5 Dirty Harry gone global? On globalising policing and punitive impotence
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David Sausdal
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the experiences of powerlessness among police detectives in a global world. Specifically, it discusses how Danish detectives often feel that certain foreign national criminals get away with their crimes with impunity – here not necessarily meaning that criminals are not caught and sentenced. Rather, what increasingly frustrates Danish detectives are their experiences of how even convicted foreign national criminals do not seem to think of their conviction as a real form of punishment, as something which is painful or problematic. To the detectives, such unaffectedness troubles not only the intended deterrent aspects of the law and the criminal justice system, it also comes off as a professional provocation – as a sad symbol of how all their work is, in the end, futile. As the chapter goes on to describe, this futility, this police impotence, sometimes becomes a catalyst in the police applying their own sort of ‘street justice’, to make sure that punishment is not only formally handed down but also truly experienced as such by the foreign national criminal. And as the chapter concludingly ponders, such Dirty Harry-style practices may indeed be on the rise in an increasingly globalising world of crime and policing. As not only Danish detectives but police officers worldwide experience that criminals from other places and parts of the world appear unstirred by the threat and force of the criminal justice system, there is a growing risk of the police taking the delivery of punishment into their own hands.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the experiences of powerlessness among police detectives in a global world. Specifically, it discusses how Danish detectives often feel that certain foreign national criminals get away with their crimes with impunity – here not necessarily meaning that criminals are not caught and sentenced. Rather, what increasingly frustrates Danish detectives are their experiences of how even convicted foreign national criminals do not seem to think of their conviction as a real form of punishment, as something which is painful or problematic. To the detectives, such unaffectedness troubles not only the intended deterrent aspects of the law and the criminal justice system, it also comes off as a professional provocation – as a sad symbol of how all their work is, in the end, futile. As the chapter goes on to describe, this futility, this police impotence, sometimes becomes a catalyst in the police applying their own sort of ‘street justice’, to make sure that punishment is not only formally handed down but also truly experienced as such by the foreign national criminal. And as the chapter concludingly ponders, such Dirty Harry-style practices may indeed be on the rise in an increasingly globalising world of crime and policing. As not only Danish detectives but police officers worldwide experience that criminals from other places and parts of the world appear unstirred by the threat and force of the criminal justice system, there is a growing risk of the police taking the delivery of punishment into their own hands.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures and tables vii
- List of contributors viii
- Acknowledgements xiii
- Introduction 1
- I Categorisations of difference in police work 29
- 1 Police racism in France and Germany 31
- 2 Policing order 53
- 3 Predictively policed 72
- 4 The social construction of parallel society in Swedish police documents 95
- II Doing differences in everyday policing 115
- 5 Dirty Harry gone global? On globalising policing and punitive impotence 117
- 6 Instrumentalising racism in Russian policing 135
- 7 Negotiating with ethnic diversity 157
- 8 ‘Do you understand? Yes, you understand.’ 174
- III Policing as translation 193
- 9 Inclusive and non-inclusive modes of communication in multilingual operational police training 195
- 10 Talking with hands and feet 219
- 11 The Portuguese police and colonial sedimentations 240
- IV Police officers and ethnographers 265
- 12 Albanian culture and major crime 267
- 13 Approaching foreign milieus 289
- Postface 314
- Index 326
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures and tables vii
- List of contributors viii
- Acknowledgements xiii
- Introduction 1
- I Categorisations of difference in police work 29
- 1 Police racism in France and Germany 31
- 2 Policing order 53
- 3 Predictively policed 72
- 4 The social construction of parallel society in Swedish police documents 95
- II Doing differences in everyday policing 115
- 5 Dirty Harry gone global? On globalising policing and punitive impotence 117
- 6 Instrumentalising racism in Russian policing 135
- 7 Negotiating with ethnic diversity 157
- 8 ‘Do you understand? Yes, you understand.’ 174
- III Policing as translation 193
- 9 Inclusive and non-inclusive modes of communication in multilingual operational police training 195
- 10 Talking with hands and feet 219
- 11 The Portuguese police and colonial sedimentations 240
- IV Police officers and ethnographers 265
- 12 Albanian culture and major crime 267
- 13 Approaching foreign milieus 289
- Postface 314
- Index 326
