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Crime risks assessment reports are prepared for some specific new proposed developments in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. These assessments aim to identify crime risks and should include reference to how the design of the proposed development minimises or mitigates crime risks. In 2010, Clancey et al (2011, 2012) reviewed the content of 33 crime risk assessment reports prepared in NSW. In order to investigate the impact of these crime risk assessments on the subsequent development process, site visits were conducted in February 2015 to 23 locations for which original crime risk assessment reports had been prepared. These site visits sought to determine if developments had been completed, and if so, whether potential crime risks were evident (or not) from a review of the key physical features of the site. It was found that 10 out of these 23 sites (43.5 per cent) had not been developed or construction was still being undertaken, demonstrating the lengthy development process. Of those developments that had been built, they represented a variety of functions which raises questions about the utility of generic crime risk assessment guidelines. For example, the crime and security issues of a major hospital are vastly different to a small suburban residential development. While access control measures were ubiquitous across the diverse sites, greater attention might have been given to natural ladders and the function and maintenance of communal areas. The findings from this research have implications for ongoing policy development in this area.

A range of concepts and lexicon of terms denote crime’s tendency to concentrate. The most established are repeat offending, repeat and near repeat victimization, geographical hotspots, and hot products. Complementary terms include hot dots, hot places, hot targets, super-targets, risky facilities, risky routes, crime sprees and spates. This study charts the relationships, offers a potentially unifying concept and examines the causal mechanisms by which crime becomes concentrated. It is concluded that further effort to integrate concepts and explanations relating to concentrations of crime may provide insights useful to theory, policy and practice.

This research aims to examine police recording of rogue trading. It explores whether this could be improved through a clear definition and specific crime code, or flag, for this type of crime. To examine this, the research compares rogue trading recording practices with those of distraction burglary. Both are similar in victimology and offender profile, but only distraction burglary has a nationally adopted definition and a crime code under which incidents are recorded. The findings indicate that current recording practices make understanding the extent and impact of rogue trading difficult, and victims would therefore be better served through the implementation of a definition and crime code or flag.

Children and adolescents have long been treated as the products of the socialization process they experience through their families and surrounding communities. They are rarely perceived as ‘social actors’ who can affect their surroundings or the way the society operates. This ethnographic research aims to investigate the role played by a group of children and adolescents who voluntarily formed a civil committee (a term propagated during the January Revolution in Egypt) to defend their neighbourhood against thugs’ attacks. In the absence of law enforcement, they volunteered to defend their homes, families and personal belongings. The research argues that through their interaction together and the development of their peer culture, children were able to develop skills and defence mechanisms to protect their neighbourhood. It concludes that children’s peer culture, in addition to creating social cohesion among the group, helped them to develop their abilities and skills to overcome threats.

This article discusses some new developments in British illicit drug markets: the commuting of London-based gang members to sell drugs in other British towns, or in gang member’s parlance: ‘working the country lines’. This is concerning for several reasons, not least because children and young people may be running away from home and putting themselves at significant risk by dealing drugs, including involvement in the distribution of drugs from ‘crack houses’. This article hypothesises that the increased saturation of London drug markets is increasing the chances of drug dealers commuting from their homes, which in turn raises particular harms, including conflict with established dealers in other cities as well as child welfare issues. The article concludes with some policy and research recommendations.

Fieldwork in a postcode area of inner-Sydney (New South Wales, Australia) over an 18-month period (mid-2012–December 2013) revealed a number of key findings relevant to crime prevention policies and practices. First, a welter of crime prevention programmes and security-related technologies were observed. Many of these diverse programmes are delivered by various organisations, reflect different methods of prevention, and combine to form a preventative ‘quilt’, which has built up over time. Second, few of these specific initiatives have been thoroughly evaluated, raising questions about the efficacy of the existing evidence-base. Third, despite the seemingly disparate nature of some of these initiatives, there is considerable potential for collective impact from these diverse forms of security and crime prevention. Measuring the potential additive benefits of these programmes, technologies and interventions in combination requires more than just evaluating individual programmes. Together, these findings have implications for approaches to evaluation, for efforts to build an evidence-base and for the development of crime prevention policy.

