Globalising the local: A genealogy of sector policing in South Africa

International Relations

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 163-182

  Dixon, Bill ^a  

^a KEELE UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Criminology; Policing; Policy transfer; Sector policing; South Africa

Indexed keywords

EID: 34249045952     PISSN: 00471178     EISSN: 17412862     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0047117807077001     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. I am very grateful to the London Borough of Islington, the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cape Town and the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria for funding the research - carried out at various times over the past 15 years - on which this article is based. I would also like to thank Johan Burger, Jonny Steinberg, three anonymous reviewers and the editors of this special issue for commenting so helpfully on the article in draft form.
2. Tim Newburn and Richard Sparks, 'Criminal Justice and Political Cultures', in Tim Newburn and Richard Sparks (eds), Criminal Justice and Political Cultures: National and International Dimensions of Crime Control (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2004), p. 1.
3. Quoted in Janet Chan, 'Globalisation, Reflexivity and the Practice of Criminology', in James Sheptycki and Ali Wardack (eds), Transnational and Comparative Criminology (London: Glass House Press, 2005), pp. 341-2.
4. Newburn and Sparks, 'Criminal Justice and Political Cultures', p. 3.
5. Susanne Karstedt, 'Durkheim, Tarde and Beyond: The Global Travel of Crime Policies', in Newburn and Sparks, Criminal Justice and Political Cultures, p. 23. The quotation is from a subsequent paper by Karstedt, 'Creating Institutions: Linking the "Local" and the "Global" in the Travel of Crime Policies', Police Practice and Research, special issue on 'Re-Shaping Policing' (in press), emphasis in original.
6. Karstedt, 'Durkheim', p. 23, referring to David Garland, The Culture of Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
7. The dictionary definition is from the Shorter OED; the other quotations are from Barry Smart, 'On Discipline and Social Regulation: A Review of Foucault's Genealogical Analysis', in David Garland and Peter Young (eds), The Power to Punish: Contemporary Penality and Social Analysis (Aldershot: Gower, 1983), p. 64.
8. For valuable overviews, see David Dolowitz and David Marsh, 'Who Learns What from Whom? A Review of the Policy Transfer Literature', Political Studies, 44, 1996, pp. 343-57; and 'Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy-making', Governance, 13(1), 2000, pp. 5-24.
9. See Mike Brogden and Preeti Nijhar, Community Policing: National and International Models and Approaches (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2005).
10. Jonny Steinberg, Sector Policing on the West Rand: Three Case Studies, ISS monograph no. 110 (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2004).
11. Wesley G. Skogan and Susan M. Hartnett, Community Policing, Chicago Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 5-9.
12. Bill Dixon and Elizabeth Stanko, Serving the People: Sector Policing and Public Accountability (London: London Borough of Islington, 1993); William Dixon, 'Popular Policing? Sector Policing and the Reinvention of Police Accountability' (unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Law, Brunel University, 1999); Bill Dixon and Janine Rauch, Sector Policing: Origins and Prospects, ISS monograph no. 97 (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2004).
13. See Clive Emsley, The English Police: A Political and Social History, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1996), p. 224, and Simon Holdaway, Inside the British Police (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), chapter 4.
14. Dixon, 'Popular Policing?', pp. 245-7.
15. Dixon, 'Popular Policing?', pp. 247-9.
16. See Dixon, 'Popular Policing?', pp. 249-50, 217-19, 8-9, and chapter 8; Bill Dixon and Betsy Stanko, 'Sector Policing and Public Accountability', Policing and Society, 5, 1995, pp. 171-83; Bill Dixon, The Globalisation of Democratic Policing: Sector Policing and Zero Tolerance in the New South Africa (Cape Town: Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town, 2000), pp. 18-20; and Dixon and Rauch, Origins and Prospects, chapters 1, 2 and 4 for fuller accounts of these developments.
17. Dixon and Stanko, Serving the People; Dixon, 'Popular Policing?'; and Dixon and Rauch, Origins and Prospects, chapter 4.
18. The figures for the decline in police numbers are taken from Marian Fitzgerald, Mike Hough, Ian Joseph and Tariq Qureshi, Policing for London (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2002), p. 109.
19. Home Office, Neighbourhood Policing: Your Police; Your Community; Our Commitment (London: Home Office, 2005), p. 3.
