.' Developing such a conceptual counterpart, it is to be noted that these obligations do not refer to the duty on the part of states and non-state actors to respect human rights, but to obligations on the part of all humans towards one another as a complement of their human rights.

(5) The use and abuse of human rights. Related to the legalism of human rights sociology, the practitioners of the field appear to insufficiently realize that human rights can be abused precisely by being advocated. Writing at the beginning of the Reagan era of the Cold War, T.R. Young (1981) in this respect astutely observed that human rights can be used by any social formation, such as a nation-state, in such a way “as to make itself look good in contrast to its chief rival”. This abuse of human rights is politically motivated, of course, but it is made possible because human rights are formulated in highly abstract terms and because human rights entail a variety of rights that need to be weighed. Rightly, Young reminds us, human rights can be a weapon in a social conflict. Moreover, even at the abstract level, where human rights purport to claim universality, human rights can be conceived in different ways. It is important, therefore, for sociologists to unmask the abuse of human rights by specifying the historical context in which it takes place.

Conclusion: Towards a Sociological Sociology of Human Rights

This discussion on the sociology of human rights takes us back to the central question on the objectives of sociology. Sociology, we fundamentally argue, cannot be involved in promoting or defining anything other than systematically gathered, well-theorized and well-researched, knowledge about social life. In the case of human rights, any simplistic intrusion of normative questions (back) into sociology is, we suspect, a function of the politicization of sociology and a misguided orientation towards the understanding of rights (and their violations). For the revolutionary quality of sociology is precisely its ability to transcend normative debates to engage in analysis of the existing world.

Therefore, we argue that, similar to the sociology of democracy, where the best and most sociological work is done on the multiple ways in which democratic ideals are violated (Deflem, 2008), sociology can contribute in most exemplary and useful ways to the analysis of human rights violations. Especially in light of the persistence of human rights violations, which are as much a global reality as the diffusion of human rights norms (Klug, 2005), the need to recognize the true and truly valuable potentials of sociology is more urgent than ever before.

Acknowledgement

An earlier version was presented by the first author at the conference on “Human Rights and the Social: Making a New Knowledge” at Seoul National University, November 2009. We are grateful to the conference organizers and participants for their feedback and support.

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Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu and Stephen Chicoine. 2011. "The Sociological Discourse on Human Rights: Lessons from the Sociology of Law." Development and Society 40(1):101-115.

Policing the Modern City: Local Counterterrorism in the United States (2011)

2011-06-06T17:06:00.002-04:00

POLICING THE MODERN CITY: LOCAL COUNTERTERRORISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net

This is an electronic version of an article published in Counter Terrorism in Diverse Communities, edited by Siddik Ekici. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2011.

Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. "Policing the Modern City: Local Counterterrorism in the United States." Pp. 261-267 in Counter Terrorism in Diverse Communities, edited by Siddik Ekici. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Abstract. Since the events of 9/11, police organizations have refocused and strengthened their efforts against terrorism. Besides federal/national and international policing practices, reorganizations have also affected local police. This paper focuses on the local police response to terrorism in the United States and suggests important aspects of counterterrorism which local communities that are diverse need to take into account.

Keywords. Police, counterterrorism, local police, United States

Introduction
The policing of terrorism within many nations does not only involve federal or national agencies as well as international practices and organization of law enforcement, it also includes, in varying degrees, local police institutions. In the United States, in particular, the policing of terrorism primarily involves federal law enforcement agencies, specifically the Justice Department’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is the lead-agency in counterterrorism, as well as agencies in the Department of Homeland Security, but also local agencies at the state, county, and municipal levels of government.
In this paper, I wish to describe and discuss these local counterterrorism policing practices, which are generally not sufficiently considered, but which fulfill an important role, especially in an era in which local communities are increasingly more diverse [1]. The local role in counterterrorism policing is especially relevant in the United States because U.S. police functions have traditionally developed at the local level because of a historically strong opposition against the centralized policing models that were associated with the European autocratic regimes of the 18th and 19th centuries.
I begin this analysis with a review of relevant developments in New York City in order to reveal the impact of terrorism on policing in the city which was so severely impacted by the events of September 11. Subsequently, I will analyze broader issues and trends in local counterterrorism and indicate important lessons for the role of local policing in matters relating to the fight against terrorism.
1. Counterterrorism Policing in New York City
On September 11, 2001, the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks hit the city of New York like no other place in the American nation. In the immediate response to the attacks, the city’s first responders, especially firefighters and law enforcement officers, were among those who died during the terrorist attacks as they were trying to help others escape the towers [2].
The NYPD had already stepped up its counterterrorism efforts following the attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993. But since September 11, counterterrorism policing has become a very central part of the over-all mission of the NYPD. Since September 11, counterterrorism policing has become a central part of the over-all mission of the NYPD. Areas of New York that are considered particularly vulnerable, such as the financial district, are under constant police surveillance, and additional tactical teams are held ready to be deployed on a need basis. The NYPD is also concerned to visibly deploy surveillance forces across the city, in the form of heavily-armed paramilitary-styled units. Additionally, training programs are organized to teach officers how to use special counterterrorist tactics, to identify the high-risk infrastructure areas of the city, and to understand the nature of the terrorist threat.
After 9/11, the NYPD created a specialized Counterterrorism Bureau and oversees an Intelligence Division. Among its special counterterrorism measures, the NYPD manages the ‘NYPD Shield’ program that is focused on the connection between counterterrorism and private sector security [3]. A private-public partnership established to protect New York City from terrorist attacks, NYPD Shield is meant both for the NYPD to receive information from the private sector and for private sector security to obtain information and cooperation from the police department.
The NYPD also partners with federal and other law enforcement agencies, particularly through a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), which enables the exchange of intelligence between the local and federal levels of law enforcement. Through its counterterrorism activities, the NYPD also engages in international cooperation. A number of NYPD liaison officers are permanently stationed abroad, and some NYPD agents have been involved on a temporary basis in various foreign counterterrorism operations. Moreover, the NYPD participates in the electronic communications system by Interpol.
2. Professional Perspectives on Local Counterterrorism
Before taking a look at the reformation of local counterterrorism policing in other local communities across the United States, it will be useful to look at the manner n which police professionals have received the problem of terrorism. Analyzing the relevant literature, three themes have received most attention: a) the localization of terrorism; b) the need for increased inter-agency cooperation; and c) the relevance of intelligence and proactive police methods.
First, in the light of prior terrorist attacks on American soil, including the Oklahoma City Bombing and the attacks of 9/11, law enforcement professionals emphasize the seriousness of terrorism as an issue that can strike anywhere, anytime. The notion that terrorism has come to the United States and that its impact is felt locally, even when the perpetrators originate from abroad, justifies that decisive action has to be taken. It is stressed that the distinct possibility has to be taken into account that terrorist acts can be perpetrated in smaller towns and jurisdictions, especially because the goal of terrorism, to instill fear, can be even more efficiently met by targeting unsuspecting communities.
Second, the most discussed theme among police professionals addressing counterterrorism among local law enforcement is the need to establish and/or expand effective systems of cooperation and inter-agency communication. It is emphasized that police agencies should transcend their traditionally carefully guarded jurisdictional borders and overcome any existing inter-agency rivalries. The responsible officials thus have to unite around a common goal that is based on their shared understanding of the nature of the terrorist threat and the best ways for law enforcement to respond. Such cooperation is favored across the board: among local police agencies, across functionally specialized agencies, such as between police and firefighters, as well as vertically between local agencies and federal law enforcement. Moreover, law enforcement efforts in counterterrorism have to rely on support from the community of citizens and from the political leaders in state and local governments.
Third, law enforcement professionals emphasize intelligence work as among the key functional adjustments of local policing. All law enforcement is based on information about crimes that have been committed or crimes that are likely to be committed. But the role of proactive police methods is different in the case of terrorism because counterterrorism intelligence involves a more routine collection of information, irrespective of whether there is a specific threat or occurrence of a crime. Such intelligence capabilities are typically not well developed among police agencies, especially those at the local level. But because of the devastating impact terrorist attacks may have on a community, a focus towards intelligence-led policing, involving proactive surveillance and inquiries, is emphasized as an important complement to existing reactive measures. Additionally, such intelligence needs to be shared widely in the law enforcement community, both horizontally, among local agencies, and vertically, with relevant federal organizations in the law enforcement and intelligence communities. Gathering intelligence, local law enforcement agencies have the advantage of being in close proximity to their communities, including the neighborhoods where sympathies towards terrorist groups and ideologies are more likely to develop.
3. Trends and Variations in Local U.S. Counterterrorism Policing
The case of New York City might thus lead to conclude that professional theories of counterterrorism policing have been readily implemented by local law enforcement organizations. However, a more complicated picture must be sketched of the local counterterrorism situation in the United States. Based on available scholarly research, indeed, it can be observed that much variation exists in the degree and manner in which local police agencies have responded to the terrorist threat, although there has generally been an increase in counterterrorism activities [4]. During the 1990s, local agencies were generally not prepared to deal with terrorist attacks. But following the events of September 11, local agencies at the state, county, and municipal levels had made several adjustments to bolster terrorism preparedness. Besides a general increase in counterterrorism activities at the local level, however, many variations can be observed depending on the size and scope of the agency (and the jurisdiction) involved.
Generally, the shift towards counterterrorism functions brought about changes in the internal structure of police organizations (specifically the creation of specialized divisions focused on counterterrorism) only in larger cities and at the state level The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), by example, oversees a specialized Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau that focuses on terrorism and other major crimes [5]. In 2006, the LAPD was the first municipal police to establish a so-called Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), and in March 2008 the LAPD further bolstered its counterterrorism mission through a National Counterterrorism Academy for the training of personnel from local law enforcement agencies [6]. Yet, besides New York and Los Angeles, there are very few local U.S. police forces that have established specialized counterterrorism bureaus of any meaningful significance, with most local police concentrating its counterterrorism role on providing information about terrorism and terrorism preparedness to citizens.
4. Prospects and Problems of Local Counterterrorism Policing
4.1. The Coordination of Hometown Security?
A first issue that deserves discussion based on this review concerns the suggestion, which has often been made in the academic literature, that the general trend towards the adoption of counterterrorism functions among local police can be attributed to a shift towards the strengthening of national security, centrally directed at the level of the executive branch of U.S. government and the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.
Indeed, there are indications that there exist pressures to co-opt U.S. local law enforcement into a comprehensive nationwide and centrally guided counterterrorism strategy. Under the banner of the ‘war on terror,’ this coordination of all levels of law enforcement would also involve a centralization and nationalization of local counterterrorism to be in line and aligned with federal efforts. Moreover, policies from the U.S. federal government have also sought to promote the development of counterterrorism functions at the local level. In November 2001, then U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft distributed memorandums to all U.S. attorneys in which he argued that procedures for information-sharing and cooperation among local and federal law enforcement agencies should be developed [7]. A program of inter-agency cooperation, the so-called National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan, was worked out autonomously by law enforcement executives and intelligence experts at a ‘Criminal Intelligence Sharing Summit’ organized by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in the spring of 2002 [8]. The Plan was eventually launched in 2004 [9].
The underlying assumption in the above explanation of the generalized drift towards counterterrorism functions among local police agencies is that law and policy, formulated at the federal level and additionally coordinated through local governments and offices, effectively determines the course and outcome of related police activities. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that this is the case. On the contrary, while the policy and legal frameworks to promote counterterrorism coordination with local law enforcement are meant to apply across the nation, the variation that exists among local counterterrorism policing is not guided by any legal or political considerations. Instead, rather than being justified on the basis of political directives or legally defined frameworks, the policing of terrorism at the local level is based on a professional understanding of the means and goals of counterterrorism.
Thus, most conspicuous among local law enforcement agencies is the emphasis on setting up efficient systems of counterterrorism policing. The formal rationalization of counterterrorism tasks within a broader framework of crime control is observed from the creation of specialized counterterrorism bureaus and the assignment of officers to terrorism-related activities, the emphasis on technological systems of counterterrorism, especially with respect to information exchange, and the increased reliance on cooperation agreements with various levels of law enforcement. The targets of these activities are therefore conceived in terms of terrorism as crime. As a result of this de-politicized understanding, importantly, local police in different towns, cities, and states will implement counterterrorism measures differentially.
4.2. The Localization of Counterterrorism
Research on the variations that exist among local law enforcement agencies in matters of terrorism has identified several aspects of varying local conditions that exist in shaping the law enforcement response. What is particularly noteworthy thereby is that legal and political developments are not mentioned. Instead, distinctly societal factors related to crime and crime control, conceived in professional terms from the viewpoint of law enforcement, are argued to shape counterterrorism policing at the local level.
Revealing the relevance of regional persistence in counterterrorism policing, what matters most to local law enforcement, in particular, are locally distinct conditions of terrorism as a criminal problem. The police agencies of large metropolitan areas are focused on terrorism because the perceived risk level is high. Conversely, police departments in smaller towns and cities will remain primarily focused on crimes other than terrorism because these concerns are more relevant to the security conditions in their respective communities. Therefore, also, the police departments of some of the largest and most globally oriented cities, in the United States as well as in other parts of the world, will engage to a considerable extent in international activities as part of their counterterrorism missions. In the case of the NYPD, international counterterrorism efforts are consequently relatively pronounced because of the international nature of the city of New York and its accompanying terrorism concerns. Conversely, U.S. cities that lack the big-city characteristics of New York may not adopt the counterterrorism principles practiced by the NYPD even though they are confronted with the same political and legal pressures.
Also a function of the relevance of crime conditions rather than political agendas is the fact that crimes other than terrorism remain of much more concern to local police anywhere, even in the case of large metropolitan police departments. From the viewpoint of an efficient management with respect to the central functions of police to control crime and maintain order, it is evident that the counterterrorism functions of local police must be weighed against the local criminal concerns police are more routinely confronted with.
4.3. Resistance as Professionalism
The lack of cooperation in inter-agency arrangements involving local police indicates that variation in counterterrorism activities among local police agencies can also imply resistance against certain efforts. In this respect, a striking event occurred in Portland, Oregon, where the municipal police force in 2005 withdrew from participation in the local JTTF [10]. Among community groups in Portland, concerns had been raised about the overly broad surveillance powers that would be given to local police officers through participation in the FBI-controlled JTTF and the fact that local officials would not be able to oversee the activities of the city police agents cooperating with the FBI. These feelings were amplified after FBI agents arrested seven Muslim-Americans in the Portland area in October 2002 and April 2003 [11]. The arrests, now known as the case of the ‘Portland Seven,’ angered not only Muslim leaders in the local Oregonian community but also fueled anxieties about the potential of counterterrorism police efforts to violate civil rights and rely on racial profiling tactics, as some analysts have argued. In 2005, newly elected mayor Tom Potter led an ultimately successful effort to withdraw the Portland Police Bureau’s participation from the JTTF.
The Portland case indicating local resistance against cooperation with (and controlled by) federal law enforcement is confirmed by experiences with the use of proactive surveillance methods in Dearborn, Michigan [12]. The city of Dearborn has one of the highest concentrations of Arab-Americans in the United States and has therefore been particularly subjected to counterterrorism efforts. In the days following the attacks of 9/11, local police prepared for retaliations against Arab Americans, a problem that plagued many cities in the United States. Soon thereafter, however, federal migration officials began intense surveillance programs, including random interviews, of recently arrived immigrants in the Dearborn area. Local police was generally reluctant to play a part in these efforts and only one Dearborn police officer was assigned to the local JTTF.
The Portland and Dearborn cases show that there can be resistance from within law enforcement to political and legal plans to direct local counterterrorism. In the case of immigration policy, likewise, politically directed plans in some jurisdictions (with large migrant populations) to influence local counterterrorism policing have met with resistance in opposition to the top-down nature of control. The withdrawal of the Portland Police Bureau from the local JTTF is no exception in this case because the actions by mayor Potter (a former Portland police chief) only expressed, at the political level, the professional attitudes that already existed among law enforcement. And as the case of Dearborn showed, local law enforcement will resist cooperation in migration control efforts out of fear for the damage it can bring to their community relations.
The resistance of local law enforcement to cooperate in federally guided counterterrorism efforts can thus be attributed to a general reluctance by police agencies to be dictated by political and legal directives and, additionally, the strong localism that is deeply ingrained in the U.S. system of policing against any intrusion by federal agencies. Whereas the federal level of law enforcement may face pressures only from (federal) law and policy, local police agencies are doubly exposed to pressures from law and policy (at either the federal and/or local level) as well as from federal law enforcement. It is therefore not surprising that complaints are often made against the one-way direction of information flow in cooperation agreements with federal agencies. As the coordination of local law enforcement in counterterrorism cannot be ensured top-down (through legislation, executive action, or federal control), the bureaucratic autonomy of law enforcement necessitates the development of internal policies and agency guidelines. Such agreements would have to be developed on the basis of a condition of equality among the participating agencies if they are to be effective.
Conclusion
The manner in which counterterrorism issues of efficiency, cooperation, and intelligence are articulated in the organization of law enforcement at the local level across the United States varies considerably because of locally specific conditions that are relevant from the viewpoint of a professional understanding of crime, including terrorism, and the control thereof. In large metropolitan areas, such as New York and Los Angeles, counterterrorism policing has since 9/11 been approached in more elaborate ways, although other crimes besides terrorism always remain primary. In the jurisdictions of America’s towns and smaller cities, there is generally a continuation of police practices focused on crimes other than terrorism. Cooperation with federal law enforcement is welcomed at the local level only when such cooperation exemplifies a state of equality among all participating agencies, a condition that is not always met. In some cases, there can even be resistance from local law enforcement against counterterrorism efforts that are led by federal agencies.
What these findings suggest is that counterterrorism is not only multidimensional in being comprised of developments in politics, law, and policing, but also that there are variations in the extent and nature of counterterrorism practices within the police community. These conditions not only differentiate those agencies that are more engaged in counterterrorism from those that are less involved, but also indicate the factions that may exist among police because of regionally varying crime conditions and their relevance for police work. The variations in the local police involvement in counterterrorism work is a manifestation of the regional persistence that exists in police cooperation activities and that is also strongly revealed at the national/federal and international levels of policing.
References
[1] This paper is revised from Chapter 5 of M. Deflem, The policing of terrorism. New York: Routledge, 2010.
[2] Post-9/11 Report Recommends Police, Fire Response Change, USA Today. [Online] Available from: URL: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-19-nypd-nyfd-report_x.htm [2002, August 19]
[3] See the website of NYPD Shield. [Online] Available from: URL: http://www.nypdshield.org/public/.
[4] See the sources mentioned in Deflem 2010, Chapter 5 [note 1].
[5] Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, Los Angeles Police Department. [Online] Available from: URL: http://www.lapdonline.org/inside_the_lapd/content_basic_view/6502.
[6] Manhattan Institute and LAPD Unveil Counterterrorism Academy for State and Local Cops, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Press Release. [Online] Available from: URL: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/PressReleaseCPT_03-11-08.pdf [2008, March 10]
[7] Directives from Attorney General Ashcroft’s Speech before EOUSA’s Anti-Terrorism Coordinators Conference. [Online] Available from: URL: http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind0111&L=POETICS&E=7bit&P=1018151&B=--&T=text%2Fplain;%20charset=iso-8859-1 [2001. November 13]
[8] National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan, Institute for Intergovernmental Research. [Online] Available from: URL: http://www.iir.com/global/ncisp.htm.
[9] Remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft, National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan Event, Department of Justice. [Online] Available from: URL: http://justice.gov/archive/ag/speeches/2004/51404aginteliacp.htm [2004, May 14]
[10] See Deflem 2010 [note 1].
[11] ‘Portland Seven’ Terrorism Investigation, Complete Archive from The Oregonian. [Online] Available from: URL: http://www.oregonlive.com/special/terror/index.ssf?/special/terror/pdx_archive.html.
[12] See the sources mentioned in Deflem 2010, Chapter 5 [note 1].

