Beyond the national: policing across borders

Increasing mass population movement and advancements in information technology have contributed to globalisation and substantial challenges in both the management and security of the nation state (Block, 2011; Yar, 2013). These developing pressures, over the last twenty-five years or so, have resulted in the emerging requirements to: police beyond national borders; develop political and police cooperation to make use of technology; create treaties, partnerships and protocols to counteract dangers and risks related to global crime threats (Bowling and Sheptycki, 2012); and devise ways in which, somewhat paradoxically, police forces can cooperate simultaneously at strategic, tactical and operational levels without compromising national integrity.

Adaptations to an evolving global and European policing context are undertaken through a range of policing models (as we saw in Chapter One), themselves made more complex because of national histories, political administration, channels of legitimacy, governance, roles and a state's functions, responsibilities, resources and capabilities. These complexities are not static: they evolve alongside changing political ideologies and swift but profound developments in technology and social media, all set against a background of uncertain economics and financial constraint. The pressures that result encourage a slow convergence of police practices, exacerbated by inevitable tensions between those that favour development towards a federal European police service and those committed to the protection of the Weberian ‘nation state’ (Biersteker and Weber, 1996; Frank et al, 2000). One example of this from Britain may make the point. A suggestion was floated in early 2013 that the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police might be the former chief of the New York Police Department, William (‘Bill’) Bratton.