20. Home Office, Neighbourhood Policing, p. 3; see Ian Loader, 'Plural Policing and Democratic Governance', Social and Legal Studies, 9(3), 2000, pp. 323-45, for the notion and implications of pluralisation.
21. Rachel Tuffin, Julia Morris and Alexis Poole, An Evaluation of the Impact of the National Reassurance Policing Programme, Home Office Research Study 296 (London: Home Office, 2006).
22. Home Office, Neighbourhood Policing, p. 3.
23. Wilfried Schörf, 'Community Policing in South Africa', Acta Juridica, 1998, pp. 206-33.
24. See Bill Dixon, 'Community Policing: "Cherry Pie" or Melktert ?', Society in Transition, 35(2), 2004, pp. 251-72; Mark Shaw, Crime and Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Transforming under Fire (London, Hurst and Co., 2002); and Jeffrey Lever and Elrena van der Spuy, 'Challenges Facing Democratic Policing in South Africa', in Dilip K. Das and Otwin Marrenin (eds), Challenges of Policing Democracies: A World Perspective (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 2000), pp. 195-214.
25. Lever and van der Spuy, 'Challenges', p. 198; see also Eric Pelser, The Challenges of Community Policing in South Africa, ISS Occasional Paper no. 42 (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 1999).
26. The epithet is from Mike Brogden's 'Community Policing as Cherry Pie', in R. I. Mawby (ed.), Policing across the World (London: UCL Press, 1999), p. 197.
27. Policy Framework and Guidelines quoted in Eric Pelser, Johann Schnetler and Antoinette Louw, Not Everybody's Business: Policing in the SAPS' Priority Areas, ISS monograph no. 71 (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2002), p. 24. Dixon, 'Cherry Pie or Melktert ', pp. 257-60, discusses the tensions surrounding the adoption of a recognisably Anglo-American brand of state-centred community policing in preference to the kind of civil policing advocated by Mike Brogden and Clifford Shearing in Policing for A New South Africa (London: Routledge, 1993).
28. Department of Safety and Security, National Crime Prevention Strategy (Pretoria: Department of Safety and Security, 1996).
29. Department of Safety and Security, National Crime Prevention Strategy, paras. 5.7.5.2.1-3.
30. Department of Safety and Security, White Paper on Safety and Security: 'In Service of Safety' 1999-2004 (Pretoria: Department of Safety and Security, 1998), pp. 17-18. 'High-density policing' and 'preventive' and 'directed' patrol were listed as other ways of enhancing visibility in addition to sector policing.
31. The following description of sector policing in Nyanga and Kraaifontein is based on research reported more fully in Dixon, Globalisation, pp. 30-5. The only other published account of Project Ithemba in Nyanga is contained in a Practical Guide to Local Partnership Policing (Midrand: Institute for Security Studies, undated), pp. V2-3.
32. There is no evidence that, despite having arrived in South Africa from the Metropolitan Police in London, this adviser had any larger role in the development of sector policing in Nyanga.
33. South African Police Service, Guidelines on Sector Policing (Pretoria: South African Police Service, 1998).
34. South African Police Service, Guidelines, pp. 1-3. This working definition reappeared some time later in an early (but undated) Draft National Policy Framework.
35. South African Police Service, Guidelines, p. 5.
36. South African Police Service, Guidelines, p. 9.
37. Senior Superintendent Management Services, Area Johannesburg, personal communication, 16 May 2000.
38. Secretariat for Safety and Security, Evaluation of Programme Johannesburg (Pretoria: Department for Safety and Security, 1999), pp. 30-3.
39. See Dixon and Rauch, Origins and Prospects, pp. 24-8, for more detailed discussion.
40. Dixon and Rauch, Origins and Prospects, p. 24.
41. Dixon and Rauch, Origins and Prospects, p. 24; see Dixon, 'Cherry Pie or Melktert ', pp. 263-5, for more detailed discussion of the NCCS.
42. South African Police Service, Draft National Instruction on Sector Policing (Pretoria: South African Police Service, 2003), para. 4.1.
43. Steinberg, West Rand; and Jonny Steinberg, After the Commandos: The Future of Rural Policing in South Africa, ISS monograph no. 120 (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2005).
44. See Steinberg, West Rand, p. 4, for the summary of his findings on which the rest of this paragraph relies.
45. Steinberg, West Rand, p. 4.
46. Steinberg, After the Commandos, p. v and chapter 6.
47. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 5.
48. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 4. The first six of these questions were asked in their earlier article (Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Who Learns What from Whom?', p. 344); the seventh is posed for the first time in 'Learning from Abroad'.
49. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 10.
50. The following account is based on a personal communication from the officer concerned, 13 September 2006.