A survey was conducted in the United Kingdom to identify the beliefs and attitudes of Department for Work and Pensions and police fraud investigators towards the PEACE model of interviewing with particular focus on assumptions of guilt, interviewer characteristics and detecting deception. There was support for the usefulness of the PEACE model for fraud interviews, although assumptions of guilt before these interviews were widespread. This finding was coupled with stereotypical beliefs about cues to deception, despite a general view that open mindedness and good listening skills were key features of a good interviewer. It was concluded that the way in which fraud investigations are carried out challenges the expectation that the interviewer will not assume guilt before the interview but does not necessarily challenge the expectation that the interviewer will have an open-minded and non-judgemental attitude. Beliefs about cues to deception should be challenged and substituted for more reliable indicators.

This article aims to describe and analyse the notion of informerphobia in the context of Jamaican society. Informerphobia refers to the fear people have about reporting information on (threatening) violence, crime and terror to the state agencies/agents formally tasked to respond to these threats. The article draws on interviews with garrison residents, law enforcement officials and other citizens, as well as secondary research data. On the basis of this case study, the wider implications of this phenomenon are discussed. The article points to the importance of having properly functioning state agencies and systems that are effective, not part of the problem, and flexible enough to deploy in a decentralized manner, hence generating trust within local populations. In addition, a civic culture of ordinary citizens providing counter-pressure is indispensable for state agencies to be more effectual. The concept of informerphobia is new, as is its conceptual elaboration and application to Jamaica.Keywords: informerphobia, Jamaica, crime, garrisons, fear, informer

This research fills some gaps in the literature regarding the viability and sustainability of law enforcement councils for policing in the twenty-first century. The Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council (Metro-LEC) is a non-profit organization comprising 43 law enforcement agencies in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that have pooled resources and regionalized selected police services. The amalgamation provides services to small- and medium-sized police agencies to address incidents that go beyond their capability in scale/duration and in scope/skills. Results are presented from multi-wave surveys of frontline officers as well as surveys administered to the chief executive officers in member police agencies regarding their perceptions of the organization. In addition, a cost analysis presents a comparison between the costs of operating regionalized police units to the costs of operating those units in-house. The overall findings conclude that a law enforcement council approach provides needed services to area police agencies that are valued, utilized, cost effective and sustainable over time.

This special issue of Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal comprises select papers presented at the First International Design+Crime Conference and Exhibition held at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia in December 2012. Design+Crime provided a transdisciplinary forum for discussion on how the disciplines of design and criminology are becoming interlinked in crime prevention practice and academia. Academics and practitioners from design, urban planning, architecture, as well as criminology, law enforcement, social geography and policy development shared in this unique discussion and showcased a growing collection of innovative approaches to crime prevention.

Train schedules are particularly important during service peak periods and short headways. Miscreant passenger behavior such as the inappropriate or malevolent use of the emergency communication alarm, or the deliberate holding open of doors, has a detrimental effect upon maintaining the service timetable. There is a general absence of literature in the transportation field examining this problem or offering potential solutions. Manipulating the design of the environment to provoke desired behaviors in people is a technique widely used in various disciplines from large architectural projects to more subtle uses of applied psychology. This article discusses a collaborative research project carried out between Monash University’s Department of Design and the French National Railway (SNCF). Two research projects are discussed as they relate particularly to SNCF’s network in the Ile-de-France. However, the design solutions may have pertinence for other networks similarly afflicted around the world.

This article reports on preliminary investigation of relationships between levels of legal firearms ownership and violent firearm-related crime in New South Wales, Australia. No evidence was found to suggest that increasing numbers of legally owned firearms are associated with increasing levels of crime; rather, modest negative associations were found between levels of legal gun ownership and violent firearm crime. The results suggest that reducing levels of legal gun ownership is not necessarily a prerequisite for reducing levels of violent crime, and that reductions in firearm crime can occur in the context of increasing levels of legal ownership.

Guardianship or the absence of capable guardianship is a central element in routine activities theory, and has been the subject of research for more than 30 years. The original conceptualization of guardianship has been interpreted and expanded upon in many ways during this period of time. This article charts the evolution of research on the guardianship component of routine activities theory and provides a theoretical and conceptual reappraisal of guardianship. Aiding future empirical research is a central aim of this endeavor. A refined definition of guardianship is presented that is consistent with its original conceptualization and new theoretical advancements. Implications for theory and research are discussed.

This article reports on the development of a multi-agency partnership project to introduce gender-responsive community policing in Bangladesh. It considers the nature of crime prevention and community-policing forum initiatives in four pilot sites and examines some of the difficulties encountered and progress made in promoting police responsiveness and the safety of women and other vulnerable groups in Bangladesh society.

