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"Creating networks” – the new effectiveness myth for "internal security”, by Thomas Feltes, Peter Stegmaier

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Transinstitutional policing: networking at all levels

There is on the political agenda now the goal of linking together security agencies more closely than previously had been formally or practically foreseen.[1] One of the guiding principles of the former Interior Minister, Otto Schily, was "We must combat the networks of terror with our own networks.”[2] The present Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, is pursuing the same strategy, although he personally tends to speak of the concept of "network” less frequently than Schily did. One example is the World Cup, 2006: at this event, a broad system of cooperation was set up including with "foreign partner police forces”.[3] It was noticeable that the organisational model for this was not limited to the cooperation at the communal level, as is familiar from "local crime prevention” schemes. Instead, there was action on several levels: Interior Ministries and Senate administration both at the level of the Länder and the federal government, the Central Information Office for Sporting Events (ZIS), the Federal Crime Office, the federal police, the federal judicial system and even private security services cooperated to an unprecedented degree.[4] Preventive and repressive measures were closely connected to one another, for instance in public places and at public viewings.[5]

In the manner in which tickets were sold and checked, and in the way data were collected and checked, practical security and economic interests were combined in "close security cooperation with the organisers”.[6] There was a huge gap between theory and practice in the manner in which this was transposed, for instance with the way VIP tickets were checked.

What does it mean to organise security in the form of networks? The "network” in question no longer refers simply to electronic data networks but instead to deeper and broader forms of cooperation between security institutions which are at least in the initial stages of being organised in the form of networks. Examples include the "National Information and Cooperation Centre”, NICC, established for the FIFA World Cup in 2006; COLPOFER, the collaborative organisation for railway police, railway companies and private security services; the EU's TREVI cooperation, set up in 1976 for the fight against terror; and so-called "security partnerships” at the local level. Information technology plays an important role in this. The creation of such networks is not limited to data files and data networks (such as ,for instance, "the central anti-terror data file”, INPOL SIS, II). Organisation is a social process in which structures are created. Actors have to change their attitudes, while knowledge comes with reference to different things when other organisational structures are created. Dependencies are created and used.

If the structures of cooperation and competition between individual authorities and other actors are to be developed, then it depends which actors are to be included who have the state-sanctioned right to use force. Gert-Joachim Glaessner defines institutions of "internal security” conventionally as "organisations which are legitimised executively to use public force in the framework of the constitution and other laws, if necessary through the employment of means of constraint.”[7] If one takes the concept of "force” further, so that forms of "structural force” are also included, then institutions such as parliamentary committees for internal affairs, or informal bodies such as the "Group of Police Chiefs” or the AK II (Working Group II) of the Conference of Interior Ministers should also be brought into consideration.

If one also extends the concept of state legitimacy further, then private security actors within the network of "internal security” – actors who are not directly legitimised by the democratic state - must also be brought into view, so that the actual reality of the policy area known as "internal security” can be properly understood and not just the normative-prescriptive side of it. The law and order authorities which are to be found in every public body cooperate intensively with one another; they are directed and overseen by institutions legitimised for the purpose; political groups try to influence them; and they are also in principle ready to make compromises with political institutions and lobbies.[8]

One of the peculiarities of the creation of networks between law and order authorities is the specific working logic of network cooperation, according to which cooperation occurs at different levels and with different centres, and with the help of a mixture of centralised, de-centralised, vertical, horizontal, regional, national and trans-national organisations. In the framework of traditional structures, by contrast, working patterns are organised on a much more strongly hierarchical and national or local basis.

It is not easy to manage the reorientation of law and order bodies towards network-based cooperation (for instance in the "Common Anti-Terrorism Centre” in Berlin, or in the so-called "Help Networks” which already exist in the field of domestic violence).[9] The culture of organisations cannot be changed at the touch of a button or even partly changed by instructions from above. Change has to grow and develop in the daily practice of all those concerned. If the talk is of a "network” then it is precisely the relationships between actors which is being denoted, characterised by a specific form of coordinated interaction.

For social cooperation in networks, mutual cooperation and trust are regarded as essential, as well as shared access to powers (resources, the right to define problems and solutions, performance functions). At the same time, actors are autonomous and free and there are generally mediating bodies between them.[10]

There is a particular closeness of cooperation in the area of local crime prevention and in security partnerships. This has been accompanied by a change in the working patterns of those involved, above all the police. In many places this has now been the case for some time, although still not everywhere.[11] In parallel, a policy is being developed of linking together the superior, cross-border authorities. Starting with communal cooperation, there is henceforth a move towards more regional, national and trans-national cooperation. One could call this a policy of establishing a system of "trans-institutional crime prevention”, but it would be simplistic to speak only of prevention. Prevention, like repression, never comes in pure forms: there is always a further dimension, and therefore the participants are drawn into it in different roles. The extension of bodies for the prevention and repression of crime which, horizontally and vertically, transcend institutions, can therefore only be called "trans-institutional policing.”

"Policing” is here the overarching concept for the totality of state and private action, carried out by associations and citizens' initiatives, whose aim is to achieve and maintain "internal security”: it is the struggle on the part of those involved for the justification, the entrenchment and the implementation of strategies for action within a certain group, or within certain networks, which are suitable for ensuring social order. Policing includes: repression and prevention, public warning and information, the provision of advisers, publishing crime statistics, education in combat sports and the ownership of weapons, the observation of public places with video cameras and the broadcast of television programmes which promote law and order. It includes measures to prevent money laundering; the systematic scanning of the world wide web in search of illegal content; the construction of "Panic Rooms” (safe shelters); various movements to improve life in inner cities by cleaning up the streets and getting rid of beggars, drug addicts and prostitutes; advice given to drug takers in so-called "Locations”; the involvement of citizens in neighbourhood watch schemes and in gated communities for the elderly and the well-to-do[12]; all professional discussions about "internal security”; the sudden strengthening of the so-called "broken window” initiative[13]; the adoption of the concept of zero tolerance by a number of German towns[14]; and the discussions within society on the increasing need for traditional values and standards of behaviour.[15]

At all levels of policing there are cultures of independence up to and including competition which have been both institutionalised by law and also entrenched in practice over a period of many years. One thinks of the relationship between regional (Länder) police forces, of the relationship between regional and federal authorities and between different national authorities; or even of the competing claims of various authorities who deal with "organised crime” (the Federal Criminal Office versus the Federal Information Service). "Soft structures of cooperation”, however, in the legal-administrative and political-administrative context of today's Federal Republic, can exist only in the shadow of "hard structures”.[16] This is particularly true of the work of the state security agencies. They are based on the hierarchical model by which the state and its authorities are organised.

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