Policing the pandemic: Public health, law enforcement, and the use of force (original) (raw)
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European Law Enforcement Research Bulletin, 2021
It is much remarked upon that the pandemic exposed underlying tensions and weaknesses in European societies. Police attention, in enforcing lockdowns and other restrictions on movement and assembly, has tended to be disproportionately focused upon minority communities. However, middle class white people have also been policed in ways they have perhaps not previously experienced. As a consequence, the pandemic has shed light on the use of police powers more generally. While police powers to stop citizens, to check their identity and to search or otherwise detain them have long been controversial in the US and in the UK, they have now become a focus of debate in Belgium, France, Germany and beyond. In a public health pandemic, the police largely continued to discipline the working class and minorities (despite the alarm raised by middle classes). Attention was not equally distributed and there is little to connect patterns of policing with, for instance, prevalence of the virus within local populations. Instead, policing continued to act as a disciplinary instrument in particularly problematic and unruly communities. This paper draws upon a review of policing of the pandemic undertaken by an EU COST Action (CA17102) on Police Stops. In the absence of clarity and transparency, the use of police powers can undermine legitimacy in particular communities and, this presents particular threats to the social health and security of all.
Policing and challenges throughout the COVID 19 Pandemic
In this paper I aim to examine some new roles and practices that the police should have during the COVID 19 pandemic crisis, some of the challenges that this situation creates; new policing approach to developing a two-dimensional police response, both in carrying out traditional legal missions and responsibilities, as well as in its new role in the complex context created by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, to operate and to serve their community as the broadest function of public safety. Police today is facing a new challenge, that of policing the Covid-19 Pandemic. Traditional police practices in the pandemic situation such as; escorting, interviewing, detaining, arresting, etc., currently pose a significant acute risk and threat of infection to the police themselves, suspects, witnesses and community members. In this context, the police are required to develop new strategies to ensure public order and safety and manage the pandemic crisis by combining traditional public safety techniques and applying innovative policing approaches through digital platforms that are experimenting with partial block chain measures or "by closing specific cities or areas to manage new outbreaks of infection, rather than forcing closure or quarantine nationwide2. Pandemic policing as a new paradigm presents many challenges and dangers, ambiguities and strategic surprises of national and public security and community. Some of the most significant challenges facing the police today during the pandemic crisis are: dealing with a microscopic "enemy" (several microns), lack of clarity in what is expected of the police, reduction of staff, insufficient budget, efforts to manage infection levels in the context of day-today tasks, increase the number of operational requests including new and unknown responsibilities, infection risks and loss of life by the staff themselves, as well as significant physical and psychological burdens on police staff performing tasks such as and with overtime hours. The impacts of these challenges show that law enforcement institutions require significant reforms to better serve their community, including the adoption of new training curricula, strengthening cooperation between police and health institutions, and investing more in community policing, combating cybercrime and increasing transparency in police decision-making processes.
Current Issues in Criminal Justice
In this article we consider the enforcement of COVID-19 measures as an instance of security policing, characterised by a preemption paradigm. Whilst COVID-19 measures are directed towards the goal of 'biosecurity' to stop the spread of the disease, in practice, COVID policing appears to rely on longstanding criminalisation strategies at odds with public health. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary data sources, we provide a critical account of the policing practices used and the groups to which the special measures have been directed in the most severely affected states of Victoria and New South Wales. We consider the implications of the securitisation of public health through the use of policing. Although we identify the potential for expansion-whereby population groups that do not usually attract police attention are drawn into contact with police-our case studies reveal that COVID policing as practiced in those contexts intensifies existing patterns of public order policing directed towards the 'usual suspects' and reinforces a criminalisation rather than a public health paradigm.
