Manning, Peter --- "Democratic policing: case working and intelligence" [2016] ELECD 1046; in Delpeuch, Thierry; Ross, E. Jacqueline (eds), "Comparing the Democratic Governance of Police Intelligence" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 180

Book Title: Comparing the Democratic Governance of Police Intelligence

Editor(s): Delpeuch, Thierry; Ross, E. Jacqueline

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781785361029

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Democratic policing: case working and intelligence

Author(s): Manning, Peter

Number of pages: 21

Abstract/Description:

Intelligence-led policing is a ‘buzz word’ or ‘verbal pillow’ term of art that has never been precisely defined (Tilley, 2003). Its fundamental feature is that it is prospective, future-oriented, data-based and relies on large data sets (maps, graphs, pictures, video and audio files) as a part of the analysis. It may include innovative tactics such as surveillance, profiling, undercover work, and almost inevitably, informants. If it is intelligence-led, it will require weighing and analyzing the likelihood of future events and their potential consequences. It may target groups, networks, or persons but is often characterized by ‘fuzzy’ or associational logic, a kind of puzzle solving, and blurred boundaries between crimes, terrorism, and political rebellion. In many respects, it requires creative and imaginative work that often shades into the illegal or is illegal and thus is protected and carried out by designated agents and agencies. I argue with Jean-Paul Brodeur that such policing resembles the policing of matters of national security rather than the policing of everyday crimes. Intelligence-led policing requires a re-thinking and re-fashioning of current police practice which is predicated on working cases to their conclusion and in the shadow of the courts and legally mandated procedures. I argue here that a conversion of policing to any form of intelligence-led policing will require the police to ‘rethink’ the social object of concern. Objects have social meaning as a result of practices that make the object ‘visible’, and practices are reinforced by rewards, the occupational culture, supervision and the apprenticeship model of training. I suggest that those of us interested in intelligence-led police work will have to ‘reconstitute the object’ and refocus practices.