COURSE TITLE: COMPARATIVE MODELS OF POLICING (unit 2)

A. POLICING IN ACROSS NATIONAL BORDERS

In recent years, police research has been concerned, more than ever before, with
dimensions of law enforcement that traverse the borders of national-legal jurisdictions. This
research has revealed that police officials often operate outside the borders of their countries,
although police institutions are by definition sanctioned by the governments to fight crime and
maintain order within the borders of their country.

International police research has been applied in a variety of contexts. Thus, research
has been devoted to recent developments in the control of national borders, the international
activities of national and local police organizations, and the formation of international network of
police.

Research has revealed that:

a. Police agents working abroad are less guided by judicial control and political supervision and
more likely to do whatever tasks they see fit given the circumstances.
b. Police abroad may as such be less guided by concerns related to civil rights and democratic
procedure.
This democratic deficit of international policing is seen as an important social problem,
because it can lead to abuses by police. James Sheptycki (1996), for instance, has raised
concerns over the lack of accountability that arises from the police agents investigating suspects
in foreign countries without the limitations that are placed on police organizations in their own
country. Particularly in the fight against drugs and drug trafficking, Sheptycki notes that police
agencies rely on international networks that can be effective, but difficult to monitor, thus
undermining the ideal of democratic oversight.

Also related to democratization in the new global order are the efforts by the police from
established democratic regimes to assist with the reorganization of law enforcement in the
newly formed and evolving democracies of the world. Comparative police expert David Bayley
(1995) has argued that police institutions are central in the democratization process, because
law enforcement agencies are such a visible instrument of power with which many citizens are
confronted. Bayley suggest that US authorities can assist foreign governments with
democratizing their police, if at least some conditions are fulfilled. For example, Bayley argues,
foreign police should be assisted by US agents only if the political system of the foreign country
is genuinely democratic and if efforts are made by foreign police to eliminate all forms of
corruption.

B. LAW ENFORCEMENT IN GLOBAL ARENA

How can the police or law enforcement agencies safeguard life and human dignity in a global
scale?

The system and norms are codified in a widely endorsed set of international undertakings,
like:
a. the "International Bill of Human Rights" Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and
b. International Covenant on Social and Economic Rights; phenomenon specific treaties on war
crimes
c. Geneva Conventions, genocide, and torture; and protections for vulnerable groups such as the U
Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women.
d. International dialogue on human rights has produced a distinction between three "generations" of
human rights, labeled for their historical emergence.
e. Security rights encompass life, bodily integrity, liberty, and sometimes associated rights of political
participation and democratic governance.
f. Social and economic rights, highlighted in the eponymous International Covenant, comprise both
negative and positive freedoms, enacted by states and others: prominently, rights to food, health
care, education, and free labor.

With this is the creation of an international regime to enforce these UN declarations, bills and
other international standards. We may call it "Universal Declarations". However, the very process of
globalization blurs distinctions among categories of law enforcement due to racial differences and
states own standards or laws.

Analyst on crime control have identified of psychological, social, economic, and political
patterns that put societies "at risk" of law and other violations. These generally include
authoritarian bgovernment, civil war, strong ethnic cleavages, weak civil society, power
vacuums, critical junctures in economic development, and military dominance. Above all, the
study of human rights teaches us that human rights violations usually reflect a calculated pursuit
of political power, not inherit evil or ungovernable passions.

C. EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

Every law enforcement agency in the world is expected to be the protector of the
people's rights. Globalization has great impact on every human right.

The emergence of an "international regime" for state security and protection of human
rights, growing transnational social movement networks, increasing consciousness and
information politics have the potential to address both traditional and emerging forms of law
violations. Open international system should free individuals to pursue their rights, but large
numbers of people seem to be suffering from both long-standing state repression and new
denials of rights linked to transnational forces like international terrorism and other acts against
humanity.

The challenge of globalization is that unaccountable flow of migration and open markets
present new threats, which are not amenable to state based human rights regimes, while the
new opportunities of global information and institutions are insufficiently accessible and distorted
by persistent state intervention.

D. OPPORTUNITIES FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

While globalization brings the threats and many other threats to law enforcement,
opportunities like the following are carried:
a. Creation of International tribunals to deal with human rights problems
b. Humanitarian interventions that can promote universal norms and link them to the
enforcement power of states;
c. Transnational professional network and cooperation against transnational crimes;
d. Global groups for conflict monitoring and coalitions across transnational issues
E. CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION IN THE FIELD OF LAW ENFORCEMENT

In the law enforcement and security sphere, states respond with increased repression to
fragmentation, transnationalized civil war, and uncontrolled global flow such as migrants and
drug trafficking. Transborder ethnic differences help inspire civil conflict, while the global arms
trade provides its tools.

Even extreme civil conflicts where states deteriorate into warlordism are often financed if not
abetted by foreign trade: diamonds in the Congo and Sierra Leone, cocaine in Colombia. While
non-state actors like insurgents and paramilitaries pose increasing threats to human rights, state
response is a crucial multiplier for the effect on citizens. Since all but the most beleaguered
states possess more resources and authority than rebels, they can generally cause more
damage-and human rights, monitoring in a wide variety of settings from Rwanda to Haiti
attributes the bulk of abuses to state (or state-supported) forces. States also differ in their ability
and will to provide protection from insurgent terror campaigns (like that in Algeria).

Global economic relationships can produce state policies that directly violate social and
labor rights and indirectly produce social conflict that leads to state violations of civil and
security rights. While global windfalls of wealth may also underwrite repressive and predatory
states, as in Angola, where oil revenues have fueled repression and civil war Harden 2000). It is
stated that it largely determines labor rights and security response to labor dissidence; states
also regulate multinationals, certify unions, and form joint ventures with global inventors.

The challenge now is on how every state pursues a strong relationship in the area of
policing these global wrongs.

F. THREAT OF GLOBALIZATION TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

Some threats brought about by globalization are:

a. Increasing volume of human rights violations evident by genocide or mass killing;
jb. The underprivileged gain unfair access to global mechanism on law enforcement and
security;
c. Conflict between nations;
d. Transnational criminal networks for drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism, etc.

G. EFFECTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

The effect of globalization on state-based human rights violations will depend on the
type of state and its history. In newly democratizing countries with weak institutions and elite-
controlled economies (Russian, Latin American, and Southeast Asia), the growth of global
markets and economic flow tends to destabilize coercive forces but increases crime, police
abuse, and corruption.

Global mobility and information flow generally stimulate ethnic mobilization, which may promote
self-determination in responsive states but more often produces collective abuses in defense of
dominant-group hegemony. On the other hand, the same forces have produced slow
institutional openings by less fragmented single-party states (like China and Mexico). In much of
Africa, globalization has ironically increased power vacuums, by both empowering sub-state
challengers and providing sporadic intervention, which displaces old regimes without
consolidating new ones. Some of the most horrifying abuses of all have occurred in the
transnationalized Hobbesian civil wars of Sierra Leone, Angola, and Congo.

In general, analyst of globalization finds that states' international integration improves

security rights, but increases inequality and threatens the social rights of citizens. However,
neither economic development nor economic growth in and of themselves improves law
enforcement capabilities and human rights performance. In addition to globalization and growth,
findings on the effectiveness of international pressure on state human rights policy suggest that
target states must be structurally accessible, internationally sensitive, and contain local human
rights activists for linkage.