Elite-Engineered Moral Panics (2011)

2011-06-03T17:05:00.001-04:00

Elite-Engineered Moral Panics
Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
&
Stephen Chicoine
University of South Carolina
This is an online copy of a publication in Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications, 2011.
Also available online from the publisher.
Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu and Stephen Chicoine. 2011. "Elite-Engineered Moral Panics" In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.
.
The concept of moral panics was systematically developed and applied by Stanley Cohen in his 1972 study of the “mods” and rockers of 1960s Great Britain. Seeking to denote the disproportionate societal response to a relatively limited and not very harmful problem, Cohen argued that a “moral panic” occurred when “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media.” Since this groundbreaking formulation, many scholars have applied and theoretically extended the moral panics perspective. In the contemporary literature, three theories can be identified concerning the causal mechanisms of why moral panics take place. The elite-engineered model is one of these theories.
First, the interest-group model holds that rule creators and moral entrepreneurs can engage in moral crusades in order to establish new rules and subsequently enforce them. Since a necessary step in this process is to establish the recognition of the problem or issue, these moral crusades can become moral panics affecting society at large. The interest-group model traces the source of moral panics back to the role of the media and other specific groups that frame a particular problem. Moral panics are argued to be the result of the efforts of groups and organizations located in the middle rungs of society, independent of elites’ interests or widely shared public concerns.
Second, according to the grassroots model, moral panics originate in a pre-existing, widespread public concern, not just on the basis of issues presented by interest groups or elites. The expression of certain concerns in special sectors of society are suggested to be the result of the prevalence of these concerns among the populace at large. Grassroots moral panics only require interest groups, the media, or elites to serve as triggers for the moral panic to take hold.
Third, the elite-engineered model suggests that moral panics are orchestrated by political, economic, and other powerful elites through their control of the major institutions of society. Such moral panics are engineered to direct attention away from other societal problems as a means to protect the elites’ political and economic interests by focusing on creating fear and concern toward a behavior that the elites recognize as not being particularly harmful or threatening to society. The threat purportedly posed to society can be exaggerated from an existing minor problem or almost completely fabricated. Elites are able to create and sustain such concerns and fears through their control of major social institutions such as the media and the police. The motivation for the moral panic is typically to distract the public from a problem that is conceived to be detrimental to the interests of the elites.
The most famous analysis using the elite-engineered model was conducted by Stuart Hall and his associates in a study of mugging in Great Britain in the 1970s. According to the study, the moral panic concerning mugging was orchestrated by societal elites in order to divert attention away from the economic recession. Along with this motive, elites were also genuinely convinced of the threat posed to society by the problem of mugging. As elites had experienced a crisis in their hegemony, the moral panic surrounding mugging represented a new means of control. The moral panic was largely successful because the media predominately represented statements by authorities to frame the mugging issue. The media thus contributed to reproducing the perspective of the elites. As public opinion is largely formed and informed by the media, the public at large adopted the position of the elites.
Criticism of the Elite-Engineered Model
Among the criticisms of the elite-engineered model, it has been found to have limited power to explain all cases of moral panics. There is also evidence that elite campaigns often fail due to their inability to direct the public's attention toward certain problems.
Relating to drug policy, it has been found that drugs can be an important source of moral panics. Drugs can be a social concern that is shared among many members of the public as well as articulated by interest groups and by elites. From the perspective of the elite-engineered model, it can be argued that political rhetoric, especially by an important head of government such as the U.S. president, has helped to generate a moral panic concerning drugs. The kind of policy rhetoric that is adopted, in particular, has played a large role in the development and maintenance of a moral panic.
In the United States, the “War on Drugs” meets the requirements of being a moral panic since basic facts about drug abuse and drug trafficking have been exaggerated. As a result, public concerns on drugs have increased independently of the magnitude of the problem. In the years before the events of September 11, 2001, a majority of the U.S. population listed drugs as the number-one concern for the country as a whole. It was especially the policy rhetoric used by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan that enabled the development of a moral panic about drugs. Reagan typically resorted to punitive policy statements that emphasized the choice involved in using drugs and the urgency to take action. After a moral panic on drugs was created, it was further sustained by the adoption of rehabilitative statements and policies in order to generate signs of success and progress. Exemplifying the elite-engineered model of moral panics, policy rhetoric on drugs is able to generate a moral panic through its influence on how the media present the problem of drugs and its solution.
Further Readings
Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. “The Sociology of Moral Panics: Toward a New Synthesis.” Sociological Quarterly, v.27/4 (1986).
Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972.
Goode, Erich and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. “Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction.” Annual Review of Sociology, v.20 (1994).
Goode, Erich and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994.
Hall, Stuart, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John N. Clarke, and Brian Roberts. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. New York: Macmillan, 1978.
Hawdon, James E. “The Role of Presidential Rhetoric in the Creation of a Moral Panic: Reagan, Bush, and the War on Drugs.” Deviant Behavior, v.22/5 (2001).
Hunt, Arnold. “‘Moral Panic’ and Moral Language in the Media.” British Journal of Sociology, v.48/4 (1997).
Rowe, David. “The Concept of the Moral Panic: An Historico-Sociological Positioning.” In Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England,
David Lemmings and, ed. Claire Walker, eds., ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
.
Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu and Stephen Chicoine. 2011. "Elite-Engineered Moral Panics" In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.

International Drug Policies: International Cooperation (2011)

2011-06-01T17:04:00.003-04:00

International Drug Policies: International Cooperation
Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
&
Stephen Chicoine
University of South Carolina
This is an online copy of a publication in Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications, 2011.
Also available online from the publisher.
Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu and Stephen Chicoine. 2011. "International Drug Policies: International Cooperation." In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.
.
Narcotic drugs have been the subject of international policies and regulations for many years at various levels of international governance. International drug policies supplement and aim to strengthen relevant policies at the level of national states and foster cooperation among them. Countries that sign international conventions are expected to develop necessary legislation, law enforcement capacities, and administrative measures, in addition to cooperating with one another and with international drug control agencies. The history of international drug policies dates back to the early 20th century and has since steadily evolved and, in most recent times, witnessed certain changes in direction. Among the most important international regulating bodies involved with the control of drugs throughout history are the League of Nations, the United Nations (UN), and several regional bodies, such as the Organization of American States and the European Union.
The League of Nations
Before the formation of the League of Nations after World War I, drugs were already the subject of international control when an international convention was held in Shanghai in 1909. Attended by 13 countries, the conference set the foundation of much of the future of international drug polices by developing a prohibition regime that outlawed the recreational use of drugs (opium and morphine) while additionally regulating their medical use. As a result of the 1909 conference, the First International Opium Convention was drawn up in The Hague in the Netherlands in 1912. Developing a multilateral drug control regime, the Convention included specific provisions outlawing the use of opium, morphine, and cocaine, as well as controlling the manufacture and trade of these substances. The Convention was signed by 41 nations just before the outbreak of World War I.
The League of Nations continued and extended its policies from the international drug agreements that had been developed before World War I. The Versailles Treaty included an international obligation for nations to agree to the 1912 Convention. Subsequently, the International Opium Convention of 1925 created the Permanent Central Board to end the diversion of main narcotics from legal (medical) to illicit (recreational) channels. The export of coca between producing countries and manufacturing countries also became controlled, and the Convention included the first provision regarding the export of cannabis.
In 1931 the Narcotics Limitation Convention required states to estimate their respective needs for narcotics for medical and scientific purposes as the basis for an annual statement of the world narcotics requirements. The Permanent Central Board was authorized to intervene in cases of noncompliance with respect to the limitations that were set on production. Because nations often did not readily cooperate to control the trafficking of drugs, a new international convention was drawn up in 1936 that provided provisions for the prosecution and extradition of drug traffickers as well as for the organization of police cooperation on drug-related offenses.
The United Nations
After the dissolution of the League of Nations and the carnage of World War II, the UN carried on the world's drug control policies. A new international protocol in 1946 summarized the previous drug conventions and transferred all authority to the UN, whose Economic and Social Council created a Commission on Narcotic Drugs. The existing Permanent Central Board and Drug Supervisory Board were combined into the International Narcotics Control Board.
Testifying to the recognition of the drug problem as an international concern among the world's nations, the United Nations was able to draw up a series of drug-control conventions even during the period of international political conflict that marked the Cold War.
In 1948 a UN protocol addressed the problem of synthetic drugs and further expanded the scope of provisions to include any potentially addiction-forming drug that might be created in the future. A 1953 convention prohibited the nonmedical use of all controlled substances, required governments to acquire a monopoly of poppy fields to control cultivation and the production of opium, and authorized some countries to legally produce opium.
The 1953 convention served as the basis for the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, which sought to integrate all previously developed international policies. Focused on plant-based drugs (heroin, cocaine, cannabis, and opium), the Single Convention extended the basic idea of a drug prohibition regime, in which ideally all nations of the world would cooperate, by criminalizing the production, trade, and use of drugs, extending the scope of control to cannabis and coca, and limiting the possession of drugs for medical and scientific purposes. The Convention also extended the 1925 policies on import regulations for poppy and further developed an international system of statistical control that applied to all transactions concerning drugs, and advanced new medical obligations concerning drug addicts.
The 1961 Single Convention also established the International Narcotics Control Board, while the powers of the World Health Organization were increased to oversee the medical and scientific aspects of drugs. A new classification scheme for narcotics was developed, which ordered each illicit drug in respect to its dependence-creating properties, potential level of abuse, and actual or potential therapeutic value. Specifically, Schedule I drugs were subject to all of the controls of the convention. Schedule II drugs could be used for medical purposes and were therefore subject to less control measures. Schedule III concerned exempt drugs such as pharmaceuticals. And Schedule IV specified the amounts of drugs that could be used for medical and scientific purposes, including Schedule I substances (cannabis, for example).
In 1971 a new UN convention, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, expanded the existing policies to all synthetic drugs, specifically psychotropics such as LSD. In 1988 an additional UN convention on drugs was agreed upon to specifically address the illegal trafficking of drugs. The convention was necessitated by the fact that cannabis, heroin, and cocaine abuse had continued to expand and the production of these substances had likewise spread to more nations despite all the existing national and international policies. Because illicit drug trafficking had become a highly profitable criminal activity that was organized on a global scale, new provisions were developed to promote international cooperation aimed at targeting the proceeds of drug traffickers' criminal activity and enhanced methods of international cooperation and the monitoring of substances used for the production of drugs in clandestine labs. Whereas previous conventions had focused on drug control at the supply side, the 1988 convention also required nations that signed the treaty to make drug possession a domestic criminal offense.
Contemporary UN Drug Policies
Despite the wide variety of international policies against narcotics that were formed by the 1990s, a decrease in the use and trafficking of illicit drugs did not take place. In the late 1990s, therefore, the UN once again sought to expand and strengthen international cooperation in drug control, specifically by adopting a political declaration and related action plans at the 1998 special session of the General Assembly.
The 1998 political declaration reaffirmed the UN's commitment to combating drugs in view of the human and social damage that drugs inflict. Besides emphasizing nations' shared responsibilities in the drug problem and re-affirming their respective rights to sovereignty and territorial integrity, the UN declaration for the first time referenced the charter on human rights. The declaration centrally explicated the necessity for international cooperation, including a call for international financial institutions (such as the World Bank) to include drug control measures in their programs, addressing the link between illicit production and trafficking with transnational organized crime and terrorism, and promoting a call to civil society to promote a drug-free society.
The action plans developed by the UN in 1998 addressed a variety of drug-related issues, such as the control of amphetamine-type substances, money laundering, judicial cooperation, demand reduction, and the elimination of narcotic crops. The Declaration on the Guiding Principles of Drug Demand Reduction provides recommendations for national demand reduction polices, and was the first official UN document to discuss harm reduction, specifically by addressing the reduction of consequences of drug use and dependency as well as the prevention of use.
Policies were recommended to engage in a balanced approach, addressing supply and demand aspects of the drug problem, and demand reduction policies that should specifically aim to prevent the use of drugs or reduce the consequences thereof. Demand reduction policies should be integrated into welfare, health promotion, and preventative education programs, while the nations' criminal justice systems should also include means to assist drug abusers.
An important UN action plan concerning International Cooperation on the Eradication of Illicit Drug Crops and on Alternative Development included several new principles of international drug control, including a balanced approach and alternative development. The balanced approach aims at policies both concerning the use and production of drugs, while alternative development was proposed as a better option than eradication in some situations. Among other provisions, alternative development policies involve the creation of social and economic opportunities through rural development and infrastructure, the promotion of democratic values of community participation promoting a civic culture that rejects illicit cultivation, and the inclusion of demand reduction measures. Crop eradication and arrests were deemed appropriate measures in situations involving organized crime, but eradication without the presence of satisfactory alternatives is considered to be hazardous to alternative development programs.
An Action Plan against Illicit Manufacturing, Trafficking, and Abuse of Amphetamine-Type Stimulants also contains innovative elements that were absent in prior UN drug policies. The action plan includes general provisions for demand reduction, concrete obligations for supply reduction, and measures concerning the use of information technology. Member states are asked to engage in data collection and research to inform treatment and prevention programs and to raise public awareness. In relation to the growing relevance of the Internet and the proliferation of information on drug recipes and techniques of abuse, states are called to reduce the flow of this harmful information.
Among the main innovations that emerged from the 1998 UN special session was a so-called Know Your Customer principle to prevent the diversion of precursors from legal to illicit drugs and to promote cooperation between authorities as well as shift some of the burden of control to the industry. The 1988 convention was also extended by advocating stronger control of acetic anhydride (for the making of heroin) and potassium permanganate (for cocaine production).
Finally, methods to promote judicial cooperation were also included in the 1998 action plans, including measures on extradition, mutual legal assistance, transfer of proceedings, and cooperation and training. A few additional notable changes in drug control can be noted with respect to the simplification and harmonization of extradition procedures. Additionally, other potentially important changes concerned the protection of judges, prosecutors, surveillance and law enforcement officials, and witnesses, and the harmonization and simplification of procedures to increase cooperation.
In 2009 the Commission on Narcotic Drugs reviewed the developments since the 1998 special session and put forth a new Political Declaration and Plan of Action on International Cooperation Towards an Integrated and Balanced Strategy to Counter the World Drug Problem. Reconfirming the principles and aims of the previous conventions, this declaration sought to refine the existing international drug control system. More emphasis has been placed on some aspects of international drug control, such as the importance of civil society, human rights, sovereignty and territorial integrity, measures and support services pertaining to the consequences of drug abuse, the linkage between transnational organized crime and corruption, and the development of research and data on all aspects of the drug problem. With respect to demand reduction, the measures that are advocated also include a wide variety of strategies, such as the reduction of abuse and dependence, the promotion of international cooperation among nations, the implementation of a comprehensive drug-control approach that is sensitive to human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the promotion of demand reduction services. Similarly, supply reduction efforts include enhanced cooperation among and coordination of law enforcement operations, the reduction of drug-related violence, the strengthening of anticorruption measures, and the promotion of means to counter money laundering.
American and European Drug Policies
Efforts to promote international cooperation in the control of drugs have also been undertaken at various regional levels in the world. On the American continent, the Organization of American States (OAS) has done the most to promote drug policies. Consisting of 30 sovereign states, the OAS has especially focused on the drug problem because of the differences that exist between nations that are primarily involved in the production of drugs and those where consumption is a great concern. Because the United States primarily faces the problem of drug consumption, its efforts were mostly focused on limiting the supply of drugs. Necessarily involving cooperation with other nations, these policies raised concerns with respect to Latin American sovereignty.
At the OAS 14th General Assembly in 1984, a resolution was adopted that classified drug trafficking as a crime that affects “all mankind.” A specialized meeting, the Inter-American Specialized Conference on Traffic in Narcotic Drugs, was subsequently held in 1986. It constructed a framework of recommended action that could be used to guide member state drug policies. The reduction of drug demand was considered a top priority, while the exchange of information on trafficking organizations and developing common legislation to track down drug traffickers were emphasized on the supply side. An Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission was set up at the OAS 16th General Assembly. The Commission advocated the implementation of the UN 1988 Convention, and it has since, like the UN, diversified its methods to include alternative development measures as well as strategies aimed at demand and supply reduction.
In Europe, the European Union (EU) has made many efforts to promote cooperation on drug policies in view of the differences that exist with respect to drug control among Europe's nations. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which formed the EU, advocated coordination among the national drug policies across the union without attempting to create one common policy. A truly European drug policy was difficult to develop, however, because drug issues pertain to all three of the pillars of the EU (economic policy, foreign relations, and justice and home affairs) and there was no specific provision for the development of an institution that would coordinate the various responsibilities involved.
In 1997 the Amsterdam Treaty was signed that changed various provisions of the Maastricht Treaty and that also paid special attention to combating the drug problem. In order to develop more effective drug control measures, Title IV of the Treaty includes provisions to arrange for checks at Europe's external borders, promote judicial cooperation in criminal matters, ease the freedom of movement within Europe while building effective international cooperation, emphasize efforts against drug trafficking, and advocate cooperation among police, customs, and judicial authorities.
More than is the case in other parts of the world, European drug policies have generally shifted more toward treatment, prevention, and even decriminalization, rather than prohibition. Yet, standardization and efficient cooperation among nations have not always been readily accomplished, further exemplifying the difficulties in forming effective international drug policies that also exist at the global level.
Further Readings
Bayer, I. and and H. Ghodse. “Evolution of International Drug Control, 1945–1995.” Bulletin on Narcotics, v.51/1–2 (1999).
Bewley-Taylor, David R. “Challenging the UN Drug Control Conventions: Problems and Possibilities.” International Journal of Drug Policy, v.14/2 (2003).
Chatwin, Caroline. “Drug Policy Developments Within the European Union.” British Journal of Criminology, v.43 (2003).
Dziedzic, Michael J. “The Organization of American States and Drug Control in the Americas.” In International Handbook on Drug Control, S.B. MacDonald and, ed. B. Zagaris, eds., ed. Westport. CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Elvins, Martin. Anti-Drugs Policies of the European Union: Transnational Decision-Making and the Politics of Expertise. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Ghodse, Hamid. International Drug Control Into the 21st Century. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
Pietschmann, Thomas. “A Century of International Drug Control.” Bulletin on Narcotics, v.59/1–2 (2007).
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Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu and Stephen Chicoine. 2011. "International Drug Policies: International Cooperation." In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.

