Over the past ten to fifteen years the police in many Western European countries have undergone a series of profound organisational changes. The police now appear to operate at a greater distance from citizens, they are more impersonal and decontextualized and have become more dependent on digitalised data systems.

These changes are captured through the concept of the ‘abstract police’ and in this international collection of essays, leading policing scholars use this concept to make sense of contemporary changes to police organisations.

Drawing on empirical evidence from a wide range of policing contexts, the individual chapters address major questions about current developments in policing:

How are police organisations being shaped by the social, cultural, technological and political contexts in which they operate?
How does the concept of the abstract police help understanding of the complex interplay between change and continuity in policing?
Is the emergence of an abstract police the unintended outcome of processes of rationalization or a deliberate response to the new complexities of late modernity?

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Inhoudsopgave:

1 Introduction: Abstract Police, the Concept and Some Main Questions, Jan Terpstra, Nicholas R. Fyfe & Renze Salet; 2 The Abstract Police and Occupational Culture, Michael Rowe, Liam Ralph, Andrew Millie & Matthew Jones; 3 Abstract Police and Police ‘Professionalism’: Contemporary Contradictions in British Policing Tom Cockcroft & Jacques de Maillard; 4 Reform and Emergent Police Practice in Scotland: In Search of Situated Policing Alistair, Henry & Nicholas R. Fyfe; 5 Community Policing in the Age of Abstract Police Jan Terpstra & Renze Salet; 6 Investigating at a Distance: Abstractness in Detective Work, Helene O.I. Gundhus, Niri Talberg & Christin Thea Wathne; 7 Risks of Abstractness in Policing Honour-Based Violence, Janine Janssen; 8 An Assessment of Police Technology and the ‘Iron Cage’ of the Abstract Police in the United States, James J. Willis, Christopher S. Koper & Cynthia Lum; 9 Good Policing in Times of Abstract Police, Kai Seidensticker & Felix Bode; 10 Canadian Reflections on ‘the Abstract Police’, James Sheptycki; 11 ‘Virtual Policing’, Trust and Legitimacy, Ben Bradford, Elizabeth Aston, Megan O’Neill & Helen Wells; Contributors