Abstract
Criminologists and police
scholars have discussed the role of technology in the function and practice
of police in a variety contexts. Studies have typically focused on technologically
driven functional re-orientations of policing to scrutinize these developments
in relation to the problems posed relative to normative concerns related
to citizens’ and human rights. Less discussed has been the role of technology
in the organization of police institutions, including, in particular, the
development of international cooperation among police. This paper analyses
theoretical and empirical aspects of the role of technology in relation
to the internationalization of the police function. Based on historical
data of international policing in the period from the middle of the 19th
century until World War II, this analysis reveals that technological advances
in the areas of communication, transportation, and criminal identification
significantly facilitated the internationalization of police operations.
At the same time, it is shown, police institutions also held technological
developments accountable for an increase in opportunities for cross-border
criminality, which in turn justified the planning and implementation of
international police strategies. I conclude with theoretical reflections
on the relative autonomy of technology as a facilitating factor in the
internationalization of policing.
INTRODUCTION
The role of technology in
police institutions and police practices has long been recognized as relevant
and ambivalent. [*454] Technological advances are particularly relevant
for policing because they are seen to influence the organization and practices
of police in ways that intimately connect to the police function of crime
control. New and more efficient means of crime detection, communication
among police, and police transportation all influence how successful police
are in doing their job as crimefighters, additionally affecting the level
of legitimacy police receive from the public and relevant bodies of governments.
The use of technology in policing is also ambivalent. Striking a more general
theme of societal modernization in the development of policing, police
reliance on technology involves an important tension between demands for
effective crime control, on the one hand, and a continued and revived focus
on issues of justice and rights, on the other. In the early history of
law enforcement in the United States, for instance, the use of new technologies
was perceived as beneficial in order to enhance efficiency and counter-act
favoritism in policing (Miller, 2000; Walker, 1977). As part of a broader
trend of attempts to enhance professionalism in police, the police reform
movement of the Progressive Era viewed the use of technology in terms of
an egalitarian, democratic, and unpartisan mode of policing. The increasing
use of technology in police institutions, in other words, was held to be
virtually synonymous with advancing progress and civilization. However,
soon after technologies were introduced and applied by police, suspicions
also mounted against an excessive and unbalanced reliance on technology.
In particular, civil-libertarian currents sought to curb technologically
driven police practices that were motivated by a blind reliance on the
often assumed, but largely unproven merits of technologies at the expense
of concerns of civil rights and constitutional demands of due process.
Technologically powerful means —wire-tapping is the classic example— are
not necessarily the most opportune from a moral and legal viewpoint and
can therefore not always rely on support from the public and/or find approval
from government. The tension between a need for efficacy in crime control
and the recognition and respect for citizen and human rights has remained
a central topic of controversy since technologies have been applied in
policing. The problem is accentuated even further as the latter half of
the 20th century has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the use of
technology for purposes of social control, including a diverse and broad
arsenal of means, such as heat, light, motion, and sound sensors, video
and audio surveillance systems, biometric access codes, DNA analysis, and
computerized information and analysis systems (Marx, 1998, 2001).
Next to studies of the practical
aspects of the use of technology in police (e.g. Ackroyd, Harper, Hughes,
Shapiro & Soothill, 1992; Manning, 1996), police scholars debating
and criticizing the impact of technology have mostly focused on the clash
between a quest for technical efficiency and concerns of a normative nature
(see, e.g., Haggerty & Ericson, 1999; Manning, 1992a, 1992b; Marx,
1995; Meehan, 2000). Only few scholars attribute liberating qualities to
technology in policing to argue [*455] that a careful and responsible use
of technological advances in police practice can safeguard abuses of power
based on biased discretionary decision making powers (e.g., Leo & Ofshe,
1998). More typically, police scholars have criticized high-tech strategies
of policing because of their pervasive powers to erode civil liberties
and the distorted, narrow conceptions of a crime-free social order that
drive their use (e.g., Julie, 2000; Rosenberg, 1998). Problems associated
with an over-reliance by police on technology are particularly acute in
societies that are complex in matters of economic organization, social
organization, and cultural make-up while also aspiring to democratic ideals.
Although technologically sophisticated forms of control are typically justified
as objective, scientific, and neutral, critics argue that they are in fact
socially used and culturally interpreted (Marx, 2001). As a society is
an essentially moral order, there are very good reasons to keep the debate
on these normative issues alive, as we are reminded of the opportunities
and obligations that accompany an open and free society that is also committed
to a degree of order (Marx, 1988).