International Drug Agencies (2011)

2011-06-01T17:04:00.002-04:00

International Drug Agencies
Shannon McDonough
University of South Carolina
&
Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
This is an online copy of a publication in Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications, 2011.
Also available online from the publisher.
Cite as: McDonough, Shannon and Mathieu Deflem. "International Drug Agencies." In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.
.
Since the early 20th century, international drug control has evolved to include many specialized international agencies, including administrative agencies involved in the monitoring of the international drug situation and the formation of international drug policy, law enforcement organizations concerned with drug-related crime control, and informal groups that seek to exert influence on international drug policies. Besides the unilateral involvement of individual nations (especially the United States), both regional organizations (e.g., the European Union, Europol) and international organizations (e.g., the United Nations [UN], Interpol) are part of the international drug control system.
Historical Background
The development of an international drug regime can be traced back to the early 20th century with attempts to control the supply of opium entering China when Britain and China signed a treaty in 1906 to limit the opium trade. In 1908, an international commission concerning the opium trade met in Shanghai. Subsequently, in 1912, the First International Opium Convention was agreed upon. After World War I, the League of Nations assumed responsibility for supervising international drug control. The first meeting of the League of Nations established an Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and other Dangerous Drugs to supervise the implementation of international drug control agreements and to coordinate government cooperation. This Advisory Committee would serve as the predecessor of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
In 1928 the League of Nations established a Permanent Central Board, which monitored the production, manufacturing, storage, and consumption of illicit drugs. In 1931 a Drug Supervisory Board was created to monitor drug supplies in each country.
After World War II, the UN assumed responsibilities of international drug control. In 1946 the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) was established to serve as an advisor to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The ECOSOC was created as the supervisor and coordinator of the 14 specialized UN agencies dealing with international social and economic issues. The Council also served as the main forum for formulating policy recommendations for Member States and the UN drug regime.
Over time, the UN organized additional international conventions on drug control that established additional agencies. The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs established the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) through a merger of the Permanent Central Board and the Drug Supervisory Board. The 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances created the UN Fund for Drug Abuse Control (UNFDAC) with the purpose of supervising programs aimed at combating the growing manufacturing and trafficking of illegal substances.
In 1991 the UN International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) was created through the merger of the civil services of three existing UN bodies involved in drug policy implementation: (1) the DND, established in 1946 by the League of Nations international civil service, which managed the drug control system; (2) the UNFDAC; and (3) the Secretariat of the INCB.
In 1997 a merger between the UNDCP and the Center for International Crime Prevention (CICP; formerly known as the Crime Branch) created the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention. In 2002 it was renamed the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which functions to assist UN member states in the coordination and implementation of drug control legislation recommended under UN conventions.
UN Administrative Agencies
Most administrative agencies involved in international drug control reside within the UN administrative hierarchy. ECOSOC functions as the main organizing body of the UN's 14 specialized agencies, functional commissions, and five regional commissions. ECOSOC oversees a number of specialized agencies, including those UN agencies involved in drug control, such as the CND, UNODC, the INCB, and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) is the UN's main drug policy-making agency and oversees both the INCB and the UNDCP. Both the CND and the UNDCP are funded by the 17 Major Donors, which include the European Community (EC), Canada, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, France, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, Belgium, and Ireland. The CND may only pass resolutions of which the cost has been evaluated. If the regular budget does not provide enough funds for the implementation of the resolutions, funds must come from one of the Major Donors although they are under no obligation. The Major Donors, therefore, play an influential role in international drug control policy and organization.
The CND's function was expanded in 1990 to provide policy guidance to the UNDCP and to oversee the UN's Global Programme of Action (GPA) and its System-Wide-Action Plan (SWAP). The CND began with 15 country members and currently has 53 member countries. Other organizations present at CND meetings but that do not exercise any direct policy or financial control are a number of international and regional organizations such as Interpol, the World Customs Organization (WCO), the UN Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), Europol, and the Organization of American States (OAS), among others.
The CND is further responsible for the establishment of various regional bodies involved in the monitoring of drug trafficking trends, the coordination of regional cooperation and sharing of criminal intelligence on drug trafficking, and the identification of the best practices in training law enforcement personnel. These agencies include the Subcommission on Illicit Drug Traffic and Related Matters in the Middle East (established in 1973) as well as four similar regional bodies founded in Asia and the Pacific in 1985, Latin American and the Caribbean in 1990, and Europe in 1990. These agencies help the heads of National Drug Law Enforcement Agencies (HONLEAs) to report to the CND through a secretariat from the UNODC.
The UN Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) became the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2002 after it merged with the Centre for International Crime Prevention (CICP) in 1997. The UNODC implements CND drug policy and acts as the secretariat for the CND. While implementation cannot be enforced, the UNODC facilitates implementation of UN drug policy by providing support to member states in the form of laboratory work, support and training for law enforcement agencies, and facilitating international cooperation. It also works closely with other UN agencies involved in projects related to drug trafficking, such as alternative development programs run by the UN Development Organization. The UNODC has 22 regional and field offices covering 150 countries.
The UNODC encompasses a Scientific Section that develops initiatives aimed at improving drug characterization and impurity profiling methods standardized by the CND in order to control the manufacturing and trafficking of synthetic drugs. The Scientific Section of the UNODC was in 1946 initially established as the UN Narcotics Laboratory to research the origins of opium production. International drug control requires the ability to identify the sources of supplies of synthetic drugs or precursor chemicals, drug trafficking routes, distribution patterns, and any links that exist between different samples of seized drugs. The Scientific Section of the UNODC also trains personnel in methods of drug characterization and impurity profiling and promotes cooperation in the sharing of methods and information related to drug profiling.
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is a body of 13 individual experts on subjects relevant to drug control (including pharmacologists, pharmacists, lawyers, police officers, and medical doctors). In contrast to the CND and the UNODC, the INCB is funded by the UN's regular central budget rather than by the Major Donors. The INCB's primary function is to ensure cooperation among governments so that drug supplies and manufacturing meet legitimate medical or scientific demand while suppressing illicit drug trafficking and manufacturing, including the control of precursor chemicals. The INCB is a monitoring body for the implementation of UN conventions on drug control, but it has no formal powers of enforcement. The INCB submits an annual report on its activities to ECOSOC through the CND.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is also involved in the international drug control system. Specifically, the WHO's Expert Committee on Drug Dependence, established in 1949, is obligated under UN international conventions to provide primary scientific and medical advice on drugs including dependency potential, abuse liability, medical usefulness, and to advise which schedule a drug should be placed under, if any, to fulfill international drug control conventions. The committee also makes recommendations to the CND regarding which control measures should exist for certain substances.
Other Administrative Agencies
Outside the UN, other international administrative organizations are also involved in the international drug control system. For example, the World Customs Organization facilitates compliance with international drug control conventions. Located in Brussels, the WCO was established in 1952 as the Customs Co-Operation Council and renamed in 1994. The WCO works on projects and task forces with the UNODC and the INCB as well as with Interpol and Europol to facilitate international cooperation and adherence to UN drug conventions and to promote efficient communication among member customs organizations. It consists of a secretariat with over 100 international offices, technical experts, and support staff, regional intelligence liaison offices (RILOs), and national contact points of member administrations. The national contact points collect seizure data at a national level that are entered into the Customs Enforcement Network (CEN) to be shared with RILOs and other drug control agencies. The WCO currently includes 175 customs agencies, which process over 98 percent of world trade.
Another organization outside of the UN, the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), was established in 1986 by the Organization of American States (OAS) as that organization's anti-drug agency. It aims to foster cooperation and coordination among OAS member states in drug control operations through the formation of action programs. CICAD also maintains a database of information on illicit trafficking including arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. CICAD currently has 34 member states from the Western Hemisphere.
The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) was established in 1993 to provide the European Union (EU) and its member states with information on Europe's drug problem, including data needed to draw up informed drug laws and to identify the most efficient and effective practices for various drug control operations. The EMCDDA systematically collects information on drugs from EU Member States and analyzes the data to provide a more complete picture of the drug situation in Europe. The center focuses mainly on Europe, but also works with drug control agencies across the globe through the exchange of information and expertise. It also works closely with other European agencies involved in drug control including the EU Council's Horizontal Drugs Group, which was established in 1997 to coordinate and prepare EU drug policy.
Law Enforcement Agencies
In addition to administrative agencies, there are two major international agencies involved in the policing of international drug crimes: the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) and the European Police Office (Europol).
Interpol is an international police organization created in 1923 that currently brings together police agencies from 188 countries. International drug control is one of Interpol's major goals and is addressed through its Criminal Organizations and Drugs Sub-Directorate. This agency aims to assist all national and international law enforcement organizations involved in drug control in a variety of ways. It organizes the collection, collation, analysis, and dissemination of information related to drug control that can be used in international drug investigations. In 2005 Interpol established the Drugs Intelligence Unit to issue drug intelligence alerts and reports to keep up with developments in drug crimes, such as new methods of trafficking. It also fosters cooperation and coordination in drug investigations involving member agencies from two or more countries. Furthermore, it organizes regional and global conferences on certain drug topics in order to determine the extent of a specific drug problem and to provide information on the most recent developments in investigative techniques.
Interpol also plays an active role in the training of law enforcement for drug investigations. In 2007 the Interpol Anti-Heroin Smuggling Training Centre was opened outside of Moscow to train about 2,000 police officers a year. In addition to relationships with national law enforcement agencies, Interpol also works closely with other international agencies involved in drug control including the UN and the World Customs Organization.
Interpol has many ongoing projects aimed at international drug control. For example, Project Drug@net handles drug trafficking via the Internet. Project COCAF began in 2006 in order to monitor commercial air routes used to traffic cocaine between Africa and Europe. Project White Flow monitors and attempts to disrupt cocaine smuggling from South America to West Africa by criminal organizations that use private aircraft and sea freighters.
Europol, the European Police Office, was established by the Treaty on European Union, or the Maastricht Treaty, in 1992 and began limited operations in 1994 as the Europol Drugs Unit. After the Europol Convention was ratified in 1998, the European Drugs Unit was formally transferred into Europol, which began full operations in 1999.
Drug trafficking is one of Europol's main concerns with the Drugs Unit as the most active part of Europol's organization. The Drugs Unit organizes numerous projects that aim to facilitate cooperation in drug investigations involving EU member states and to combat the production and trafficking of heroin, cocaine, synthetic drugs, and precursor chemicals. Project COLA, for instance, is concerned with cocaine trafficking from Latin America, in particular Colombia, to EU member states, including investigations of criminal groups engaged in trafficking toward and within the EU. Project MUSTARD similarly investigates heroin trafficking and related crimes of Turkish and associated criminal organizations.
The Synthetic Drugs Section of Europol's Drugs Unit oversees a number of projects concerned specifically with the profiling of synthetic drugs and precursor substances. For example, the Synthetic Drugs Section created the Europol Ecstasy Logo System that collects information on seizures including the logos or markings on the drugs, which allow for the matching of drugs' origins from different seizures. Europol also maintains the Europol Illicit Laboratory Comparison System, which contains information on drug production, storage, and dump sites.
Besides the international organizations Interpol and Europol, it is to be noted that numerous national enforcement agencies also take on a host of international activities that affect many nations across the world. Among the internationally most significant of these national agencies is the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the United States. The DEA has several hundred officers stationed in 87 foreign offices in 63 countries. The agency has also established the International Drug Enforcement Conference (IDEC), which is held once a year to share drug-related information to aid in the implementation of effective strategies and to foster a coordinated approach to law enforcement efforts aimed at combating international drug trafficking.
Originally set up as a conference forum for countries from the Western Hemisphere, the IDEC has become a global forum with 91 countries in attendance at IDEC XXVI in 2008. The DEA functions as the IDEC's permanent Secretariat through the Office of International Programs. The DEA also cooperates with other agencies involved in international drug control such as Interpol, Europol, and the UN.
Informal International Groups
A number of informal international groups play a major role in international drug control. First, the Major Donors, which provide most of the funding for the CND and the UNODC, have major influence on drug control policy and the projects approved and maintained by these UN agencies. They meet twice a year to discuss projects of the UNODC and to ultimately make decisions about which will be funded.
Second, the countries known as the G8, formerly known as the G6 and G7, also play an active role in international drug control. The G8 is a group of eight highly industrialized nations and provides an informal forum for the discussion of global issues and problems, including international drug control. In 1989 the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was created at the G7 Summit in Paris. The purpose of FATF is to promote policies that combat money laundering, which is a major dimension of drug trafficking.
The G8 is also involved in the Dublin Group, which was created by the EU at the 1990 meeting of the European Committee to Combat Drugs (CELAD) in Dublin, Ireland. The Dublin Group is an informal group interested in international drug problems and the exchanging and analyzing of relevant information. The Dublin Group makes recommendations to member states and the UNODC on drug policy. The Dublin Group meets twice a year in Brussels. The Egmont Group emerged from the FATF in 1995. It was established by G7 to aid in the exchange of information between financial intelligence units (FIUs) in over 100 countries to combat money laundering and the funding of terrorism.
The wealth of international agencies in the world of international drug control indicates the peculiar difficulties with administering and enforcing a global or regional drug regime. It also poses additional issues of cooperation among the various international agencies, which further contributes to a complex picture of agencies at multiple levels of international government.
Further Readings
Carstairs, Catherine. “The Stages of the International Drug Control System.” Drug and Alcohol Review, v.24 (2005).
Drug Enforcement Administration. “The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Website.” http:/ / www.justice.gov/ dea/ index.htm (Accessed March 2010).
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. “The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.” http:/ / www.emcdda.europa.eu/ index.cfm (Accessed March 2010).
Fazey, Cindy. “The Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the United Nations International Drug Control Programme: Politics, Policies, and Prospect for Change.” International Journal of Drug Policy, v.14 (2003).
Fazey, Cindy. “International Policy on Illicit Drug Trafficking: The Formal and Informal Mechanisms.” Journal of Drug Issues (Fall 2007).
Haberfeld, Maria and William H. McDonald. “International Cooperation in Policing.” In Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice, P. Reichel, ed., ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005.
Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission. http:/ / www.cicad.oas.org/ EN/ default.asp (Accessed March 2010).
International Narcotics Control Board. “International Narcotics Control Board Website.” http:/ / www.incb.org (Accessed March 2010).
Interpol. “Interpol Official Site.” http:/ / www.interpol .int/ default.asp (Accessed March 2010).
Jelsma, Martin. “Drugs in the UN System: The Unwritten History of the 1998 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs.” International Journal of Drug Policy, v.14 (2003).
United Nations Economic and Social Council. http:/ / www.un.org/ en/ ecosoc/ about (Accessed June 2010).
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. http:/ / www. unodc.org/ (Accessed March 2010).
World Customs Organization. http:/ / www.wcoomd.org (Accessed March 2010).
.
Please cite as: McDonough, Shannon and Mathieu Deflem. "International Drug Agencies." In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications.

