European Journal of Policing Studies – Jaargang 2/3 (2014) (ISSN 2034-760x) – Special issue Plural Policing

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Contents:

Introduction
Antoinette Verhage, Lieselot Bisschop & Wim Hardyns

Articles

Plural Policing in Western Europe. A Comparison
Elke Devroe (1) & Jan Terpstra (2)

Abstract
One of the almost undisputed findings of contemporary policing studies is thatthe past few decades have witnessed a far-reaching pluralization of policing. Manycountries, in different regions of the world, were confronted with the rise of newnon-police providers of policing services. Increasingly, the myth of one organization(the public police) with a monopoly on policing lost its power of persuasion as avalid description of reality. Generally, the new agencies of policing concentrate onthe management of petty crime and social disorder in public places. With this newsituation, multiple providers, both public and private, have become involved in theprevention and management of crime and social disorder. It is often assumed thatthis development of the past three decades created a more or less quiet revolution(or what Bayley and Shearing (1996) called a ‘watershed’) in the systems of crimecontrol and law enforcement. Although this claim has been disputed, also in theAnglo-Saxon world (Jones & Newburn, 2002), the proposition of the pluralizationof policing often seems to have reached the status of a universal, world-wide trend.Until recently, however, outside the Anglo-Saxon world there has been a lack ofempirical studies on plural policing. With the exception of the collection editedby Jones and Newburn (2006), the recent study by Terpstra, Van Stokkom andSpreeuwers (2013), and the volume edited by Edwards et al. (2014), there were noother international comparative studies of this issue. As a result, until now the claim of a universally similar trend of plural policing has remained largely uncontested.In fact, the absence of international comparisons implied that theories and explanationsof plural policing were based only on a limited (Anglo-Saxon) sample ofcountries. As a consequence, there was an unanswered question concerning theextent to which descriptions and explanations of plural policing were also relevantto understanding recent changes elsewhere. For example, one question that must beasked is if there is something like a Western-European style of plural policing? Orare the differences between these European countries so great that the developmentsin policing cannot be gathered under a single conceptual label?

(1) Elke Devroe is master in criminology, associate professor in Public Administration, universityLeiden, campus The Hague. She teaches in the international master ‘Crisis en Security Management’(CSM) the courses ‘Governance of crime and social disorder’, ‘Evidence-based policing’and ‘Research Design’. She conducts research on plural policing and governance of local securityproblems in particular on incivilities.
(2) Jan Terpstra is professor of criminology at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He published books and articles about policing, local public safety policies,(private) security and criminal justice. Recently he published the book Who patrols the Streets? (coauthorsB. van Stokkom and R. Spreeuwers) about plural policing in an international comparativeperspective, and the book Centralizing Forces? (co-editors N.R. Fyfe and P. Tops) about police reformsin several Northern and Western European countries.

The Policing of Public Space. Recent Developments in Plural Policingin England and Wales
Trevor Jones (1) & Stuart Lister (2)

Abstract
This p