The Simulation of Crime Control

Abstract

The authors argue that policing by consent is being displaced by policing by information control. This discomfiting adaptation in liberal democracies is possible in the shadow of asymmetrical, border-collapsing exceptionalism. It has also benefited from synoptic effects in which reference to the liberal democratic legacy substitutes for liberal democratic practices. Current technologies, as demonstrated in watch-listing, public relations operations, and fourth-generation training, exemplify ironic homage to a consent and democracy. These take for granted the loss of innocence: There is no "real" (democracy, order, control) but rather impressions, which require effective simulations. The article concludes with the contention that today it is control, not justice, that must be "seen to be done."

Spectacular Security: Mega-Events and the Security Complex

“…The social significance of such efforts is not confined to their ability to reduce threats, but also involves an effort to ease public anxiety. Security, like justice, must not only be done, it must be seen to be done (de Lint et al. 2007).…”

“…As police and security officials recognize the importance of regulating significations of disorder, they have also embraced efforts to publicize signs of order to public audiences (Ericson and Haggerty 1997). High‐profile police “street sweeps” are undertaken to convey the message that the police “own” the street and that they have not abandoned particular neighborhoods, and deliberately staged “perp walks” or highly dramatized news conferences convey a range of messages about crime, order and authority (de Lint, Virta, and Deukmedjian 2007). More mundane, everyday communications include the proliferation of public notices informing/warning citizens about assorted “watch” schemes and announcing the presence of CCTV systems.…”

Simulating the world

“…It is no coincidence that the social science literature on simulation has mostly followed the relatively broad cultural diagnosis put forward by Baudrillard (e.g. de Lint et al, 2007; Bogard, 2012), thereby circumventing the intricacies of the technicalities involved. There are only a few sociologists interested in simulation technologies as an empirical phenomenon (Hoffmann, 2007; 2014).…”

Introduction

“…In the governmentality of potentialities, oriented within the metaframe of securitization, ordering continues to follow the bureaucratic logic developed through biopolitics at the inception of the modern state but expands and reshapes its Weberian bureaucratic structure. Internally, this means organizing surveillance agencies in such a way that the officials within each agency must orient their responsibilities to the meta-frame of securitization (de Lint et al, 2007). This system allows the decision-making specifications to be more centralized.…”