The Global Making of Policing: Postcolonial Perspectives

Abstract

Policing executed by one State in another's territory and the international training of police and military forces of foreign countries are not a new phenomenon in history. Since the first decades of the twentieth century, the USA and other great powers have resorted to these practices as part of their foreign policy, especially in the US relation with the rest of the Western hemisphere. Besides these outstanding transnational characteristics of the way that policing practices are developed and executed around the world, there is still a significant gap in the literature about police and policing, which is restricted to the fields of disciplinary studies such as criminology or public security. In a general way, these perspectives see policing practices as something that do not cross borders: they are understood as particular or 'national' forms, circumscribed to a given locality in which their global or transnational dimensions are often ignored.