However, from a perspective
aimed at describing and explaining social life, there are clear limitations
to the existing research on police technology. Indeed, in terms of the
scholarly quest to account for variation in reality, it appears that a
certain fixation on the powers and potential abuses of technological advances
has held critics of police technology captive. Most critical in this respect
is that (potential) risks associated with police technology are often conceived
and criticized as (actual) dangers, thereby ironically adopting some of
the ideological baggage that comes with the successful development and
implementation of technology. Avoiding the pitfalls of these normatively
guided fears and ideals in police scholarship, my analysis favors a sociological
model that clearly separates between analytical and moral questions (Durkheim,
1906). Thus, I will in this paper not primarily seek to argue for or against
the use of police technology, but instead uncover some of its empirical
manifestations and the conditions and consequences thereof. Specifically,
I will analyze the role of technology in a variety of historically relevant
international police practices and the circumstances under which they have
taken place. Empirically, I focus on developments from the middle of the
19th century until World War II, involving law enforcement agencies from
the United States and Europe. Theoretically, my analysis concentrates on
the status of technology as a relatively new and independent force in society,
qualitatively altering social relations and institutions. On the basis
of a bureaucratic organizational perspective rooted in the sociology of
Max Weber, a dual role [*456] of technology will be uncovered in influencing
both the means and the objectives of international police activities. In
these developments, I will argue, technological advances were instrumental
in facilitating an internationalization of policing in a form that is independent
from law and politics. This relative autonomy of international police practices
and organizations has significant implications for efforts to provide adequate
democratic oversight and due-process protections.
THE POWERS AND LIMITS
OF POLICE TECHNOLOGY
A Brief History of
International Policing
This analysis is part of
a larger project on the history of international police cooperation from
the middle of the 19th century until World War II (Deflem, forthcoming).
I defend a theoretical model that attributes the internationalization of
policing to the fact that modern police agencies behave as bureaucracies
(sanctioned by states with the task of order maintenance and crime control)
that have a tendency towards independence from their political centers
on the basis of professional expertise and acquired knowledge. Inspired
by the sociology of Max Weber (1922), my perspective defends the argument
that police institutions are organized along bureaucratic lines and that
they have a tendency towards bureaucratization (Deflem, 2000). The bureaucratic
organization of police can be observed from the fact that police agencies
are subject to a principle of delineated jurisdiction, are hierarchically
ordered, rely on specialized training, and are guided by general, impersonal
rules. Bureaucratization refers to the trend of bureaucratic organizations
to claim and gain a high degree of autonomy in their operations and internal
organization relatively to outside control and supervision from political
and popular bodies. Based on a Weberian perspective, the key factor responsible
for this development of the bureaucratization of police is the technical
superiority of modern police institutions in employing the most efficient
means to achieve the objectives of crime control and order maintenance.
Although there are important
variations in the history of police systems across national states, the
process of bureaucratic organization and bureaucratization has influenced
police institutions in many societies around the globe. Accompanying these
historical developments, two stages can be differentiated in the historical
conditions that determine the internationalization among police (Deflem,
2000, pp.603-608). First, certain structural conditions need to be met
that enable police institutions to cooperate internationally, and, second,
specific motivational incentives need to be developed for cooperation to
become operational in international police practices and organizations.
In terms of the structural opportunity of international police cooperation,
I argue that cooperation among police [*457] of different nations can be
achieved when police institutions have gained a degree of independence
from their respective governments to move beyond the confines of their
respective nationally circumscribed jurisdictions. Structurally similar
positions of institutional independence of police across nations creates
conditions favorable for cooperation as police recognize one another as
fellow professionals, rather than diverse nationals. And with respect to
the operational motives police agencies must develop to construct a field
of international activities, police bureaucracies develop ‘myths’ or systems
of knowledge which detail definitions and solutions to problems for their
organizational domain of operations. In the case of international policing,
the knowledge system to operationalize international collaboration is provided
by a professional interest in the control of international crime. Such
information can be successfully developed when police bureaucracies possess
and share specialized knowledge about international crime, including official
data about its nature and extent, as well as the technical expertise for
its control.
Technology and Police
Across National Borders
I will analyze selected episodes
in the history of international policing to defend the thesis that the
bureaucratization process that facilitates the internationalization of
policing is influenced by a number of important factors which relate to
advances in technology. The theoretical perspective adopted in this analysis
conceives of technology in a non-deterministic way as the methodical application
of systematically gathered knowledge (most typically, applications based
on the natural sciences). My definition of technology does not imply any
of the normative characteristics that police scholars all too often attribute
to technologies in terms of the negative implications of their use relative
to concerns of rights and justice. In much of the police literature, technology
is often condemned as lacking a human touch on the basis of the notion
of an efficiency-oriented purposive rationality gone adrift, resonating
the familiar pessimistic theme of reason turned against itself (Julie,
2000; Manning, 1992a, 1992b; Marx, 1998). Such an outlook fails to adopt
a conception of society that accounts for a plurality of rationalization
processes in society, not all of which obey to the logic of purposive (ends-means)
rationality (see Shields, 1997b). For the increasing intrusion in society
of technological developments has not prevented a continuance of societal
rationalization in terms of rights and norms (Marcuse, 1964). As much as
our age is dominated by technology, modern society is also unprecedented
in terms of attained level of legality [*458] and democracy. Advanced democratic
societies offer rich potentials to set limits to technically dominated
accomplishments to bring technological ability in tune with practical needs
and cultural requirements (Habermas, 1968, 1992).
