Patrolling the New European (In)Security Field; Organisational Dilemmas and Operational Solutions for Policing the Internal Borders of Europe.

This article explores several organizational features of cross border policing ventures, focusing on the technological tools in use, several issues surrounding enforcement jurisdiction and the management issues that arise from coordinating a multi-agency trans-border policing institution. Much of the public perception about the need for cross-border police cooperation has been focused on the activities of transnational organized crime. Organized crime has indeed become the major policy concern in transnational criminal justice circles across Europe. The pragmatic solution to the problems of coordinating trans-border cooperation in the policing enterprise has been the establishment of specialist multi-agency units. One of the first of these was the European Liaison Unit-based on the English side of the Channel Tunnel in Kent. Another example of cross-border police coordination is the International Contact Centre based at Maastricht in Limburg, the southernmost province of the Netherlands. But neither the European policing system nor the national policing systems that help to comprise it are monolithic entities. This means that technological refitting is uneven. Information technologies are not standardized across the policing complex.