ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some fundamental yet recurring questions, such as ‘What is policing?’; ‘What is policing for and how is it transformed by “transnational”, “international” or “supranational” developments?’; and ‘What are the connections and contradictions between the demands for local and global security?’ As scholars have been reminding us for at least the past three decades, such questions take us far beyond visible patrol work; indeed, beyond those activities that we might normally ascribe to ‘the police’. One of the reasons for this ‘expansion’ of policing is linked to general influences of ‘globalisation’ and to the supposed growth in criminal opportunities and its prominence in political agendas across the world. Added to this are international terrorist threats highlighted by the ‘war on terror’ and the dissolving ‘borders’ of crime and crime control. As the preceding chapters have shown, one of the central concerns of criminal justice, in its many forms and guises, is the control of certain people, actions and outcomes.