Hence, a scholarly discussion
of technology, in casu police technology, should proceed from the
tension between efficiency and normativity in societal rationalization
which is couched in a demarcation between theoretical and practical questions,
respectively. A sociological study of technology must always demarcate
between the technical and normative components of technology as a force
in social life. This paper will therefore primarily concentrate on theoretically
relevant questions on the role played by technology in the internationalization
of policing. Specifically, I will show how technology influences the bureaucratization
process that has historically enabled the internationalization of policing.
The most critical factor of technologies shaping international policing
is their capacity to transcend physical and other borders (Marx, 1997).
In terms of international police strategies, these borders pertain primarily
to geographical space and the related juridical limitations of jurisdictional
competency. For the present investigation, it is also important to more
carefully delineate the function and impact of technology in respect of
both the structural conditions and operational motives of international
policing, the two components which I earlier identified as central to the
internationalization of the police function.
AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS
OF TECHNOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL POLICING
Reviewing the role of technology
in terms of the specified conditions of international policing, this analysis
proceeds on the basis of a thematic logic, not necessarily a precise chronological
order. The origins of modern forms of international policing are historically
rooted in 19th-century efforts to establish cooperation for the control
of political suspects, especially in Europe (Deflem, forthcoming). Typically,
these efforts involved limited and temporary (unilateral and bilateral)
international operations, but sometimes more permanent organizations were
formed. From 1851 to 1866, for instance, police from seven German-language
states participated in the Police Union of German States, an organization
that targeted the political opponents of established autocratic regimes.
In 1898, a conference of government representatives was organized in Rome
to foster international cooperation in the policing of anarchist movements.
From the early part of the 20th century onwards, international police cooperation
gradually depoliticized to focus more explicitly on criminal enforcement
duties. In 1914, for instance, the [*459] First Congress of International
Criminal Police was held in Monaco, around which time similar international
police meetings were also held in Latin America and in the United States.
But most of these initiatives were not very successful. The International
Police Conference, for example, was formed in 1922 in New York City, but
existed only for a few years and mostly involved only local American police
agencies. It was not until 1923 that a more permanent organization was
formed, when the International Criminal Police Commission —the organization
today known as Interpol— was founded in Vienna.
Technology and the
Structural Condition of Institutional Independence
Throughout the 19th century,
the earliest technologies that contributed to transformations in policing
and international policing pertained to systems of information exchange.
The revolutionary period of the late 1840s in Europe intensified international
police activities with political objectives oriented at suppressing liberal-democratic
movements. International political policing took place in the form of unilaterally
planned intelligence work abroad and/or occurred by means of increased
cooperation for shared purposes of political suppression (Deflem, 2000,
pp.610-611). International cooperation was accomplished through establishing
personal contacts among police officials on an ad hoc basis or through
a more structured distribution system of information on wanted suspects
printed in search bulletins.
An attempt to more formally
structure international police practices took place when in 1851 police
officials from seven German-language states, including Prussia and Austria,
formed the Police Union of German States (Deflem, 1996). Operative until
1866, the Police Union was, much like other similar bilateral initiatives,
primarily concerned with establishing swifter modes of information exchange.
These new systems included regularly held meetings (at least one meeting
was held every year from 1851 until 1866) and the distribution of regularly
printed magazines with information on political opponents. Aimed at enhancing
information exchange across national borders, the Union’s organizational
structure implied that the participating police organizations had already
established or would newly create adequate intelligence systems. Particularly
the Prussian and Austrian police institutions participating in the Police
Union could rely on technically advanced systems intelligence systems.
The Austrian political police, for instance, transmitted weekly reports
among various police offices across [*460] the Austrian territory from
the first half of the 19th century onwards. During the late 19th century,
the criminal police bureaus of Vienna and Berlin distributed regularly
appearing bulletins containing printed information on wanted suspects and
separately mentioned information on extradited foreigners. These police
systems of intelligence gathering and information exchange had immediate
consequences in respect of international cooperation, as bulletins were
exchanged among police from different nations (Liang, 1992, pp.155-163).
Copies of Austrian police bulletins, for example, were from the 1860s onwards
regularly sent to police in Prussia, and by the 1880s, the bulletins were
distributed across Europe. Similar exchange strategies were developed by
German police agencies. Police of Frankfurt, for example, published English,
German, and French versions of an ‘International Criminal Record,’ with
information on the whereabouts of criminals reported by various police
across Europe (Deflem, 1997).
From the late 19th century
onwards, international police cooperation would depoliticize in its objectives,
as national sovereignty concerns and differences in the political-legal
ideology of nations prevented collaboration in political matters. However,
agreements among police could sometimes still be reached in politically
sensitive matters as long as they concerned efficient means of police technique
that were conceived in politically neutral terms. For example, when Italian
authorities in December of 1898 brought together representatives of 21
nations at a conference in Rome to coordinate the fight against anarchism,
the resolutions that were passed at the meeting failed to influence legislation
in the participating nation-states (Jensen, 1981). But in matters of practical
cooperation among police institutions the meeting was successful. Specifically,
all conference attendants, except the English and French delegates, agreed
to introduce in their countries the ‘portrait parlé’ method
of criminal identification. The
portrait parlé (spoken picture)
was a refined version of the bertillonage system, which classified identifications
of criminals on the basis of certain measurements of parts of their head
and body and the color of their eyes, hair, and skin. Measurements based
on the bertillonage system were numerically expressed and transmitted from
one country to another by means of telephone or telegraph, a practice which
the Rome conference encouraged to be further developed.
