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The private security industry has come to play a major role in Sweden and has become subject to a wide range of regulations. While these regulations give a sense of the role played by private secur...

In 1938, a communal conflict took place in the city of Bombay. This confrontation between Hindus and Muslims flared into large-scale violence. During the riots, the home minister of the provincial ...

The article discusses a militant worker strike at the Bata shoe factory in Calcutta in the year 1938. The strike owed to the communist mobilisation of the workers in the city and demanded various r...

This article argues that UN peace operations play a central role in the nexus between policing and counterinsurgency, and constitute one of the underappreciated sites and circuits of counterinsurge...

As the COVID-19 crisis has evidenced, Europe is currently facing non-traditional, hybrid threats and challenges to its public order and security that question traditional, stand-alone responses. Co...

This article addresses the relationships between emotions and the law, and how they define public order and constitute emotional legal landscapes. Using the example of the litigation process of the...

Introduction: Ecstasy (MDMA) is a popular recreational drug, but its illegal production and trade in the Netherlands have developed into a serious public order and ecological problem which endanger and question the harm reduction approach of the Dutch ecstasy policy.Methods: The market characteristics, adverse health effects, risk profile, and link to criminal activity of ecstasy were reviewed.Results: Ecstasy is often used in combination with other substances (i.e. polydrug use). Compared to several other illicit drugs and alcohol, ecstasy has a very low abuse and dependence liability and, as yet, there is little evidence of long-term harm. A potential health risk associated with ecstasy is acute hyperthermia, however this occurs at an unknown incidence rate and seems to be more prevalent when ecstasy is consumed in combination with heavy exercise at high ambient temperatures or when used in combination with other substances, including alcohol. Organized crime related to the production and trafficking of ecstasy in the Netherlands is a growing problem.Conclusions: This review provides a science-based summary that can be used to assist the public and political debate surrounding future Dutch ecstasy policy to reduce ecstasy-related organized crime while maintaining the principle of harm reduction.

The article presents a new quantitative approach to studying the feeling of safety and risk perception and proposes a new method for determining the intensity of this phenomenon based on data from ...

Discussions on public order policing often centre on the role of paramilitary policing tactics, only recently has the role of dialogue become more prominent within the field. This paper focuses on ...

The dispute between Muslims and Sikhs over the Shahidganj mosque in Lahore in the early 1930s served as the prelude to the Punjabi Muslims’ decisive shift in favour of the Pakistan movement...

This paper posits that certain Muslim minority and Muslim reformist groups that propagate non-mainstream viewpoints on Islam were securitised by the Malaysian state as societal threats when...

Scholars have written extensively on dueling and honor in the antebellum period, but most have neglected or dismissed the work of anti-dueling associations. Anti-dueling activists staked a claim to public power by challenging duelists’ claims to mastery. The history of the organizations provides evidence that the South was home to many similar societies dedicated to public activism and moral uplift. Their work illustrates the incapacity of the law, in a period of social transformation on the eve of the sectional crisis, to produce social reform without community support and the commitment of authorities to safeguard public order.

The legal example is used in large part to dress the rule. A naked norm, for common lawyers, is simply an abstraction, an umbrageous nebulosity that needs its particulars, its cases, to have meaning, impact and thought. Using the paradoxical example of nakedness the essay examines the inability of British and European courts candidly to address the undressed. Nakedness is here examined as an instance of undressing the law, of stripping and streaking the norm.

While historians have long studied the institutional dimensions of crime and punishment, this article examines the informal, extra-legal efforts of Nahuas and other residents of central Mexican communities to contend with violence and resolve conflicts. Residents of Nahua communities could not rely entirely on the authorities for protection and justice; rather, by being vigilant and taking matters into their own hands, they played a vital but underappreciated role in policing their communities, dealing with disorder, and preserving the peace. As such, they shouldered some of the law enforcement functions of the state apparatus. At times, their contributions could prove indispensable to the administration of justice. Their efforts not only helped to maintain public order and protect one another but they also tell us much about perceptions of acceptable behavior as well as notions of civic responsibility and, by extension, community membership and social solidarity.

Security sector reform (SSR) has been at the core of the international intervention in Haiti since the mid-1990s. Following the deployment of MINUSTAH in 2004, the scope of SSR varied, with more or less consideration for non-state actors, and influenced public order and violence in the country. Under President Rene Preval (2006–2009), efforts were made to address the role of non-state actors in the production of public order and security provision at the local level, with positive impact on the level of public order in Port-au-Prince. After the 2010 earthquake and the election of Michel Martelly, however, this approach was mostly abandoned. International donors refocused their assistance in the security sector on the development of the national police. By 2014, despite continued international presence, Haiti registered the highest level of homicides since 2007. This article contends that state-centric SSR is unlikely to improve security and stability in this context since it ignores parts of the H...

