Policing: Toward an Unknown Future

The enclosed papers are the culmination of a project Dr. John Crank and Dr. Colleen Kadleck carried out assessing issues facing the police into the early 21st century. The papers are future oriented, in the sense that they anticipate trends visible today. Everywhere, the contributing scholars found that the organizational concept, practice, and function of the police were undergoing transition. Yet, the seeming state-level hardening of the police function was ubiquitous. Two themes were noteworthy. On the one hand, in developing or ‘second world’ countries, police face endemic problems of corruption, organized crime, and drugs. Police, in response, are undergoing centralization and intensification of law enforcement activities. In countries with first world economies – Canada, the United States, and Australia – contributors discovered trends toward expansion of the police function, a trend described by Brodeur as toward 'high policing'. It reflects the growing reliance on surveillance for crime control and for the tracking of minority, indigenous, and immigrant populations in crime prevention efforts. The results suggest that governments, sometimes encouraged by their citizenry, seem increasingly to rely on the police to deal with a broad array of social as well as criminal problems.This book was originally published as a special issue of Police Practice and Research.

Dr John Crank received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1987 and is currently employed at University of Nebraska, Omaha in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. His work focuses primarily on police issues, culture, and organizational practices. He has published six books, receiving ACJS outstanding book award for Imagining Justice. He is currently at work on the book Mission-Based Policing, a new model of police structure and practice that integrates current trends and represents a break from traditional, calls for service policing deployment practices. He has also published 52 papers in refereed scholarly journals. Dilip K. Das is the President of the International　 Police Executive Symposium (www.ipes.info), Editor-in-Chief of　 Police Practice and　 Research: An International Journal, Human Rights Consultant to　 the United Nations and Professor of Criminal Justice.