Among the communications
technologies relevant for the internationalization of policing were not
only various forms of printed information, but also photographs and other
means of identification of wanted suspects and criminals. After the first
picture of a convict had been taken in a prison in Brussels, Belgium, in
1843, the police of [*461] Paris were the first to set up a picture collection
of criminals in 1874. By the end of the 19th century, photographic identification
services were established among all major police institutions in Europe
and the United States. In the 1880s, the New York City police department
established a picture collection of international rogues and exchanged
information with police in Europe (Nadelmann, 1993, pp.82-83).
Perhaps most important of
the technological means of criminal identification influencing the internationalization
of the police function were the bertillonage and fingerprint systems (Brown
& Brock, 1953; Cole, 2001; Nadelmann, 1993, pp.82-85; Sullivan, 1977,
pp.38-40). The bertillonage or anthropometry system was developed by the
anthropologist Alphonse Bertillon in 1870 and first adopted by the French
government in the 1880s. In 1890, the police department of Chicago was
the first to implement the system in the United States. In the same year,
it was suggested at a meeting of the International Prison Society in Bern,
Switzerland, that the method could be used to track down criminals fleeing
abroad. When the World’s Fair was held in Chicago in 1893, the local police
department showed its bertillonage system to visiting foreign police. The
Fair itself also proved a testing ground for the new method, because "the
temporary influx of strangers from every quarter of the globe" on occasion
of the exhibition was expected to present a "problem of international significance"
(Bonfield, 1893, p.714; see McClaughry, 1893).
The application of fingerprint
or dactyloscopy techniques for criminal investigations was first suggested
in the 1880s by Francis Galton, who in his book Finger Prints argued
for the individuality and permanence of fingerprints (Galton, 1892). In
the 1890s, police officials Juan Vucetich of Argentine and Edward Henry
of Scotland Yard were the first to introduce fingerprint classification
systems for purposes of criminal identification in their respective police
agencies. In 1891, the Argentinean Police adopted a criminal identification
system based on Galton’s classification, and the system was revised and
introduced at Scotland Yard in London in 1901. To ease cross-border exchange,
fingerprints were numerically expressed on the basis of certain of its
characteristics and then telegraphically transmitted (Borgerhoff, 1922;
Jörgensen, 1922). Although there was considerable conflict between
the proponents of the Bertillonage and the advocates of fingerprinting
for several decades (Cole, 2001), the fingerprint system would soon internationalize
to remain among the most popular methods of criminal identification until
this day. In 1902, Henry P. DeForest introduced the dactyloscopy system
in the New York Civil Service Commission. A year later, the [*462] New
York state prison adopted the system, and in 1904 the St. Louis Police
Department organized its fingerprint bureau with the help of a Scotland
Yard sergeant. In the same year, a detective of the New York Police Department
traveled to London to inspect the application of the method by Scotland
Yard. By the early 1900s, the system was also introduced in Germany, though
in France the bertillonage system remained in force for some time after
that (Schneickert, 1904, 1911). Already in 1905, Police Chief Richard Sylvester,
President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, argued
that the transmission of fingerprints had brought about a considerable
degree of international police cooperation, when he remarked, "We find
the finger print of England and the finger print of United States filed
within the police cabinets of the principal cities of these two great countries.
The photographs and measurements of the criminals of Paris may be found
in the galleries of the department in Washington, and vice versa" (cited
in Nadelmann, 1993, p.86). Technologies of identification were accompanied
by other developments of police technique that were held to efficiently
respond to the threat of the internationalization of crime, especially
in the area of transportation and communication. Among these new technological
means at the disposal of police were telephone and telegraph (Jörgensen,
1923; Schneickert, 1917), radio (International Police Chiefs’ Newsletter,
1937), cars (Hanna, 1927), and pigeons and airplanes (Polke, 1941).
In the earlier part of the
20th century, technologies of communication and transportation further
expanded and were increasingly applied in police institutions, with more
and more consequential results for the internationalization of police.
In 1914, an important initiative was taken to set up a permanent organization
of police, when the First Congress of International Criminal Police was
organized in Monaco (Deflem, 2000, pp.612-614). The Congress attracted
delegates from 24 countries and focused primarily on various technical
means of information exchange. At the meeting, systems of police information
exchange were suggested that could be conducted directly from police to
police, aided by postal, [*463] telegraphic, and telephonic means of communication.
Also proposed were a universal system of identification of fingerprints
and photographs, the distribution of an international publication containing
search warrants, and the creation of a central clearing house. Eventually,
the Monaco Congress adopted resolutions that specified that direct police
communications should be developed and improved and that national governments
should allow police free use of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications
for matters pertaining to international criminals (Roux, 1914).
