Ben Bowling - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ben Bowling

School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual a... more School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the

This paper examines how forensic science and technology are reshaping crime investigation, prosec... more This paper examines how forensic science and technology are reshaping crime investigation, prosecution and the administration of criminal justice. It illustrates the profound effect of new scientific techniques, data collection devices and mathematical analytical procedures on the traditional criminal justice system. These blur the boundary between the innocent person, the suspect, the accused and the convicted. They also blur the boundary between evidence collection, testing its veracity and probative value, the adjudication of guilt and punishment. The entire process is being automated and temporally and procedurally compressed. At the same time, the start and finish of the criminal justice process are now indefinite and indistinct as a result of the introduction of mass surveillance and the erosion against ‘double jeopardy’ protections caused by scientific advances that make it possible to revisit conclusions reached in the distant past. This, we argue, indicates a move towards a...

This paper brides a gulf between the Enlightenment idea of a science of policing and contemporary... more This paper brides a gulf between the Enlightenment idea of a science of policing and contemporary police techno-science and asks questions about how such ideas can be brought into accord with notions of ‘good policing’. Policing has been central to the art of governance since the modern period began more than two hundred years ago. Policing under transnational conditions presents enormous challenges. The system of global governance is highly complex and this is especially evident with regard to the conceptual field of policing. Globally speaking, police legitimacy is projected through a functionalist rhetoric predicated on certain folkdevils and suitable enemies, to which strong police measures are said to be the only answer. The original science of police was deeply imbued with normative thinking, since it was concerned with notions of the general welfare of society and state. In present times, police science is being reduced to experimental criminology and crime science. This pape...

This article surveys the life and work of Robert Reiner who has, over the intervening years, been... more This article surveys the life and work of Robert Reiner who has, over the intervening years, been a continuing source of inspiration and support to the authors. The article lays out for the reader the evolution of Reiner’s oeuvre as the authors understand it.

Accountability of Policing, 2015

1. Introduction: Stop and search in global context Leanne Weber and Ben Bowling 2. The formation ... more 1. Introduction: Stop and search in global context Leanne Weber and Ben Bowling 2. The formation of suspicions: police stop and search practices in England and Wales Paul Quinton 3. Stop and search in London: counter-terrorist or counter-productive? Alpa Parmar 4. Ethnic profiling in ID checks by the Hungarian police Balazs M. Toth and Andras Kadar 5. The usual suspects: police stop and search practices in Canada Scot Wortley and Akwasi Owusu-Bempah 6. The fantastical world of South Africa's roadblocks: dilemmas of a ubiquitous police strategy Monique Marks 7. Police stop and search in India: Mumbai 'nakabandi' Jyoti Belur 8. 'War on Illegal Immigrants', national narratives, and globalisation: Japanese policy and practice of police stop and question in global perspective Mitsuru Namba 9. Ethnic profiling in the Netherlands? A reflection on expanding preventive powers, ethnic profiling and a changing social and political context Joanne P. van der Leun and Maartje A.H. van der Woude 10. 'It sounds like they shouldn't be here': immigration checks on the streets of Sydney Leanne Weber 11. Suspecting immigrants: exploring links between racialised anxieties and expanded police powers in Arizona Doris Marie Provine and Gabriella Sanchez 12. Stop and search in global context: an overview Ben Bowling and Leanne Weber

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

This chapter explores the ways in which racism shapes immigration policing. Focusing on the devel... more This chapter explores the ways in which racism shapes immigration policing. Focusing on the developing roles of constables and immigration officers in immigration policing in the UK, it contributes to a wider investigation of the emergence of a ‘crimmigration control system’ arising from the convergence of criminal and immigration law. Drawing on Weber and Bowling’s (2004) ‘sites of enforcement’ model, the chapter examines the research evidence on the ways in which racism shapes immigration policing within domestic space, at the border, and extraterritorially. Immigration policing tends to invoke racial characteristics in ways that define ‘suspect communities’ and focus enforcement activities on specific people based on what is imputed to be their national, ethnic, or racial origin. This, we argue, leads to racialized restrictions on the enjoyment of fundamental rights—such as the freedom of movement—consistent with Richmond’s claim that a system of global apartheid is being created.

International Journal of Law in Context, 2019

This paper examines the impact of body-worn video (BWV) on the police craft skills of close obser... more This paper examines the impact of body-worn video (BWV) on the police craft skills of close observation, note-taking, investigative analysis, report-writing and preparation of evidence for the courts. It explains how the technology functions and explores its surveillant, investigative, probative and regulatory applications. The evidence shows that policing tasks are being transformed by BWV cameras and analytics such as facial recognition. The paper argues that BWV exemplifies the automation of policing – the replacement of police labour with mechanical devices – and explores the implications of this for transparency, accountability, fairness and police discretion.

King's Law Journal, 2017

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 2017

Offending, victimization, policing, the work of the courts, and imprisonment are patterned by dif... more Offending, victimization, policing, the work of the courts, and imprisonment are patterned by differences between different ethnic groups. This chapter explores these long-standing patterns and critically examines the reasons for the often uneasy and conflictual relationship between minority ethnic groups and agents of the criminal justice system. It also interrogates new manifestations of ethnic patterns in crime and the administration of justice, particularly those linked to the global issues of controlling migration and terrorism. Finally, the chapter considers how criminological scholarship has developed in this subfield of race, ethnicity, and crime.

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017

This chapter examines how forensic science and technology are reshaping crime investigation, pros... more This chapter examines how forensic science and technology are reshaping crime investigation, prosecution, and the administration of criminal justice. It highlights the profound effect of new scientific techniques, data collection devices, and mathematical analysis on the traditional criminal justice system. These blur procedural boundaries that have hitherto been central, while automating and procedurally compressing the entire criminal justice process. Technological innovation has also resulted in mass surveillance and eroded ‘double jeopardy’ protections due to scientific advances that enable the revisiting of conclusions reached long ago. These innovations point towards a system of ‘automatic justice’ that minimizes human agency and undercut traditional due process safeguards that have hitherto been central to the criminal justice model. To rebalance the relationship between state and citizen in a system of automatic criminal justice, we may need to accept the limitations of the ...

Policing the CaribbeanTransnational Security Cooperation in Practice, 2010

Theoretical Criminology, 2008

Attempts by governments to control unwanted border crossings are a defining feature of late moder... more Attempts by governments to control unwanted border crossings are a defining feature of late modernity; but the suppression of cross-border mobility is not new. In pre-industrial England the `masterless men' and `valiant beggars' were subjected to harsh measures designed to curtail their mobility. In this article, we observe that border control intensifies at times of tumultuous structural change when institutions capable of preserving the emerging economic and social order are largely absent. In a globally mobile society, we argue that `flawed consumers' and `suspect citizens' are the most likely to be earmarked for exclusion. This designation links historical conceptions of `the other' with the tropes of race, class and foreignness to underpin contemporary xeno-racism.