paradigm lost the dutch dilemma

268 THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGYVOLUME 38 NUMBER 2 2005 PP. 268–281

Addresses for correspondence: Maurice Punch, (res.) Veenendaalplein 8, NL 1185 DDAmstelveen, the Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]

Paradigm Lost: The Dutch DilemmaMaurice PunchLondon School of Economics, UK

Bob HoogenboomNyenrode University, the Netherlands

Tom WilliamsonUniversity of Portsmouth, UK

In the 1970s the Dutch police developed a paradigm of policing thatmarried ideas from the United States on community-oriented policing to

a strongly social and democratic role for the police in society. From theearly 1990s there was a gradual shift to the right in Dutch society that wasreflected in concerns about crime and safety. The paradigm came underscrutiny. Then Dutch officers began to visit New York in considerablenumbers and returned with ideas on ‘zero tolerance’.This ‘tough’ approachto crime reduction appears to conflict with Dutch ‘tolerance’ in criminaljustice.The paper argues that there is reluctance to abandon that originalparadigm, ambivalence about the new concepts from abroad but, above all,an inability to develop a new, comprehensive paradigm. This may well betrue elsewhere and we assume that modern policing needs to be based ona well-thought paradigm on the police role in society.

In many societies the police organisation has experienced significant change in recentyears (Chan, 1997; Newburn, 2003). Brogden (2005) asserts that there is a globalcriminal justice movement driven by international institutions, governments, consult-ing firms and a veritable industry of entrepreneurial academics and practitionerspromoting change programs (of varying quality and integrity). In some transientsocieties — South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Eastern and Central Europe, forexample — there are efforts to foster a profound change in policing with outsideexpertise and funding. Even where policing has an awful record of human rightsabuses and corruption, as in Brazil and Argentina, there is a reform agenda ostensiblyto develop a ‘professional, accountable and universal police service’ (Hinton, 2005, p.1). In cases of major reform we can refer to ‘paradigm shift’, whereby the values andpractices of policing are substantially renewed (e.g., on South Africa; Marks, 2003).

The thrust of developments in police reform in transient societies is to moveforces from being a feature of state repression, with low legitimacy and accountabil-ity, to a fundamentally different style of policing — responsive to public needs,professional in its conduct and with enhanced legitimacy and accountability. Thishas often drawn on the conceptual vocabulary of ‘community-oriented policing’, or

COP, and, more recently, on human rights (Crawshaw, Devlin, & Williamson,1999). In the USA and UK in particular COP was a diffuse label that signified ashift away from the ‘professional’ model of a centralised force geared to law enforce-ment and emergency response to a decentralised model of community involvement,problem-solving and taking citizens’ needs seriously (Bayley, 1994; Waddington,1999). An excellent example of this twin thrust is the Patten Report in NorthernIreland where a fundamental reform of the police was seen as essential to the peaceprocess after 30 years of near-civil war; the organisation had to shift from a securityfocus to becoming a legitimate agency responsive to the diverse communities andwith a commitment to human rights (‘Patten Report’, 1999). A third thread inreform is introducing managerial improvements in policing; this may appear to bemore instrumental and ideologically neutral than the other elements but all thesedevelopments are fraught with assumptions and ideological quicksand. We shouldbe aware that there is no one right model that fits all sizes, that organisationalchange is never linear and unproblematic and that there may be an element ofshort-sighted conceptual ‘imperialism’ to exporting change (Brodgen, 2005).

Moreover it remains the case that each country will retain its own specificdynamic of change related to a particular combination of historical, sociopolitical,cultural and institutional factors. The change dynamic in Britain, the USA andAustralia, for example, displays some common themes but also individual character-istics (in the last a pattern of ‘corruption and reform’; Dixon, 1999). The analysis ofthese complex processes can focus at the macro level but also at the national, case-study level. In turning to the Netherlands in this article the focus is on the latter.

In comparison to societies and policing systems that have been throughdramatic if not traumatic change, the rather genteel reforms in the stable, affluentand liberal society of the Netherlands may appear unproblematic. In the 1980s and1990s it was not a divided society, did not have international agencies pushing for amore accountable police, did not experience insistent government pressure and hadwidely implemented forms of community-oriented policing. In many ways Dutchpolicing had already made the institutional, managerial and conceptual leaps thatforces in other countries were being encouraged to make (Punch, van der Vijver, &Zoomer, 2000).