The article examines the configurations and organisational dynamics of policing mega-events through the metaphor of ‘flows’. Using the Brisbane 2014 Group of 20 Summit (G20) as an explorative case study, we suggest that the metaphor of flows may not only hold value with regard to understanding how objects of policing are rendered visible and manageable, but also how it might enable us to take stock of internal flows of data, information and intelligence within public order policing operations. We examine how police pursued their goal of containing and controlling protest flows as well as managing rapid intra- and inter-organisational flows. In particular, we examine how police and security actors designed what we call ‘flow-based’ architectures and the underlying organisational and situational contingencies shaping how these structures and systems form and function. The article concludes by calling for greater attention on internal dynamics of policing operations which, we argue, can potentially b...

In Western Europe, young men flocking together at major railway stations and occupying space with seemingly no discernible purpose, tend to personify threats to public order and safety. Julie Klein...

Public order policing has long been a central area of concern for policing political mega-events. Following the Toronto 2010 Group of 20 (G20) meeting, however, public order policing policy and practice attracted renewed attention that has had a considerable influence on subsequent political mega-events. The Toronto G20 involved up to 20,000 protesters, over 1000 arrests, and widespread criticisms against the Toronto Police Service and Royal Canadian Mounted Police regarding excessive use of force. Using the Brisbane 2014 G20 as a case study, this article reflects on the localised tensions involved in public order policing in the context of political mega-events. We look inside the operations of Brisbane 2014, which was heavily influenced by the events from Toronto 2010, to focus on the tensions that underpin public order policing tactics in the context of political mega-events and call attention to the significance of these tensions in shaping policing policy and practice. More particularly, we e...

This article examines the nature and effectiveness of the legal observer model developed for, and implemented at, the Brisbane G20 in 2014. 'Independent' legal observers ('ILOs'), who were all admitted lawyers, recorded interactions between police and members of the public, with a view to encouraging peaceful relations in public spaces during the event. Few arrests were made, and police were praised for their restraint. The relationship between the 'negotiated management' approach of police and the presence of the legal observers is discussed, drawing on group interviews undertaken with participating ILOs. Aspects of the Brisbane ILO model are analysed, and implications for the policing of public spaces more broadly are suggested.

We use the concept of governmentality to explore how different historically constituted regimes of practice operate to govern the thinking and practicing of full-contact martial arts and combat sports (FCMACS) in the Netherlands and consequently, to resist regulation. After conducting 43 interviews, observing a meeting and various FCMACS events, and analysing media and relevant documents, we conclude that the (traditional) boundaries between (commercialised) sports and government are strained since the government bans certain events and yet implements policy goals through community FCMACS. The public order and safety regime has now becomes relevant in addition to the already existing sport and economic regimes of practice. Each regime shapes constructions of problems and solutions differently and applies varying technologies of power that are historically and culturally appropriate to that regime. The terms ‘dialogue of the deaf’ and ‘power vacuum’ illustrate the resulting impasse. The data show t...

The death of Ian Tomlinson in 2009 and the destructiveness of the English Riots in 2011 brought unprecedented coverage to public order police (POP) strategies and tactics. These events signalled a watershed in POP management that inferred greater responsibility and stronger leadership. In these high stake environments senior officers have to manage multiple dynamics. In addition to managing crowds, commanders have to consider external culpability and alleviate concerns from junior officers. Effective communication with officers and other external parties could potentially negate troublesome situations. The research presented in this paper investigates communicative instructions delivered by commanding officers at a small number of POP events. It identifies instances of how leadership is communicated and how accountable situations are managed. A micro-level discourse analysis was used to analyse the data. This approach evaluates discursive linguistic categories that interlocutors use ‘to perform ac...

The following paper examines emerging trends in protest management in the UK, looking predominantly at the 5 November 2015 demonstrations led by hacktivist collective Anonymous. This event can be considered unique on a number of fronts. First, the common terminology used by police to justify the use of undercover operatives and aggressive forms of crowd control was conspicuously absent from public discourse surrounding the event. Secondly, conventional media channels throughout the UK focused on the London campaign and all but failed to cover the wider national/international demonstrations – thus depicting London itself as an isolated incident. Thirdly, the Million Mask March was a significant moment in civil history, for behind the scenes much of the policing effort was taking place online, with covert agencies manipulating mainstream coverage of the event to discredit campaigners, disrupt a legitimate public protest, and deny participants their right to dissent.

