Copyright © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press.
High Policing in the Security Control Society
* Criminology Program Co-ordinator, Associate Professor of Criminology, Faculty of Arts, York University, Toronto, Canada. E-mail: jshep{at}yorku.ca
The article considers the nature and practice of high policing in the security control society. It looks at the effects of the new information technologies on the organization of policing-intelligence and argues that a number of ‘organizational pathologies’ have arisen that make the functioning of security-intelligence processes in high policing deeply problematic. The article also looks at the changing context of policing and argues that the circuits of the security-intelligence apparatus are woven into, and help to compose, the panic scenes of the security control society. Seen this way, the habits of high policing are not the governance of crisis, but rather governance through crisis. An alternative paradigm is suggested, viz.: the human security paradigm and the paper concludes that, unless senior ranking policing officers—the ‘police intelligentsia’—adopt new ways of thinking, the already existing organizational pathologies of the security-intelligence system are likely to continue undermining efforts at fostering security.