In dissecting the Dutch process of change we shall argue that the interest of thiscase-study is that it illustrates a shift away from a ‘progressive’ paradigm of policingto a harder style; this is almost the reverse of the process elsewhere. Furthermore, theprimary dynamic for change came largely from professional debate within the policeleadership. Perhaps most significantly, although there has been an array of changesin policing (Bayley & Shearing, 2001), although some police leaders claim to besurfing the waves of innovation with aplomb (Blair, 2003), and although theNetherlands may appear to represent a case of well-lubricated change, there doesremain a measure of resilience about abandoning or shifting paradigms (whichshould not surprise academics; Kuhn, 1962).

The Dutch ‘Social’ Paradigm of PolicingOn the surface the Netherlands appears to be a small and homogeneous society with astrong central state. Compared to the mish-mash of agencies in the decentralised

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USA (Loveday & Reid, 2003), the Dutch Police would probably be perceived byoutsiders to be a national force. In practice there is more of a national/regional, two-tier structure with the large municipalities still playing an influential role through themayor (Policing in the Netherlands, 2004). But there is central governmental control ofpolicing, much uniformity in training and equipment and only 26 police chiefs (withsome 40,000 officers, about the same as New York or London). Surely, one mightthink, this must be an ideal environment for innovation because the system isrelatively small and coherent and can be steered from the centre. But some of Punch’sexperiences from the mid-70s onwards with the Dutch Police revealed local chauvin-ism, resistance to central control and a resentment of the dominance of the Randstad(the western part of the country, with Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague). Thisproviso is simply to warn against overemphasising the degree of consensus andcohesion over practical implementation within the Dutch system. But of major signif-icance here is that the Dutch Police organisation has functioned with a widelyaccepted paradigm that has exerted considerable influence in the last two decades —but which is now up for revision. What were the components of that paradigm?

Punch’s contacts with the Dutch Police have extended over a period of 30 years,from 1974 when he began fieldwork in the Amsterdam city centre (Punch, 1979). Inthat period he encountered ‘old-fashioned’ policing that institutionally was highlyreactive, with little sense of direction, and with a distant, bureaucratic leadership.This model was soon under attack for being distant, unresponsive and authoritarianand the criticism came not only from without, but also from within. The backgroundwas that Dutch society had reacted to the turbulence of the late 1960s with a leap tothe left; politicians and others became progressive and policies were lenient —notably on drugs, pornography and prostitution. The antiauthoritarian and at timesanarchistic ‘Provo’ movement of the 1960s continually provoked the police withplayful ‘happenings’ that often elicited a heavy-handed response; the organisation washeld to be hopelessly out of touch with developments in society.

One response to this societal change was that a new generation of critical youngpolice officers started to kick against the old-style, hierarchical, bureaucratic system.In particular, three of them were given an assignment by the Ministry of the Interiorto examine the manpower, strength and organisation of the police, but grasped thisopportunity to write a critical report on policing in general (Nordholt & Straver,1983; POS, 1977). This argued for a more internally democratic police and for astronger external orientation to societal change (POS, 1977; the title was ‘AChanging Police’ and POS stood for ‘Project Group on Organisational Structure’).

‘A Changing Police’ was mainly concerned with the legitimacy of the police insociety. Straver was important for the content — along with Wiarda, Nordholt andHans Anderson (Straver, Wiarda and Nordholt were police officers, Anderson was aconsultant). At that time there were very few people who thought seriously aboutpolicing and there was no research on the police. People wanted to change but no-one knew exactly how to go about it; and then ‘A Changing Police’ was designed toget back to the essentials, ‘small is beautiful’ and so on, based on the new ideologiesin society’ (Interview, Kees van der Vijver, Professor, University of Twente).

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All three of the young officers — Nordholt, Wiarda and Straver — later becameinfluential and prominent chiefs (in Amsterdam, Utrecht and Haarlem respec-tively). The 1970s rebels became the new establishment.

This report, and the triumvirate that produced it, are of central significance. Forthe call for reform had come from professionals within the system; it was not drivenby government demands or by scandal (Sherman, 1978), but by a powerful, internaldemand for change from critical young, middle-ranking officers. This report actedfor many years as a leitmotiv for policing in the Netherlands and gave it a strong‘social’ character — geared to societal change, internal democracy and the wishes ofthe public (Boin, van de Torre, & ’t Hart, 2003).

