Innovative Possibilities: Global Policing Research and Practice

Innovative Possibilities: Global Policing Research and Practice brings together observations that reflect upon the state of police (and policing) across the globe and associated forms of policing scholarship with inputs from Africa, Australia, South and Central America, China, Europe, and the USA. Following the introduction the book begins with a review of the nature of the relationship between policing research and practice with the Victoria Police in Australia and moves on to Britain where the focus is on how the National Improvement Strategy for Policing (NISP) is developing and how research is being used to design, define, monitor, and develop its strategic interventions using a series of case studies. In the United States the complex American terrain of the police is examined -- in particular this chapter examines how crime statistics are used to rationalize, justify, and account for their actions. In Latin America a comprehensive review of research on police reform in Latin America during the last two decades is given. Africa provides a complex and diverse social terrain which needs to be understood in relation to its plural policing landscape. Police scholarship in China looks at the historical development and current status of police scholarship in China, together with the emerging issues arising from it. The overarching concern of all these reflections is with bridging the deep seated tensions that exist between scholarship and practice within policing across the globe and the call for a new relationship of mutual respect that is committed to exploring better ways of governing security.This book was published as a special issue of Police Practice and Research.

 Les Johnston was formerly a Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth. He has research interests in governance; security; and the relationship between state and non-state forms of policing. He has published articles in a wide variety of journals and his books include The Rebirth of Private Policing (London: Routledge, 1992) and (with Clifford Shearing) Governing Security: Explorations in Policing and Justice (London: Routledge, 2003).Clifford Shearing is the Chair of Criminology and Director of the Centre of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town. His most recent books are Ayling, J., Grabosky, P. & Shearing, C. 2009, Lengthening the Arm of the Law: Enhancing Police Resources in the 21st Century (Cambridge) and Wood, J and Shearing, C. 2007. Imagining Security (Willan). 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.