Anthropology of Police & Policing

Informal gold miners in South Africa are not “illegal" because they mine gold. They are criminalized from the start, and mine gold because the substance makes it difficult for police and private industry to forensically track and trace them. My chapter on “Zama-Zamas” (criminal miners) who take big risks to avoid surveillance, in a new United Nations sponsored book that contains writing from leading experts on crime and corruption inside the global mining industry.

Convocation Address at Bethel University, August 29, 2016 about recent troubles in Minnesota, particularly the shooting of Philando Castille, and our responsibility as followers of the Gospel. There is an audio link also available. After you click the link, it's the first one in the queue; fast-forward to 15:00:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/2016-2017-chapel-college-arts/id1148681753?mt=10

Poiares, N. (2021). A Ciência Policial em Portugal: o reconhecimento pela Comunidade Científica Internacional. Lição Inaugural da Cerimónia de Abertura Solene do Ano Académico 2021-2022, presidida por Sua Excelência o Ministro da Administração Interna, em 2 de dezembro de 2021. Lisboa: ISCPSI.

Although FASD is first and foremost a health issue, it is a consideration in the justice system because individuals with FASD have contact as victims, witnesses and offenders. This chapter will draw on research with justice professionals to argue that there is an ethical need, and indeed an obligation, for appropriate training to better prepare police to work with clients that have FASD. By illustrating the ways in which many frontline workers misunderstand FASD, coupled with the stigma associated to FASD, this chapter argues that individuals with FASD have unique needs and the stakes in the justice system are simply too high to not have appropriate training in place to meet those needs.

The issues of ‘race’ and ‘racism’ have been with us since the founding of our august republic. Unfortunately, they are perniciously still with us today. They were the reason we fought the Civil War (1861-1865) and have mired our history throughout. There is no period in our history, the history of the United States, when ‘race’ has not been significant in some profound way. For many reasons too, the American Civil War is still with us today. It is still with us in every racial conflict we have had since. It is still being fought, perhaps unknowingly by many African-Americans, who have experienced ‘structural violence’ in some way, whether in terms of wanting better education, better housing, or a better job, or even rights for a normal life. And it is still with us today when African-Americans are targeted unfairly by law enforcement.

Two weeks ago, the world witnessed a murder of an innocent Black man, George Floyd, what many, including Jesse Jackson, called a “public lynching” in broad daylight, at the hands of a white policeman. It was a brutal killing by the manner in which Minneapolis policeman, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, slowly and viciously forcing the life out of Floyd for almost 9 minutes. While Chauvin’s fellow officers, by not coming to Floyd’s aid, were complicit to the crime. There was no need for Chauvin to have subdued Floyd in such a cruel and purposeful way until Floyd could no longer breathe, especially since Floyd had already been restrained. Nor, did Floyd have any weapon. Nor had he committed any crime warranting such force. In a video captured by a teenager, Floyd could be heard stating he could not breathe, and calling out for his deceased mother. Since 2014, there have been other police killings of African-Americans with no consequences for the police officers involved.

Cet article interroge la pratique de signalement psychiatrique dans les espaces publics urbains. À partir de l’analyse documentaire des rapports d’intervention de police pour des « indésirables » à Bruxelles, il est possible de saisir les caractéristiques typiques des troubles « psychiatrisables » qui mènent à une prise en charge institutionnelle. Cette démarche permet d’identifier les conduites et comportements qui sont requis de la part de « la personne du malade mental » pour déclencher une prise en charge institutionnelle. Cela soulève des enjeux majeurs de contrôle social, d’accès aux soins et de protection des personnes, d’autant plus brûlants à l’heure de la désinstitutionalisation psychiatrique.

In studying the consistencies we find our purpose of establishing the consistencies of how variations of truth are assessed.
The methodology used was a threefold assessment of short sections of a recorded interview that was later publicized.
From this we find normative and acceptable consistencies in the methods and responses, and we gain an insight into the internal workings of the law enforcement of law enforcers, supporting our social confidences.
In conclusion, the reinstatement of appropriate and correct boundaries are evident.

