POLICING

Policing

Policing

Introduction

The rise in crime is almost worldwide phenomenon. Our people are naturally concerned at the trend in India, though the increase in crime here is not yet at the rate seen in some advanced countries like the United States. The fact is that the problem of crime control is seldom considered dispassionately. Reports of crime evoke emotional reactions and in the public furore that follows, the objective factors behind the increasing trend of crime either get obscured or sidetracked by political considerations. 

When there is an upsurge in criminal activities or a particularly heinous crime is committed, the public tends to blame the police. The general tendency is to hold the police solely responsible for checking crime. This attitude is reinforced by the manner in which the police react to public criticism. They either quote statistics which are not too impressive or point out the inadequacies of manpower and equipment at their disposal. This fails to satisfy the public and thus the cycle goes on.  

Role of Police

In most Western legal systems, the main role of a police is to deter and investigate crimes against people or affecting public order and the arrest of suspects, and inform the competent authorities. According to Foucault police has as its main function the production and protection of wealth and protection of general conditions of health (which is obviously related to the first two functions) (Frank, 2003). The making of wealth function comprises of all types of “economic regulation (the circulation of commodities, manufacturing processes, the compulsions of trades people both to one another and to there clientele)". The guard of wealth function is constituted of the " 'measures of public order' (surveillance of dangerous individuals, expulsion of vagabonds and if necessary beggars and the pursuit of criminals" (Pasquino, 1978, p.170). The production and protection of health function includes the "general rules of hygiene (checks on the quality of foodstuffs sold, the water supply and the cleanliness of streets)" (Pasquino, 1978, p.170-171).

That labor ('the police of the poor'), urban space, transportation, moral and social order and later, public health, were the major sites giving rise to police innovations and regulations is well known. But what is discrete about Foucault's account, particularly the long account of police given in the STP lectures, is the analysis of the crucial location of 'police' as a rationality of governance that articulates sovereignty with biopolitics and discipline. Police thus provides the site of and some of the tools for a large-scale transformation in European modes of state power/knowledge (Pasquino, 1978). Police, Foucault comments, reconciles or aligns the welfare of the people in general - the public interest in prosperity, public health and order - with the concern to preserve and enhance state power. Tearing down someone's warehouse without compensation to make way for a port (the classic US 'police power of the state' situation) is an exercise of sovereign power. But, unlike more merely coercive moves, such expropriation is acceptable through - and may well actually serve - the universal interest of the commercial and consuming publics, which is what ...