51. South African Police Service, Policing Priorities and Objectives 1997/ 1998 (Pretoria: South African Police Service, 1997).
52. See Elrena van der Spuy, 'Foreign Donor Assistance and Policing Reform in South Africa', Policing and Society, 10, 2000, pp. 343-66, for further analysis of the experience of donor assistance between 1994 and 1999.
53. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Who Learns What from Whom?' p. 346, citing P. Haas, 'Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control', International Organisations, 143, 1989, pp. 233-403.
54. Dixon, 'Cherry Pie or Melktert', pp. 256-7.
55. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 12; and 'Who Learns What from Whom?', pp. 349-51.
56. SAPS, National Instruction, para. 1. Sector policing is similarly described as the 'practical implementation of community policing' in the earlier SAPS Guidelines, p. 6.
57. See Brogden and Nijhar, Community Policing; and David H. Bayley, Changing the Guard: Developing Democratic Police Abroad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
58. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 12.
59. These policy goals are set out in SAPS, Guidelines, p. 6; Department of Safety and Security, White Paper, p. 17; and SAPS, National Instruction, para. 5.2, respectively.
60. Steinberg, West Rand, pp. 4 and 29; Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 12.
61. SAPS, Guidelines, p. 2. Reference is also made to the Japanese 'coban' (sic) system as 'an intensified form of sector policing'.
62. Interview in Cape Town, 10 June 1999.
63. I am grateful to Jonny Steinberg for this point. For an account of the activities of the 'people's courts' between 1985 and 1988, see Jeremy Seekings, 'Social Ordering and Control in African Townships of South Africa: An Historical Overview of Extra-state Initiatives from the 1940s to the 1990s', in Wilfried Schörf and Daniel Nina (eds), The Other Law: Non-State Ordering in South Africa (Cape Town: Juta Law, 2001), pp. 89-93.
64. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 12; and 'Who Learns What from Whom?', pp.351-3.
65. In Lesson-Drawing in Public Policy (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1993), pp. 30-2, Richard Rose suggests five 'alternative ways of drawing a lesson'. Dolowitz and Marsh ('Learning from Abroad', p. 13; and 'Who Learns What from Whom?' p. 351) combine Rose's 'hybridization' and 'synthesis' into the single category of 'combinations'.
66. SAPS, Draft Instruction, paras. 10.4.1 and 5 (cf. SAPS, Guidelines, p. 7); Dixon, 'Popular Policing?' pp.266-9.
67. SAPS, Guideline s, p. 2; Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 13.
68. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', pp. 13-17 and Fig. 1; 'Who Learns What from Whom?' pp. 346-9.
69. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 13, Fig. 1.
70. Rose, Lesson-Drawing, p. 78.
71. The argument presented here is inspired by Mike Brogden's analysis of 'community policing as an evolutionary response to an American policing dilemma' in 'Community Policing as Cherry Pie', pp. 172-4.
72. See Loader, 'Plural Policing and Democratic Governance', for a thoughtful analysis of the pluralisation of policing.
73. See Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams, this issue, pp. 237-53; Shaw, Crime and Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa; and Boyane Tshehla, 'Non-state Justice in Post-apartheid South Africa - a Scan of Khayelitsha', African Sociological Review, 6(2), 2002, pp. 47-70.
74. Les Johnston, The Rebirth of Private Policing (London: Routledge, 1992).
75. This view of sector policing has not gone unchallenged within the SAPS and a more traditional enthusiasm for reactive solutions to local crime problems is evident in the current Strategic Plan for the SA Police Service 2005-2010 (Pretoria: South African Police Service), p. 36, which says that '[e]ach sector will be responsible for visibility, crime deterrence, quick response to crimes, partnerships with communities and problem-solving projects'.
76. Steinberg, After the Commandos, p. 2.
77. SAPS, Guidelines, p. 5; SAPS, Draft Instruction, para. 10.2.1; Steinberg, West Rand, chapter 3.
78. Bayley, Changing the Guard, pp. 73-4.
79. Interview, Cape Town, 10 June 1999.
80. SAPS, Draft National Instruction, para. 1.
81. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', pp. 17-20.
82. Dolowitz and Marsh, 'Learning from Abroad', p. 17.
83. Tuffin et al., National Reassurance Policing Programme.
84. 'Reports of "Demise" Premature, Says Met Chief Defending Bravery of his Officers', The Guardian, 22 June 2006.
85. See Mark Evans and Jonathan Davies, 'Understanding Policy Transfer: A Multi-level, Multidisciplinary Perspective', Public Administration, 77(2), 1999, pp. 361-85, for a thought-provoking discussion of the relationship between structure and agency in understanding policy transfer.
86. Steinberg, West Rand, pp. 28-9.