ABSTRACT
This chapter presents three sets of conceptual bifurcations that define the policing field. These are the distinctions between public and private policing, the distinction between high and low policing, and the policing of territory and of suspect populations. Using these distinctions it will be shown that conventional accountability frameworks for policing that depend on civilian review. The chapter provides how postmodern and transnational policing might be rendered governable is to map the contours of the policing field. Postmodern power is, in an important sense, becoming deterritorialized, even while many states and regional compacts of states struggle to maintain their territorial boundaries. The transnationalization of policing is co-valent with its postmodernization and raises serious questions about how to conceive of a theory of democratic accountability pertinent to the entire policing field. The notion of the 'rule of law' seems problematic under conditions of legal pluralism and the increasing transnationalization of policing.
