Police departments across North America and Europe are using Twitter for many different reasons, one of the most important being public relations (i.e., image work). This article examines the relationship between Twitter use, police image work, and public engagement in the Canadian context. On the basis of 8,174 police-related tweets sent by the Toronto Police Service (TPS) and citizens, we advance the argument that despite its dialogical potential, the TPS use Twitter first and foremost as a means to legitimize the organization and that the organizational precepts of police image appear to preclude meaningful forms of engagement with citizens via Twitter.
In this article, we take advantage of the versatility inherent in Merton's work and apply his theory of social structure and anomie to the realm of policing. Specifically, we argue that police deviance can be understood as a function of an anomic social structure in which an exuberant cultural emphasis on police as noble, masculine 'crime-fighters' occupies a disproportionate relationship to the availability and/or efficacy of institutionally accepted means. The outcomes, we argue, are forms of deviant behaviour that coincide closely with Merton's four classic modes of adaptation.
This article explores the means by which crime-related risks are discursively framed by practitioners and supporters of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED). It will argue that crime-related risks are framed in three interrelated ways: first, as forms of foreseeable danger; second, as depoliticized potentialities; and third, as potentialities that require complete responsibilization. It is argued that these discursive practices constitute the means by which practitioners legitimate their area of professional expertise while at the same time providing them with an opportunity to exercise pastoral control over their client(s). Furthermore, it is argued that these frames demonstrate how "risk" has become an important discourse through which neo-liberal governmentalities (Foucault 1991) with respect to crime control are actualized.
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