The Role of the Police Power in 21st Century Public Health
Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 1999
The police power is the right of the state to take coercive action against individuals for the benefit of society. The companion article by Potterat et aJ., "Invoking, monitoring, and relinquishing a public health power: the health hold order," is a classic use of the police power in the control of a communicable disease, yet one that is increasingly controversial. Reaching an acceptable balance between the rights of society and tho e of individuals is the central issue facing public health in the next millennium, and the police power is at the center of this balance. This article reviews the constitutional basis of the police power, its historical use in public health, and the structural reasons why health departments preoccupied with personal health care cannot effectively use the police power to carry out public health enforcement.
Policing and Public Health: State Capacity on the Front Lines of the COVID-19 Pandemic
CASI Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania , 2020
The Police in India has been consistently contributing on the front lines of the Pandemic not only in imposing the lock down but also supporting the health sector in its massive contact tracing drives, along with facilitating in bringing food and emergency assistance for the public. There is a pressing need to integrate police agencies into the state planning process. Doing so would allow policymakers to identify linkages between policing and broader development goals, as well as improve inter-agency coordination. COVID-19 is likely to yield lessons for different divisions of the state. But the institutional chain—curbing virus transmission, protecting health systems, and securing livelihoods—is only as strong as its weakest link. For system-wide capacity and resilience, the police and other state organizations must learn to work in concert, alongside non-state agencies and citizens. Policy Analysis must include police service delivery as a consideration in planning processes.
Police, Policing and covid-19 Pandemic
European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice
The past almost two years have brought many changes to our lives. The covid-19 pandemic was announced by the who on 11 March 2020, and social life soon changed significantly. Schools, universities, and kindergartens were closed down and many other work-related activities moved to the workfrom-home platform as stay-at-home-and curfew measures were adopted by almost all governments while others decided in favour of a much more liberal approach. Some industries or sectors thereof were badly affected, others, particularly the tourism and hospitality sectors, collapsed. This editorial is aimed at complementing the previous editorials by Estella Baker (2020) and Nina Peršak (2020). In social control activities, the police have crucial roles in providing people with security and safety, maintaining public order, and investigating crime. On top of this, the police play a vital role in community policing activities. External perspectives regarding policing and the police are critical, and so are the internal ones giving rise to questions about the role of the police in the covid-19 pandemic. Police organisations' adaptation to the new circumstances in terms of caring for police officers' health, long hours of police work, pressures by civil criticism of the police in controlling offenders for neither wearing protective masks or ignoring governmental regulations with a view to curbing the spread of the virus, such as the curfew and prohibition of gathering in public places, highlighted several challenges. This years' cepol Research and Science Conference dealt with the role of the police in the times of the covid-19 pandemic. The conference organisers were cepol, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training, and the Mykolas Romeris University of Lithuania. Speakers were mostly from Europe and some from the USA and South Africa. In total, more than 550 participants registered for the conference. The conference was organised in six
Unmasked: Impacts of Pandemic Policing
2020
The COVID19 Policing Project is a collaborative effort to track and challenge policing and criminalization in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, including the violent policing of protest which further jeopardizes public health. This is the first in a series of reports summarizing and analyzing what we've learned, and offering visions and guidance for responding to #COVIDWithoutCops
COVID 19 : Human Security as a Police Mandate during the Pandemic
IACP WEBSITE GLOBAL POLICE RESPONSE TO COVID19, 2020
The security institutions like the police are at the center stage of health related crisis brought by the spread of Covid 19, placing the police staff next only to the health workers as important agents of the state to render services for mitigating crisis amidst high levels of fear and insecurity in the society. The police forces worldwide struggle to live up to this mammoth challenge to human life and survival in an increasingly risky health environment forcing people to change livelihood norms and lifestyles and compelling governments to restrict human to human contacts through containment and controls over social and economic life. This has compromised usually held public liberties of freedom of movement at the demands of survival, health and safety. The police forces which are entrusted to ensure these liberties are now pressed hard to prioritize restrictions and controls, a challenge in reverse job orientation. However the patterns and practices vary from state to state, depending upon particular social, economic and governance context of each country and the varying degree of the risk factors involved through the spread of Covid 19 virus.