Although this report was essentially a reflection of highly particular ‘progressive’changes in Dutch society, it did draw importantly on organisational concepts fromthe US. In particular, the Dutch model saw an affinity in moves by American policeagencies towards community-oriented policing (COP) and problem-oriented polic-ing (POP; Goldstein, 1979). These imported models fostered a series of experimentsthat were especially stimulated by the Department of Research and Development(O & O) at the Ministry of the Interior. The projects were oriented to both internaland external change in the police organisation; internal efforts were geared to bettercommunication, less hierarchy, and decentralisation and were aimed at enhancedproblem-solving; external efforts were centred on improved relations with thepublic, adopting a service-oriented mentality and focusing on societal problems.

The two key figures at O & O, Broer and van der Vijver, were academicallytrained police officers. Following their ‘research and development’ work at theMinistry, Broer and van der Vijver went on to implement devolved neighbourhoodpolicing in Amsterdam (important in sealing the innovation nationally as this isthe ‘lead’ agency). Van der Vijver was later appointed Director of the Foundationfor Police, Society and Safety (SMVP) and the SMVP became, in turn, an influen-tial stimulator of change. SMVP had been set up in 1986 and it pushed for anemphasis on community safety, on increasing the self-reliance of citizens, on bring-ing back visible control agents (in public transport, schools and on the streets) andon informing the public on safety and prevention. Through conferences, projects,research, publications and publicity it strongly pushed two themes — the need tofocus continually on the relationship between police and society and the impor-tance in communities of a proactive ‘integrated safety policy’ with multipleagencies. And safety was a task to be shared with others and could not be the soleresponsibility of the police (a forerunner of ‘community safety’ and ‘plural policing’elsewhere; Crawford & Lister, 2005).

In short, there has been continuous innovation since the early 1980s, with a fewprominent players proving highly influential and with a substantial investment insocially conscious, locally oriented policing with an external focus in the commu-nity. Much of the conceptual content of the change came from the USA, and to alesser extent the UK:

We looked particularly to the USA. We drew directly from the work of Chaiken andalso from the ‘President’s Commission’. With regard to community policing we moreor less gave it our own flavour. With us it was much more about legitimacy than withthe Americans (Interview, Kees van der Vijver).

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A great deal was based on COP and POP as well as team policing. The work of JohnAngell (1971) had ‘a tremendous influence. When we read his work it was a suddenrevelation. He analysed how you had to integrate the police both internally and tothe outside world’ (Interview:, Kees van der Vijver). People also drew on theresearch experience of the Police Foundation in Washington, DC. Officers andpolicy- makers attended academic and policing conferences in the US, interactedwith experts on police change there and some of these were subsequently invited tothe Netherlands (Punch, 1983).

Reflecting on that time we would say that the key Dutch actors would undoubt-edly have drawn from American ideas but would have said that they were giving it astrong ‘Dutch flavour’. For Dutch society was quite unlike American society. It wasin that period stable and affluent, had low levels of violent crime, had an advancedwelfare state, high security of employment and had experienced low racial tension(Goudsblom, 1967). In fact, criminal justice in the Netherlands came to be viewedas an alternative paradigmatic model to the USA (and to a lesser extent Britain). In hisanalysis of Dutch penal policy, Downes (1988) showed that the judiciary had takenprofessional views on rehabilitation on board; few people were imprisonedcompared to the US and UK and most prisons did not have punitive regimes(Punch, 1979). Indeed, in the early 1970s the number of prisoners in theNetherlands was falling — despite rising crime. In 1975 the prison population wasroughly four times less than in England and Wales, where the prison population hadbeen rising for some 20 years (Downes, 1988, p. 7).

This alternative, progressive paradigm in criminal justice — the ‘least inhumanein Europe’ (Bianchi, 1975, p. 1) — was viewed by outsiders as a reflection of somepresumed generic Dutch ‘tolerance’. To debate that concept is beyond the bounds ofthis paper but here we view it from three main perspectives that impacted on valuesand practices in criminal justice. First, the Netherlands was a liberal democracythat, rather like Canada, New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries, followedrelatively progressive and humane policies on social issues. This fostered, as Downes(1988) shows, a genuinely liberal position on crime and punishment and mostpolice chiefs, prison governors and politicians would have supported this (academicsand their research findings were taken seriously). Second, the Dutch speak of apractice that is ‘gedogen’, or to which a ‘blind eye’ is turned, which is more of apragmatic or even opportunistic way of condoning a practice (Brants, 1999, speaksof ‘regulated tolerance’). Police chiefs, in consultation with the mayor and publicprosecutor (formally his or her ‘bosses’), often tolerated practices that would haveattracted enforcement in other countries. This pragmatic liberalism could, thirdly,also take the form of nondecision-making and of rationalising the postponement ofproblems (Pakes, 2004). During the 1970s in the centre of Amsterdam it was as ifeverything around — gambling, prostitution and drugs — was formally forbiddenyet ‘tolerated’.