Drawing on data from an ethnography of the school-based Student Police Cadet (SPC) program in Kerala, India, this paper examines the ways in which female high school student-cadets mobilized SPC's uniform in their performance of citizenship education. Unlike their gendered school uniforms, SPC's gender-neutral ‘khaki’ uniform signified a program that treats girls and boys ‘equally.’ Further, SPC uniform's resemblance to the Kerala police uniform enabled female cadets to momentarily disrupt gender regimes and lay claim to specific forms of aspirational, spatial, and sartorial freedoms. These freedoms, however, are premised on the masculine authority of the police uniform and its associated protections. Thus, while the promise of female empowerment is pivotal to SPC curriculum, the conditional nature of freedom in khaki underscores the ambivalent nature of those curricular promises. The paper concludes by examining the implications of freedom bequeathed through masculine forms of protection for girls’ participation in society.

This paper explores the policing of a traditional wholesale fruit market located in a densely populated neighborhood of urban Hong Kong. Based on ethnographic and historical research, we outline the political arrangements that govern the discretionary arrangements of police power at the market. A historically developed system maintains an informal status quo against various pressures to change. We identify crucial features in the contemporary policing system that emerge from a fusion between the democratic ethos of community policing ideals and non-democratic aspects of local administration in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. These features of this historically developed mode of order-maintenance, we suggest, might be seen as broadly characteristic of a “Hong Kong style” community policing.

Convivencia is a specific historical term that has come to represent the idea of tolerant aand peaceful co-existence. Conflicts and Convivencia scrutinises the relations between cultural diversity and social conflicts and considers why some social conflicts are said to be inherently cultural. It does this through a ‘multi-scalar extended case study’ approach of the social construction of a problem and its solutions. This is an innovative approach that sheds light on the multiple local-global processes inherent to the phenomenon starting from an urban ethnography of a small town in Northern Catalonia.


This way the book analyses the simultaneously local-global transformation of migration and societies, connecting the local processes of production of space and place making with the larger processes of migration, economic crisis and social transformation, and finally, the responses to these changes from institutions, NGOs and social groupings.


This work allows for a deeper understanding of the complex social transformation that migration as a phenomenon is part of but also affected by, impulses and articulates culturally. It focuses particularly on the interaction between mobility and settlement and the socio-cultural processes at different scales, through the vectors of production and reproduction of space.

The subject of this article is the military institution, with particular reference to the training and the military culture. The approach to the subject is through the results of micro-sociological research, which mostly refer to the conceptual instruments of symbolic interactionism, and through the first results of a long ethnographic research. 
The present study shows a correlation between the training model of the military and episodes of sadistic and uncontrolled violence and torture, perpetrated by social actors trained on the basis of that model.

This article examines how police vision is trained, tested, and scripted at the site of a local police academy in San Diego, California. I use the term scripting to illustrate how police recruits are directed to see, act, and respond to racialized, gendered others in scenario-based simulations during the final week of the police academy. Through participant-observation and methods in performance ethnography, I argue that turning to police training as an object of analysis offers ethnographic insights into the performance of tacit, ordinary methods of police violence. As a feminist intervention into the “scripting” of police vision, I describe my attempts to read against the grain of these scenario scripts by volunteering as a role-play actor in the police academy, taking on different embodied roles in order to examine how police recruits read the choreography of my racialized body. I suggest an investigation into the performativity of policing can move debates centered on racialized police violence beyond ideological frameworks that rely on the same visualizing technologies and logics of objectivity deployed by the institution of policing.

