Investigating Police Coordination

Giacomantonio, Chris

doi:10.1057/9781137473752_1

Cited by 6 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…This was a main factor contributing to the failure of the police to respond adequately to the car crash on the M9. Cooperation between local officers and higher-level units may also be hampered because of differences in views, priorities and interests that often arise in fragmented organisations (see also Giacomantonio, 2015). A community police officer in a rural team arranged for a woman living in his community to receive an emergency button in her house.…”

Section: Internal Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, a main aspect of the two national police forces is their fragmentation, both from an organisational perspective and with regard to many work processes. The merger of the former, smaller regional police forces created organisational integration at a higher level, but also resulted in new internal boundaries (Giacomantonio, 2015; Fyfe, 2018), which are more or less comparable to interorganisational relations (Benson, 1975). Many organisational and work processes are horizontally fragmented, with tasks and responsibilities divided among several actors and units within the organisation.…”

Section: Organisational Changes and Changing Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This may create new challenges for coordination and the transfer of information. It may make it hard for police officers to have an overview of relevant activities, and may create room for diverging views and interests and for new boundary conflicts (Giacomantonio, 2015; Fyfe, 2018). The M9 incident mentioned before dramatically illustrates what this vertical fragmentation may lead to.…”

Section: Organisational Changes and Changing Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Abstract Police: A conceptual exploration of unintended changes of police organisations

Terpstra

Fyfe

2019

The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles

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As a consequence of the 2013 police reforms in the Netherlands and Scotland, the police in both countries have made a shift towards a fundamentally different kind of organisation: the Abstract Police. The increasing abstract character resulted in changes in the internal and external relations of the police. The police became more formalised and dependent on rigid systems and system information. Citizens and communities became more at a distance. Gradual and long-term processes may have similar consequences. For that reason it may be expected that the increasingly abstract character of the police may also be found elsewhere.This paper puts forward the thesis that over the past years the police in many Western European countries have made a shift towards a fundamentally different kind of organisation, a change with far-reaching consequences, but which have remained unnoticed until now. To understand this process, we introduce a new concept, Abstract Police. With this concept we mean that, both internally and externally, the police have become more at a distance, more impersonal and formal, less direct, and more decontextualised. The abstract police are also less dependent on personal knowledge of officer(s), as this is increasingly being replaced by 'system knowledge', framed within the 'logic' and categorisations of computer data systems (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997).This break with traditional ways of organising the police can especially be found in countries such as the Netherlands and Scotland, where police reforms in 2013 have resulted in considerable organisational scale enlargement and highly centralised national forces Fyfe, 2014, 2015). The main arguments for these reforms were to improve the effectiveness of the police (especially with regard to transregional problems), partially also their efficiency, and to find solutions for problems of organisational fragmentation (Fyfe and Scott, 2013;Terpstra, 2013). As we try to show in this paper, the rise of the abstract police can partially be seen as a significant unintended outcome of these reforms. However, more gradual and long-term social developments have also contributed to this new kind of police organisation. Seen from that perspective, the 2013 police reforms in the Netherlands and Scotland have mainly strengthened and accelerated this process, making it more prominent than elsewhere. This implies that it may be assumed that increasingly abstract police forces can also be found in other Western European countries, perhaps as yet in more modest and rudimentary forms.We expect that in the future the abstract character of the police will gain in importance and have far-reaching consequences for the relations between members of the police services, for police work, and for the relations with citizens and local communities. It may also have an impact on the dominating views about what is 'good' policing and about police professionalism and leadership. For that reason we believe that the abstract police is also an important concept for reflecting on future d...

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Section: Internal Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Organisational Changes and Changing Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Organisational Changes and Changing Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Abstract Police: A conceptual exploration of unintended changes of police organisations

Terpstra

Fyfe

2019

The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles

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“…Our focus on 'wicked policy problems' overlaps with Giacomantonio's (2015) work on coordination in the interstitial areas of public police organisation. Coordination work, understood as determination of responsibilities, protocols, and jurisdiction, lays the foundation for establishing and maintaining working partnerships between relevant stakeholders.…”

Section: Challenges Of Multi-agency Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical perspective on the administrative approach to crime prevention: The case of labour trafficking

Malik¹,

Vanto

Lähteenmäki

et al. 2022

European Journal of Criminology

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Building on empirical data from Finnish enforcement agencies, we reflect on the challenges of the administrative approach to crime prevention. At the operational level, we identify explicit legal and implicit extra-legal limitations for using the administrative approach, that we call (1) ‘tunnel view’, (2) ‘structural siloes’, (3) ‘double role’, and (4) ‘blurred lines’. At the conceptual level, we consider the challenges of using the administrative approach in the context of labour trafficking. We argue that the initial set-up of the administrative approach that stresses the serious and organised crime paradigm limits understanding of the habitual and pervasive nature of labour trafficking . Nevertheless, administrative cooperation has the potential to contribute to full ‘labour justice’ as a governance framework that coordinates the efforts of public authorities and their multidimensional strategies to account for the entire labour exploitation spectrum.

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“…The review highlighted the increasing influence of New Public Management thinking on police organizations internationally and how this has led to the now widespread belief that more centralized structures provide scope for greater top-down control over performance and opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness. As Giocomantonio (2015: 55) observes, ‘the rationalized myth of coordination and integration of resources as a means of cutting spending and increasing value’ now has widespread currency within police organizations. The review indicated that the available evidence to support the benefits of New Public Management approaches was not only limited and of variable quality, but that strong arguments could be made for either greater decentralization or increased consolidation depending on the overall objectives of reform.…”

Section: Making Change Happen: the Path To A National Police Forcementioning

confidence: 99%

The challenges of change: Exploring the dynamics of police reform in Scotland

Fyfe

2019

International Journal of Police Science & Management

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Despite a long tradition of pessimism regarding the scope for meaningful change in police practices, recent structural reforms to police organizations in several European countries suggest that significant change in policing is possible. Drawing on recent research into the establishment and consequences of a national police force in Scotland, this article uses instrumental, cultural and myth perspectives taken from organization theory to examine how change happened and with what effects. It highlights how police reform involves a complex interplay between the strategic aims of government, the cultural norms of police organizations and the importance of alignment with wider views about the nature of the public sector. The article concludes by identifying a set of wider lessons from the experience of organizational change in policing.

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Investigating Police Coordination

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

The Abstract Police: A conceptual exploration of unintended changes of police organisations

The Abstract Police: A conceptual exploration of unintended changes of police organisations

A critical perspective on the administrative approach to crime prevention: The case of labour trafficking

The challenges of change: Exploring the dynamics of police reform in Scotland

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