This article examines the reaction by the Australian Federal Government to the protest movements of the 1960s–1970s and their attempts to use public order legislation to thwart radical discontent in Australia. It argues that the Public Order (Protection of Persons and Property) Act 1971 was aimed at the threat of “violent” protests, particularly the tactic of the “sit-in”, and that to this end, the legislation was an overreaction to the actual threat posed by the protest movements at the time. It also shows that after a long gestation period, the Act was ill-equipped to deal with the changing nature of demonstrations in the 1970s, such as the problems caused by the erection of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Thus, after an initial flurry of use in mid-1971, the law has been seldom used since.

This article offers a first academic evaluation of the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, two British undercover police units working for the Metropolitan Police Service at different times between 1968 and 2011. It provides a historical overview of their infiltration of political groups involved in protest for the purpose of gathering criminal and political intelligence aimed at preventing violence, public disorder, and subversion. It discusses the controversies surrounding these units, and the related institutional responses, and offers an attempt at understanding their operations within the remit of intelligence-led policing and against a political culture that prioritizes action over inaction in reducing risks and threats to the State and society.

Pakistan's anti-blasphemy laws deserve no introduction. For three decades, these laws have suffocated the rights of Pakistan's citizens, be they Sunni, Shia, Ahmadi, Sufi, Christian, or Hindu. In r...

I'm not defending their views. I'm defending their right to have their views. There's a difference.—Mohja Kahf The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf France has traditionally refused recognition of a stat...

Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) 1994 provides police officers with greater stop-and search powers, in order to find offensive weapons or dangerous instruments. Secti...

In this essay, I examine empirical evidence which tests whether free speech and religious freedom impact on public order and public morality.1 In global political discourse today, there are diametr...

Freedom of speech and religious freedom are both fundamental human rights, but neither is absolute. Under what conditions can states lawfully restrict an individual's exercise of these rights?The 1...

David Buchanan was a radical politician, a temperance advocate and a notorious drunkard. His personal struggles with alcohol and the law in New South Wales in the 1860s illustrate changing understandings of drunkenness, but also the wider transformation of the colony under responsible government. As a free society developed, public drunkenness became a symbol of deviance and the authorities used the crime of drunkenness to manage public order and uphold respectability. An increasingly interventionist state challenged traditional notions of individual liberty when it assumed responsibility for problems like drunkenness.This article has been peer reviewed.

The medical clown's multimodal performance in the hospital takes place within its rigid space. A clown in a hospital is a paradox. “Medical clowning” is a metaphor taken from two seemingly unrelated fields of meaning, juxtaposing what is medical, scientific, serious and logical with clowning, emotions, carnival spirit and humour. The clown addresses barriers erected by illness, pain, alienation and distress with a continuous flexible performance of humour and fantasy tailored to changing conditions and circumstances. A clown, by definition, threatens the public order and seemingly has no place in the hospital paradigm. The current article compares medical clowns to carnival clowns, examines the medical clown's flexible performance, illustrates it with case studies, presents a semiotic analysis of the clown's journey through the hospital and examines the significance of the performance on the ideological level.

Though the focus of this article is Australia, it is intended as a contribution to the debate about what was happening in the UK and elsewhere before football was codified by the Football Association in 1863. There is mounting evidence that a football culture existed far beyond the public schools and universities and that small-sided predominantly kicking games, often for monetary or other rewards, were being played by migrants to Australia who drew on their British heritage. Not only that but the game was being presented and encouraged by public authorities who would not have countenanced doing so had there been a risk of a breakdown in public order or violence accompanying the games. The article provides support for the arguments developed by Adrian Harvey in the UK.

Scholars have suggested that the policing of protest have become more permissive in Western democracies since the 1960s. While widely accepted, studies affirming a softening of police conduct have focused on national trends despite awareness that police tactics have unevenly diffused across the USA. This study examines the temporal trends in protest policing in New York City to evaluate how and why the dominant strategies of protest control have changed over time. Drawing on the widespread privatisation of public space in New York during the 1980s coupled with the adoption of Broken Windows crime control strategies, I develop an alternative explanation of the temporal dynamics of protest policing that is based on policy spillover, or the unintentional spillover effects that policy decisions unrelated to protest policing may nonetheless have on police conduct. Using a sample of 6147 protest events occurring in New York between 1960 and 2006, I confirm that the prevalence of arrests and other forms of polic...