However, despite its emphasis
on technical means of policing, the Monaco Congress failed to found an
international police organization (Deflem, 2000, pp.614-616). The main
reason for this failure is that the gathering was primarily a French initiative
undertaken by jurists and political diplomats, not a more broadly appealing
effort by police bureaucrats. Betraying the French dominance of the Monaco
Congress, a large majority of the attendants were French nationals and
spoke in favor of instituting French systems of criminal identification
and investigation (such as the Bertillonage) at the international level.
Among the Congress’s resolutions, also, was the recommendation that the
Paris criminal identification service would serve as central international
bureau and that French was to be used in international police communications.
However, these suggestions faced severe criticism (most notably, from the
German participants), amongst other reasons because the bertillonage system
could not be harmonized with the dactyloscopic systems that were in place
in other countries of Europe (Heindl, 1914).
Systems of criminal identification
also propelled a series of plans to foster international police cooperation
in Latin America (Deflem, forthcoming; Marabuto, 1935, pp.26-27). These
efforts, worked out at meetings held in Buenos Aires (1905, 1920) and Sao
Paolo (1912), were largely unsuccessful in establishing international cooperation,
but they were interestingly a direct result of the promotion of methods
of criminal identification. Under direction of Argentinean police official
Juan Vucetich, methods of modern police operations, especially techniques
of criminal identification, were particularly well advanced in Argentina
and other Latin-American countries. Vucetich had introduced a fingerprint
classification system in the Argentinean police in 1891. Because Vucetich
was also at the forefront of efforts to foster international police cooperation
in Latin America, it is very likely that these cooperation plans were inspired
by Vucetich’s personal ambitions to advance and spread the use of sophisticated
techniques of policing and enhance the standards of professionalism among
police in South and Middle America. The role of Vucetich is that of a moral
crusader in instituting new policies of crime control. Also, because the
dactyloscopic system (and other technological developments) served as a
useful basis to establish systems of information exchange between police
across national borders, the Latin-American plans to organize international
police cooperation may indeed have contributed to introduce scientific
methods in, and thus enhance the professionalism of, participating police.
Remarkable in any case is that international police cooperation in Latin
[*464] America was planned without much, if any, reference to an internationalization
of crime.
Perhaps no better is the
role of technology in the development of international policing manifested
as in the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), the police organization
founded in Vienna in 1923 and today known as Interpol (Anderson, 1989;
Deflem, 2000, pp.616-620). The Commission’s headquarters were established
in Vienna and, gradually, the ICPC facilities and instituted means of information
exchange expanded. By 1934, the Vienna headquarters included specialized
divisions on fingerprints and photographs, the falsification of currencies
and other valuable documents, and various kinds of information on international
criminals and suspects. Next to the headquarters, the Commission therefore
established systems of technologically advanced means for international
communication, specifically a telegraphic code, a system of radio communications,
and printed publications, which next to the meetings served most concretely
as efficient means of direct international cooperation among police, unhindered
by legal procedure and diplomatic formalities. Other international police
initiatives in the early decades of the 20th century likewise placed a
premium on technology. An international meeting in Karlsruhe, Germany,
in 1925 was entirely devoted to the promotion of new police technologies
(Archiv für Kriminologie, 1925). Around the same time, representatives
of the Police Reform Movement in the United States traveled to European
police, primarily to learn about new methods of scientific policing (Nadelmann,
1993, pp.87-88).
The Role of Technology
in the Creation of International Crime
The origins of a professional
police system of knowledge about the internationalization of crime date
at least back to the 19th-century efforts to control the political opponents
of Europe’s autocratic regimes (Deflem, 1996). Police officials felt that
enhanced international cooperation was needed not only so that each country
could deal with its internal sources of dissent, but also, and particularly,
because the liberal-democratic, communist, and anarchist political movements
were perceived to be organizing an internationally concerted overthrow
of established political regimes by organizing their efforts across nations.
To this end, political dissenters were believed to hold (secret) meetings
and exchange information to strengthen their political efforts. Additionally,
it was widely assumed among police and government authorities that the
internationalization of political protest was especially aided by new technological
developments in the areas of communication and transportation. [*465]
The Press. The relevance
of technologies of communication for international policing is well-reflected
in the fact that many of Europe’s political police institutions focused
special attention to the printed press. At a time when weekly magazines
and daily journals constituted the prime source of information, the relevance
of the press as a forum for the distribution of ideas was explicitly recognized
among police. Because the press, and printed writings more generally, could
be oriented at affecting public opinion across national boundaries, police
would likewise have to operate beyond the confines of national jurisdiction.
Police and press were closely related institutions during the early development
of capitalism inasmuch as policing activities were conceived as concerning
control of the public market, whereas the press concerned public opinion,
neither one of which were spatially bound to confined regions (Habermas,
1962, pp.77-79). Indicating the enormous power attributed to the written
word is the fact that the press formed one of the Police Union’s specifically
defined fields of inquiry and that the clandestine opening of letters was
a favored method of political policing across Europe (Deflem, 1996).