This writing, "Creative Community Policing Initiatives in Columbia, South Carolina," appears as Chapter 4 in Dennis Stevens' edited book, Policing and Community Partnerships.  To meet the public safety needs of increasingly diverse neighborhoods in cities across the nation, creative and innovative community policing initiatives seem to be required to curb and to prevent crimes and related problems and to bridge the gap between the police and citizens through community involvement in policing activities. Community policing is guided by the values of building partnerships, people helping people, and community organizing. In this light, community policing initiatives in Columbia, South Carolina, are characterized by the concept of "shared responsibility." In this chapter, therefore, the creative and innovative community policing initiatives in Columbia, South Carolina, are examined. This discussion thus focuses on questions as they relate to the community initiatives of the Columbia Police Department and the City of Columbia, South Carolina.

Policing is a product and producer of narratives. Drawing on data collected during an eight-month ethnography in the South African Police Service (SAPS), this article suggests that the SAPS and its organisational culture are best understood as the products of overlap and entanglement of three narrative spheres: the national (South Africa), organisational (SAPS) and personal (officer). Themes common to these narratives are a history of oppression, stark income inequality, the violent nature of its crime, and the general precarity of life. In this context, SAPS officers jostle with other South Africans to secure a better life for themselves and their kin, which in turn shapes police culture and practice. The combination of precarity and organisational and public performance pressures that police face, can produce police practices that echo apartheid era logics of space, place and race.

Nuestro estudio indica que la reforma de la Policía de la Provincia de Buenos Aires a cargo de León Arslanián alteró y con creces el curso normal de las prácticas policiales, lo que ellos reconocen como parte de la crisis y de la ausencia de dirección clara hacia el futuro. La imagen construida de los dinosaurios con sus relatos casi míticos sobre los verdaderos policías, es un reflejo de esta incertidumbre, su extinción señala la imposibilidad de su reproducción.  Pero, por el otro lado, al participar de la configuración de los quiebres generacionales internos, es decir de la visión de sí mismos como formando segmentos difíciles de integrar, e invocar un modo de ser policía y del saber hacer policial, la generación que comanda introduce estándares morales particulares. De este modo, en la división interna, reclaman la reimplantación de una especificidad de la vocación policial basada en el servicio y no en el trabajo. Sin embargo, en un contexto de fuerte depreciación del trabajo donde la flexibilización ha eliminado el escenario de la estabilidad laboral e implantado el del empleo múltiple, donde parece difícil escapar al trasvasamiento de  estas lógicas y las que introdujo el gobierno civil de la policía, los comandantes parecen buscar en la vocación un modo de resistir la crisis y orientar el futuro del oficio policial.

This ethnography of the everyday life and work of police in northern India revisits some intractable questions for the anthropologist who directly engages violence and power in the field: How do we understand violence, especially state violence? How do we understand and negotiate the vulnerabilities, responsibilities and complicities of violent agents, as well as those of the ethnographer who aims to understand the life worlds of these agents? What kinds of knowledge are produced in these ethnographic encounters, and how should they be framed and represented? And finally, how do we conduct ethnography with interlocutors who engage in violence on a routine basis, willfully, or as part of their job description, and still maintain professional ethical standards and the directionality of our moral compass? I argue that while there is no way around or out of complicity, a concept of “strategic complicity” can serve as guide in navigating the murky work of “dirty anthropology”.

The aphorism «jiu-jitsu is therapy» was encountered at the American military base on Guam. Immediate questions arise. How does therapy arise from techniques to incapacitate, injure, and kill? What could be the malady? Who requires treatment? Therapy is an endeavour to «shift subjectivities», change attitudes, dispositions, and lifestyles towards better health and well-being. During Brazilian jiu-jitsu sparring, where police «roll» with criminals, virtual homicide is enacted through holds applied to a partner, who «taps out» to offset injury or death. Virtual murder/suicide enacted through actual victory/surrender provides the basis for a «catch-up institution».  In cultures of combat, therapy, embodiment, and subjectivity may be grasped through a Deleuzian parallel model of mind and body, thought and extension, at the intersections of knowledge, thought, and power relations. While chokehold deaths in police custody illustrate the militarization of global means of violence, colonized subjects on Guam prepare for the impending arrival of 7,000 U.S. Marines. 􏰟􏰤 􏰚􏰡 􏰜􏰡􏰁􏰜􏰚􏰫􏰟􏰤 􏰕􏰥􏰜