It could be said, then, that the system was enlightened, that there was a largemeasure of consensus and that many criminal justice practitioners were operatingalong a fundamentally different paradigm to the USA. This could have come from acombination of pragmatism, opportunism and indifference but also from principlesand conviction. But it did have a considerable impact on policies and practice incriminal justice in general and policing in particular (SMVP, 2004). Of importance

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in the ‘filtering’ process of policy transfer is that the Dutch looked to the US, andUK, for working concepts and practical techniques. Indeed, a number of Dutchforces have had, and still have, strong professional connections with forces andtraining establishments in Britain; the distance is short, the language makescommunication easier than elsewhere in Europe, and officers sense a similarity inworking styles and values. Dutch officers and officials particularly rejected theharshness and punitiveness in criminal justice ideology and practice in the US (andstill do; ‘Een sociaal New York’, 2004). In many ways American society was anegative reference point (Punch, 2005).

For, in general, the Dutch policing paradigm was based on progressive values,minimising violence, avoiding conflict by negotiation with groups, and on closeinvolvement in society to generate legitimacy and to increase the confidence of thepublic. The functioning orthodoxy was that virtually all basic policing was indecentralised teams with a geographic base, with specialised community beatofficers geared to problem-solving (‘area managers’) and with engagement in multi-agency arrangements. Policing displayed a social face; indeed, in the 1980s theslogan was ‘the police is your best friend’. In Britain, in contrast, John Alderson’s(1979) attempts, as Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, to establish a moreliberal, community-oriented police through similar ideas were ridiculed by otherchiefs and it has taken two decades for Neighbourhood Policing to become the neworthodoxy with the Home Office promising to fund it in every force.

External Developments Impacting on PolicingHowever, there were forces gathering that challenged that paradigm. Before turningto scrutinise that challenge, we look briefly at some external developments thatimpacted on policing in general and inevitably also on Dutch policing (Manning,1997; Reiner, 1997, 2000). Our focus in the previous section has been mainly on aninternal analysis, but the Dutch are fervent travellers, speak several foreignlanguages, are often involved in international organisations and conferences and areusually well acquainted with external changes in policing. This is not to say thatthey are completely cosmopolitan, eternally searching for, and anxious to adopt, thelatest innovation; but it is difficult for an advanced and open society, in a strategiclocation in Europe and a good EU citizen, to remain immune to wider alterations inpolicing that have impacted on other societies and their police (Chan, 1997;Morgan & Newburn, 1997). For reasons of space we simply list them (see Newburn,2003, 2005).

1. Neo-liberalism: the rise of neo-liberal governments and policies (in the US, UKand elsewhere).

2. Punitiveness: rhetoric and practice in the US fostered increasing ‘punitiveness’ incriminal justice; it is debateable as to the extent to which this was exported (forthe UK, see Tonry 2004; Jones & Newburn, 2004; and for Australia, O’Malley,2004, and Dixon, 2005).

3. Managerialism: efforts were made to transfer managerial practices to publicservices and the impact of concepts and rhetoric from New Public Management(NPM) on policing was considerable (Leishman, Savage, & Loveday, 1996).

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4. Privatisation: the expansion of the private sector in criminal justice has posed aconsiderable challenge to public policing (Jones & Newburn, 1998; Stenning &Shearing, 1979).

5. Technology: the ICT revolution of the last two decades has had a tremendousimpact on practical policing and internal control.

6. Risk: Ericson and Haggerty (1997) focus on the concept of the ‘risk society’where fear of risk and harm abound and where certain groups are proactivelytargeted.

7. Internationalisation: crime has become increasingly international in scope andthis had an impact on cross-border policing in specialised agencies (Loader,2004).

8. Partnerships and ‘multilateralisation’: from a monopoly position the police agencyhas moved to engage increasingly in multiagency partnerships; Bayley andShearing (2001) use the term ‘multilateralisation’ and refer to this process as the‘governance of security’ (Crawford & Lister, 2005, speak of ‘plural policing’).

9. Media and crime: particularly in the US and UK, the media has highlightedcrime and crime control with a populist ‘law and order’ slant arguing for toughermeasures and heavier sanctions.

