In terms of raw numbers, the amount of world urban dwellers have increased four-fold, skyrocketing from 740 million in 1950 to almost 3.3 billion in 2007. This ongoing urbanization will continue to create major security challenges in most countries. Based on contributions from academics and practitioners from countries as diverse as Nigeria, Pakist
Understanding the politics of security in city-regions is increasingly important for the study of contemporary policing. This book argues that national and international governing arrangements are being outflanked by various transnational threats, including the cross-border terrorism of the attacks on Paris in 2015 and Brussels in 2016; trafficking in people, narcotics and armaments; cybercrime; the deregulation of global financial services; and environmental crime. Metropolises are the focal points of the transnational networks through which policing problems are exported and imported across national borders, as they provide much of the demand for illicit markets and are the principal engines generating other policing challenges including political protest and civil unrest. This edited collection examines whether and how governing arrangements rooted in older systems of national sovereignty are adapting to these transnational challenges, and considers problems of and for policing in city-regions in the European Union and its single market. Bringing together experts from across the continent, Policing European Metropolises develops a sociology of urban policing in Europe and a unique methodology for comparing the experiences of different metropolises in the same country. This book will be of value to police researchers in Europe and abroad, as well as postgraduate students with an interest in policing and urban policy.
Policing Cities brings together international scholars from numerous disciplines to examine urban policing, securitization, and regulation in nine countries and the conceptual issues these practices raise. Chapters cover many of the world’s major cities, including New York, Beijing, Paris, London, Berlin, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Melbourne, and Toronto, as well as other urban areas in Britain, United States, South Africa, Germany, Australia and Georgia. The collection examines the activities and reforms of the traditional public police, but also those of emerging public and private policing agents and spaces that fall outside the public police’s purview and which previously have received little attention. It explores dramatic changes in public policing arrangements and strategies, exclusion of urban homeless people, new forms of urban surveillance and legal regulation, and securitization and militarization of urban spaces. The core argument in the volume is that cities are more than mere background for policing, securitization and regulation. Policing and the city are intimately intertwined. This collection also reveals commonalities in the empirical interests, methodological preferences, and theoretical concerns of scholars working in these various disciplines and breaks down barriers among them. This is the first collection on urban policing, regulation, and securitization with such a multi-disciplinary and international character. This collection will have a wide readership among upper level undergraduate and graduate level students in several disciplines and countries and can be used in geography/urban studies, legal and socio-legal studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, and criminology courses.
This book uses crime-science and traditional criminological approaches to explore urban crime in the rapidly urbanising country Nigeria, as a case study for urban crime in developing nations. In Africa’s largest democracy, rapid unmanaged growth in its cities combined with decaying public infrastructure mean that risk factors accumulate and deepen the potential for urban crime. This book includes a thorough explanation of key concepts alongside an examination of the contemporary configuration, dynamics, dimensions, drivers and potential responses to urban crime challenges. The authors also discuss a range of methodological techniques and applications that can be used, including spatial technologies to generate new data for analysis. It brings together history, theory, trends, patterns, drivers, repercussions and responses to provide a deep analysis of the challenges that confront urban dwellers. Urbanisation and Crime in Nigeria offers academics, researchers, governments, civil society organisations, citizens, and international partners a tool with which to engage in a serious dialogue about crime within cities, based on evidence and good practices from inside and outside sub-Saharan Africa.
Urban Criminology offers an accessible analysis of our urban condition, viewed through the prism of crime, disorder and social harm. This book gathers cutting-edge treatments, research field reports and critical examinations of crime and harm in cities, from the disciplines of urban studies and criminology. The social, economic and political composition of cities and the various inequalities that mark out and drive the problem of crime in many cities today are foregrounded. Readers follow a series of thematic engagements, generating a deeper understanding of a range of key areas that include problems of violence, social and spatial divisions, housing, policing and the role of the urban economy in issues of financial crime. This book comes at a time of rising crime in many cities and complex responses by city administrations and communities. It presents a critical, political thesis – that crime in cities must be understood with reference to the varying social structures, political forces and economic opportunities of cities. These influences intersect to produce dramatic variations in victimisation and attempts at social control, often felt most strongly around class and gender divisions. To understand crime, we must better understand the life of the city. Urban Criminology seeks to present an integrated framework that brings to life these key issues and seeks to enthuse students of our urban condition – to locate the harms within it and to identify ways of reducing the risk of crime. This book is ideal reading for all students with an interest in cities, crime, community life, urban sociology and urban cultures.