Introduction: Criminological Perspectives of the Crisis (2011)

2011-05-18T17:02:00.001-04:00

INTRODUCTION: CRIMINOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE CRISIS
Mathieu Deflem

deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net

Published in Economic Crisis and Crime, edited by Mathieu Deflem. Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2011.

Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. "Introduction: Criminological Perspectives of the Crisis." In Economic Crisis and Crime, edited by Mathieu Deflem. Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Writing shortly after the economic turmoil that set in since the Fall of 2008, it is clear to any reader what is meant when reference is made to ’the’ crisis. The financial crisis that developed out of the implosion of the United States housing bubble that reached its peek around 2006-2007 no doubt can be told, in its origins and consequences, in terms of a complex economic tale. But even and especially for non-experts, the crisis need not to be argued to be of special significance in any more detail than to consider the reality that, on a near world-wide scale, millions of people have lost their jobs and/or their homes, while governments have been scrambling to develop appropriate policies to rectify conditions which they had helped to create.

Naturally, the crisis is primarily a matter of economics, finance, and other such issues which, from a technical-practical viewpoint, are outside the purview of sociology and criminology. Yet, what can be valid as well as useful about social-science perspectives devoted to the study of crime and crime control, as the contributions in this volume will testify, is to focus on those dimensions, dynamics, and implications of economic crisis that belong most intimately to the scholarship of criminology, in general, and criminological sociology, in particular.

Social scientists have historically devoted much attention to a wide range of societal implications related to crises in the economic realm. Karl Marx (1867) virtually equated the study of the forces of capitalist production with the study of crisis, as he saw economic crises and their political and other social implications as a phenomenon inherent to the development of capitalism. More restrained and arguably more sociological in orientation were the relevant perspectives developed by Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. In his essay Die Börse (The Stock Exchange), Max Weber (1894) argued, on the basis of his theory of rationalization, that financial actors legitimize their work with reference to their specific expertise and that, therefore, any moral considerations may be less appropriate to consider than are financial-technical concerns. From a different approach, Durkheim (1893, 1897) offered a sociological perspective of the organization of labor in society that devoted special attention to the distinctly social or moral implications of crisis moments in the economic realm by examining the consequences for crime, suicide, and other behavioral patterns.

The intellectual foundations of criminology and criminological sociology have likewise on occasion focused on the impact of crisis on crime and its control, typically as part of a more general focus on economic development and organization. The seminal works of Bonger (1916), Sellin (1937), and Rusche and Kirchheimer (1939) come to mind. In the further unfolding of modern sociology and criminology, economic crisis has from time to time remained an issue of concern, especially among critical criminologists who aligned, in more or less explicit fashion, with Marxist theorizing (Godefroy & Laffarguelien 1984; Greenberg, 1993; Greenberg & Humphries, 1982). Yet, it is also true, perhaps logically so, that the theme of economic crisis strikes scholarly thinking mostly then when a crisis occurs. By its very nature, a crisis is somehow delineated in time and space, even and especially when it is intense and highly consequential. The very nature of a crisis, then, perhaps explains why it has served as an inspiration for scholarly reflection only on certain moments, though this cannot be an excuse for scholarly indolence. In any case, the present day is a time for serious reflection on economic crisis, and the authors in this book show that social scientists with an attention for crime and crime control are up to the task.

Briefly reviewing the chapters in this volume, a first set of contributions deal with the mortgage crisis, arguably the most central component of the crisis from an economic viewpoint. Tomson Nguyen and Henry Pontell analyze how deregulatory fiscal policies created conditions that brought about a tension with legislation to foster racial and economic equality. Deregulation contributed to increase fraud by lenders, which disproportionately impacted minority populations. Laura Patterson and Cynthia Koller also address the fact that lenders were willing to take on more risks. They show how business practices associated with housing led to the creation of a criminogenic environment with homebuyers as its primary victims. Nicole Piquero, Marc Gertz, and Jake Bratton address the mortgage foreclosure crisis by analyzing the public perceptions of the crisis as one among other influences on crime control policy. The authors find that a majority of the public blames the banks and the lenders for the crisis and additionally that about half of the examined respondents favor regulation of relevant economic enterprise. Within the context of predatory lending, Harold Barnett, finally, discusses the case of a subprime loan made out to a straw borrower which victimized an African-American couple in Chicago. Barnett details this interesting and puzzling case of equity stripping fraud, including the role played by investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The chapters in Part II address various aspects of the criminologically long-standing topics of corporate and white-collar crime in the context of the crisis. Michael Levi examines the societal reactions to white-collar crime under conditions of the financial crisis. He argues that the crisis affected government reactions to fraud, yet also that the seriousness of business-elite crimes has been downplayed, unlike other crimes. Wim Huisman offers food for thought to unravel the causal mechanisms of corporate crimes and the economic crisis. Identifying four possible scenarios, Huisman astutely differentiates between the causes of criminal behavior and the processes of the criminalization of such behavior. Focusing on one specific form of white-collar crime, David Shichor, Henry Pontell, and Gilbert Geis analyze three cases of illegally backdated stock options. The authors dutifully recommend multi-disciplinary attention to the issues by combining both economic and criminological expertise.

The final part of this book includes chapters that examine various consequences of economic crisis for criminal developments and law enforcement. Paul Harris offers a theoretical discussion of the criminal consequences of various changes that have been brought about in neighborhood structure as a result of home foreclosure. Reviewing strain, social disorganization, and disorder theories of criminology, the author introduces the notion of suburban insulation as an appropriate conceptual avenue to the problem at hand. Richard Peterson examines the relationship between (un)employment and intimate partner violence on the basis of data from the National Crime Victim Surveys. Contradicting suggestions made in the news media, he shows that unemployment is only weakly related to rates of intimate partner violence. Finally, Darrell Irwin investigates how local police departments across the United States have been affected by the economic recession, specifically by having faced budgets cut. This development, of course, has affected the quality of police work that can be offered, which in turn may have consequences with respect to criminal developments.

As a whole, the chapters in this book hope to offer a useful set of analyses of criminological issues concerned with important aspects of economic crisis that will appeal to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, economics, criminal justice, and other relevant social sciences. The unprecedented scale of the economic recession that has begun since the late 2000s on a global level will necessitate criminologists from various disciplinary background to take these issues seriously for quite some time to come.

REFERENCES
Bonger, W.A. (1916). Criminality and economic conditions. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company.
Durkheim, E. (1893) 1984. The division of labor in society. New York: The Free Press.
Durkheim, E. (1897) 1951. Suicide: A study in sociology. New York: The Free Press.
Godefroy, T., & Laffarguelien, B. (1984) Crise économique et criminalité. Criminologie de la misère ou misère de la criminologie? Déviance et société, 8, 73-100.
Greenberg, D.F. (ed.) (1993). Crime and capitalism: Readings in Marxist criminology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Greenberg, D.F., & Humphries, D. (1982). Economic crisis and the justice model: A skeptical view. Crime & Delinquency, 28, 601-609.
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This is an electronic version of a print publication. Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. "Introduction: Criminological Perspectives of the Crisis." In Economic Crisis and Crime, edited by Mathieu Deflem. Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Policing Afghanistan: Civilian Police Reform and the Resurgence of the Taliban (2011)

2011-05-17T16:59:00.003-04:00

Policing Afghanistan:
Civilian Police Reform and the Resurgence of the Taliban
Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
This is an online copy of a print publication in The Routledge Handbook of War and Society: Iraq and Afghanistan, edited by Steven Carlton-Ford & Morten G. Ender, pp. 114-124. London: Routledge.
Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. "Policing Afghanistan: Civilian Police Reform and the Resurgence of the Taliban." Pp. 114-124 in The Routledge Handbook of War and Society: Iraq and Afghanistan, edited by Steven Carlton-Ford & Morten G. Ender. London: Routledge.
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Introduction

Modern police institutions have historically developed from government agencies involved with the suppression of political dissent (against the state) towards the development of independent expert institutions involved with the control of crime (in society) (Deflem 2002, 2009). This historical development towards an increasing bureaucratic autonomy of policing also has an important comparative dimension, for police institutions only reach a high degree of autonomy when a society is relatively peaceful and the polity is democratized. In autocratic regimes, conversely, police power will remain very closely tied to governments’ quest to maintain power and secure order. This typically occurs through very violent means and in close conjunction with military forces that are not as sharply differentiated from police as is the case in democratic societies. As police institutions under autocratic polities tend to be very closely associated with the military, civilian police duties (of crime control) are typically subsumed under a much broader security regime (of order). In democratic regimes, by contrast, police and military are not closely intertwined except in exceptional circumstances, such as a period of warfare.

These theoretical insights are used to analyze the evolving police condition in Afghanistan since the invasion of the country in 2001. Accompanying the analysis of policing in contemporary Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006; reprinted in this volume), it will be shown that the establishment of civilian police forces in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, is not only difficult and slow, but has also been hampered by violent attacks against the police by the Taliban’s deliberate efforts to impede democratization.

From 1996 until the invasion of 2001, Afghanistan was politically controlled by the autocratic Taliban. Based on the theory of policing that argues for the gradual development of professional police systems (Deflem 2002), it can be postulated that the police function under the Taliban was intimately tied to the political objectives of the state. As a result, civilian police functions will not have been well-developed compared to those of the military, secret intelligence, and security agencies. However, since the invasion of Afghanistan and the introduction of a democratic system of government, these conditions will have led to a democratization of the country’s polity and to a development of accompanying civilian police systems. This process of police professionalization, however, has been substantially hindered by Taliban fighters, who seek to disrupt Afghanistan’s path to democracy. The Taliban thereby uses violent strategies against the newly instituted police forces in order to destabilize Afghan society.

Like the insurgent activities that have plagued the development of policing in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the militant activities of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, I argue, are purposely aimed at hindering the development of the newly established Afghan police institutions. Thus, the military intervention in Afghanistan has not only responded to the terrorism of 9/11, it has also brought about an entirely new set of conditions of terrorist violence. Given the connections between the development of civilian police and the democratization of society, I argue, the terrorist activities of Taliban forces in Afghanistan are aimed at the police institutions that are being established because a regularly functioning police would represent an important and highly visible indicator of the pacification and normalization of society. Civilian police forces are ironically a preferred target of terrorist activities, precisely at times when these institutions are needed, even more urgently than under peacetime conditions, to fight terrorist activities. This analysis is based on a variety of government and agency reports and international news sources.

Policing Autocracy: Afghanistan under Taliban Rule

Given the variable connections between police and politics, it is useful to situate the development of the organization and function of policing in Afghanistan within the country’s political evolution (Ewans 2002; Rogers 2004; Runion 2007). Although Afghan civilization dates back several thousands of years, a modern state of Afghanistan was not founded until the middle of the 18th century, when Persian rulers took control of a region that now covers Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as parts of Iran and India. In the early 19th century, the United Kingdom extended its colonial empire to the Afghan region, until Amanullah Khan was installed as Shah in 1919.

Afghanistan’s monarchial dynasty was very stable, with Mohammed Zahir Shah ruling from 1933 until 1973, when he was ousted by a relative, Mohammed Daoud Khan, who became the first President of a newly formed Republic of Afghanistan. In 1978, Daoud Khan was killed following an uprising led by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, at which time the country was officially renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Backed by the Soviet Union, the new regime was secular and introduced various modernization reforms, leading to opposition from religious conservatives and other factions, including the Islamic warriors of the so-called Mujahideen.

On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Faced with international opposition and an increasingly better organized Mujahideen, which could also count on the backing from the United States government, Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in the late 1980s. During the 1990s, secular and Islamic forces in Afghanistan continued fighting for control of the country. In 1996, the Islamic political forces of the Taliban seized the city of Kabul and gradually took control over almost all of Afghanistan.

During the Taliban era, many police functions were subsumed under broader military powers and formulated in terms of principles derived from Islam (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001; Mohammad and Conway 2003; PBS 2006). Besides a constant involvement in battling rivaling militias, the Taliban also maintained an elaborate internal enforcement regime to impose its strict version of Islamic law (sharia). Partly based on a similar police force in Saudi Arabia, this ‘religious police’ was formally overseen by a Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Amro bil mahroof) and was expected to enforce various Taliban edicts oriented at making Afghan society Islamic in all respects. Such edicts were promulgated to ban all non-religious music, all books not published in Afghanistan, television sets, videocassettes and recorders, satellite dishes, and movies, all of which were judged to be offensive to Islam and, consequently, subject to police action. Behavior forbidden under Taliban law included laughing in public, dancing, keeping pigeons, and smoking. Neckties, fashion catalogues, musical instruments, computer discs, and flying kites were also banned, and police were ordered to seize all such items. Afghan women were particularly targeted by Taliban laws, which forbad women to work or go to school, to wear white shoes or heels that clicked or clothing other than the all-covering burqa, to use lipstick, or to walk outdoors unaccompanied by a close male relative. In August 2001, a Taliban edict banned all organizations in Afghanistan, except the Taliban militia headquarters in Kandahar, from using the internet (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001).

The Taliban police would beat or imprison anyone who broke the rules of sharia law. Men could be beaten by the religious police for having beards shorter than the length of a fist. Taliban policemen would sometimes stop vehicles on the street and search for music or video tapes, telling people to spend more time praying and going to the mosque. Barbers were arrested for giving men haircuts, known as the ‘Titanic,’ that mimicked the style of actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie about the famous ship. Thieves could have their arms or legs amputated, anyone caught drinking liquor could get whippings, adulterers could be stoned to death, and women were generally not granted any independent rights (Abdullah 1998; Lamb 2006; Maier 2001).

Post-Invasion Police Reform

As has been the case since Iraq was invaded (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the invasion of Afghanistan brought about many immediate and long-term changes. Although the military interventions were motivated differently in terms of their purported connections to the terrorist attacks of September 11, they each envisioned a political regime change and the installation of a new, democratically elected government. The democratization of primary social institutions, including Afghan police and security forces, would have to be part of this process.

Because the al-Qaeda movement was linked to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where terrorist training camps were organized and Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding, the United States government, in direct response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, launched Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7, 2001 with the support of coalition forces of some 50 countries. After the invasion, local Afghan warlords sided with coalition forces in fighting the Taliban and joined the so-called Northern Alliance, a collection of anti-Taliban Afghan political and religious groups. Once the Taliban forces had been largely defeated, the Alliance helped install an Afghan Transitional Administration in 2002. This paved the way for a new permanent government allowing the 2004 Presidential elections, when Hamid Karzai became President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Congressional elections were held in September 2005 to establish a National Assembly.

In April 2002, an international conference on Afghanistan was held in Geneva to formulate a plan for Afghan security in the post-Taliban era (Combined Security Transition Command 2008; Del Vecchio 2008; Library of Congress 2006; Murray 2007; Powell 2005; Sedra 2003; U.S. Department of State 2006; Wardick 2004; Wilder 2007). The initial goal was to install a new Afghan national police that would consist of some 44,300 uniformed police, 12,000 border police, 3,400 highway police, and 2,300 counternarcotics police. In 2003, a new Afghan National Police (ANP) was established along with an Afghan National Army. The newly formed national police resembles a gendarmerie in having a military character, but it is responsible for regular law enforcement duties, including criminal investigations, drugs enforcement, and border security. The ANP is supervised by the Afghan Ministry of Interior, which developed a document, the Tashkil, that specifies the structure and functions of the new police. By 2009, the number of police officially part of the ANP had risen to about 79,000. Yet no accurate information is available of the number of officers actually serving, as police commanders are known to accept salaries of nonexistent ‘ghost officers’ (Saunders 2008).