Last summer, the New York Times reported that the George Floyd Uprising was the largest set of protests in U.S. history. Data indicates that nearly 25 million people took part in protests across the country. For incoming students, perhaps no topic is as important as the national policing crisis. In this course we will examine the deep history of police institutions and the part they have played in political life. Our study of the politics of the police will be theoretical and historical, but also attuned to the ways that theory and history allow us to better understand current events. We will read classic texts, primary sources, academic articles, position papers, and government reports. This course will put current debates into context by exploring critical approaches to police reform and the role of social movements in building pressure for change and developing alternatives. After completing this course students will better understand the causes that contributed to the current policing crisis and will be able to defend their own perspectives on contemporary debates.

O projecto de investigação parte de um estudo maior intitulado COPP-LAB: Circulações de Polícias em Portugal, África Lusófona e Brasil, financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), actualmente em curso (até 2015) e pretende explorar alguns temas que não têm sido abordados até ao momento presente.

As questões em análise centram-se fundamentalmente na cooperação técnico-policial entre Portugal e São-Tomé e Príncipe ao abrigo dos protocolos estabelecidos entre o actual Instituto Superior de Ciências Policiais e Segurança Interna (ISCPSI) localizado no Calvário em Lisboa e na exportação para São Tomé e Príncipe de um modelo policial típico de países “ocidentais” como é o Modelo de Policiamento de Proximidade presente na polícia portuguesa – a Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP), desde os anos 90 até à actualidade.

Neste sentido, pretende-se reflectir e examinar o modus operandi da Polícia Nacional de São Tomé e Príncipe (PNSTP), fazendo uma pesquisa etnográfica com recurso à observação participante junto de Agentes, Comissários e demais chefias pertencentes àquela instituição policial que se considerem para o efeito pertinente, visando compreender se a polícia são-tomense encontra-se organizada e suficientemente preparada para lidar com os desafios actuais e vindouros do seu país em questões como a segurança, policiamento, manutenção da ordem pública, entre outros.

Em simultâneo, procura-se percepcionar o enquadramento e a aplicação do Modelo de Policiamento de Proximidade na sociedade são-tomense a partir de uma nova geração de agentes policiais formados em Lisboa e que neste momento são comissários no seu país de origem. Para esse efeito, procurar-se-á fazer um trabalho quer próximo destes comissários que oportunamente foram entrevistados no início deste ano na capital de São-Tomé e Príncipe, São-Tomé, quer junto dos autóctones e nas interacções destes com as forças policiais, maioritariamente em locais públicos como recintos desportivos, praças, avenidas, arruamentos, instituições culturais, entre outros locais que sejam alvo de patrulha e supervisionamento da PNSTP.

Numa primeira fase, deseja-se examinar a génese dos protocolos estabelecidos entre o ISCPSI e a entidade responsável pela sua tutela – o Ministério da Administração Interna e a Polícia Nacional de São Tomé e Príncipe tutelada por seu lado pelo Ministério da Defesa e Ordem Interna. Neste primeiro momento procura-se responder a algumas questões que foram sendo elencadas e que julgamos serem pertinentes: i) Qual a justificação para o surgimento destes protocolos; ii) Em que data foram assinados e aplicados inicialmente? iii) Que pressupostos compreendiam? iv) Que configurações tiveram desde o seu surgimento até ao momento presente?

Com efeito, foi possível apurar que as primeiras entradas dos alunos dos PALOP (designados por cadetes cooperantes) no ISCPSI, datam de finais da década de 80, mais concretamente em 1988 (dados fornecidos pelo instituto), embora não se consiga responder até ao momento às questões acima formuladas. Julgamos portanto existirem enormes lacunas nesses campos que deverão ser respondidas a breve trecho.