We propose that late modern policing practices, that rely on neighbourhood intelligence, the monitoring of tensions, surveillance and policing by accommo- dation, need to be augmented in light of emerging ‘cyber-neighbourhoods’, namely social media networks. The 2011 riots in England were the first to evidence the widespread use of social media platforms to organise and respond to disorder. The police were ill-equipped to make use of the intelligence emerging from these non-terrestrial networks and were found to be at a disadvantage to the more tech-savvy rioters and the general public. In this paper, we outline the development of the ‘tension engine’ component of the Cardiff Online Social Media ObServatroy (COSMOS). This engine affords users with the ability to monitor social media data streams for signs of high tension which can be analysed in order to identify deviations from the ‘norm’ (levels of cohesion/low tension). This analysis can be overlaid onto a palimpsest of curated data, such as official statistics about neighbourhood crime, deprivation and demography, to provide a multidimensional picture of the ‘terrestrial’ and ‘cyber’ streets. As a consequence, this ‘neighbourhood informatics’ enables a means of questioning official constructions of civil unrest through reference to the user-generated accounts of social media and their relationship to other, curated, social and economic data.

The widespread adoption of new forms of digital communication platforms such as micro-blogging sites presents both an opportunity and a challenge for researchers interested in understanding people's attitudes and behaviours, especially in the context of unfolding crises and the need for government agencies such as the police to inform the public and act swiftly to ensure public order and safety. In this paper, we use a study of a recent public order crisis in England to explore how the police, other organisations and individuals used Twitter as they responded to this event.

Les etudes sur le banditisme ont donne lieu a plusieurs interpretations sociologiques anthropologiques ou politiques. La critique marxiste a vu dans les bandes rurales une forme archaique de la revolte, tandis que les revoltes urbaines ont ete lues comme un mecanisme d'economie morale de la foule. Les phenomenes revolutionnaires donnaient aux emeutes urbaines un statut de contestation prepolitique, prelude aux grands mouvements organises de la contestation populaire de la societe en voie d'industrialisation (fin 18e siecle, debut 19e siecle). Le propos de cette contribution est de comparer deux grandes vagues de banditisme, l'une a la fin du 18e et au debut du 19e siecle, l'autre un siecle plus tard en Belgique. Toutes deux en periode d'occupation militaire et de deliquescence de l'Etat. La lecture hobsbawnienne peut etre conservee mais inversee. Le banditisme participe a ce « protopolitique » suggere par Hobsbawn: a la difference de l'Ancien Regime, c'est la faiblesse apparente de l'Etat que stigmatisent...

Social media provide many opportunities to connect people, but the kinds of personally identifiable information that people share through social media is understudied. This paper presents findings from a content analysis in which we coded the amount and kinds of personally identifiable information of public Twitter messages. Overwhelmingly, public Twitter messages do not include identifiable information such as phone numbers, email, and home addresses. Using Goffman's [(1963). Behaviors in public places: Notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York, NY: Free Press] concepts of public order and civil inattention, we also coded for whether people articulate the kinds of information that are communicated with others in public space, including locational, temporal, and activity-related information. Our findings suggest that people do share similar kinds of personal information on Twitter that they do in others kinds of physical public spaces, suggesting that people may also be mapping old practice...

This article focuses on what happened to citizenship rights in Colombia in the 1920s when urbanization and industrialization brought the ‘social question’ to the fore. In exploring the categories relating to citizenship and narratives about them in laws and congressional debates, it reads the fields of political, social, and civil rights in relation to one another and signals the particular anxieties that centred and still today centre on civil rights or, viewed obversely, on concerns about state security and public order.

This article compares and analyzes the functioning of dialog within police and protester interaction. The question is posed whether dialog is a stratagem for safeguarding the public peace or whether it is a form of symbolic theater. Liaison between police and protest organizers sometimes adopts a ritualistic format as both sides seek information about intentions, numbers, and tactics. Dialog initiatives create opportunities for negotiated arrangements that set parameters and expectations for crowd behavior, limit surprises, and establish some rapport. Swedish Dialog Police are arguably the exemplar of this approach. Although dialog is not a panacea for all police–protester encounters, as limitations are apparent and although some suspicion is inevitable, it is argued that it remains in the self-interest of both police and protesters to facilitate peaceful protest through meaningful dialog, whenever feasible.

After Mubarak's ouster, the Egyptian senior command had assumed a guardian role similar to the former Turkish model despite a shoddy performance in maintaining public order and the questionable loy...