The Afghan National Police consists of several specialized branches. The Uniformed Police (at 34,000 the largest unit in the ANP) is responsible for general law enforcement, public safety, and internal security. A Civil Order Police is responsible for security involving civil disturbances in large urban areas. Additionally, specialized law enforcement functions are maintained by the Border Police, the Counter Narcotics Police, the Criminal Investigation Division Police, as well as a Counter Terrorism Police.

On the basis of the 2002 Geneva conference, German authorities in 2003 took on the lead role in Afghan police reform through the German Police Project Office which aimed to help the Afghan government create a national police that is both effective and respectful of the rule of law (Auswärtiges Amt n.d.). Since June of 2007, the German initiative has been expanded into a European effort through the European Union Police Mission to Afghanistan, called ‘EUPOL Afghanistan’ (Council of the European Union n.d.). Largely made up of German as well as other foreign police, EUPOL Afghanistan provides training, advice, and equipment to the Afghan National Police. Consisting of some 200 officers, EUPOL Afghanistan decided, in May 2008, to bring the size of the mission to a total of 400 personnel on the basis of a budget of more than 35 million Euros (nearly 52 million U.S. dollars).

Besides Germany and the European Union, other coalition forces, especially Canada and the United States, have also assisted in the reorganization of the Afghan police. Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been deployed to Afghanistan since 2005 to monitor and train the Afghan National Police (RCMP n.d.). The United States policing efforts in Afghanistan are not primarily involved with Afghan police reform but at poppy crops eradication, especially by intervention of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (and the Drug Enforcement Administration) (see Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs n.d.; Risen 2007).

Since 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense has assisted the Afghan National Police, using U.S. marines and other military units to train police recruits (Rohde 2007b). As in Iraq, U.S. efforts to train Afghan police are also handled by DynCorp. By June 2006, the private company had 245 police trainers in Afghanistan. Police training is conducted at the Afghan National Police Academy (Central Training Center) in the capital city of Kabul as well as in several regional training centers across the country. By 2006, more than 60,000 Afghan police officers had received training. Because the government of Afghanistan does not have the necessary funds, the reorganization of the country’s police is funded by members of the international community.

Although some former Afghan militia members have been recruited into the army and the national police, several thousands of militia organizations have continued to exist under the command of local warlords. Additional problems exist because the Afghan criminal justice system has developed very slowly and there are not enough attorneys, judges, and other necessary personnel to carry out law enforcement activities. Also, some areas of the country remain unprotected by army or police and are under the control of drugs traffickers and local militia groups.

By 2009, there were still plans to increase the size of Afghanistan’s national police. Yet, because Afghan police forces have not been able to provide adequate security with respect to civil order, drugs enforcement, and border security, Afghan National Army troops have been deployed in areas that are lacking in law enforcement. As in Iraq, police in Afghanistan have also been accused of being ineffective as well as unprofessional, using torture to extort confessions and being involved in corruption (Berglund 2008). As a result, the need for international assistance in Afghan police training remained high as late as the Fall of 2008 (Canwest News Service 2008; Deutsche Welle 2008).

Target: Afghan Police

Again paralleling the development in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the invasion of Afghanistan has brought about continued problems of violence and civil unrest despite the efforts that have been made to introduce democratic rule and establish new social institutions. Democratic rule has been formally instituted in Afghanistan, but ongoing outbursts of violence by Taliban forces have prevented a normalization of Afghan society. As in Iraq, the newly formed Afghan civilian police forces have been especially targeted by the renewed violent unrest.

Despite the fact that a democratic government has been installed in Afghanistan, Taliban forces have been able to regain control over several areas in the country (and in neighboring Pakistan). As early as 2005, coalition forces had to mount a new offensive against Taliban positions. A year later, Taliban resistance continued to increase, especially by means of attacks involving improvised explosives and suicide bombings. As a result, Afghan society has been destabilized by what has been described, since as early as the summer of 2006, as a full-fledged Taliban resurgence (de Borchgrave 2006). The Afghan National Police, moreover, has been judged to be ineffective in dealing with the upsurge in Taliban violence, as the police have remained understaffed, undertrained, and underequipped (Chivers 2008; CTV 2008). By July 2008, the violence perpetrated by Taliban forces had reached such proportions that the United States government decided to extend the tour of duty of some its troops, and asked other NATO nations involved to increase their respective troop levels (Dillow 2008). In February 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that an additional 17,000 troops would be deployed to Afghanistan (Alberts 2009).

There is no systematic information available on the fatalities of the Taliban resurgence that is comparable to that provided by the Iraq Body Count website on the situation in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006). In more ways than one, the military intervention in Afghanistan is a ‘forgotten war.’ However, based on information provided in published media reports, there are clear indications that the Taliban resurgence has increased since at least 2005 and that its violent tactics have been specifically and increasingly aimed at Afghanistan’s new civilian police forces (Rohde 2007a; Motlagh 2007). Although Afghan police were already targeted by Taliban forces soon after the new National Police was installed (McCarthy 2003), attacks against the police particularly increased during the spring of 2007, when Taliban tactics moved from attacking the military troops of the (foreign) coalition forces to hitting the (domestic) police forces. By early September 2007, at least 379 Afghan police were reported to have already been killed in that year, compared to a total of 257 police fatalities for all of 2006. Other sources put the numbers even higher, estimating some 1,200 police killed in 2007 (CNN 2008). Data provided by Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry indicate that more than 900 Afghan police officers were killed as a result of Taliban violence in 2007 (Shah and Gall 2008). Other sources put the numbers even higher, with as many as 1,700 Afghan police fatalities in the first four months of 2007 (Chivers 2009).

Throughout 2008 and the first half of 2009, media sources continued to report on Taliban attacks purposely aimed at killing Afghan police officials (e.g., Farmer 2009; Gul 2008; Khan 2009; Shah 2009). By the spring of 2009, U.S. military command estimated that 1,500 Afghan police were killed in 2008 (Garamone 2009). In June of 2008, the first ever killing of a female Afghan police officer was reported (GEO TV 2008). A few months later, the highest ranked female police officer in the city of Kandahar was also murdered in an attack the Taliban claimed as part of the increasing wave of attacks purposely aimed at Afghan women (Burns 2008). A surge of Taliban attacks took place in the weeks and days leading up to the Afghan presidential and provincial council elections that were held on August 20, 2009. Afghan police forces were thereby particularly targeted (Weissenstein 2009).

The total number of fatalities among the Afghan police as a result of Taliban violence appears to be lower than the number of insurgency killings of police in Iraq. In the years 2008 and 2009, when violence against Afghan police was on the rise, similar incidents against Iraqi police were on the decline but were still at levels comparable to that in Afghanistan at the time. Extending from the analysis by Deflem and Sutphin (2006), numbers reported in the Iraq Body Count database show that by February 27, 2009 a total of 9,490 Iraqi police officers had been killed in 3,291 incidents since May 2003 (Deflem 2010). The total number of Iraqi police fatalities rose from 962 in 2004 to 1,454 in 2005, 2,413 in 2006, and 3,107 in 2007. After the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq was increased to 152,000 in March of 2007, the number of police fatalities decreased, but the level of insurgent violence involving police fatalities remained higher than it had been before the summer of 2006. In the 8-month period from November 2005 to June 2006, 1,009 police were killed, while 1,225 police died in the 8-month period from August 2007 to March 2008. In 2008, the total number of police killed was 1,241, considerably less than the year before, but still more than in 2004.

The violent attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq indicate a similar pattern: militants avoid targeting military troops and resort to roadside bombs and suicide attacks directed at police forces. Afghan police officers are additionally vulnerable because many are based in small police stations in regional districts and are attacked at night. More fundamentally, the Taliban attack Afghan’s new system of policing to bring about a destabilization of society. The attacks against the police are not merely tactically motivated to fight anti-Taliban forces. Rather, they broadly target Afghan police institutions throughout the country, irrespective of the role of police in counter-terrorism or other civilian tasks. Taliban forces have also sought to destabilize a democratic Afghanistan by targeting other important social institutions such as schools and mosques.

Police, Democracy, and the Normalization of Society

Soon after U.S. Special Operations and other coalition forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban was quickly ousted and a nascent democratic regime was soon installed. The quick overthrow of the Taliban took place much as the U.S. government and the other coalition powers had hoped for. However, even more than is the case with the insurgency in Iraq, the Taliban forces were able to regroup and regain control, at least in some areas of Afghanistan. As in Iraq, the greatest difficulties in the reconstruction of Afghanistan since a democratic government was put in place have come from the resurgence of ethnic and religious factions, the eruption and intensification of militant violence, and the very slow and incomplete restoration of primary social institutions. A durable peace and normalization of Afghanistan has as of yet not been firmly established.

Continued violence from Taliban militants in Afghanistan (like the violent operations from insurgents in Iraq) have hindered the normalization of social life, including the development of civilian police systems. Societies that have not reached a degree of pacification are unlikely to develop a new civilian police force. As argued elsewhere (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), pacification can thereby not be understood to imply merely an absence of warfare and extreme levels of violence, but should also entail a durable peace that allows for a normalization of social life. Importantly, conditions of peace and the functioning of primary social institutions such as the police can be observed to mutually influence one another. A well-functioning Afghan police system is thus a very important element in the transition to a democratic Afghanistan. Precisely because of the role a civilian police plays in the democratization of Afghan society, the newly established Afghan police forces (much like the Iraqi police in the post-Saddam era) have been among the favored targets of terrorist violence.

Affirming the importance of the police as a primary institution, it can be noted that terrorist attacks against police, often specifically targeted at new recruits, have also taken place in other nations that, for various reasons, have gone through periods of instability. Since the summer and fall of 2008, attacks against police and police stations, claimed to have been organized by a variety of terrorist groups, have been reported in countries as diverse as Yemen, Algeria, China, Turkey, Zimbabwe, and the Russian republic of Ingushetia (Deflem 2010). Although more systematic research would be needed, it is not unthinkable that at least some of these actions have been undertaken because of the successful implementation of similar attacks against police in other nations, thus indicating a spread of terrorist tactics across national borders. In the case of Pakistan, moreover, the attacks against police that have taken place in 2008 and 2009 have been attributed to the same Taliban forces that operate in neighboring Afghanistan (Deflem 2010).

Confirming the analysis of police reform in Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the case of the post-invasion Afghan police suggests that a pragmatic perspective is needed which acknowledges that military interventions in autocratic political regimes will inevitably bring about breakdowns of the social order at multiple institutional levels (Perito 2005). Rather than merely assuming and hoping that invading powers will be “greeted as liberators,” as then U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed before the invasion of Iraq, a more sobering and realistic estimate about restoration efforts following military interventions is in order (Milbank 2003). Even under the best of circumstances, police reform in post-autocratic regimes should be expected to take several years. The development of a civilian police in post-Taliban Afghanistan (as in post-Ba’athist Iraq) is especially difficult because states with a strongly militaristic and dictatorial past cannot easily separate internal security tasks from national defense functions. As the case of Iraq also shows, a rigid separation of military and police functions and an adaptation to local circumstances are needed to enable the successful creation of a civilian police in post-autocratic regimes (Bayley 2001).

In the current global era, it is unthinkable that the democratization of any society can occur in isolation from the rest of the world. In the case of civilian police reform in Afghanistan (and Iraq), international assistance has therefore proven to be instrumental. However, these international programs have faced inherent difficulties because they depend not only on support from police in the assistance-providing nations, but also have to rely on military units and private companies whose police-reform capabilities are by definition limited. Private security groups, such as DynCorp, can often rely on officers recruited from professional law enforcement agencies, but they lack the accountability that characterizes public police institutions. Military personnel are neither trained nor equipped to deal with matters of law enforcement unless they have been recruited from law enforcement. The assigning of police tasks to the military is also counter-productive and highly ironic in view of the fact that a primary goal of police reform in post-autocratic regimes is precisely to demarcate the civilian police more clearly from the military.

Conclusion

Besides the inherent difficulties in forming a democratic polity in post-war societies, the development of democratic police institutions poses many additional concerns. While some variation exists in how democracies are and can be policed, the police function in a democratic society must at a minimum fulfill the following dual conditions: 1) police agencies must have a position of independence relative to the center of the state and be responsible towards the needs of citizens and accountable to law; and 2) police must abide by standards of law and human rights (Bayley 2001, 2005). In contemporary Afghanistan (as in Iraq), these conditions are very tentatively beginning to emerge, but many problems persist. Most distinctly, civilian police forces are expressly pursued as the preferred targets of violent operations by factions expressly oriented at destabilizing society.

At the time of this writing (August 2009), indications suggest that Afghanistan, even more so than is the case in Iraq, does not (yet) have a stable democratic polity and also that the country cannot (yet) count on a civilian police that can truly lay claim to a legitimate and effective monopoly of force. Yet, inasmuch as the newly instituted and developing police institutions of Afghanistan are no longer the mere political tools of autocratic regimes, Afghan society is undergoing a slow and difficult process of normalization and democratization. It is for this reason precisely that terrorist attacks against the civilian police are meant to thwart the pacification of society. Yet, to the extent that Afghan police forces succeed in attaining a position of bureaucratic independence as professional law enforcement institutions, they will remain among the preferred targets of violent attacks from Taliban militants.

Study Questions

1. In the period before the invasion of 2001, Afghanistan was under control of the Taliban. Describe the central characteristics of the Taliban political system and how it differed from a democratic system of government.
2. During the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, police activities were closely aligned with military functions and justified on the basis of Islamic law. Summarize the main functions of policing during the period when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.
3. Police activities in a democratic society are very different from police activities in an autocratic regime. Describe the most important changes that have taken place in the policing of Afghanistan since the invasion of 2001.
4. The newly formed civilian police in Afghanistan faces great challenges in establishing itself as a democratic institution. Discuss some of the problems the Afghan police forces have had to deal with, especially in terms of the resurgence of the Taliban after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
5. In discussions in the media as well as in scholarly work, the role of police in autocratic societies, such as in Afghanistan under the Taliban, is often not sufficiently debated. Formulate an argument of why it is important to study the police in societies with an autocratic past that are undergoing a transition to democracy.

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Rohde, D. (2007b) ‘Overhaul of Afghan police is expensive new priority’, The New York Times, October 18, 2007. Online. Available HTTP: (accessed 18 August 2009).
Runion, M.L. (2007) The History of Afghanistan, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Saunders, D. (2008) ‘Corruption eats away at Afghan government’, The Globe and Mail, May 3, 2008. Online. Available HTTP: (accessed 18 August 2009).
Sedra, M. (2003) ‘Police reform in Afghanistan: An overview.’ Online. Available HTTP: (accessed January 18, 2010).
Shah, T. (2009) ‘Taliban kill 20 Afghan police’, The New York Times, January 1, 2009. Online. Available HTTP: (accessed 18 August 2009).
Shah, T. and Gall, C. (2008) ‘Taliban attack kills 11 officers at a police post in Afghanistan’, The New York Times, April 15, 2008. Online. Available HTTP: (accessed 18 August 2009).
U.S. Department of State. (2006). ‘Interagency assessment of Afghanistan police training and readiness’, November 2006. Online. Available HTTP: (accessed 18 August 2009).
Wardick, A. (2004) ‘Building a post-war justice system in Afghanistan’, Crime, Law, and Social Change, 41: 319-341.
Weissenstein, M. (2009) ‘Attack on police rocks busy Afghan street, 11 dead’, Examiner.com, August 3, 2009. Online. Available HTTP: (accessed 20 August 2009).
Wilder, A. (2007) ‘Cops or robbers? The struggle to reform the Afghan National Police’, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. Online. Available HTTP: (accessed 18 August 2009)..
Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. "Policing Afghanistan: Civilian Police Reform and the Resurgence of the Taliban." Pp. 114-124 in The Routledge Handbook of War and Society: Iraq and Afghanistan, edited by Steven Carlton-Ford & Morten G. Ender. London: Routledge.

Book Review: The Vertigo of Late Modernity (2010)

2010-05-05T17:10:00.001-04:00

Book Review: The Vertigo of Late Modernity, by Jock Young
Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. Review of The Vertigo of Late Modernity, by Jock Young.
Unpublished book review. Available online at www.mathieudeflem.net.
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Prefatory Note

This book review was originally solicited by the editors of the journal Sociological Inquiry. It was submitted in September 2008 and accepted for publication, though there was some delay because of space restraints. After a change of editors at the journal, the review was still not published by August 2011. Upon an inquiry by email, the new journal editor informed me that the review would not be published because of alleged substantive considerations concerning my discussion of the merits of the work. I leave it to the reader to draw appropriate conclusions.

