G. Kurian – World Encyclopedia of Police Forces and Correctional Systems (Second edition)

Автор: G. Kurian
Название книги: World Encyclopedia of Police Forces and Correctional Systems
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Политология и Социология
Страницы: 1189
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

Describes the national law enforcement and correctional systems of over 200 countries around the world. Providing both statistical and analytical information, the encyclopaedia features scholarly analysis by authorities about law enforcement organisations in a user- friendly, alphabetical order.

World Encyclopedia of Police Forces and Correctional Systems is the second edition of the work
published in 1988 as World Encyclopedia of Police Forces and Penal Systems. The first edition
covered 183 countries in one volume. The present one covers 198 countries in two
volumes. In the intervening years between the first and the second editions the world has
changed dramatically, and so have law enforcement and corrections. In the first edition, law
enforcement was perceived as a local activity limited to nations and localities within
nations. With the ever-present threat of terrorism, law enforcement has taken on a global
dimension and the globalization of the science and the profession will only continue to
grow in the future. When the first edition was published the Soviet Union had pulled down
its iron curtain across half the world, permitting little information to leak into the free
world. The collapse of Communism meant not only that there were now 21 more nations
in the world, but that there was more access to the police systems of those countries that
were once closed to the scrutiny of scholars. Since 1988 the information revolution and the
resulting quantum jump in technology have changed the once staid and slow-moving
profession of law enforcement into a dynamic one where every policeman has access to as
much information in the field as his commanders at headquarters. Even in the smallest
countries of the world, law enforcement people are seamlessly connected into a vast
network that, through Interpol and other organizations, can reach into the farthest corners
of the world. In fact not since the birth of the modern police in Robert Peel’s Britain in the
mid-1840s has there been a greater expansion in police powers and functions than in the
last two decades.
These changes are reflected in the second edition and in the scope of the work. Because these
global issues and trends needed to be addressed, the encyclopedia is now divided into two parts.
The first part deals with critical global themes that affect all nations and that cannot be properly
treated in national chapters. Terrorism has emerged as a discrete target of law enforcement
activity. Although it can be dealt with only in a quasi-military fashion, most of the first
responders are law enforcement officers and fire fighters. The conventional rubrics that governed
law enforcement do not apply to terrorism, which is often described as a war. As the police gain
new powers in this asymmetric war, questions are raised about the limits to such powers and the
human rights that could be impacted as a result. It is not merely terrorism that confronts police
forces and corrections throughout the world. The very same technological revolution that helps
the police to be more innovative in foiling criminal activity also helps criminals to outsmart the
police and devise new forms of crime. As technology has erased borders and shortened distances, crime in all forms has become global. It is now possible for criminals to commit crimes in any
country without necessarily being physically present there. Immigration crime and cybercrime
are two examples of the new threats that law enforcement agencies face in the twenty-first
century. This has called for an extraordinary degree of transnational cooperation among police
agencies at every level. Borderless nations create borderless crimes and they in turn create
borderless law enforcement strategies. The increasing use of drugs also contributes to the
breakdown of law and order, especially among the youth. Even with technology on their side,
few national police agencies have been able to resolve these new problems that beset them.
One indicator of how law enforcement has become one of the top priorities for every
government is the fact that during the past 20 years, the ratio of police to the general
population has risen in every country. Worldwide there is now one policeman for every
860 persons, compared to one policeman for every 1,300 persons in 1988. Worldwide
there are now 7.2 million men and women in police uniforms. Unlike the military,
policemen are highly visible and ubiquitous and their presence and profession affect society
at every level.
Even though law enforcement and criminal justice studies are now major disciplines in
their own right, police and corrections remain among the least studied institutions and
ones on which the least information is available to scholars and researchers on a global
basis. The reasons are twofold: The first is the instinctive and historical academic distrust
of the more forbidding aspects of police and correctional studies, and the second is the
uncommunicative nature of police and penal professionals who see little practical benefit
in scholarly investigation. This is slowly changing. Movie and television dramas with
police and court themes have helped to romanticize the investigative aspects of law
enforcement. Secondly, there is now more accountability in law enforcement, especially
in democratic countries. Nevertheless, the information currently available in police and
corrections is of such poor quality outside of Europe and North America that many
decades will pass before it reaches the level currently obtainable in other fields of public
activity.
Information on police forces and penal systems is not only meager but also uneven
and limited to certain areas of law enforcement to the exclusion of others. The situation is
not helped by the fact that Interpol, the major international police organization, does not
have a strong publishing or data collection program and has never taken an aggressive
initiative in promoting police studies. It depends on the voluntary cooperation of members
for input into the irregularly published International Crime Statistics. This publication
provides only strict crime data and does not deal with law enforcement forces.
The individual country entries in the second edition are broader in scope and provide
more information on areas that were not covered in the first edition. The most important
of these new sections are the ones on human rights, including police corruption and prison
conditions. Police activity is one that easily lends itself to brutality and corruption if left
unchecked and if proper accountability procedures are not in place. This is particularly
true of non-democratic nations where the police (as well as the military) are used by the
powers that be to suppress legitimate dissent under the guise of enforcing the law.
Within each country entry the information is organized under four main headings:
Law Enforcement; Human Rights; Crime; and Correctional System. Basic statistics are
presented for both police and crime. While every effort has been made to present the
information in a uniform and consistent manner, the schema had to be modified for some
countries because of the paucity of information. Nevertheless, the encyclopedia represents
one of the largest caches of information on law enforcement and correctional systems now
available in print.
George Thomas Kurian