Transportation. Developments
in the means of transportation likewise influenced international police
activities. Considered particularly troublesome from the 19th century onwards
was the development of the railways. The total number of railway lines
increased exponentially from the middle to the late 19th century, with
a total of some 4,000 kilometers of railway lines across Europe in 1840
and nearly 50,000 kilometers in 1860 (Pounds, 1985). As early as 1893,
a German criminal justice scholar devoted an entire book to the criminal,
legal, and police implications of the railways (Loock, 1893). As with the
internationalization of political protest, the opportunities of mobilization
enabled by the expansion of the railroads were relevant for international
police cooperation because they were recognized among police initiating
international
practices as consequential for crime developments. As early as 1855, for
example, a police official participating in the Police Union referred to
the expansion of traffic, which "accelerated through the railways, [had]
since about 10 years particularly benefited the overthrow parties of the
different states in their common organization and dangerous cooperation"
(in Siemann, 1983, p.28). Later, from the early 20th century onwards, cars
and planes were added to the list of means of transportation relevant for
use by criminals seeking refuge abroad and, consequently, by police in
their pursuit (Weiß, 1919; Hanna, 1927). These technological developments
were considered to enhance a general mobility in society, particularly
enhancing opportunities from criminal wrongdoers to seek refuge in [*466]
foreign countries beyond the jurisdiction and competence of national police.
Theoretical developments.
The idea of an increasingly international character of crime was also aided
by new theoretical developments in criminology that were increasingly influential
from the middle of the 19th century onwards. Particularly important was
the growing popularity of the positivist perspective of criminology which
located the causes of crime in a society of living beings, not in formal
and nationally variable systems of law (see Deflem, 1997; Pasquino, 1991).
According to positivist criminology, crimes were committed by people who
were causally determined to act criminally for various reasons related
to their body, psyche, or social environment. Findings from the science
of criminal statistics had demonstrated the empirical reality of these
correlations and causalities. With the discovery of the statistical regularities
of crime across national states, the focus of attention shifted from the
national jurisdictions of legality to a borderless society of dangerous
criminals. Indeed, as one important element of the new sciences of crime,
the notion was defended that international crime was on the rise as a consequence
of a general modernization of social life. In the late 19th century, the
famous French social-psychologist Gabriel Tarde claimed that criminals
used "more intelligently than the police the resources of our civilization"
(in Marabuto, 1935, p.30). In 1893, the German criminologist Franz von
Liszt expressed the similar idea that criminals specializing in monetary
crimes had begun to roam the world and that the police response against
them should be internationally coordinated (Marabuto, 1935, p.15). Hence,
as the society of criminals knows no boundaries, the criminal sciences
and the criminal justice agencies that implemented their insights should
know no boundaries either (Deflem, 1997). Police institutions mostly lagged
behind modernization trends, but the depoliticized conception of international
crime was consequential for the development of international policing inasmuch
as perspectives on the nature and development of crime could be shared
among police of different nations to thereupon plan international cooperation
with a relatively broad base of representation and irrespective of the
political relations between nations. Under such circumstances of a developing
commonality in police culture with respects to the objectives of control,
it would become possible for police authorities to organize international
cooperation on a broad international basis.
Implications for International
Policing. The increasing attention for the international criminal since
the second half of the 19th century became more and more consequential
in organizational [*467] respects during the first half of the twentieth
century. Though doomed to fail because of its French national character,
the Monaco Congress is in this sense an important indicator of achieved
international police developments because the meeting focused explicitly
and exclusively on international crimes that were not political. We find
the same emphasis on an internationalization of non-political crime among
the founders of the International Police Conference in New York in 1992
and the International Criminal Police Commission in Vienna in 1923. But
these two organizations did not make their similar claims with the same
level of success.
The International Police
Conference (IPC) was organized in New York in September 1922 in order to
promote and facilitate international cooperation among police (Deflem,
2000, pp.620-623; Enright, 1925). The publicly stated motives of the organizers
of the IPC related to an internationalization of crime that was thought
to have increased after World War I. However, such an internationalization
of crime with sufficient implications to justify the creation of an international
police organization was at this time still missing in the United States.
Technological means of communication and transportation were until the
mid-20th century simply not sufficiently developed for there to be any
real concern of international criminality between the United States and
Europe. Police tasks that related to an increasing mobility in social life
were either handled locally (e.g., the policing of immigrant groups) or
remained restricted to inter-state matters (e.g., white slavery) which
were the responsibility of U.S. federal police agencies.