The article discusses the French government support for the introduction of CCTV as a major means of crime prevention, while at the same time cutting back on funding for the police. The article argues that there is considerable evidence to suggest that this policy will be ineffective in limiting crime. Furthermore, the way in which the French government provides financial support for CCTV means that only the more affluent municipalities will be able to afford the introduction of CCTV and maintain their current crime prevention programmes.

In this article, we describe the basic aspects of the development of safety policies in Spain from the time of the transition to democracy, with reference to the agencies involved, the issues tackled and the resolution of tensions between the different levels of administration. We then illustrate the changes in safety in a local area from the perspective of the city of Barcelona.

This article discusses a Europe-wide project which aimed to promote Safer Schools through utilising a Charter of ‘democratic principles’. This included the non-violent resolution of conflicts and the right to equal treatment and respect. The first part of this article discusses the empirical findings from original research conducted with five London schools (and their local partners) who participated in this project. It was found that most participants were positive about the project’s potential, with many ‘democratic initiatives’ cited as examples of how the promotion of a principled Charter could produce good practice in combating violence in schools. The second part of this article raises more fundamental questions about the role of democracy in violence prevention programmes. In particular, it questions the assumption of a direct relationship between (non)violence and democratic values, and asks whether it is possible to promote democratic principles within inherently undemocratic institutions such as schools.

In the latter half of 2008, proposals emerged from the Home Office for the creation of a completely new elected office in England and Wales, the Crime and Policing Representative. These were to be directly elected and would chair Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) in England and Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) in Wales, as well as automatically become members of the police authority. However, before the proposals were even debated in parliament they were dropped because of concerns extremist parties may win them. This article presents findings from interviews with a range of councillors, police officers and other officials working with or for CDRPs/CSPs in a representative mix of authorities. It shows that although extremist parties winning were a concern there were many more compelling reasons to reject this policy. The article ends with a brief discussion of alternative proposals that could be considered.

Graffiti removal is a prolific and costly problem for Australian municipal authorities. In Western Australia, new incidents of graffiti are reported through the state government's dedicated graffiti hotline. The aim being to have all highly offensive graffiti removed within a 24-hour time frame and all other graffiti within 48 hours. The flaw in the system is that individuals reporting graffiti incidents have diverse understandings as to what forms of graffiti constitute the state government's highly offensive classification. This confusion has led to removal contractors being sent to remove non-highly offensive graffiti ahead of highly offensive graffiti. To address this problem, this article reports on the development and validation of a graffiti classification system. This system provides authorities with a typological tool for prioritizing the removal of graffiti.

Drawing on data derived from Motoring Which assessments, the study investigates the role of vehicle security in the decision of people to recommend the purchase of a particular car model to a friend. This is important because, were security to be shown to be salient in purchaser decision making, it would be a factor in incentivising manufacturers and retailers to incorporate and stress car security in marketing. Crucially for purchasing decisions, security was observed to contribute to the willingness of people to recommend the purchase of a particular car model in 2007. This was not significantly so in 2008, although the association was in the same direction. The results are interpreted as modestly encouraging for the importance of security in purchaser decision making. Research on the role of vehicle crime in diminishing brand loyalty is advocated. Supplementary data analysis indicates that vehicles became more secure on average between 2007 and 2008, and that there was a triangular distribution between car price and car security, with expensive cars being uniformly secure, and cheaper cars exhibiting a range of security levels.

This paper compares how Japan and England deal with the problem of juvenile offending. It contrasts English youth justice, which has recently moved towards centralized control and low local visibility, with Japanese youth justice, which is characterized by the integration of law enforcement with informal social control and a strong emphasis on local visibility. The relative success of the Japanese system seems to be evidenced by the low numbers of young people in custody compared to the English system. The analysis looks at changes over the last 10 years and takes account of the recent triple track approach announced by the English Youth Justice Board in mid-2008, which could lead to an approach that is more in line with the Japanese model. The paper ends with a call for more systematic comparative research to promote both understanding and possibilities for change in both countries.

