Police Intelligence, from Local to Global. From 1750 to the Present Day

Police Intelligence, from Local to Global. From 1750 to the Present Day
Colloque international

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This conference examines the many faces and roles of police intelligence in practices of law enforcement and crime control, in line with new approaches in the history of bureaucracy and information management and, above all, in the history of the police and policing. It addresses the largely unexplored questions of the production and uses of police intelligence, the institutions and tools involved, its contents, and how all these elements have changed over time, from the late eighteenth century – when modern police systems and a transregional security culture focused on political surveillance started to develop – to the present day – a time of unprecedented use of information and communication technologies in policing. The conference examines these developments on a global scale, analysing transnational information exchange and circulation of knowledge and intelligence techniques, and how they play out at regional and local levels. “Intelligence” is not merely situated in its traditional context of high-level political policing and criminal investigation, but also in everyday practices of ‘street-level policing’, outside the strict political and judicial spheres, in both exceptional and ordinary contexts. Thus, several papers discuss aspects of ‘grass roots’ intelligence and its sources – citizens, but also the procedures behind it, such as complaints, testimonies, neighbourhood enquiries – in the context of local surveillance practices.