In the case of the International
Criminal Police Commission, a motivational basis to operationalize international
police activities could successfully be created with reference to a cross-national
rise and internationalization of crime which police officials argued to
have taken place after World War I (Deflem, 2000, pp.623-626). First, there
was the widespread idea among police that the level of crime had increased
dramatically after World War I. The reports and statistics officials from
participating nations provided at the Commission’s meetings confirmed the
necessity of an adequate police response and the commonality of the task
among European police. Second, there was also believed to have occurred
an epidemic spread of a new class of criminals who abused the modern opportunities
of society and the increase in mobility after the war. With the latest
technologies of communication and transportation at their disposal, these
criminals —among them, hotel and railway thieves, white slave traders and
drug traffickers— possessed a special capacity to transcend spatial boundaries
in disregard of the national jurisdictions police institutions were traditionally
subject to. In sum, what police officials organizing the ICPC argued to
justify collaboration across national borders was a new class of criminals
appearing in all countries undergoing rapid [*468] social change and technological
progress, including particularly mobile criminals transcending nation-state
borders.
THE RELATIVE AUTONOMY
OF TECHNOLOGY
Briefly summarizing, my analysis
here has shown, first, that the structural condition of institutional independence
of police from the political center of the state was primarily assured
by a steadily growing professional expertise in the means of policing.
Conditions favorable for international police cooperation were based on
a mutual recognition of professionalization and achieved standards of policing,
especially in technical respects. Central among these technical accomplishments
were both organizational innovations (a division of labor, a structured
chain of command, and other elements of formal rationalization) and enhanced
skills and means in police activities (scientific methods of crime detection
and new technologies of communication and transportation). What these technologically
driven accomplishments had in common is that they enhanced the opportunities
to cooperate across national borders to realize the potential of technology
in diminishing the constraints of dependency on physical space (Marx, 1997).
Second, with respect to the
motivational basis for police cooperation, available evidence shows that
police expertise in means (technical know-how) had developed before police
institutions acquired knowledge (official information) about international
crime. When the methods to respond to international crime were already
in place, the incidence and nature of international crime was known as
a possibility police bureaucracies would increasingly have to deal with.
Then international police practices responded to this problem with a technical
apparatus that was already developed, leading to dialectically reinforce
the notion of an internationalization of crime. Technologies in the means
of policing were already developed before similar technological developments
were seen to contribute to the creation of certain risks of international
crime. In other words, police systems of knowledge about international
crime took on an actuarial form, as it presented an enhanced possibility
of international crime as a risk to be reckoned with. Resonating the relevance
of risk recently discussed by police scholars (Ericson & Haggerty,
1997; Simon, 1988), international crime functioned as a professionally
defined construct that was real in its consequences of expanding international
police organizations and facilities. The risk (international crime) as
well as the response (international police) were conceived in terms of
technological progress. This manifests a more general theme of modernization
whereby a changing society is conceived as [*469] presenting specific problems
that need innovative solutions in the same terms that define those new
conditions. The ambivalence of modernity, then, is not just a sociological
curiosity described by the founders of the discipline (e.g., Weber, 1922),
but finds a concrete expression and practical recognition in the development
of the bureaucratic institutions of society.
The accomplishments of police
technology were primarily perceived, developed, and implemented in terms
of the means of policing. As the application of knowledge, technology is
inherently always more instrumental in nature. The emphasis on means explains
that the origins of international police activities primarily revolved
around technical know-how and policing methods, especially with respect
to information exchange and direct ways of police communications. These
technical accomplishments could at times even transcend strong political
divisiveness. In the case of the 19th-century efforts to organize the fight
against anarchism, for example, political-ideological sentiments could
not prevent the successful implementation of administrative matters that
were enabled because of advances in police technique. From a theoretical
viewpoint, this primacy of means in the development of police technology
offers support to the Weberian notion that technology is the embodiment
of a means-oriented instrumental rationality (Weber, 1922; see Shields,
1997a, pp.193-194).
The instrumental emphasis
that is placed on the technologies of international policing also explains
the relative lack of effectiveness of instituted international police organizations.
For it was precisely with respect to sheer technical capacity that those
police forces that had acquired a leading position within a national state
typically remained much more powerful than any international organization.
Prototypical in this respect is the position since the first half of the
20th-century of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Bureau held
a virtual monopoly in the United States over technologically advanced means
of policing ever since it had assumed responsibility of the Uniform Crime
Reports in 1930. Perhaps most important among the means aiding the FBI’s
international efforts was its huge collection of fingerprints, allowing
Bureau agents to maintain an elaborate network of contacts with foreign
police. Additionally relevant in this respect was the role of FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover, who —much like Vucetich in Latin America— exerted considerable
influence because of his professional charisma in instituting many of the
Bureau’s novel and spectacular tools of scientific policing (see, e.g.,
Hoover, 1934). [*470]
Public police agencies in
other nations working beyond the confines of their national jurisdictions
or participating in international cooperative efforts were likewise driven
by technological concerns. Of course, not all police institutions can achieve
these ambitions with the same level of success. There are important differences
between local and national or federal police systems as well as between
the police of different countries participating in international practices
and organizations in terms of their attained level of technological sophistication.
This differential development of police technology relates next to sheer
technical accomplishments also to the tradition of police culture and the
influence of nationally variable contexts in political and economic respects.