This paper is based on data gathered for an evaluation of a large public area closed circuit television (CCTV) system in an English city. The methodology includes semistructured interviews with security guards, shop assistants and camera operators, and a survey of retail premises, as well as observations and data analysis from the camera control room. The paper deliberates on the working relationships between the different practitioners who used the radio/CCTV link that monitored the local shopping precinct and aims to reflect firstly on the tensions in practice, between different practitioners in their interactions with the public, and secondly the tensions between practitioners in their interactions with each other. The paper concludes that although the link has a number of positive consequences for the working conditions of those using it, there are a number of tensions between practitioners who raise issues in respect of accountability and effective working relationships.

This paper reflects on doctoral research conducted in Northern England to explore understandings about and approaches to domestic violence. Specifically, it considers the problem's increasing popularization as an “…horrific crime…” and wonders whether and how its increasing celebration as a “collective cause” could marginalize the feminist analyses and action that has, for over 30 years, been so central to endeavours to challenge male violence in the home. Focusing on two issues, gender and crime prevention, the paper examines local and national policy and practice on domestic violence in order to explore whether current policy is a move in the right direction or whether it has taken a step too far.

The paper discusses the work taking place to develop a new national crime database that holds information on individual crimes and their geographic location. The new system will open up opportunities for more detailed analysis of the circumstances around crimes, as well as geographic analysis that was not previously possible. The issues to be considered in presenting and analysing data at a local level are discussed. The steps that have already been taken to improve the quality of crimes recorded by the police are described, along with plans to respond to two recent reviews of crime statistics. The response includes more transparent categorization and naming of offences as well as plans for web-based dissemination of crime data at both the national and local levels.

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain why some bars generate more crime than others. Using data gathered from bars in Cincinnati, Ohio, we find little support for the hypothesis that high crime bars are simply the product of high crime neighborhoods. To explain the unequal distribution of violence across drinking establishments, we propose a model that recognizes crime as an outcome of place manager decision-making. This model explains how managers create environments that suppress or facilitate violence through business-related choices. Implications of the model for understanding crime distributions, conducting future research, and extending current theoretical frameworks are discussed.

This special edition of Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal comprises selected papers presented at the 15th Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis (ECCA) seminar held at University College London, UK in July 2007. ECCA appears to be entering a new phase of growth, in terms of both participating members and research agenda. The 2007 seminar served as an international forum to discuss, exchange and reflect on the developments, research direction and advancements in environmental criminology and related areas such as situational crime prevention and offender profiling.

In the midst of the Peloponnesian War the city of Athens held its last ostrakaphoria, the ritualized ostracism that served to thwart the ambitions of potential tyrants. Now, in the arena of contemporary politics, a new form of exile has emerged, the so-called residency ban enacted against individuals categorized as sex offenders that effectively prohibits them from maintaining domicile within participating municipalities. It is at the site of exile, perhaps more than at the site of even death itself, that the state reveals its failure. The exile is the actor beyond compliance, insufficiently disciplined and improperly socialized. In this paper, I examine the revaluation of power as represented in the comparison of ancient and modern exile. I argue that the futile effort to control sexual predation through the use of exile succeeds in inadvertently creating a new kind of political resistance. Through the lens of exile a notion of modern power emerges that is inverted from its ancient antecedent.

This article examines an initiative in the United Kingdom to professionalize counter fraud staff through the creation of the Counter Fraud Specialist (CFS). It describes how common training packages have been created using “Professional Accreditation Boards” which are also accredited by Universities, who embed those awards in specially tailored University programmes. The paper evaluates the success of the initiative so far outlining areas where it could be further enhanced.

The feature outlines recent developments in the way several countries in Europe have cooperated to counter fraud and corruption against their healthcare systems. Although the delivery of healthcare differs across Europe, nonetheless the frauds and acts of corruption committed against them are similar and the issues surrounding countering fraud and corruption are familiar ones. As a result, cooperation and sharing best practice can only benefit participants.

This paper introduces certain problems of the Ukrainian health-care system, and provides an overview of the local health-care system and pharmaceutical market, and identifies regulatory and legal issues. The authors present the preliminary results of an interview programme with medical practitioners in Ukraine that address the issues of development of relationships between Western pharmaceutical companies and medical practitioners in Ukraine. It also identifies some unique features of these relationships, and discusses the implications for the culture of bribery in this important developing market.

Organizations need to be continually creative in the fight against fraud, and the professionalism of counter-fraud work over the past few years has contributed towards the significant achievements that have been made in this area. This article will discuss various themes surrounding the evolution of a counter-fraud profession, including an assessment of the characteristics of a “typical” counter-fraud specialist, some of the problems that they face in their workplace and the response made by creating an independent association which aims to promote their status and of counter-fraud investigations generally.