Para se conseguir atingir tal objectivo, far-se-á uma pesquisa aprofundada relativamente à constituição do ISCPSI no Calvário, ao teor dos seus conteúdos programáticos, ao seu corpo docente e discente, ao regime de internato de 5 anos que aí vigora e que de acordo com a literatura apurada se encontra em desuso, aos objectivos a que essa instituição de ensino superior se propunha e se propõe actualmente, descodificando as alterações que foram sendo realizadas a esse nível.

Em simultâneo, serão efectuadas entrevistas semi-estruturadas a decisores políticos que foram responsáveis pela fundação daquela instituição de ensino superior, docentes e discentes actuais e passados que aí trabalharam e estudaram respectivamente entre outros que porventura se considerem fundamentais para os temas em questão.

Numa fase posterior, serão realizadas algumas viagens a São Tomé e Príncipe com o objectivo de fazer trabalho de campo. Com efeito, a etnografia terá aqui enorme relevância e espaço na medida em que se pretende registar o dia-a-dia de agentes e comissários policiais nas suas missões de controlo de tráfego rodoviário, no patrulhamento de ruas, aeroportos e outros locais, o trabalho administrativo, workshops e palestras em escolas e outras instituições em que PNSTP se desloca regularmente para informar a população sobre temas de interesse público.

This study uses a structured literature review method to examine the concept of ‘canteen culture’ which has been identified as a feature of police forces around the world. Theories from the fields of sociology, organisation/management studies and gender/diversity studies are used to define the origins and nature of police canteen culture and gain an understanding of why it arises, how it influences the effectiveness of police forces, and which factors might be relevant in promoting or suppressing it.
The historical origins of police culture and authority are examined and a number of key policy changes affecting the police over the last century are traced, with particular reference to evolving views about the direction in which policing culture should be heading.
Chapter five examines a range of empirical studies on police culture under the thematic headings of a) use of force; b) stress and coping mechanisms, c) diversity and resistance to diversity and d) peer group networks. This empirical review shows that police canteen culture in the UK and in other contemporary police forces is an enduring phenomenon which is fuelled by the nature of the job itself and the underlying values and beliefs which motivate people to take up a career in the first place. These underlying values and beliefs are modified through the experiences that younger officers have in their first operational shifts, highlighting a built-in dynamic of limited resistance to senior management and visible loyalty to fellow members of the immediate working unit.
Referring back to the theoretical part of this study, it is found that these behaviours are amply explained by organisational and leadership theories about culture and change management. There is a particularly acute problem in contemporary police culture, however, due to the proliferation of major policy changes in recent years, and the addition of multiple layers of governance including now an elected Commissioner role which brings added political pressure to bear on an organisation which is under-resourced in terms of its remit to combat crime on a fair and equal basis.  Moreover the empirical studies appear to show that many attempts to combat the negative aspects of police canteen culture may in fact reinforce it by increasing the pressure on serving police officers to relinquish features which many of them regard as non-negotiable of elements of both individual and corporate police identity.
This dissertation concludes that police canteen culture is gradually being changed over time, but that because of the fragmented and often contradictory nature of policy development, this change will contain good and bad elements and it will include planned changes as well as some unplanned changes for the better and for the worse. If any recommendations can be made in this area, they should be in the direction of encouraging individual value formation, questioning and openness in daily interactions between all grades of staff. Canteen culture is here to stay and the best that can be achieved is greater diversity within this canteen, and greater consistency in the messages that are being heaped upon rank and file officers from above.

In the past decade, images of fatal police shootings shared on social media have inspired protests against militarised policing policies and redefined the ways marginalised communities seek justice. This article theorises the repetition of violent images and discusses how social media has become an important tool for localising popular critiques of the law. I provide an ethnographic account of a police shooting in a Brazilian favela (shantytown). I am particularly interested in how residents of the favela interpret law and justice in relationship to contemporaneous movements such as Black Lives Matter. Reflecting Walter Benjamin's concept of mechanical reproduction, this case study demonstrates an 'aura' that is shaped by the social and legal context in which a violent image is produced , consumed and aggregated. This case study suggests the possibility for research examining the ways inclusionary social media platforms are increasingly co-opted by oppressive political institutions.