Most critical in terms of international policing is the relatively high
degree of centralization and standardization of police institutions in
the traditionally strong national states of Europe, on the one hand, and
the pluralistic system of local, state, and federal policing in the United
States, on the other. Such differences can pose critical barriers to cooperation
among police. In consequence, police institutions of different national
states do not meet one another on the international plane in egalitarian
terms, but are instead more or less powerful, contribute more or less actively
in international cooperation, and function as buyers or as sellers in the
global market of the transfer of intelligence and police technology. Yet,
although the extent to which police institutions from different nations
can choose to work independently or not from international organizations
is variable, evidence suggests that they are all primarily motivated by
concerns over practical needs and technical capacity rather than any collectively
shared interests in a common unitary cause.
CONCLUSION
I have empirically grounded
the role of technology in international policing on the basis of a theoretical
model that attributes the internationalization of the police function to
structural conditions of institutional independence and operational motives
in the internationalization of crime. In this evolution, technology has
the dual role of providing public police institutions with the means necessary
to claim independence from their respective political centers on the basis
of professional expertise, as well as of enhancing the opportunities for
a newly constructed class of criminals to transcend the borders of national
jurisdictions. Both developments contribute to an internationalization
of policing to establish structures [*471] of cooperation beyond the formal
jurisdictional competence of police, based on an efficiency of the means
of police technique and a depoliticized understanding of policing objectives.
The emphasis on an efficiency
in means of policing has serious implications in terms of the legality
and morality of police. As police agencies and international police organizations
employ a technical apparatus of crime investigation and information exchange,
normative questions of rights, and often even legal matters of due process
and constitutionally guaranteed protections, are typically not or at least
not primarily taken into account. In fact, police technologies were historically
often developed and implemented to expressly bypass legal arrangements.
Extradition procedures, in particular, were seen by police officials as
time-consuming and unnecessarily restrictive arrangements that had to be
replaced by ways to establish direct police communications across national
borders (Deflem, 2000, p.763). The systems of information exchange instituted
by international police organizations were similarly intended to bypass
the restrictions of legal provisions, anticipating the relevance of the
international exchange of expert knowledge and technical know-how among
police today (Sheptycki, 1998).
As an emphasis on efficiency
and speed replaces concerns for legality and rights, police institutions
of different nations could cooperate with one another irrespective of the
various, political, legal, and cultural differences between them. Of course,
this does not mean that police power is rendered neutral in the idealized
sense presented by the agencies and officials involved. The very reliance
of police on an overriding principle of efficiency is itself a strategy
of domination (Weber, 1922, pp.122-130). Also, other factors besides technology,
especially political conditions, may impede or facilitate international
police efforts. For example, political conditions pertaining to Europe’s
fragile order of national states hindered international police cooperation
on a broad international scale during most of the 19th century. International
antagonisms in international political affairs then proved to be too strong
a dividing force, positing even police with similar objectives and expertise
against one another. But as the 20th century unfolded, political antagonisms
would gradually be overcome to foster cooperation among police across many
nations. The expansion of the membership of the International Criminal
Police Organization (Interpol) and the proliferation of other, bilateral
and multilateral, forms of international cooperation among police testify
to this. At the same time, political conditions on the world scene would
continue to affect international police conditions, especially in those
[*472] parts of the world where police institutions could not maintain
institutional independence because of their respective governments’ nationalist
ideological commitments (Deflem, forthcoming). The role of police agencies
in the Soviet Union and the former Communist regimes of Eastern Europe
are prototypical in this respect. As such, international policing remains
closely related to political conditions that can hinder cooperation in
matters of crime control. Conversely, under conditions of a high degree
of institutional independence, the fact that police bureaucracies participate
in international cooperative efforts poses new challenges in terms of legislative
control, due process, and human rights. For without effective principles
of democratic oversight in place, requirements of due process will not
primarily be considered in international police operations. Revelations
of police agencies of a democratic nation cooperating with the police institutions
of dictatorial regimes, for instance, will provoke much debate and antagonism.
In terms of the transfer of police technology, it is problematic that technologies
designed for a particular, legitimate purpose can be used for other, more
troublesome objectives, as instruments of legitimate police power can become
part of an apparatus of political control (Earth Island Journal, 2002).
Briefly turning to a contemporary
condition, in the post-September 11 context the war on terrorism is making
high-tech systems of surveillance probably more acceptable than ever. Even
civil libertarians concede that there is widespread sentiment that a proliferation
of technologically sophisticated police methods, internationally as well
as domestically, may contribute to make society safe from terrorist attacks
(Wood, 2001). But at the same time, legal and constitutional safeguards
are brought into play to curb an excessive use of technology in policing
(e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 2001; see Colbridge, 2001). Instead of attributing
intrinsic liberating qualities to technology or, conversely, condemning
technological applications because of a presumed inherent lack of accountability,
a more ambiguous role should be attributed to technology in terms of technical
realizations and normative concerns alike. In the modern era of highly
technologically oriented police institutions, policing becomes a delicate
balancing act, caught in between demands for job effectiveness in matters
of crime control, on the one hand, and concerns of due process, on the
other. [*473]
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