Multi-agency partnership working is becoming increasingly prevalent, particularly within and between the public and voluntary sectors. However, it is widely accepted that while this method of working brings the prospect of benefits, it also has the potential to be problematic. This paper looks at the difficulties experienced by one particular partnership and describes how the partnership used insight into the effectiveness of its structures and processes, to make changes to its design. The approach used to provide this insight was an application of the Systems Failures Method. This method is explained briefly in the paper and a summary of its application in this context is also given. Links are drawn with research work on partnerships in other contexts, and proposals are made about how the Systems Failures Method could be used at different stages of a partnership's life in order to evaluate its design and monitor and improve its methods of working and its effectiveness.

The author describes the new European Police Research & Science Database for which he is responsible, in the wider context of police cooperation throughout Europe and the importance of police science/studies as a basis for police education and training and improving policing.

This article describes the Norwegian police and recent shifts that have led to policing becoming multilateralized. This includes private sector developments, the growth of the Night Ravens as a citizen volunteer group, and the expansion of the police reserve and groups with “restricted police authority”.

There is a long tradition of linking antisocial behaviour on the part of young people with a breakdown in respect, and the present government's pronouncements about the causes of youth crime and antisocial behaviour are continuing this tradition. This paper, however, argues that respect is a complex commodity, which is not easy to generate. Young people tend to accept that some of their number are disrespectful of their elders, but argue that they are more likely to show respect if they are accorded it themselves. Self-respect is also crucial. Government strategies are premised on a limited definition of respect and an inadequate understanding of how it is generated. They confuse respect with obedience towards authority and propose to generate respect by asserting control, but there is no evidence that this will lead to those being controlled respecting either the controllers or themselves.

Restorative justice has emerged in recent years as an important new approach to tackling crime and disorder. In Poland, mediation became established as an appropriate tool for resolving conflict in the mid-1990s, and has subsequently been adopted by the courts. This paper describes the context within which these developments have occurred and discusses current provisions.

Problem-orientated policing has been justified as an effective and cost-efficient crime reduction strategy. A preliminary evaluation of the operation of the initiative in Plymouth, South-West England, suggested that it did indeed lead to a reduction in calls to the police. This article therefore addresses how problem-orientated policing was perceived by the key players—police problem-solving officers and representatives of the other agencies they work with. In line with earlier research, the problems of facilitating cooperation, both with police colleagues and with partner agencies, were acknowledged. However, most of those interviewed felt that by focusing on a specific problem they had been able to reduce demands on police resources and to help the communities they served.

The emergence of the discourse of ‘community safety’, regarded by many as a definitive shift in crime control strategy, has in theory renewed prospects for the flourishing of criminological knowledge as to the incidence of ‘crimes of the powerful’ (that is, crimes committed by corporate and state actors). The paper examines this prospect in the light of the current boom in local criminological knowledge production. In particular it discusses the degree to which community safety agendas have taken account of more general crime/safety threats to local populations posed by powerful corporate and state actors. This investigation is based on an analysis of data generated by crime and disorder partnerships in the North West of England, with a particular focus on the visibility of environmental crimes in these data. It concludes with a discussion of the prospects for the inclusion of crimes of the powerful in future crime reduction agendas.

Although most commentators have dated their arrival to the 1980s, the use of public CCTV systems by the British police has a history that stretches back 40 years. Initial experiments in the 1960s with CCTV in London and Liverpool were unsuccessful due to the high cost of cabling. The first permanent use was the surveillance of political demonstrations in central London. This fitted into existing police operational requirements and structures, and continued a process of centralization and mechanization that began in the 1930s with working practices originally deployed in the First World War. The arrival of police surveillance systems in the 1960s thus calls into question any easy theoretical association between them and ‘post-industrial society’.

The UK government has recently made £300 million available to help local authorities to modernise their street lighting. In consideration of such future funding, this paper reviews the relationship between lighting and crime, explores the current theoretical explanations, and discusses the limitations of the existing BS 5489 lighting standards as they relate to crime reduction. British street lighting standards rely largely on official recorded crime statistics as the preferred measure of crime and, crucially, fear of crime maps have been shown to differ markedly from the reality suggested by recorded crime statistics (Brantingham et al, 1977; Vrij and Winkel,1991). The implications of utilising the current classification of streets according to levels of recorded crime and levels of pedestrian and traffic flows to determine acceptable lighting levels are presented. In the light of recent research on crime and street lighting, local authorities might usefully critically review lighting levels following the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Acknowledging the emergence of the 24-hour city, the policy implications for improving the crime reduction potential of street lighting are discussed.

