Preface

Summary

A Criminology of Policing and Security Frontiers by Randy K. Lippert and Kevin Walby is the seventh title in the New Horizons in Criminology book series. All books in the series are by leading authors and reflect cutting-edge thought and theoretical developments in criminology. This title is no different. Over the past decade Lippert and Walby have developed a strong reputation for their work on urban policing and security. Their work takes a broad definition of policing and introduces readers to areas of policing and security that are less often the focus of mainstream policing research (e.g. Lippert and Walby, 2013; Walby and Lippert, 2014; 2015). In this book they push the frontiers of policing scholarship even further. The authors take the concept of ‘frontier’ to mean “the edge and realms beyond conventional policing and security thinking and practice”. Examples of frontiers that they consider include the private funding of public police, and the work of ambassador patrols, conservation officers and corporate security personnel. The authors note that such examples may be dismissed as they are most often associated with the visible deterrence of nuisances, anti-social behaviours or minor rule violations, whereas the public police also deal with more significant criminal or terrorist threats. But such dismissal would be a mistake – not, as the authors say, because they support “the now debunked ‘broken windows’ thesis”, but because of the disproportionate impact on disadvantaged populations often identified as perpetrators.

Lippert and Walby consider temporal frontiers with different agencies working at different times of day or night, at different speeds, tempos, or pace; and spatial frontiers, including post-colonial understandings of the frontier, something that has resonance in the authors’ home country of Canada (as well as elsewhere). In popular imagination the frontier is a place outside the law's reach. The authors argue that the frontier in twenty-first century policing and security is not “a ‘wild west’ devoid of oversight”; yet it can be a place where resourcing blurs boundaries between public and private. Lippert and Walby are interested in how ambassadors, corporate security personnel, community safety officers, and conservation officers are involved in cleaning up the frontier, in preserving an aesthetic through various forms of physical and social cleansing.