The present article focuses on the learning of aggression in a “total institution” within the Italian army – namely, an elite corpse of paratroopers called Folgore. The extremely violent training and rituals of this group can be seen as both symbolic and particularly representative of the ideal model pursued within the army, and the armed forces in general. The central hypothesis of the work is that the learning of aggression within the military institution is wanted and controlled, being necessary and functional for the purposes of the military institution itself. Based on an autobiographic ethnography, main rituals and practices in the everyday life of the squad are described and analyzed by making conceptual references to the notions of rites of passage, rites of institution, and the psychological behaviourist learning model. Moreover, the authors argue that Italy is witnessing the transmission of practices and ideologies from the military to the police – thus producing a blend which makes the custom between war and peace ever more blurred.


Il presente articolo indaga le modalità di apprendimento della violenza all’interno di una “istituzione totale” e di un corpo d’elite dell’esercito italiano: la Folgore. L’addestramento e i riti estremamente violenti di questo gruppo possono essere considerati simbolici, oltre che particolarmente rappresentativi, di un modello ideale perseguito dall’esercito e dalle forze armate in genere. L’ipotesi centrale presentato nel lavoro è quella per cui l’apprendimento dell’aggressione dentro le forze armate è voluta e controllata, essendo funzionale ai fini di queste
stesse istituzioni. Attraverso un’etnografia autobiografica e il riferimento alle nozioni di rito di passaggio, rito di istituzione e, infine, al modello comportamentista di apprendimento, vengono descritti e analizzati i principali riti e le pratiche quotidiane di un reparto di paracadutisti. Gliautori sostengono inoltre che in Italia si stia assistendo alla trasmissione di pratiche e ideologie dall’esercito alla polizia, producendo una commistione che rende il confine tra guerra e pace sempre più confuso.

This article describes how the blended format of a higher education program initially designed for police officers supported the nurturing of human skills, such as creativity, collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking, which are increasingly seen as essential in 21st century workplaces. The article begins with a discussion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and how the impacts of automation, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of things, among others, are compelling reevaluation of non-cognitive or human skills. Then, the article explores the evolution of the educational program at the University of Guelph-Humber, in Toronto, Canada, and outlines how by-products of the program were hallmark liberal arts skills, such as critical thinking, research, analysis, and communication, which were seen as valuable to police work. Third, it highlights some of the specific impacts of increasing technological inputs such as artificial intelligence, crime mapping, and predictive policing algorithms on everyday community policing. Finally, the article correlates how, perhaps counterintuitively, blended or hybrid and online education can create learning environments to nurture the human skills to respond to the workplaces of the future.

Abstract


Massage and sexuality have overlapping elements but also distinct elements. This article focuses on experiences in massage and the area of taboo regarding the overlap in massage and sexuality in three different countries I have visited: Netherlands, South Africa and the USA.
Within these three countries six areas are highlighted:
1) Sport massage / Swedish massage
2) Medical Massage / Physiotherapy
3) Chinese / Japanese rub massage and pressure point massage
4) Holistic Massage
5) Erotic Massage
6) Tantric massage.

After an introduction a) with more or less objective descriptions of these six types of massage follows a

section b) expressing the viewpoint and the best practices of massage professionals.

This section is followed c) by some views and experiences by clients.
One finding is that the boundary between massage and sex is sometimes not easy to make, and that massage and the erotic and in some cases are inextricably linked.

Finally d) there is an attempt to construct a model of the field and some thesis. The thesis is mainly ethical in nature, whereas the article itself is mainly descriptive. Very little indeed has been published on this taboo subject. This article presents a first rough impression, exploration and survey of an untouched area, where no author has yet dared “to get one’s fingers burnt”, and the article does not strive to be exhaustive.