Business Crime Direct is an initiative funded by the Home Office's Targeted Policing Programme which aims to reduce crime against small businesses throughout Merseyside. It was envisaged that this initiative would build on the experience of previous research, which had found that it was crucial to access those harder-to reach businesses that saw crime as an inevitable part of everyday life; these were often the most victimised businesses. It was also seen as important to provide a continued support service to those at the greatest risk, to maintain and extend the longevity of the effect of any assistance that was given and to increase the momentum of crime prevention efforts. BCD was therefore set up using a call centre to manage potential recipients of security improvements and to grant assistance. It would so this by receiving inward enquiries and making outward contact with businesses, and referring those of the latter most at risk to Security Advice Officers, who then made site visits. This dual approach to managing the contact between businesses and crime prevention experts, along with accurate recording of the history of this contact, should assist in providing such long-term support to hard-to-reach higher-risk businesses. The extent to which the service achieved these aims, and the problems experienced in implementing such an innovative scheme, are discussed in this paper.

This paper discusses the impact of the events of September 11th on the UK's business community, and the threat from what has been termed the 'new terrorism'. It summarises and analyses the effect on different sectors of the community, ranging from the public utilities to the financial and insurance sectors, and examines how security has been affected by the impact of September 11th. It also makes reference to the British government's response to the threat of the new terrorism, and to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee's reports The Threat from Terrorism and Defence and Security in the UK. Finally, the paper seeks to outline a number of considerations on how the UK could be better prepared for terrorist attacks.

Many think that the ‘third sector’ generally refers to an intermediary between the government and the private sector, in which there are a considerable number of social organizations (eg associations, professions, guilds) to provide various kinds of social service for society. In contrast, there has been little reference to it as a form of law enforcement. This paper argues that China has traditionally regarded the third sector organization as a form of law enforcement, and this practice has continued in modern China, even in the People's Republic of China. Although such sector organizations are generally recognized as a kind of intermediary to provide for social services, it is argued that, historically as well as contemporarily, China has regarded these organizations as a form of enforcement for crime prevention and community safety.

This paper is concerned with how both housing design and management and ‘active citizenship’ are perceived to influence crime and ‘defensible space’. It explores the way in which criminals decode the ‘active citizen’, common housing designs and levels of safety within the British city.

The idea of undertaking crime and disorder audits is by no means new. Unfortunately, actually undertaking such audits has been a relatively rare event, particularly in the United States. This is somewhat surprising for a variety of reasons. First, over the past three decades there has been a growing recognition that official agents of social control are not capable of dealing with crime on their own. Second, there has been an increased recognition that the police are called on to deal with a wider range of issues besides simply law enforcement. Third, a great deal of attention has been given to the ideas of problem-oriented and community-oriented policing, both of which suggest a wider role for auditing community issues and problems.

This special issue brings together contributions from across Europe on policy and political rhetoric on community safety. This issue differs from the usual structure for the journal by including a combination of four articles and three shorter commentaries.

There can be no doubt that the Internet offers the possibility of increasing access to a range of sources of available information in a timely manner. This is particularly so as we increasingly seek to engage with information from outside our jurisdictional boundaries. While this hints at the effects of globalisation, it is also meant to be suggestive of the practical realities involved in researching (or simply following) developments occurring within emergent federal structures (for instance the European Union) or longer-standing federations such as the United States and Australia. Of course, a department or agency having a homepage and various links is only the start of the process of making information accessible. As will be indicated below, there remain significant limitations in the electronic material available from many agencies. Fortunately, there are also a number of organisations that enable the researcher to access original data and research publications.

The Indian police force is seldom considered to be a highly professional and regimented organisation characterized by discipline, honesty and efficiency. There is a general sense of popular suspicion that has alienated the Indian police from Indian civil society. Indian policemen, as generally elsewhere in the developing world, are regarded as villainous, trigger-happy characters appointed by the State to act as judges, jury and executioner on its behalf. The ‘modern’ Indian police force was structured as ‘a defender of the Establishment rather than as a professional organisation owing its accountability to democratic good governance and the Rule of Law, and this situation has changed little.