This paper reflects on the interplay between the transnational subculture of policing and the subculture of transnational policing and pays particular attention to the encoding of masculine tropes within them. It uses the culture/subculture distinction to illuminate how gendered masculine identities help to mediate the relationship between the broader culture of control and the occupational subculture(s) of policing. The paper is part of an attempt to theorize global policing as a synecdoche of the global system, an idea that is fundamentally challenging to our ideas about the boundaries of the state. In this paper we draw attention to the specifically ‘masculinist’ nature of the discourse concerning global policing practice, which is often essentialized in dyadic terms; in extremis, in terms of chivalrous knights and rapacious Bluebeards. The paper looks at the militarization of US policing and briefly explores the global terrain of public order policing in the contemporary period, again drawing attention to the masculine tropes that pervade the scene. The paper endeavors to show how the prevalence of problematic masculine role-types in the enactment policing subculture(s) affects the global system.

Building on an assessment of Norwegian policy documents from 1994 to 2012, this article provides a critical analysis of the process leading up to the Norwegian agreements with EU, primarily those concerning police cooperation. The purpose is to discuss the Norwegian Government’s justifications for entering into the agreements throughout this period. The Norwegian Government firstly argued that the pertinent agreements were imperative to maintain the free travel-arrangements already existing between the Nordic countries. This justification was shortly after moderated, and had a few years later disappeared completely. It was replaced by a former secondary argument; the pressing need for enhanced police cooperation. This article presents some of the changes the EU agreements involved for the Norwegian police. It shows a discrepancy between the policiary needs and purposes as these were presented fluctuating throughout a relatively short period of time. Further, it reveals the lack of debate concerning what may be seen as fundamental changes in the way a sovereign nation state interacts with other states and their citizens. The article discusses what it may imply when justifications turn out to be flawed due to weak foundational premises, or because of later developments, but are still repeated or circumvented, or even used tautologically, to promote a certain outcome. It finds that this may be but one example of a general tendency where governmental justifications slide as a reaction to a dynamic supranational development. This is problematic in a democratic state because citizens are left unable to consider the development in the area of policing and border control, an area where justification of the state actions is perhaps of most importance.

The European Cyber Crime Centre, EC3, established under the umbrella of Europol, started operations on January 1 2013. It is to act as the focal point in the fight against cybercrime in the European Union. Using a “shared, cross-community approach” the EC3 is concluding partnerships with member states, European agencies, international partners and the private sector. This article describes the coming about of EC3 and its efforts to address cybercrime. Furthermore, the article is an attempt to assess the growing role of the European law enforcement community on the European security scene, this not least in view of the EC3’s mandate to conclude strategic agreements with a fairly high degree of autonomy.

Based on extensive interviews with officers participating in the operations of the EU external border control agency, Frontex, the article examines the nature of police culture and, in particular, the role of social and cultural proximity in transnational policing and its implications for our understanding of police loyalty and accountability. Precisely the possibility of proximity, of being “where the action is” and developing personal bonds and networks, is what makes this type of work attractive to the officers and is an important motivational driving force behind the agency’s dynamic expansion. The findings therefore support the orthodox accounts of police culture, which stress the importance of physical action, excitement and informal connections, rather than legal regulatory frameworks and formal and technological connections. However, by examining Frontex through the social dimensions of proximity, the article also brings attention to important internal divisions, cultural differences and divided loyalties within what might at first appear as a unitary culture of transnational policing. This is important for understanding the dynamics of closure, insularity and lack of accountability which has been a defining and problematic feature of transnational policing. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the empirical findings for bringing into light previously unexamined potential for greater openness and for improving the democratic ethos within the field.

The just behaviour of police officers in their interactions with citizens has been demonstrated as an antecedent of police legitimacy in Western democracies and beyond. As this paradigm gains prominence, the implementation of procedural justice interventions should be examined in order to better focus policy efforts in varied contexts. This article draws on a study of training in the Israeli Border Police to propose four factors that may influence the efficacy of procedural justice interventions in deeply divided societies: the perceptions of police officers regarding the minority group as deserving a relationship based on legitimacy; the depth of the existing deficit in legitimacy within that group; the paramilitary attributes of the police organisation; and high policing tasks, specifically protests, as discouraging dialogue. Highlighting these factors is of value to the successful delivery of interventions and advances understanding of police legitimacy in different contexts.

The regulation of police cooperation across national and international jurisdictional boundaries differs significantly around the world. It ranges from formal, legally binding international treaties and agreements, to informal custom applied between agencies. This article aims to explore the relevance of shared fundamental rights, and in particular fair trial rights, for the formalisation of police cooperation strategies. More broadly, it aims to address whether there is a relationship between similarities in human rights frameworks and the formalisation of transnational police regulation from a comparative legal perspective. The article addresses five distinctly different systems within which cooperation can eventuate. First, it assesses international police cooperation strategies with a view to formal regulation to show how a high (or even the highest possible) level of diversity regarding human rights regimes impacts on cross-border policing regulation. Second, the interaction between the Nordic countries, as a region with a long cross-border law enforcement history within Europe is analysed as a region comprising distinct sovereign states, but very similar human rights requirements. Third, the article addresses Greater China, which is composed of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao and Mainland China. The four states, while not being sovereign nation states, have distinctly different histories, legal systems and police organisations, which presents challenges for cross-border law enforcement. Australia, the fourth system investigated, is a federal state and its states and territories are independent criminal law jurisdictions with separate police forces, making cooperation across their borders necessary. However, the cooperating states and territories abide by very similar procedural rules and human rights requirements. Australia has been chosen as an example for the impact of greatest similarity (but no uniformity) on police cooperation regulation. Lastly, the European Union (EU) is assessed as a region that has formed its own human rights framework, as well as a significant number of treaties and agreements regulating police and justice cooperation.

This article addresses the use of security and surveillance technologies through police forces. It looks at the growing importance of mass-surveillance technologies for policing and with that, how general information gathering by police forces increasingly blur the borders between targeted and non-targeted surveillance. As a consequence, modern surveillance interferes with established national and international rights frameworks. The questions discussed relate to the legal basis of employing such technologies and in how far such technologies per se create legal problems. This article argues that information on the nature of technologies in the hand of police forces cannot be secret by default and that surveillance and control capabilities need to be transparent and information on the deployment possibilities must be publicly available. Due to the unprecedented capabilities of modern surveillance technologies, lawyers and police officers alike need to rethink the frameworks for employing surveillance technologies and even more: there needs to be the option of a public debate based on publicly available information as part of the creation of adequate legal basis. To illustrate this, this article will employ fundamental rights standards to assess the requirements for police use of surveillance systems in public places with special focus on Europe and the European fundamental rights frameworks.

This article examines the development of networked modes of policing along what has been described as a particularly vulnerable part of the UK border – namely, the Welsh coastline. Through the introduction of a novel policing initiative, ‘Coastal Surveillance Wales’, the enforcement apparatus aims to bring together numerous state agencies, an array of service providers and responsibilised members of civil society. While finding resonance with claims that the hierarchical, state-dominated provision of policing has been uprooted by a move toward a more polycentric, networked mode of governance (Shearing & Wood, 2003; Brodeur, 2010), it is suggested that the emerging security network along the Welsh coastline serves to enhance the policing and surveillance functions of the state. By co-ordinating otherwise disparate institutions, the policing initiative aspires to incorporate a range of agents and agencies in the crime control complex. In sketching a map of this policing arrangement, the article raises the question of how localised security arrangements can be imagined.