NCJ Number
181221
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 38 Issue: 3 Dated: Summer 1998 Pages: 485-503
Date Published
1998
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This paper defines the concept of the postmodern by reference to notions of deep historical fissure as revealed in the word of Arnold Toynbee and C. Wright Mills; it develops this concept through analysis of current and ongoing processes of transnationalization, with emphasis on police organization in Great Britain.
Abstract
The discussion focuses on four postulates of postmodern police. These postulates are the marketization of insecurity and social control and the transnationalization of clandestine markets and policing. The nesting sites of policing are the nation-states; the nation-state system itself is currently undergoing a significant transformation that is both visible in changing forms of policing and constitutive of these new forms. These factors and changes make communities, citizens, and other organizations actively responsible for their own risk management and thereby reduce the responsibility of the government, through the public police organization, in this area of social provision. All this must also be considered against the background of the ongoing fiscal crisis of the modern government. The transnational area also displays clear indications of the magnitude of transformation in the nation-state system in that countries are being reconstituted downward into regions. The analysis concludes with a discussion of the role of academic criminology in these processes, which seemingly are beyond rationalism. Footnotes and 100 references (Author abstract modified)