TARGETING, TESTING AND TRACKING:
The Triple-T of Evidence-Based Policing
6th International Conference on Evidence Based Policing
Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge
In Association with the Society for Evidence Based Policing
8-10 July 2013
The Law Faculty Building on the Sidgwick Site
"What are police organizations?
Towards a systematic comparative
taxonomy of police forms"
Sebastian Roché
CNRS
(National Center for Scientific Research)
Sciences Po, University of Grenoble
Translating the lessons of research into
practice?
• How challenges of translation would play out
in different countries?
• Executives thinking about their different
context in a systematic way?
• Leadership strategy to adopt to be able to
introduce and sustain an initiative
Double question,
Double approach.
Police
Actions &
Transfers
Science FOR
the police
HOW to do it BEST?
(including
Triple T)
Police
structure
and
functions
Science OF
the police
What are police
force/ how change?
Systematic comparisons in police
science: FOR vs OF
Science FOR police
Science OF police
• Police practice
• National forces
• Randomization,
Large N
• Applied: designing
practices
• Police structure
• Comparing forces
• Small N
• Before / after
• Applied: Designing
forces
How to pose the problem?
• What is the problem?
• Term “police”
• Police can “speak” (“we are police”, “we are
the police”).
• 1=> police (extension and intension),
• 2=> Same term, many meanings
• 3=> Same term, distinct realities
Police force
•
•
•
•
No single function, job,
No single employer or affiliation,
No intl shared definition,
Most often, no national definition (≠ legal
definition of what police competences);
obvious with privatization trends,
• Lots of variations across countries, history.
Starting point
• Asked to do a “gap analysis” in a EU program
• Immediately faced with:
• - problem of definition of “police”, structure, a
function, a power?
• - problem of elusiveness of notions
(professionalism, oversight…),
• - “the traveling problem”: absence of
definitions valid for comparing (centralization,
military police…).
Methodology
• 1=> Absence of taxonomy of police forms
• 2=> Absence of taxonomy of interaction of
police forms with their environment
• What are the available methodologies?
• (how do other sciences or other fields than
“police science”?)
1 - In need of taxonomic hierarchy
• Putting things where they belong
• Supermarket: cereals with cereals, meat with
meat etc…
• Some order to things
• No order, scientist cannot talk to one another
(and police cannot either),
• No order, cannot understand the relationships
that the social organisms have
Marine
life
forms
What are police?
Taxonomical treatment: Sartori and
comparative politics
• “A taxonomic unfolding represents a
requisite condition for comparability”
(G.S 1970: 1036).
• “taxonomical exercise ‘unpacks’
concepts”, it “decomposes mental
compounds into orderly and manageable
sets of component units” (1038).
Classification
• Most inclusive (biggest group)= Domain
• To the smallest group = Species
Linneaus’s sytem of classification
(Mountain lion)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Domain: Eukarya (not bacteria)
Kingdom: Animal
Phylum: Chordata (have a backbone)
Class: Mammalia (fur, milk)
Order: Carnivora
Family: Felidae
Genus: Puma
Species: Concolor
Implication…
• Police with adjectives
2-Back to Police:
problems with an undefined term?
• Police measured without conceptualization
(ex. Gendarmerie, centralization etc…).
• Police: a universal category? Or a universal
name? (police can speak their name):
• => an undefined, undelimited notion? or
• => example of of “conceptual stretching”
Tool #1: Extension / Intension
Term
Police
EXTENSION
Class of things to which
the word/ term applies
DENOTATION
Totality of objects indicated
by that word
INTENSION
Collection of properties
which determines the
things to which the
word / term applies
CONNOTATION
Totality of the
characteristics anything
must possess to be in the
denotation of this word
What can we call
“police”?
Police as a “genus”
What are the properties
that determines
inclusion
The ladder of abstraction
“A GENERAL CONCEPT”
LADDER
A “GENERALITY”
BROADEN THE EXTENSION
OF THE CONCEPT BY
DIMINISHING ITS
PROPERITIES
HIGH LEVEL
CONCEPTUAL STRECHING
MEDIUM LEVEL
CONTEXTUAL DEFINITIONS
(differences are stressed
above similarities)
= a larger class that
differentiate less (but still
with precision)
= traceable relation to a
collection of specifics. At
least one connotation is
retained
LOW LEVEL
= obfuscating the
connotation
Same term across the whole ladder
LEVEL
TERM
HIGH
POLICE
MEDIUM
LOW
POLICE
POLICE
GENERALIZATION IN
DISGUIZE or PSEUDO
UNIVERSALS
ANYTHING (no connotation is
retained)= INDETERMINATE
CONCEPT, we don’t know
what it points at;
Ex: THE POLICE FORCES IN
FRANCE (connotation is
context based only)
Categories with universal applicability
• Men with arms (patrolling the street) = highest
level of universal applicability
• Professional in arms
• A professional force in arms set up by a political
authority
• A professional force in arms composed of civil
servants set up by a political authority
• Police = lowest level of universal applicability
• Etc…
3 - Classification building for “police”:
how to do it?