Review

I enjoy writing reviews of books, but I do not always enjoy the books I review. I must also admit that I often enjoy writing reviews of books I do not enjoy reading, though sometimes I do not. There is a certain measure of irony in this experience, but I do not think it is particularly dizzying. I did not enjoy reading The Vertigo of Late Modernity by Jock Young, who presently holds academic at the University of Kent and at John Jay College, and I will make it (very) clear why. Most basically, this book presents itself as a sweeping study of the conditions of our present age, but it actually fails to offer a question which it wishes to address. It is not a characteristic of the condition of late modernity that no clarity in formulating questions and suggesting directions can be expected from its observers. Yet, from the very beginning of this text, a multitude of often rather vague questions is introduced. At one point this book is about ‘cultural borders’ (p. 1), then it deals with a politics of hiatus (p. 11), and then eventually with late modernity’s vertigo, here defined as a ‘sense of insecurity of insubstantiality, and of uncertainty, a whiff of chaos and a fear of falling’ (p. 12). I would say there is quite more than just a whiff of something very unpleasant in these pages.

What are the themes that this book deals with? Young begins with a discussion of processes of inclusion and exclusion to show how both are intertwined. Applied to economic and other inequalities, the emphasis is mostly on the underclass, the members of which are subject to a double stigmatization of poverty and a lack of respect. But as meritocracy crumbles, a search for a new politics of identity is on the rise. Work is devalued for those who cannot but serve the middle classes and others who are higher up on the socio-economic ladder. In matters of crime, the underclass also gets the brunt of all the blame. Economic poverty breeds criminality, and new moral panics over criminal epidemics are created and sold to the public. A process of othering, as Young calls it, is applied as well to immigrant groups and, of course, to the terrorist who comes from outside the Occidental world.

How to evaluate this book? A clear line of thinking can be discerned in the development of Young’s work, from the initial promise of a critical criminology in the 1970s, through the demise thereof during the 1980s and 1990s in the form of a cunningly constructed left realism, to the present phase of works that are (by definition) much harder to define. It is within this trajectory that we find Young’s present story —a narrative, I suppose— which deals with so-called liquid modernity, in which all is in flux and motion. Nothing is clear. Everything is ambiguous. Social theory is easy under these circumstances, for it can never be wrong, let alone falsifiable or more or less valuable. And the manner in which the presumed ambiguities of nowadays are conceptually addressed cannot reveal clarity either. If the 19th century was an age characterized by an avalanche of numbers, the present time has brought about a deluge of buzz words. Paradox, contradiction, disembeddedness, fluidity, and othering, to name but a few of those that are encountered in the pages of Young’s book.

The essence of the story, if there is one to be discerned, is that in the global era of today things are always changing and nothing stays the same. While flexible and filled with the potential for reinvention, late modernity also brings about ontological insecurity, Young writes. But apparently these conditions do not hold true for its critics, for they are secure more than ever in both their work and their thinking. Therefore, it makes all too much sense that in this book a shift is suggested from economy to culture. Of course, there is such a shift —at least for those who can afford it. Sadly, however, if there is anything that has been subject to exclusion in this kind of scholarship it is precisely any sense of realism.
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Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2011. Review of The Vertigo of Late Modernity, by Jock Young. Unpublished book review. Available online at www.mathieudeflem.net.

Book review: The Sociology of Deviance (2010)

2010-05-05T17:09:00.002-04:00

Book review: The Sociology of Deviance, by Robert J. Franzese
Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
This is an online copy of a publication in Teaching Sociology 38(4):392-393, October 2010.
Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2010. The Sociology of Deviance: Differences, Tradition, and Stigma, by Robert J. Franzese. Teaching Sociology 38(4):392-393.
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The sociology of deviance remains one of the most beloved specialty areas of our discipline, at least among many of our students, if not always among many of our fellow scholars. The field is also richly filled with textbooks of all kinds. So it may be difficult to see why another textbook in the sociology of deviance is needed and what such a book could contribute to our teaching

that other books have not yet been able to accomplish. Despite conditions, Robert Franzese has written a textbook on deviance, one that he introduces in the preface as having a central focus on differences. Thus, Franzese’s book presents a specific angle from which it reviews various traditions in the sociology of deviance. The particular approach of the book is further clarified by the subtitle, especially the addition of the term stigma, which is conceived as a tribute to the work of Erving Goffman and to emphasize the merits of societal reaction perspectives. How, then, is the book structured, and what are its main merits and limitations?

The book contains an introductory part and two main parts on theory and substantive issues, respectively. The various chapters are introduced by means of illustrative cases to facilitate students’ understanding into more abstract issues in the sociology of deviance. The author introduces a general definition of deviance based on extant conceptualizations from the literature. In specifying broad models of deviance, the author again relies on existing conceptualizations, specifically those forwarded by Alex Thio and Ruth Shonle Cavan. A second introductory chapter briefly introduces the central methodological social science perspectives of ethnography, survey research, and secondary data analysis.

The second part of this textbook focuses attention on the main theoretical approaches in the study of deviance. The author first briefly reviews the theories and then proceeds to offer lengthier overviews of a variety of theories. The theories that are discussed in this book squarely fall in the category of the usual suspects. First, the author discusses anomie and strain theory as it was developed by Robert Merton. Next, a chapter is offered on contemporary strain theories, such as those developed by Robert Agnew and by Richard Rosenfeld and Stephen Messner. Next up in the overview are the control theories of crime, especially those that were developed by Travis Hirschi and, later, in collaboration between Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson. Chapter 7 then focuses on the center piece of this book, devoting a discussion on societal reaction theory. Besides the leading proponents of labeling theory, this chapter also includes the works of Edwin Sutherland and Ronald Akers. Conflict and feminist theories are the subject matter of the last theoretical chapter.

The final part of this book reviews a number of substantive topics on deviance, specifically, suicide, violence, substance abuse, mental disorders, sexual deviance, and elite and power deviance. I can be brief about these chapters because they each follow the same structure of first offering rather lengthy reviews of empirical trends on these behaviors and next, in a shorter section, offering an overview of some of the major theoretical explanations. In the theoretical sections, the author’s orientation mostly favors societal reaction perspectives.

I can generally be rather straightforward in my evaluation of this book. I do not find that it offers much new under the sun and nothing much of value in the few instances when it is more original. There is not much here that can be learned that cannot already be learned in other textbooks. The one main contribution of this book is that it offers both theoretical and substantive discussions, a very useful combination that is not often explored in other textbooks. However, the two main parts of the book do not hold together besides a general orientation toward societal reaction theory. The qualities of each of the three parts are also rather limited. The chapters in the introductory part are but summaries of what other scholars have argued, without the author offering much of a general orientation to how these ideas hold together.

The second, theoretical part of this textbook reveals many shortcomings as well. The way in which the central ideas in the sociology of deviance are structured reveals an astonishing ignorance of both the history and the systematics of the sociology of deviance. For instance, anomie and strain theory is discussed before differential association theory is explained. No discussion is presented of the Chicago School. Control theories receive a separate chapter, while Sutherland’s work is squeezed into the chapter on societal reaction. Within each chapter, similar intellectual blunders are committed. The work of Albert Cohen is explained before the writings of Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin, but after the much more recent work of Agnew and Messner. Feminist theories are merged into a chapter on conflict perspectives.

The intellectual blunders in this book are too many to mention. By example, the author’s brief excursion on Talcott Parsons is stunning in arguing that Parsons had only an indirect influence on the sociology of deviance by having been a mentor to Robert Merton. Remarkably, Parsons’s lengthy chapter on deviant behavior and the mechanisms of social control in his influential book The Social System is ignored. Analytically, also, this textbook’s notion of deviance as difference is unsatisfying on its face. There are many differences in the human condition that do not constitute deviance. In this book’s part on substantive issues of deviance, the readers are spared many of the intellectual limitations of the theoretical part. Yet instead, they are exposed to a largely descriptive presentation of data that in the present era could just as easily have been gathered from a good Internet search.

In sum, this book does not make a useful contribution to our teaching of the sociology of deviance. In fact, I fear that it is books like these that give the field of the sociology of deviance the bad reputation that it often has on the part of those who are not familiar with the very best research and teaching materials that our field has to offer.
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Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2010. The Sociology of Deviance: Differences, Tradition, and Stigma, by Robert J. Franzese. Teaching Sociology 38(4):392-393.

Book Review: The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener (2010)

2010-05-01T17:08:00.001-04:00

Posted on Mathieu Deflem's Publications site.

Book Review: The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ISBN: 0-230-57390-8 (hardback). £50.00. xv + 192 pp.
Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
This is an online copy of a print publication in Global Change, Peace and Security 22(1):152-153, 2010.
Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2010. Review of The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener. Global Change, Peace and Security 22(1):152-153.

The world of international policing is extremely varied and extensive, today more so than ever before. The rise of international policing is not only a function of the increasing demands for the policing of international crime, but also relates to the variation in international policing on a conceptual level as various forms can be distinguished. Traditionally most developed has been the study of comparative police systems across the world. Effectively linking the police systems of different nations, international police cooperation among the world’s law enforcement agencies, both on bilateral and multilateral levels, has taken on increasing relevance from the early twentieth century onwards. And, arguably of most growing relevance in recent decades has been the involvement of civilian police in peacekeeping missions in various post-war societies. Interestingly, there existed a literature that was especially well developed in the period between the two world wars of the previous century that went under the heading of “international police,” but that dealt, not with law enforcement, but with the establishment and maintenance of international peace among nations. What is interesting about recent developments is that international peacekeeping missions have increasingly included criminal law enforcement tasks, thereby effectively transforming the former metaphor of international policing into a reality involving civilian police institutions.

Within the broader field of international policing, Beth Greener’s book specifically focuses on the involvement by civilian police in peacekeeping missions in a variety of contexts. Noting that such efforts are on the rise under the auspices of political bodies such as the United Nations, the European Union, and various nations, Greener’s study is concerned with unraveling the history and present dynamics of the police involvement in peacekeeping operations. The work is oriented at both the audience of international relations scholars and police professionals. Her analysis starts with a brief overview of the history of police involvement in peacekeeping. Noting that such efforts were already taken after World War II, when the allied powers sought to restore civilian police in Germany and Japan, Greener observes a trend for the United Nations to take on such tasks as CIVPOL (civilian police) operations, denoting clearly the difference with the UN’s military operations. In various post-conflict societies, such as Cyprus in the 1960s and Namibia and Panama in the 1980s, CIVPOL programs were implemented. These efforts evolved from relatively passive monitoring programs to more active efforts, involving police development through training as well as participation in law enforcement operations.

In the remainder of the book, Greener analyzes various cases of civilian police in peacekeeping in more detail. In a chapter on Kosovo and East Timor, the author pays particular attention to the problems associated with the UN strategies to develop new police institutions as part of a comprehensive law-and-order approach. The imbeddedness of policing in a broader field of social and political factors is acutely felt in these societies. The chapter on the Solomon Islands, a chain of more than 900 islands north of Australia, narrates the involvement in police missions by the Australian Federal police and the police from other nations in the region. Initiated in 2003, following a period of ethnic tensions on the islands, this program has been fairly successful as it has relied on a considerable foreign presence and was tailored towards the specific needs of the region. Turning attention to the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is shown that enormous difficulties can be faced in the police missions of peacekeeping operations. In the case of the building of a new civilian police in Afghanistan, where German police took on a leading role, the focus was too narrowly tailored towards law enforcement issues irrespective of larger societal conditions. In the case of Iraq, central problems emerged with the US-led efforts to form an Iraqi civilian police because of the reliance on military forces and private contractors as the United States does not have an appropriate national police to handle such tasks.

In the book’s final two chapters, Greener discusses the challenges and future of police involvement in peacekeeping missions. Most central are the problems with the changing relationship between police and military, whereby it may become necessary for police to take on military roles, leading to a militarization of policing, but whereby it is also more likely that the military takes on traditional police tasks. Given the likelihood that police efforts in peacekeeping operations will continue to take place in the near future, Greener recommends that police officials are aware of and be prepared to take on necessary operational challenges, yet also that broader social and political conditions are adequately addressed.

The literature on various aspects of international policing has expanded very considerably over the past two decades. Greener’s book is a welcome addition to this scholarship especially in that it discusses an often ignored aspect in the world of international policing as well as in the scholarship on international relations and global peace. Rather than being analytically oriented at developing or applying a theoretically informed social-science perspective on policing and/or nation-states, the book is primarily informative in describing the involvement of police in various peacekeeping missions. This focus is acceptable, in my mind, given the relative novelty of the book’s topic. I would only have wished that Greener had been more clear in specifying that the involvement of civilian police in peacekeeping is only one dimension of international policing. The author’s use of the term ‘international policing’ might obscure the fact that police agencies are in a variety of ways no longer restricted in their activities to the boundaries of national states and otherwise confined localities. However, in thoughtfully addressing aspects of the law enforcement role in post-conflict societies, which is arguably the as yet most neglected aspect of international policing, Greener’s work may serve as a useful guide for our further exploration of the shifting relations and possibly blurring boundaries between police and military in times of both war and peace.

Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu. 2010. Review of The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener. Global Change, Peace and Security 22(1):152-153.

International Law Enforcement Organizations (2010)

2010-02-04T15:58:00.004-05:00

International Law Enforcement Organizations

Mathieu Deflem
deflem@sc.edu
www.mathieudeflem.net
&
Shannon McDonough
University of South Carolina

This is an online copy of a print publication: Pp. 127-148 in Comparative and International Policing, Justice, and Transnational Crime, edited by Sesha Kethineni. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010.

Cite as: Deflem, Mathieu, and Shannon McDonough. 2010. “International Law Enforcement Organizations.” Pp. 127-148 in Comparative and International Policing, Justice, and Transnational Crime, edited by Sesha Kethineni. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
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The police function, primarily organized in law enforcement agencies at the local and national level, reveals a variety of characteristics in different jurisdictions. As discussed in the previous chapter, there are important variations in policing practices and organizational styles in different nations. However, the practice and function of policing has become internationalized, which has brought about important mechanisms and structures, in general, and international police cooperation in particular. Although the internationalization of police work has accelerated tremendously since the 1980s,over the past decades , this chapter will show that the recent growth of international police activities has important historical antecedents. Moreover, contemporary dimensions of international policing vary in terms of functions and modalities. In particular, among the efforts to organize international police work are the international law enforcement organizations that exist to structure police cooperation on a broad, multilateral scale. This chapter will discuss two important examples of such organizations: Interpol and Europol.

The History of International Policing

A review of some of the key historical developments in international law enforcement and cooperation among industrialized nations reveals two important trends (Deflem 2002, 2007a, 2007b). First, early manifestations of international policing had a strong focus on the political objectives of the particular governments, but international policing gradually evolved toward a concentration on criminal objectives as police institutions achieved a certain level of autonomy. Second, the structure of international policing progressed from exclusively unilaterally enacted transnational activities and temporary and limited forms of cooperation to the development of more permanent and structured organizations with wide multilateral participation.

The origins of international policing date back to at least the nineteenth century amidst the expanding development formation of large national states, especially in Europe states . In the United States, international police activities were historically restricted to regional issues, such as immigration and the changing borders of the United States. By contrast, Europe experienced greater development of international police practices because of the multitude of countries existing in close proximity to one another as well as the general political conditions of the time. International policing activities in Europe during the nineteenth century initially emerged to suppress political threats to established autocratic regimes. These activities were mostly conducted unilaterally through the employment of agents abroad, either secretively or as representatives in foreign embassies. Bilateral and multilateral cooperation occurred only on a limited and temporary basis in specific investigations.

The first effort to organize international police cooperation on a more permanent basis took place in 1851 with the formation of the Police Union of German States. Consisting of police from seven German-speaking nations that shared similar political objectives, the Police Union engaged in the gathering of political intelligence and created systems of information exchange on suspect political groups (e.g., democrats, anarchists, and socialists) to thwart the threat they were thought to pose to the participating members’ governments. Because the Union was organized around political rather than criminal enforcement objectives, the organization gradually declined as the governments of its member agencies began to diverge politically. The Union was dissolved in 1866 when war broke out between its two primary members, Prussia and Austria. This failure to create a more enduring international police organization illustrates the inherent limitations of policing for political objectives and shows the importance of securing the autonomy of police agencies with exclusively criminal objectives.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, police institutions became subject to bureaucratization through the gradual development of professional systems of knowledge about crime, including its increasing international dimensions, and the attainment of expertise about the proper means of policing. This process of bureaucratization was manifested by a growing emphasis on criminal enforcement tasks rather than the political objectives of national governments. In response to the political disorder produced by anarchism, however, national governments’ political demands remained in force until nearly the end of the nineteenth century, which impeded attempts to establish more permanent forms of international police cooperation. For example, amidst increasing violence directed against autocratic regimes in Europe in the final decade of the nineteenth century, the Italian government arranged for an international conference in Rome to organize the fight against anarchism. From November 24 to December 21, 1898, fifty-four delegates from twenty-one European nations attended “The International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against Anarchists,” which was focused on suppressing the anarchist movement. The conference encouraged police to keep watch over anarchists through establishing specialized surveillance agencies in each country along with systems of information exchange. Yet, although the conference was organized around explicitly political objectives, police officials established only practical standards of cooperation and law enforcement, e.g., adopting a shared method of criminal identification and a procedure for extraditing persons involved in assassination attempts of a sovereign or head of state. In March 1904, the Russian government revived the anti-anarchist program at a follow-up meeting in St. Petersburg where a “Secret Protocol for the International War on Anarchism” was drafted. The Rome and St. Petersburg conferences, however, failed to produce any long-term forms of international police cooperation because of their political foundations and the ideological divisions of the participating countries. In particular, these conferences failed to create a central anti-anarchist intelligence bureau that would allow for more efficient information exchange between nations.

