Tara Lai Quinlan
I am a lawyer, criminologist and socio-legal empirical researcher focused on policing, law, criminal justice, inequality, terrorism, countering violent extremism & related issues in the United Kingdom & United States.
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In post-crash cities, graffiti takes on renewed cultural significance as resistance to the sanitized and homogenous expressions of urban life. Marginalized urban groups facing reduced social programs, fewer economic opportunities and uncertain futures have increased social and political frustrations with fewer outlets to channel them into. Graffiti is but one of many mechanisms facilitating social and political expression of the lived realities of the urban experiences of post-crash populations.
The concept of law enforcement-community partnerships is not new to policing. It was first developed and selectively implemented in the US and other Western countries by local police forces in the 1970s and 1980s under the rubric of community policing. In the post-9/11 security society, law enforcement-community partnerships are gaining renewed interest and wider acceptance as experts begin to acknowledge benefits achieved through partnering.
To date, community partnerships in counterterrorism have been implemented on an ad hoc basis by some police departments in the United States, and on a more widespread basis in the United Kingdom through the national PREVENT program. Those law enforcement-Muslim community partnerships that have been implemented in the United States and the United Kingdom have proven highly effective in aiding law enforcement with terrorism investigations, alerting law enforcement to potential terrorist incidents, and addressing issues of Muslim youth radicalization, while simultaneously helping communities improve communication and trust with law enforcement, and addressing non-terrorism community issues of community concern like blight, youth truancy and gang activity. This paper will touch on whether the law enforcement-Muslim community partnership model can feasibly be implemented on a larger scale in the United States and other Western countries.
The globalized, post-modern world sees the boundaries between police, security services, military, and border control agencies more blurred than ever before. (Brodeur 2005). When it comes to terrorism prevention, these blurred boundaries result in local police having new mandate, expanded responsibilities, funding, and tools at their disposal with regards to post-9/11 terrorism prevention. Local police execute these new and enhanced duties through a variety of means, including using existing laws, relying on expanded laws that provide additional powers, relying on new technologies, inter-agency information sharing, and gathering new sources of intelligence.
Of particular focus in this paper are the expanded powers provided to local law police in the post-9/11 landscape including under criminal, immigration, nuisance, and public health laws. Although local police have historically used a variety of laws at their disposal to address all sorts of local community problems, it is the particular blurring of boundaries between criminal and immigration laws in post-9/11 terrorism prevention, and the new roles that local police are playing in immigration enforcement, that will be further explored in this paper.
Indeed, while enforcement of US immigration policies was once exclusively within the purview of federal authorities, the increased terrorism prevention role played by local police has resulted in increased enforcement of immigration policies by local police to promote security. For example, the US Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program, and statewide laws in Arizona, Alabama and Georgia, among others, task local police with immigration check functions. Although the legality of such measures has been subject to significant debate, as well as recent review by the US Supreme Court, the phenomenon of the local police role in immigration enforcement for national security purposes is nonetheless a trend that must be examined.
But what are the effects of the blurred criminal and immigration laws being enforced by local police in terrorism prevention? Does this create suspect populations based on particular national origins and religious affiliations. (Pantazis & Pemberton 2009)?
The security paradigm facilitates the identification and classification of “suspect populations” for proactive crime control by law enforcement to reduce risk of crime. (Zedner 2007). In the post-9/11 landscape, Muslims have been identified and classified as the suspect population posing a risk of terrorism, and have thus been subjected to proactive heightened law enforcement actions. (Pantazis and Pemberton 2009, 2011; Parmar 2007, 2011.). But is this constructed Muslim criminality really a helpful mechanism for reducing the terrorism risk?
This paper posits that the constructed Muslim criminality is not helpful for reducing terrorism risk. Given that the Muslim population hails from nearly every nation, ethnicity, race, genders, socioeconomic level, education level, profession, and type of belief in Islam, how can a singular profile of a Muslim terrorist be created? Law enforcement has attempted to ascribe particular gender, physical, cultural, behavioral, linguistic, socioeconomic and religious belief characteristics to create a singular Muslim criminal identity, but ultimately it cannot be successful as a law enforcement tool. This paper will examine how this Muslim criminality has been created and applied to policing of terrorism in London and New York City.
This paper will further examine why primary reliance on “hard” policing practices tends to be favoured by many in law enforcement over “soft” practices in post-9/11 terrorism policing, including policing cultural norms, short-term focus, political constraints, and community apprehension/resistance. This paper will examine why, despite resistance within police institutions to expanded use of “soft” approaches, a growing number of policing experts have embracing this model for its effectiveness in terrorism prevention and countering violent extremism.
This paper will also illustrate how to date “soft” approaches have tended to be locally based and tailored to the specific needs of local communities. Moreover, in the United States, “soft” policing models have been implemented on an uncoordinated and ad hoc basis, while in the United Kingdom, the government has organized and implemented the national PREVENT strategy (with varying degrees of success) in an effort to streamline “soft” approaches in communities across the UK.