Drawing upon over a quarter of a century’s worth of research, The Urban Now illuminates our present urban condition. John Rennie Short captures the main features of this moment of urban significance, investigating the city as a crucial arena strategically located between global flows and national surfaces.
Policing in Central and Eastern Europe has changed greatly since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some Central and Eastern European countries are constituent members of the European Union, while others have been trying to harmonize with the EU and international requirements for a more democratic policing and developments in accordance with Western European and international policing standards, especially in regard to issues of legality and legitimacy. Changes in the police training system (basic and advanced), internationalization of policing due to transnationalization of crime and deviance, new police organizational structures and agencies have impacted new cultures of policing (from exclusively state to plural policing). This timely volume examines developments in the last two decade to learn the nature of these changes within Central and Eastern Europe, and their impact on police culture, as well as on society as a whole. The development of police research has varied widely throughout Central and Eastern Europe: in some countries, it has developed significantly, while in others it is still in its infancy. This work will allow for a transfer of ideas and models of police organization and policing is also need to be studies closely, with an aim to provide consistent and comparable data across all of the countries discussed. For the twenty countries covered, this systematic work provides: short country-based information on police organization and social control, crime and disorder trends in the last 20 years with an on policing, police training and police educational systems, changes in policing in the last 20 years, police and the media, present trends in policing (public and private, multilateral, plural policing), policing urban and rural communities, recent research trends in research on policing – specificities of research on police and policing (researchers and the police, inclusion of police researchers in policy making and police practice) and future developments in policing.
Full-scale political change affects every level of a society, but perhaps nowhere as strikingly as in the areas of crime policy and law enforcement. Over the past two decades, the European nations that have moved from totalitarianism toward democracy have come to embody this trend, yet reliable sources on crime and law enforcement in these countries have not been readily accessible to the West. Representing viewpoints seldom available to outsiders, the contributors to Crime and Transition in Central and Eastern Europe analyze changes in criminal activities and crime control strategies in the region, explain the political background underlying these developments, and assess their long-term social impact. Experts from Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina discuss the politicization of crime, the ongoing paradoxes regarding civil liberties, and the future of crime policy in comparative and country-specific terms. Among the topics featured in the book: Crime and crime control in transitional countries, politics, the media, and public perception of crime, surveillance: from national security to private industry, penal policy and political change, emerging trends: economic and organized crime, human trafficking, juvenile delinquency, new perspectives on corruption in the region. With this fascinating insight, Crime and Transition in Central and Eastern Europe is a singular reference for researchers and policymakers in criminology and political science, and historians with a special interest in European affairs and policy.
Policing Cities brings together international scholars from numerous disciplines to examine urban policing, securitization, and regulation in nine countries and the conceptual issues these practices raise. Chapters cover many of the world’s major cities, including New York, Beijing, Paris, London, Berlin, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Melbourne, and Toronto, as well as other urban areas in Britain, United States, South Africa, Germany, Australia and Georgia. The collection examines the activities and reforms of the traditional public police, but also those of emerging public and private policing agents and spaces that fall outside the public police’s purview and which previously have received little attention. It explores dramatic changes in public policing arrangements and strategies, exclusion of urban homeless people, new forms of urban surveillance and legal regulation, and securitization and militarization of urban spaces. The core argument in the volume is that cities are more than mere background for policing, securitization and regulation. Policing and the city are intimately intertwined. This collection also reveals commonalities in the empirical interests, methodological preferences, and theoretical concerns of scholars working in these various disciplines and breaks down barriers among them. This is the first collection on urban policing, regulation, and securitization with such a multi-disciplinary and international character. This collection will have a wide readership among upper level undergraduate and graduate level students in several disciplines and countries and can be used in geography/urban studies, legal and socio-legal studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, and criminology courses.