During the twentieth century, international policing continued to move away from political objectives toward a focus on the policing of crimes with international dimensions. The progress towards criminal enforcement activities was fostered by structural conditions that allowed police agencies to gain institutional autonomy from their respective governments, which enabled them to function as independent, professional institutions. Following the work of sociologist Max Weber (1922), it can be argued that this position of autonomy was achieved as a result of a bureaucratization process by which police institutions began to rely on a purposive-rational logic to find and use the most efficient means to achieve given objectives of criminal law enforcement (Deflem 2002). The trend towards autonomy was periodically interrupted by repoliticization attempts instigated by incidents of political disruption, e.g., World War I (1914-1918) and the Bolshevik Revolution (1917). However, police institutions became more resistant to such influences as they gained higher degrees of autonomy, which fostered the establishment of more permanent forms of international policing with multilateral participation. Furthermore, a variety of globalization trends accelerated attempts to organize police internationally because of the growing interdependence of societies and the increase in opportunities for crimes with global implications.

Among the earliest historical manifestations of the change toward criminal concerns in international police work was the focus on the suppression of the international trafficking of prostitutes, the so-called “White Sslave” trade. The first attempt to organize international police activities against the White Sslave trade was organized by France at a conference in Paris in 1902. This meeting eventually led to the “International Agreement for the Suppression of White Slave Traffic” in 1904, which was signed by twelve European nations and several other nations, including the United States. In addition, in 1910, the “International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic” was signed by thirteen nations. These conventions, however, failed to take into account the bureaucratization of police institutions, nor did the participants consult with police officials; therefore, neither the conference nor the agreements had any significant impact on actual international police activities.

Other attempts to establish an international police organization likewise failed due to their exclusion of representatives from police agencies. For example, in Monaco in 1914, politicians and legal officials failed to establish an international police organization during the “First Congress of International Criminal Police,” because they excluded police officials and only focused on criminal police duties as a function of legal principles already abandoned by police institutions. World War I began soon after the meeting and the program did not recommence after the war had ended. Other efforts to set up an international police organization that did include police officials were relatively insignificant because they emphasized professional standards of police reform rather than international criminal policing objectives. Such attempts included the International Association of Chiefs of Police, formed in Washington, D.C., in 1901; police conferences in Buenos Aires in 1905 and 1920, and Sao Paolo in 1912; and the International Police Conference in New York in 1922.

The most successful effort to organize an international police organization was the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), which was established in 1923 in Vienna, and which is today widely known as Interpol (Deflem 2002). The ICPC was independently organized by police officials to facilitate cooperation in the policing of international crime, explicitly excluding political violations. To that end, the organization established a headquarters and various systems of information exchange. The ICPC became the most developed international law enforcement organization with multilateral membership, although the organization was initially a predominantly European organization. In the years leading up to World War II, the ICPC was taken over by the Nazi regime after the annexation of Austria in 1938. The Nazi-appointed president of the Viennese police was assigned to the ICPC presidency and, a few years later, the headquarters was relocated to Berlin. In 1946, the ICPC was revived at a police meeting in Brussels, Belgium, and renamed the International Criminal Police Organization, and the headquarters were relocated to France. As will be discussed in more detail below, today Interpol is the largest international law enforcement organization with member agencies representing 1876 nations.

Contemporary Dimensions of International Policing

The attainment of bureaucratic autonomy by police institutions has facilitated the development of more permanent forms of international cooperation based on systems of information exchange and a shared understanding of criminal enforcement goals. The apolitical nature of international police organizations allows for the cooperation of police from nations with different political and legal systems. At the same time, however, nationality remains a persistent element in international policing in terms of forms and objectives.

Forms
International law enforcement emerges within the context of important societal developments such as political and economic transformations (notably, the spread of capitalism and democratization), which affect the organization and practices of police institutions across nations (Deflem 2007b). These societal developments allow police institutions to engage in transnational operations involving foreign citizens within their own jurisdictions or through police work concerned with nationals or foreigners abroad. International policing can also involve various types of collaboration among police institutions of different nations, including temporary or permanent bilateral and multilateral arrangements, in the form of investigative enforcement tasks, the sharing of operational and organizational methods and techniques, or more permanent multilateral international police organizations.

Whatever the form, the nationality of police organizations is persistent, and is manifested in three ways (Deflem 2007a). First, police organizations prefer to conduct international policing unilaterally rather than through cooperation with foreign police. This is especially the case with police institutions (e.g., those in the United States) that have sufficient resources to operate alone. Second, arrangements of cooperation are most often made on a temporary basis, rather than through multilateral organizations, and occur in the context of specific investigations in which cooperation is necessary to accomplish criminal objectives. Third, police cooperation in the context of a permanent multilateral organization does not involve the formation of a supranational police force. Rather, police institutions of different nations engage in collaborative efforts with one another to attain their respective nationally or locally defined goals.

The persistence of nationality in international policing activities is most evident in the case of U.S. agencies because they are heavily involved in unilateral transnational police work (Cottam and Marenin 1999; Deflem 2001, 2004a, 2005). In the context of international cooperation involving U.S. law enforcement organizations, there is a relative lack of cooperation due to the U.S. police’s lack of trust in foreign law enforcement agencies and suspicions of corruption and unprofessionalism. Police organizations in the United States, especially those at the federal level, are generally more heavily involved in international policing activities than police from any other nation, due mainly to concerns over the international drug trade, illegal immigration and border control, and international terrorism. The dominant role of the United States today—in stark contrast to the conditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—signifies an “Americanization” of international police activities (Nadelmann 1993). This Americanization can be observed in various aspects of foreign police organizations and activities, such as the adoption of policing methods and principles originally developed in the United States, the reliance on U.S. assistance in the formation of specialized drug units and the organization of police training and investigative work, and the influence of U.S. agencies on the legalization of certain police techniques in foreign countries. Reviewing the most prominent organizations involved in international policing, the dominance of the United States becomes evident in terms of the level of participation and assistance that U.S. police institutions bring to international policing. At the same time, however, there is still some development of autonomous international police organizations (e.g., Europol) that are directed toward specific local and regional concerns outside of U.S. interests.

Organizations
Many law enforcement organizations are involved in international operations. At the international level, Interpol and Europol (the European Police Office) are among the most prominent international police organizations with permanent multilateral structures (see below). Among the many U.S. federal agencies involved in international policing activities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have the greatest international impact and presence (Deflem 2001, 2004a, 2005, 2007b). The FBI serves the investigative function of the Department of Justice and is responsible for the policing of federal crimes, e.g., terrorism and drug trafficking. The Bureau manages a system of legal attachés (or legats), employed in at least fifty-two countries, who participate in investigations and help foreign police forces make arrests. The FBI also oversees international training programs for foreign police at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and, in cooperation with the Diplomatic Security Service, at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, Hungary.

The DEA is the U.S. agency primarily responsible for policing the drug trade. Through the enforcement of U.S. drug laws, the DEA engages in many international activities at the borders and abroad, including regular communication with international organizations concerned with drug control. The DEA Operations Division includes an Office of International Operations, which organizes international missions, and a foreign liaison system, which is even more extensive than the FBI’s, with at least seventy-eight offices in fifty-eight countries. The U.S. law enforcement organization with the largest overseas presence is the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which, amongst other things, is in charge of security at U.S. embassies around the world.

Although U.S. agencies prefer to work unilaterally or bilaterally in international police activities, the United States is represented in the multilateral organization Interpol through the National Central Bureau (NCB) in Washington, D.C. (Deflem 2001, 2005). Also known as Interpol Washington, the NCB is organized into five divisions: the Alien/Fugitive Enforcement Division, which deals with international fugitives; the Financial Fraud/Economic Crimes Division, which involves the policing of economic crimes; the Criminal Investigations Division, which oversees activities involving a variety of international crimes; the Drug Investigations Division, which deals with drug crimes; and the State Liaison Division, which maintains relations with various state and federal police agencies in the United States States.

Many U.S. federal agencies are involved in international policing activities (Deflem 2001). Besides the FBI and the DEA, tThey include U.S. the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USBCIS), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Postal Inspection Service, the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs in the Justice Department, and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Besides these federal agencies, various local and state police forces, especially those located close to the borders, also have international policing duties.

Activities
The current era of globalization has produced an increase in international criminal activities, which have greatly expanded the scope of international policing. Moreover, advances in technology have shaped the nature and forms of international crime and its control. Thus, the internationalization of crime, along with the important organizational and technical developments of police agencies (i.e., bureaucratization and institutional autonomy), have facilitated international police activities and cooperation in the fight against international crime. In particular, growing concerns over border control, illegal immigration, drug trafficking, international money laundering, cybercrimes, and international terrorism have steadily affected the development of international police cooperation (Deflem 2001, 2007b; James 2005; McGillis 1997; Nadelmann 1993).

Border control has become a special focus of international policing activities with the rise of international crimes such as smuggling and illegal immigration. In the United States, the Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly called the Immigration and Naturalization Service) and the Border Patrol within Customs and Border Protection enforce immigration laws through various prevention strategies and the apprehension of smugglers and illegal aliens. As border policing becomes increasingly redefined as a “militarized” national security issue (Dunn 1996), there has been an increase in the deployment of military forces at the U.S. border as well as an upgrade in the weaponry used by border patrol agents (e.g., semiautomatic guns). Likewise, ATF manages a division of agents that specialize in border control issues such as gun and liquor smuggling. The United States also cooperates bilaterally with Mexican and Canadian police agencies in the patrol of their respective borders and related law enforcement activities.

To prevent illegal immigration and smuggling, the main strategy of Border Patrol since the 1990s has been to increase the number and visibility of local and federal police agents stationed at the borders in an effort to deter aliens from attempting to enter the country illegally. Other activities include the search and identification of criminal and illegal aliens, the inspection of passengers aboard ships and airplanes entering the country, and the investigation of drug, liquor, and gun smuggling. To enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of these activities, border police rely on advanced technologies such as computerized fingerprint tracking systems.

Intimately related to border control and placed in the context of the United States’ “war on drugs,” international drug trafficking is another major focus of international policing. The drug trade was, in fact, the original driving force behind the increased participation of U.S. police agencies in international policing activities, the Americanization of policing abroad, and the continued dominance of U.S. police in international efforts (Deflem 2001, 2004a, 2007a). International police work targeting the drug trade involves a large number of U.S. agencies. The primary U.S. drug enforcement agency is the DEA, which handles violations of drug laws within the United States as well as at the nation’s borders and abroad in collaboration with other U.S. agencies and foreign police. Related to the enforcement of drug laws, the DEA participates in various forms of international cooperation, including functioning as a liaison in a number of international organizations involved in drug control and an international network of more than 500 DEA agents stationed abroad, mostly in notorious drug-producing nations, who collaborate with foreign police in drug investigations and training programs.

In addition to the DEA, the escalating emphasis on controlling the drug trade in the United States’ “war on drugs” has led to an increase in the international orientations of other U.S. agencies. For instance, the FBI includes drug trafficking among its federal crime enforcement responsibilities. Other U.S. agencies involved in international activities related to policing the drug trade include the Marshals Service, the Coast Guard, and the Border Patrol. Furthermore, all branches of the U.S. military have anti-drug units and there are joint military task forces aimed at fighting drug operations at the U.S.-Mexico border (Defenselink 1996). Multilateral cooperation occurs through the Drug Investigations Division of Interpol Washington, which coordinates investigations of drug-related international crimes.

International money laundering is related to drug trafficking and terrorism, which has increased along with a general rise in organized crime (Deflem and Irwin 2008). Money laundering is often used to conceal illegal income, including its sources and applications. The policing of international money laundering occurs in conjunction with international regimes aimed at suppressing money laundering through the implementation of policies and regulations at bilateral and multilateral levels between countries. These global regimes formally prohibit and criminalize money laundering, whereas police agencies enforce the respective laws and regulations. The hidden and technologically advanced nature of money laundering activities presents additional obstacles and therefore requires specialized means and police agencies to control them.

In the United States, the FBI and the DEA include specialized operations divisions against money laundering among their overall international policing activities. The Financial Crime Section of the FBI includes a Money Laundering Unit, which oversees activities aimed at disrupting and dismantling money laundering operations identified in relation to the FBI’s enforcement of white-collar crimes, organized crime, and drug and violent crimes. The FBI also maintains relationships with other police agencies at the local, state, and federal level and organizes special task forces aimed at domestic and international money laundering concerns. The DEA engages in similar activities focused on the money laundering activities and capabilities of major drug-trafficking organizations.

It is important to note that U.S. authorities perceive of the United States views money laundering as an international security threat and views some vulnerable foreign governments as incapable of avoiding the risk or temptation of allowing illegal monetary transactions in their countries. Therefore, U.S. law enforcement agencies also set up sting operations within these countries unilaterally, without the knowledge of the host country, or bilaterally, to thwart money-laundering activities. International cooperation also occurs at the multilateral level. For example, Interpol has facilitated the cooperation among member nations in identifying, tracing, and seizing the assets of money launderers through the exchange of information. Private organizations, such as financial institutions, also cooperate with law enforcement in the identification of money-laundering crimes.

Since the late twentieth century, international policing has shifted its focus towards more technologically advanced crimes (Deflem 2007a). Advancements in computer technology have brought about new opportunities for crimes involving the Internet and information technology, transcending national borders and affecting multiple national jurisdictions. The transnational nature of cybercrime requires international policing activities ranging from unilateral activities to the establishment of bilateral agreements and multilateral law enforcement regimes. Unilateral transnational police activities are sometimes necessary because the legal systems of nations do not always harmonize. Law enforcement agencies from different countries do cooperate to police cybercrimes, but collaborative efforts may be hindered when laws related to cybercrimes differ among the nations involved. Thus, international legal frameworks have been developed to facilitate cooperation among nations. For example, the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cyber-Crime serves to organize procedures of cooperation to aid in the policing of cybercrimes (Council of Europe 2001). Multilateral organizations (e.g., Interpol and Europol) also support collaborative efforts in the policing of cybercrimes. For instance, Interpol has instigated a number of activities related to cybercrime, including a system of working parties around the world that specialize in information technology crimes, to facilitate the sharing of information on computer security-related matters between member nations.

The most important development in international policing in the current era is the proliferation of terrorism. From the 1980s onwards and, especially in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, international terrorism has been the central catalyst of increased international police cooperation and an expansion of policing powers across the world (Deflem 2004b, 2005, 2007a, 2007b). Various newly developed anti-terrorism agreements and laws have facilitated these developments. In the United States, for example, the USA PATRIOT Act (“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”) of 2001 extended the authority of police. Across the globe, similar anti-terrorism agreements and laws have been passed. The strengthening of the police function has also affected various jurisdictions of authority and, as a result, has intensified cooperation among police at local, state, federal, and international levels. Police cooperation has also been enhanced by a focus on the most efficient means to accomplish counterterrorism objectives. Furthermore, the increase in international police cooperation motivated by counterterrorism objectives has reinforced the centrality of U.S. police institutions in international police activities.

In the wake of increasing concerns over terrorism, police agencies have been afforded greater powers in terms of the means of policing, equipment, personnel, and budget, and have brought about a realignment of police agencies with military forces (Deflem 2004b). Terrorism has also been conceptualized in terms related to war and national security, leading to a militarization of the police function (Kraska 2001; Sievert 2003). For example, on November 13, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush approved an order to allow military trials for foreign suspects of terrorism. Moreover, the reorganizations and realignments of police institutions that are presently justified in terms of the terrorism threat may lead to lasting structural readjustments long after the immediate repercussions of events such as 9/11 have faded.

The reorganization of policing across the world since 9/11 is reminiscent of past politicization attempts of police activities during periods of societal turmoil. However, in the present era, modern police institutions have attained an unprecedented level of bureaucratic autonomy, allowing police to remain resistant to politicization attempts and continuing to rely on professional standards of police technique and expertise. Modern-day police institutions may therefore continue to exhibit a high degree of autonomy in determining the means and objectives of counterterrorist police work even when facing political pressure to conform to the goals of their respective governments.

