Effects of transnational policing in the Caribbean explored
Web Posted - Fri Feb 17 2006
THE conditions of contemporary society may push the police further and further down the road towards transnationalisation.
This is the assertion of Dr. Benjamin Bowling, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the King's College School of Law, London. Dr. Bowling was recently exploring the topic Sovereignty versus Security: The Development of Transnational Policing in the Caribbean Region at a seminar conducted in connection with the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), at University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
Dr. Bowling has conducted a great deal of research in the Caribbean while on sabbatical leave, and he shared the results of a study he conducted on transnational policing, at the seminar.
All the indications are, that local communities ... will increasingly feel the effects of global insecurity. Consequently, we will see police officers increasingly sharing intelligence with their overseas counterparts and increasing numbers of officers posted overseas. We will also see increasing numbers of overseas police and intelligence posted..., many of whom will be invisible to the untrained eye..., Dr. Bowling maintains.
Giving a tentative definition of "transnational policing", Dr. Bowling notes that it is "those organised forms of order maintenance, peacekeeping, law enforcement, crime investigation and prevention, surveillance of suspect populations and information-brokering that transcend national boundaries".
Asking the question as to what then is the appropriate model for the development of transnational policing, the answer Dr. Bowling noted, lies in the theory and practice of global governance. Globalization, he observed, has not only created transnational organised crime and transnational policing, but it has also created transnational communities and movements for international human rights and global justice.
According to Dr. Bowling, transnational organised crime has emerged as one of the most pressing concerns of the late modern, post-Cold War era and has given new impetus to the development of transnational policing. Globalization and the de-regulation of capital, trade and businesses have mag-nified the potential for clandestine trade and criminal activity, according to Dr. Bowling. The general public, he also notes, has become increasingly anxious about organised crime groups and their involvement in ex- tortion, drugs trafficking, money laundering and murder.
Transnational organised crime is not experienced globally or transnationally, he however pointed out, but manifests itself in the context of locality.
The bombing of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001, the bombs in Bali on October 12, 2002 and October 4, 2005, in Madrid on March 11, 2004 and July 7 in London 2005, underlined the significance of international terrorism and brought home the concept of a "new world disorder" in which persons could all expect to feel the effects of transnational organised crime, terrorism and other forms of security.
Dr. Bowling maintains, however, that policing is an expression of national sovereignty, since one of the things that makes the nation state is the ability to monopolise the use of legi- timate coercive force with-in its borders. Dr. Bowling, however, went on to explore whether countries in the contemporary Caribbean will have to make a toss-up between their sovereignty or their security, as trans-national policing continues to develop.
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