NEW HORIZONS IN CRIMINOLOGY
A CRIMINOLOGY OF POLICING AND SECURITY FRONTIERS
Randy K. Lippert and Kevin Walby
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by
Bristol University Press 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK Tel +44 (0)117 954 5940 www.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk
North American office: Bristol Univeristy Press c/o The University of Chicago Press 1427 East 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637, USA t: +1 773 702 7700 f: +1 773-702-9756
Bristol University Press 2019
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 978-1-5292-0248-9 hardcover
ISBN 978-1-5292-0250-2 ePub
ISBN 978-1-5292-0249-6 Mobi
ISBN 978-1-5292-0246-5 ePdf
The right of Randy K. Lippert and Kevin Walby to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press.
The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the authors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication.
Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality.
Cover design by blu inc
Front cover image: istock
Readers Guide
This book has been optimised for PDA.
Tables may have been presented to accommodate this devices limitations.
Image presentation is limited by this devices limitations.
For Bruno Ujevic
Contents
Notes on authors
Randy K. Lippert is Professor of Criminology at University of Windsor, Canada, specialising in policing, security, and governance. Previous publications include Condo Conquest (2019) and Policing Cities (2013) (with K. Walby).
Kevin Walby is Chancellors Research Chair and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. Previous publications include National Security, Surveillance, and Terror (2017) (with R. Lippert) and Corporate Security in the 21st Century (2014) (with R. Lippert).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Mathew Zaia, Curtis Labute, and Bilguundari Enkhtugs for their attention to detail and helpful efforts. We would also like to thank Rebecca Tomlinson from BUP and Andrew Millie for their hard work in bringing this book to fruition.
Some of the thoughts in A Criminology of Policing and Security Frontiers have been developed from work in our previous books and articles. We would like to thank all of our colleagues who have been involved in other publications:
is a significantly reduced, augmented and revised version of Lippert, R., Walby, K. and Wilkinson, B. (2016) Spins, stall and shutdowns: Pitfalls of qualitative policing and security research, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 17(3).
draws on the article below and is significantly revised and reduced: Walby, K. and Lippert, R. (2012) Spatial regulation, dispersal, and the aesthetics of the city: conservation officer policing of homeless people in Ottawa, Canada, Antipode, 44(3): 101533.
is partially based upon: Sleiman, M and Lippert, R. (2010) Downton ambassadors, police relations and clean and safe security, Policing & Society, 20(3): 31635.
is partially based upon: Walby, K. and Lippert, R.K. (2012) The new keys to the city: uploading corporate security and threat discourse into Canadian municipal governments, Crime, Law and Social Change, 58(4): 43755.
NEW HORIZONS IN CRIMINOLOGY
Series editor: Professor Andrew Millie, Department of Law and Criminology, Edge Hill University, UK
Preface
A Criminology of Policing and Security Frontiers by Randy K. Lippert and Kevin Walby is the seventh title in the New Horizons in Criminology book series. All books in the series are by leading authors and reflect cutting-edge thought and theoretical developments in criminology. This title is no different. Over the past decade Lippert and Walby have developed a strong reputation for their work on urban policing and security. Their work takes a broad definition of policing and introduces readers to areas of policing and security that are less often the focus of mainstream policing research (e.g. Lippert and Walby, 2013; Walby and Lippert, 2014; 2015). In this book they push the frontiers of policing scholarship even further. The authors take the concept of frontier to mean the edge and realms beyond conventional policing and security thinking and practice. Examples of frontiers that they consider include the private funding of public police, and the work of ambassador patrols, conservation officers and corporate security personnel. The authors note that such examples may be dismissed as they are most often associated with the visible deterrence of nuisances, anti-social behaviours or minor rule violations, whereas the public police also deal with more significant criminal or terrorist threats. But such dismissal would be a mistake not, as the authors say, because they support the now debunked broken windows thesis, but because of the disproportionate impact on disadvantaged populations often identified as perpetrators.
Lippert and Walby consider temporal frontiers with different agencies working at different times of day or night, at different speeds, tempos, or pace; and spatial frontiers, including post-colonial understandings of the frontier, something that has resonance in the authors home country of Canada (as well as elsewhere). In popular imagination the frontier is a place outside the laws reach. The authors argue that the frontier in twenty-first century policing and security is not a wild west devoid of oversight; yet it can be a place where resourcing blurs boundaries between public and private. Lippert and Walby are interested in how ambassadors, corporate security personnel, community safety officers, and conservation officers are involved in cleaning up the frontier, in preserving an aesthetic through various forms of physical and social cleansing. As the authors note in the conclusions to this book, The downtown must be clean as well as safe, parks must be free of real and human garbage, and so too must fronts of government buildings retain a clean image, as dismissed employees accused of a corporate infraction are escorted out the backdoor by corporate security personnel.
Gaining research access to these new frontiers is not always straightforward and Lippert and Walby make good use of freedom of information requests. They demonstrate that criminology should not regard public police officers as archetypes of policing, nor should we see contract security as the epitome of private security provision. Policing and security is far more complicated and interwoven than this simple dichotomy suggests, and especially so on such new frontiers of practice.
This book is highly recommended. It provides challenges to conventional understandings of policing and security. And by focusing on frontiers, it casts light on areas of practice not often seen and pushes theoretical understandings of a blurred world of plural policing and security provision.