• => description of police as a “form” with a
structure
• => taxonomical unfolding
Obstacle 1: purposive approach
• Question: What are police? Turned into =>
What are police for?
• Functional (purposive) vocabulary: judicial
police, public order police, etc…
• Structural (descriptive vocabulary): ????
• => structures are not adequately described
• => functional categories are enumerated
without a taxonomical unfolding
Obstacle 2: legal definition
• The notion of police form ≠ legally defined
notion of police force or policing agency or
police service.
• An illustration from France.
• The police of Paris do not exist legally as a
force since there are only two national forces.
• However, based on our criteria, Paris police
are a force.
Organisms are classified by their:
• * physical structure (how they look) *
evolutionary relationships * embryonic
similarities (embryos) * genetic similarities
(DNA) * biochemical similarities
• => determining connotation (the properties)
for police
Conceptualization of “police”
• => “dichotomous categorizations serve precisely
the purpose of establishing (…) the unidimensionality of each continuum” (G.S :1039)
• => there a very large number of organizational
traits in police forms,
• => what classification keys?
• => However each “police property” seems to be
multi dimensional, …
• EXAMPLES
Main features of a form
(what units shall be included?)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Attachment point (hook to political system),
Command and control lines (backbone),
Mandate given,
Operational powers,
Status of force,
Size,
Composition / Professionalization: illiteracy,
conscripts (importance of training of agents
specifically for police duties),
Classification keys in biology
•
•
•
•
Cell type
Cell structures (cell walls or no cell walls)
Number of cells (unicellular, multi)
Mode of nutrition (self feeding versus eat
from other forms)
• Reproduction
Classification KEYS for police
AFFILIATION
POLICE
RESOURCES
STATUS AGENTS
Police traits or « properties »
• => each trait is multi dimensional (ex. Military
vs civilian status of forces)
• => comparing police forms (and systems) =
those traits and build an “index” or scale for
each of them (ex. Militarization score)
Degree of militarization
Personnel
Full military status
Jandarma
Chief of
Staff
Gardia
Civil
France
Italy
(MoD)
military
Civilian
Ministerial.
org.
affiliation
Switzerland
Personnel
Full Civilian status
Centralization
• Forms affiliated to central political authorities,
• Large forces operating from the centre (India,
central offices in France),
• Central forces operating locally,
• Local forces operating locally under authority
of chief appointed centrally,
• Jurisdiction of central forces operating locally
(ex; Turkey versus France)
4 - Recapitulation
• 1 – Conceptualizing “police” and produce
taxonomies based on qualitative dichotomies,
• 2 – Conceptualize the relations between a
form and its environment
Police & environment
• Bayley: force which is set by an authority, legal
or not, democratic or not etc… (if self
established ≠), manifestation of governmental
authority
Focus: Police form & its environment
Civ
Soc
Gov
Police
form
Other
Auth
Milit
Studying forms: structures
• Amenable to empirical testing
• => focus on “structure”
• Structures bear a closer relation to observables,
permit empirical testing:
• Structural principles (according to which the
component parts of polities are related to each
other)*
• Organizational patterns (relations, differentiation,
specialization),
• Specific organizational structures (how an
organization is constituted)
Forms and their environment
€
Police forms
Reproduction
Instituting
environment
Hook to “political institutions”
• “Hooks” of “police forms” to political forms:
are observables, permit empirical testing,
• “Insulation” mechanisms for chiefs from
politics
• “Insulation” mechanisms for chiefs from civil
society / clients / customers,
• “Counter measures”
What to look at?
Hooks
Insul.
pol
counter
meas.
• Election
• Elected Rk
• Fixed
term
• Unions
• “Brains”
Conclusions
• Need for comparative research: police
architecture/ organization “properties” and …
• => police protection of life,
• => police effectiveness,
• => police openness to 3T,
• => need to change what is external to police in
order to change police,