Knowledge Workers or “Knowledge” Workers?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of knowledge in policing and questions the application of the notion of network to describe police organizations in themselves or in relationship with each other. First, the concepts of knowledge and of network are critically assessed for their own. Second, their applicability to policing is examined in respect to criminal investigation, the handling of police informants, high (or political) policing, and counterterrorism. This examination is conducted with a particular emphasis on information reliability and overload. It is concluded that while it is premature to argue that focusing on knowledge and networks has generated a paradigm shift in respect to policing, both concepts may have the potential to generate a new paradigm.

Keywords:

• Information
• Knowledge
• Network
• Investigation
• Informants
• Counterterrorism
• Information sharing
• Information reliability
• Information overload

Notes

Jean-Paul Brodeur and Benoit Dupont are both researchers at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology.

1. This point is justifiably stressed by Peter Gill (personal communication).

2. In a recent interview with Law Enforcement News, Michael Scott, Director of the US Center for Problem-Oriented Policing declared that “the single biggest gap in the whole professionalization of the American police has been this absence of a body of knowledge [on problem solving]. It's the big missing ingredient” (Simonetti Rosen, 2004b: 9).

3. In an interview with Law Enforcement News, the terrorism expert Brian M. Jenkins stated that “domestic intelligence gathering has been an area that local police departments have been very, very wary about” (Simonetti Rosen, 2004c: 10).

4. For a more complete account, see Brodeur and Ouellet (2006 forthcoming).

5. The identity of a police informant can be divulged only when necessary to protect an innocent suspect. This is the traditional common law doctrine formulated in the UK during the 18th century.

6. See Québec (1980). One of us—Brodeur—was member of two bodies created to investigate the activities that surrounded the October Crisis of 1970.

7. http://www.ic-arda.org/index.html

8. See the Security of Information Act (R.S., 1985, c. O-5, s. 1; 2001, c. 41, s. 25), sections 8 and 13.

9. www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2eas.

10. “Fundamental methodological decisions … have the singular character of being neither arbitrary nor compelling. They prove appropriate or inappropriate. For their criterion is the metalogical necessity of interests that we can neither prescribe not represent, but with which we must instead come to terms. Therefore my first thesis is this: The achievements of the transcendental subject have their basis in the natural history of the human species” (Habermas, 1972: Appendix, 312, italics in text).

11. We are aware that what is published in the media can have grievous consequences for one's reputation. Media mischief is limited by the possibility of being sued and by the low credibility enjoyed by the media.