The police intelligence division-of-labour

Abstract

This article describes the police intelligence division-of-labour. It is argued that police organisation gains overall coherence in relation to the 'police métier'; a rationale that allows protagonists in the police world to make sense of an irrational workplace structure where personal loyalty, trust and honour (not formal organisational logic) form the basis of action and compliance. The concept of the police métier is defined in terms of the police professional concern with the mastery of surveillance and coercion in the reproduction of order, the making of crime and the governance of insecurity, and it is the polestar of the police mindset. The article describes the police intelligence division-of-labour paying specific attention to four different aspects of intelligence activity: the acquisition of intelligence or information; the analysis of information in the production of intelligence; tasking and coordination on the basis of intelligence 'product'; or being tasked on that same basis. The descriptive analysis presented here is useful in several respects. Firstly it provides a basis for the comparative study of police intelligence work and its configuration within broader processes of security governance. Secondly, it provides a prototypical organisational map useful understanding the orientation of particular unitsthe organisational elements of policework (e.g. of drug squads, primary response, public order and homicide investigation units)within the broader police division-of-labour. Lastly, it provides a complex view of issues concerning democratic governance of 'the police' as they are configured as nodes within broader networks of security governance.

Intelligence-Led Policing in Practice: Reflections From Intelligence Analysts

“…Interview transcripts were subsequently re-examined and several subcategories identified (e.g., "data sharing"). While saturation occurred for select themes, particularly those associated with data and tools, this was not the case in relation to the need to better appreciate the difference between specialist units and the broader police intelligence division of labor (Sheptycki, 2017b).…”

Normalizing covert surveillance: the subterranean world of policing

“…To draw on Sheptycki (: 622), the contemporary police ‘ métier’ is oriented around a professional concern with the ‘mastery of surveillance’, among others (see also Manning ). The normalization of covert policing tracks wider developments where coercive crime control practices have become supplemented and replaced by more subtle and stealthy forms.…”

“…That is to say, as conventional policing becomes an increasingly extroverted enterprise, introverted forms of policing have come to the fore. Covert policing also preserves and protects the increasingly endangered preference of the police as crime‐fighters and reproducers of the social order (Ericson ; Sheptycki ). By deploying technologies and policies of surveillance on a mundane basis, the state becomes adept at finding and ‘knowing’ those suspected of crime.…”

“…Moreover, the CIABs are underpinned by dedicated intelligence units. These once marginalized and novel features of police organizations (Maguire ; Gill ) are now the convention (Bacon ; Sheptycki ). In Summershire Police, there is little doubt that the intelligence environment and new authority regime has reoriented minds, generating a culture of debate and discussion within the police about the best way to carry out covert operations (see also Bacon ).…”

“…Within such an environment, knowledge and understanding of covert surveillance, and its authorization regime, spreads and matures. This is not surprising since police organizations, although generally conceived as hierarchical, rational and mechanistic, in reality operate much more horizontally, informally and co‐operatively (Sheptycki ). To this extent, the establishment of a bureaucratic and educational arrangement embedded within organizational structures goes some way in promoting and normalizing the culture and practices of surveillance.…”