Interpol: The International Criminal Police Organization

Since its establishment as the International Criminal Police Commission in 1923, Interpol has steadily expanded its membership to become the most prominent international police organization (Deflem 2002, 2006a). Relying on a collaborative model of policing, the formal objectives of the organization are to facilitate and ensure cooperation between the police of different nations within the limits of their respective national laws while adhering to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since the organization’s reformation after World War II, Interpol’s focus on criminal violations has explicitly excluded political, racial, and religious matters. Historically, however, Interpol has not always been invulnerable to political conditions. During the Cold War era, the Soviet control over Eastern European nations that were members of the organization led the FBI, which had joined the organization in 1938, to terminate its participation in 1950. U.S. participation in Interpol was thereafter secured on an informal basis by the Treasury Department. The United States has reestablished formal ties with Interpol, represented jointly by the Departments of Justice and the Treasury.

Originally founded in response to increasing concerns over the internationalization of crime due to rapid social change and technological progress, Interpol was created to serve as a communication network to facilitate law enforcement cooperation via a headquarters through which information could be exchanged among police agencies from different countries. Information exchange was further accomplished through printed publications, a radio and telegraph system, and regularly held meetings of police representatives. The headquarters in Vienna contained divisions specializing in the falsification of passports, checks and currencies, fingerprints and photographs, and other pertinent systems of knowledge. The emphasis on swift methods of information exchange has basically remained unaltered since the headquarters were moved to France (first to Paris and, in 1989, to Lyon), although the technical sophistication of these methods has advanced greatly. Since the 1970s and, especially, the 1980s, Interpol accelerated its activities. International terrorism has been a central driving force in this expansion. As early as 1984, Interpol decided on a resolution that encouraged its members to cooperate on terrorism matters, and by the late 1990s, Interpol viewed international terrorism as one of its primary concerns.

The structure of Interpol consists of a General Assembly, an Executive Committee, a General Secretariat, and National Central Bureaus. The General Assembly functions as the main governing component, which includes delegates, appointed by member agencies, who meet annually. The Assembly votes on all major decisions related to Interpol’s policies, resources, methods, finances, and activities. The Executive Committee, elected by the General Assembly, consists of a president, three vice presidents, and nine delegates representing Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

The General Secretariat is located at the Interpol headquarters in Lyons, France. Regional offices are located in Argentina, El Salvador, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Thailand, and Zimbabwe, and there is a liaison office at the UN in New York. Since 1996, Interpol has formal agreements with the UN, and entertains similar agreements with Europol, the International Criminal Court, and other police and legal organizations, which provide it observer status in sessions of the UN General Assembly. Interpol’s secretary general oversees the General Secretariat and assigns membership in the organization to police agencies chosen by the governments of their respective nations to be participants in the organization.

The National Central Bureaus are maintained by each of Interpol’s member agencies in their respective countries. They serve as contact points for communication between the regional offices of the General Secretariat and other member agencies concerning all official Interpol police communications about international crime investigations and the location and capture of fugitives. Communication occurs on the basis of a color-coded notification system with each of six colors representing a specific type of request. For example, a red notice is a request to arrest a fugitive under the process of extradition, whereas a blue notice is a request to gather information about an individual related to a crime. A green Interpol-UN Special Notice has most recently been added, and it concerns group or individual actions formally sanctioned by the UN against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Interpol’s functions fall into three main categories. First, Interpol organizes a system of information exchange regarding international policing among its members. Communications were originally handled by mail, but since 2003 use an encrypted Internet-based system (I-24/7) that connects the General Secretariat with the National Central Bureaus. Second, Interpol functions as a source of operational data and databases, including names, fingerprints, and DNA profiles on international fugitives and information concerning stolen property, such as passports and works of art. Third, Interpol provides its member agencies with operational assistance with investigations in priority areas. For example, Interpol coordinates a Command and Coordination Center, which acts as the primary point of contact for member agencies seeking immediate assistance. Also, the Crisis Support Group, the Criminal Analysis Unit, and the Incident Response Teams, and Disaster Victim Identification Teams offer operational support at the request of a member agency.

Interpol emphasizes certain categories of international crime, rather than taking on tasks it is not equipped to handle. The organization prioritizes crimes involving terrorism and public security, drugs and organized crime, financial and high-tech crimes (e.g., money laundering and cybercrimes), fugitives, and the trafficking of human beings (Anderson 1997; Deflem 2006a; Interpol 2009). Since the 1970s, a primary concern of Interpol has been international terrorism, and various resolutions have been passed to combat terrorism and terrorist activities. Initially, Interpol passed a number of resolutions related to crimes involving terrorist activities, e.g., plane hijackings and holding hostages. In 1984, Interpol expanded its counterterrorism focus by in a resolution concerning “Violent Crime Commonly Referred to as Terrorism,” which encouraged member agencies to cooperate in the fight against terrorism within the context of their respective nations’ laws. The political motivations of terrorist incidents are to be delineated from the criminal elements, which, once identified, can be subjected to police investigations. In 1985, a Public Safety and Terrorism Subdirectorate was established to further facilitate cooperation in matters of international terrorism.

During the 1990s, Interpol accelerated its counterterrorism initiatives following an increase in terrorist attacks around the world. In 1998, at a General Assembly meeting in Cairo, Interpol announced its commitment to combat international terrorism through a “Declaration against Terrorism,” which emphasized the threat of terrorism to public security, democracy, and human rights. Interpol’s primary concern with international terrorism was reaffirmed in 1999 at a General Assembly meeting in Seoul, when a resolution was passed condemning the financing and support of terrorism. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, strengthened the focus on terrorism as well as Interpol’s infrastructure. Immediately following the attacks, on September 14, 2001, Secretary General Ronald Noble announced the formation of an 11 September Task Force in order to coordinate international criminal police intelligence regarding the attacks. Interpol also circulated fifty-five red notices for terrorists connected to the attacks and increased the circulation of blue notices to obtain information about the location of suspects, nineteen of which concerned the hijackers who committed the attacks.

A few weeks after September 11, at a General Assembly meeting in Budapest, Interpol passed a resolution regarding the attacks, which condemned the “murderous attacks perpetrated against the world’s citizens in the United States of America on 11 September 2001” as a “cold-blooded mass murder [and] a crime against humanity” (Interpol 2001). Interpol also prioritized the red notices for terrorists connected to the attacks to combat terrorism and organized crime more effectively.

A number of important aspects of Interpol’s organization changed following the September 11 attacks. Interpol strengthened its infrastructure through the establishment of the aforementioned I-24/7 communications system and a permanent General Secretariat Command and Coordination Center. Also set up was a Financial and High Tech Crimes Sub-Directorate, which specializes in money laundering. In April 2002, Interpol announced the formation of an Interpol Terrorism Watch List, which equips the police member agencies with direct access to information on fugitives and suspected terrorists.

As an international police organization, Interpol serves a unique yet limited function by maintaining an international network relying solely on the participation of member agencies rather than a supranational police force. Obstacles to cooperation can occur because of the sensitive nature of some relevant information and the fact that not all police agencies are equipped with the necessary infrastructure, personnel, and/or finances needed for international communications. Furthermore, the ideological diversity of Interpol’s member agencies may engender feelings of distrust and suspicion. The primary goal of efficiency and the focus on international crime in the absence of a formal legal system may also lead to problems of democratic accountability. However, the main advantage of Interpol is its broad multilateral reach, which maintains communications between countries that otherwise would be unavailable. The emphasis on methods of information exchange reflects a shared concern among Interpol’s member agencies regarding efficiency in international police work unhindered by international politics. Thus, Interpol can ensure cooperation in international criminal matters between the police of countries with differing political ideologies and legal standards.

Europol: The European Police Office

The formation of the European Police Office (Europol) was brought about to promote cooperation among police agencies in the European Union (EU) when policing serious international crimes (Deflem 2006b). Europol facilitates cooperation between EU member nations through a headquarters that employs some 600 personnel, more than 100 of which are Europol Liaison Officers from various police and security agencies, including the national police, customs, and immigration services from EU member states. Europol was formally established in 1992, but, as discussed above, the organization has roots dating back to the earlier efforts to organize international policing in the nineteenth century onwards. Since the 1970s, efforts to control terrorism accelerated international policing activities within Europe and led to the formation of the “Terrorism, Radicalism, Extremism, and International Violence” group (TREVI) by European police officials in order to facilitate the exchange of information and cooperation on international crimes related to terrorism. On February 7, 1992, in Maastricht, The Netherlands, the formation of Europol was officially outlined in the Treaty on the European Union (also known as the “Maastricht Treaty”) (Europol Convention 1995; Lavranos 2003; Occhipinti 2003; Winer 2004). The Treaty specified the establishment of a European Police Office, which framed Europol’s governance structure and defined its function as supporting cooperation among police agencies in the EU. Initially, operations began on a limited basis in The Hague through the Europol Drugs Unit, which focused on international drug crimes. Other forms of international crime were gradually addressed as well. A Europol Convention was formally organized in Brussels on July 18, 1995, which activated Europol on October 1, 1998. The organization was ratified by all the EU member states, and became fully operational on July 1, 1999.

The Europol Convention of 1995 specified that Europol’s function was to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of cooperation among police agencies from EU countries in the prevention and control of international organized crime without the formation of a supranational police force (Europol Convention 1995). Europol’s mission is restricted to criminal activities involving two or more member nations of the EU, especially those committed by criminal organizations. More specifically, Europol’s activities concern the investigation of international crimes, e.g., the illegal trafficking of drugs, human beings, and vehicles; child pornography; the forgery of money; money laundering; cybercrimes; organized robbery; swindling and fraud, corruption; environmental crime; and terrorism.

Europol provides its member agencies with various systems of international policing. First, Europol facilitates communications between the Europol Liaison Officers, who represent the national police of the member states at the Europol headquarters in The Hague. Each EU nation designates a particular police agency to function as the Europol National Unit, which acts as the contact point for Europol communications. Second, Europol provides operational analyses to assist international police activities, and draws up strategic reports (e.g., threat assessments), and crime analyses utilizing information collected by the police of member states or generated by Europol headquarters. Third, Europol offers technical support for police investigations initiated by the police of EU member states. Finally, Europol manages the Europol Computer System, which is used for analyzing data on people’s behavior and movements. The Europol Computer system is supplemented by the EU Customs Information System, which affords customs agencies the ability to exchange information on smuggling, and the Identification File of Customs Investigations, which contains information on individuals involved in criminal investigations.

The structure of Europol includes a governing body, called the Directorate, consisting of a director and three deputy directors, who are all appointed by the EU Council of Ministers for Justice and Home Affairs. Tthe director serves a five-year term, which is renewable once for four years, whereas the deputy directors serve a four-year term, which is also renewable once. The EU Council approves Europol’s budget and acts as a regulatory body, and forwards an annual report about Europol’s activities to the European Parliament. The Europol Management Board, made up of one representative from each member state, supervises day-to-day operations and meets at least twice a year to discuss the activities and future direction of the organization. Europol’s operations are also overseen by a Joint Supervisory Body, which consists of appointed representatives of the national supervisory bodies in the EU member states, to ensure that the rights of individuals are not violated by Europol’s handling of data and information exchange.

Europol primarily differs from Interpol in terms of its political and legal framework because it is formally sanctioned and organized within EU governmental structures. Yet, although Europol is formally mandated by the EU and overseen by its regulatory bodies, Europol maintains a level of bureaucratic autonomy similar to other international police organizations through the coordination of activities of the National Units. Europol’s operations are primarily guided by a concern for efficiency in the control of crime and police cooperation, which is implemented through a number of measures. Europol depends on the expertise and participation of existing police institutions from EU member states to staff Europol headquarters and the Europol National Units with qualified personnel. This ensures that Europol personnel are police officials who are familiar with a highly professionalized and independent European police culture. Efficiency of operations is also achieved by emphasizing the importance of effective and speedy communication among participating police agencies. Europol also promotes efficiency through managing agreements with non-EU nations, such as the United States, to facilitate cooperation with a broader range of police organizations. For instance, Europol has a liaison office in the United States to maintain relations with U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Similar to Interpol, international terrorism is currently one of Europol’s main concerns. The Europol Convention of 1995 already listed terrorism as one of the central justifications for establishing a European police organization. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, further accelerated international police cooperation aimed at terrorism and led to a prioritization of counterterrorism among Europol’s activities (Deflem 2006b; Den Boer and Monar 2002; Fijnaut 2004; Lavranos 2003). Immediately following the attacks, Europol set up a Europol Operational Centre to enable a twenty-four-hour-a-day information exchange. In November 2001, a new Counterterrorism Task Force became fully operational at the Europol headquarters. The Task Force functions as a specialized counterterrorism unit, consisting of terrorism experts and liaison officers from various police and intelligence agencies of EU member states. In 2002, the Task Force was incorporated into Europol’s Serious Crime Department, but it became a separate entity again after the terrorist bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004. The Task Force accumulates and analyzes information and intelligence related to terrorism, performs operational and strategic analyses, and produces a terrorism threat assessment, including targets, modus operandi, and security consequences (Europol 2006). Since its formation, the Task Force has produced several threat assessments pertaining to existing counterterrorism security measures in the EU and the presence of terrorist groups in Europe, including information on the financing of terrorism and the formation of an Arabic-to-English translation system.

In addition to the Counter-Terrorism Task Force, Europol has established other programs to combat terrorism. A Counter-Terrorism Program functions to coordinate all Europol counterterrorism activities, such as information gathering and threat assessments. The Counter-Proliferation Program handles all forms of illicit trafficking, including nuclear materials, arms, and explosives. The Networking Program coordinates communication among the experts of these programs and other international organizations and police in non-EU member states. The Preparedness Program organizes multilateral counterterrorism investigative teams for terrorist incidents in the EU. Finally, the Training and Education Program supports the terrorist intelligence and investigative programs by providing training to relevant personnel in the EU.

Europol’s counterterrorist efforts focus on terrorist groups insofar as they are active in or otherwise relevant to Europe. Thus, Europol maintains a regional focus in international policing, concentrating on concerns specific to the EU. The political decision-making process within the EU framework does not always ensure smooth police cooperation through Europol. Instead, political-ideological conflicts among EU member nations still occasionally hamper cooperation and restrict the organization’s structure and capabilities, for instance in passing and implementing legislation (Deflem 2006b).

Summary

The world of international policing varies in terms of practices and structures. International police work has been transformed from a preoccupation with political violations to a focus on international crimes. Moreover, unilaterally enacted transnational activities and bilateral cooperative networks have been gradually supplemented with multilateral international law-enforcement organizations. The recent past has witnessed a general expansion of international policing in the wake of global concerns surrounding border controls, illegal immigration, the drug trade, money laundering, crimes relying on advanced border-transcending technologies, and terrorism. Despite the growth of international police initiatives, the persistence of nationality is revealed in that police agencies prefer to work unilaterally, engage in relatively small and temporary bilateral cooperation, or participate in large multilateral organizations only on the basis of a collaborative model from which they seek to benefit in terms of nationally delineated enforcement concerns. The persistence of nationality of police participating in international activities is most advantageous to agencies from powerful nations. Thus it is no surprise that the strong global presence of U.S. law enforcement has brought about an Americanization of international police work.

Interpol and Europol are two of the most prominent international law-enforcement organizations. Interpol has steadily developed since its formation in 1923 to become the largest international police organization, with a membership drawn from 1876 nations. The organization relies on a collaborative model of cooperation to facilitate technologically advanced systems of information exchange and communication among its member agencies. Since the events of September 11, 2001, international terrorism has become a key concern for Interpol. In the EU, Europol has also expanded its activities in the wake of concerns over global security and the proliferation of serious crimes affecting EU member nations. Although Europol’s function and organization are subject to political control from the EU leadership, the organization relies, like Interpol and other international police organizations, on police professionals drawn from highly bureaucratized agencies that claim expertise and institutional independence.
The current era of globalization, which affects all aspects of life, can be expected to continue to necessitate international police activities. Despite the proliferation of international police work, however, it should be noted that the police function within larger jurisdictions also is organized at smaller, regional levels, such as in the subordinate sovereignties that will be discussed in the next chapter.

Web Resources

1. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF): http://www.atf.gov/
2. Bureau of Diplomatic Security: http://www.state.gov/m/ds/
3. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA): http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/
4. European Police Office (Europol): http://www.europol.eu.int/
5. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): http://www.fbi.gov/
6. International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol): http://www.interpol.int/
7. International Law Enforcement Academy, Budapest: https://www.ilea.hu/
8. U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USBCIS): http://www.uscis.gov/
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: http://www.uscis.gov/
9. U.S. Coast Guard: http://www.uscg.mil/
10. U.S. Customs and Border Protection: http://www.cbp.gov/
11. U.S. Marshals Service: http://www.usmarshals.gov/
12. U.S. Postal Inspection Service: http://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/
13. U.S. Secret Service: http://www.secretservice.gov/

Discussion Questions

1. What are the most important conditions that have historically influenced the internationalization of law enforcement?
2. How do contemporary developments in international police work affect law enforcement efforts at the local and national level among different nations?
3. What needs to happen if Interpol is to be more effective in fulfilling its mission?
4. How would you defend the view that Europol is like a European FBI?
5. Given contemporary concerns over a variety of international crime issues, how should international law enforcement organizations be developed in the coming decades?

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