Recent reports issued by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, and the Manual of Guidance on Keeping the Peace, jointly produced by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) and the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), have advocated a more permissive approach to policing public order, involving a greater emphasis on facilitating the right to protest. This reorientation of police policy reflects an acceptance of insights and recommendations relating to the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM), a social psychological approach to explaining the dynamics of police–crowd interaction and its implications for public order. In its recent handling of an anti-‘Lib Dem’ protest staged in Sheffield in March 2011, South Yorkshire Police operated in accordance with the ESIM approach by deploying a Police Liaison Team and social media cell in a concerted attempt to enhance the quality of police–protester communication and interaction....

The origins of the Portuguese police can be traced back to the fourteenth century. The Alcaides were the first local authority throughout the Portuguese Kingdom to perform functions of public order and security, which were a natural extension of their primary defence functions. As representatives of the king the Alcaides were the first and only guarantors of the security and safety of the population, in every municipality. In 1383 King Fernando, by Royal Charter, creates the quadrilheiros of Lisbon, the first single purpose police body to fight crime and ensure the security of the community on behalf of the king. In spite of its insufficiencies, they last until the eighteenth century. The creation of the General Intendancy of Police of the Court and of the Kingdom, along with the establishment of the Royal Guard of Police in 1801, signals the end of the quadrilheiros. This first police force was never truly effective in fighting crime and reassuring the security of the community. Only after 1801, and for ...

This paper reports on innovations in public order policing during the protests surrounding the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Parliamentary Assembly in Edinburgh, November 2009. When masked anarchist protesters determined to ‘smash NATO’ gathered on the streets on the first morning of the Assembly, they were initially confronted by three plainclothes police negotiators rather than a line of riot police. In this paper, we draw on empirical data to offer an analysis of these developments and gauge the extent to which they meet the stated intentions of the police to ‘facilitate lawful protest’. Whilst welcoming the shift in attitudes and approach towards political protest, we argue that the accent on facilitation in this operation ultimately appeared neither innovative nor effective in practice and frequently reverted to styles of policing designed to contain protest.

Aims: Drawing on Lipsky's analysis of the dilemmas faced by street-level bureaucrats, this article explores the views of local council officers and police in Melbourne, Australia, in relation to the development and enforcement of public drinking laws [Lipsky, M. (1980). Street level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public spaces. New York: Russell Sage Foundation].Methods: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 18 local council officers and 6 police officers. Narratives were analysed thematically.Findings: Two divergent narratives underpinned the construction of public drinking laws. First, public drinking laws were supported by some council and police officers because they enabled the maintenance of public order and maximized perceptions of safety among residents. Second, public drinking laws were contested by some council and police officers due to concerns about discrimination of socioeconomically disadvantaged populations and confliction with personal ideologies of social equality.Conclu...

The nature of jus cogens has been an intellectual puzzle for international law academics to date. This article explores why an explanation of jus cogens lies beyond the formal sources of international law and cannot be reduced to either constitutional or public order explanations alone. It argues that jus cogens norms should instead be understood as shaped by the common good of the international community, and particularly as fundamental legal means for the international community to be able to achieve, or coordinate towards, this common good. If jus cogens norms are understood as arising from the normative commitments that states make by necessary implication for the achievement of the shared objectives and goods of the international community, then it becomes clearer why they would be both constitutive and public order in nature—supporting what Hersch Lauterpacht refers to as the reason for being of the international community.

This introductory article argues that world public order continues to be challenged by the emergence of the doctrines of anticipatory self-defense and humanitarian intervention. These challenges may be better understood, and reconciled, by application of the just war tradition.

This article examines how policing, security, and intelligence agencies have networked with private agents in a campaign targeting Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) in Canada. SHAC is a network of autonomous groups that coordinate an international campaign to disrupt the animal testing corporation, Huntingdon Life Sciences. Unlike in the USA and the UK, where SHAC groups have been targeted by a series of extraordinary legislative initiatives that are coordinated at a national level, the campaign directed at SHAC-Canada has its root in the work of private detectives. Drawing from the results of Access to Information Act requests and interviews with SHAC members, we discuss how the preliminary surveillance conducted by private detectives facilitated a multi-scalar policing effort that includes a network of municipal, provincial, national, and international police–intelligence agencies. To enrich existing typologies of social movement repression, we emphasize the role that private security plays in monit...

The paper argues that institutional accounts are useful but incomplete in providing an understanding the dynamics of the completion of the internal market. This is because they do not leave enough room for ideas and norms, which have been central to the gambling story. The paper argues that prevailing norms about gambling, which have associated it with inter alia charities, criminal activity, public health and public order, have worked to mitigate the desire for a single market and arguments about the efficiency of market liberalization. Gambling is a useful case to illustrate that there is ambivalence about market building that tries to reconcile possible efficiency gains that come with enhanced competition with an aversion to promoting risk.