10. Militarisation: there has been substantial investment in ‘soft end’ of policing butthere have also been contrasting developments at the ‘sharp end’ (Kraska,2001). In the US there has been an increase in specially trained and heavilyequipped paramilitary units and this is true of other countries. Particularly sincethe terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the US there has been an emphasis on strongsecurity measures in a number of societies.

11. Specialisation. Increasingly the police organisation has set up specialised unitsabove front-line policing to cope with new forms of crime, ICT developmentsand new forensic techniques.

12. Economies of scale and national units: the last two decades have seen amalgama-tions, or proposals for amalgamations, of forces in several countries on the groundsof ‘economies of scale’ (Savage, 1998) and the setting up of central national unitsto deal with serious crime domestically and across borders (Blair, 2003).

13. Gender and diversity: the composition of police forces has been altered by therecruitment of women and minorities while agencies have had to come to termswith diversity in the workplace and among victims and witnesses (Bowling &Phillips, 1997).

14. Accountability: a most significant factor is that police officers have become more‘accountable’ to governments, the courts, the press and the public for theirpolicies and even for operational decisions (Punch & Markham, 2004).

These 14 factors combined to have a substantial impact on criminal justice ingeneral and policing in particular; in various ways they influenced Dutch policingand threatened its comforting, consensual paradigm.

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Paradigm LostWhat factors started to eat away at the Dutch policing paradigm and how didpractitioners react to this? Already in the mid-1970s in Amsterdam it was evidentthat policing was dominated by two main features — foreigners and drugs — andboth figure significantly in subsequent Dutch crime patterns. Indeed, crime began torise sharply from the early 1970s with a fourfold rise between 1970 and 1983. Thecriminal justice system came under considerable strain; a policy document in 1985spoke of the ‘need for a drastic expansion in prison capacity’ up to the end of 1990(Society and Crime, 1985).

In a nutshell, the country became the centre of the European drug trade; therewas substantial immigration notably from Turkey and Morocco; segments of crimebecame dominated by organised criminal groups; and there was increasing pressurefrom other members of the European Union to toughen policies. The opening ofEuropean borders with the Schengen agreement allowed for much greater ease oftravel while the fall of the Soviet Union brought new threats from the East.

In retrospect it is possible to see the Dutch Police by the early 1990s at a cross-road. In research conducted in 1994–1995 for the SMVP, which was reported in‘Searching for a Future’ (Punch, van der Vijver, & van Dijk, 1998; the translation of‘Toekomst Gezocht’, SMVP, 1995), many of the problems were becoming increas-ingly evident. But debate was still predominantly within the paradigm of socialpolicing with a high measure of devolution in neighbourhood teams(Gebiedsgebonden politiezorg, 2000). In 40 interviews that Punch conducted in1994/1995, there was as yet no mention of new, tough policies in a potentially freshparadigm. There was, however, an increasingly sombre picture of the criminaljustice system painted in the media (SMVP, 1995), which then promoted a widerdebate on the defects of criminal justice and of ‘tolerance’. This became increas-ingly critical throughout the 1990s and culminated in a sharp shift to the rightpolitically with the rise of the populist politician Pim Fortyun (Pakes, 2004). Therewere views that people who had traditionally been associated with authority hadlost that authority, that gedogen had gone too far and that the police had becometoo ‘soft’ (Hoogenboom & Vlek, 2002; SMVP, 2000, 2004).

By the mid-1990s it was clear, then, that the Dutch Police institution waslooking for new paths to follow. And at that time there were some interesting devel-opments in New York, and many significant changes going on elsewhere (seeabove). We focus primarily on three features which began to alter the views ofleading practitioners in Dutch policing.

First, the so-called New York ‘miracle’, with respect to which it was claimed thatBratton’s and Giuliani’ s policies had substantially reduced crime and made the citysafer, proved highly attractive to many foreign police officers. Dutch police officerstravelled in large numbers to the USA and to New York (Punch, 2005). The so-called ‘zero-tolerance’ approach was based on assertive patrol with relentless atten-tion to street crime and nuisance offences, on rapid use of information combinedwith pressure on senior officers to perform in crime-reduction and on multiagencyinitiatives to ‘recover’ public spaces (Kelling & Coles, 1996). Although it mightappear that this forceful approach — sometimes referred to as ‘kick ass’ (Bowling,1999) — is diametrically opposed to the Dutch social paradigm, some chiefs came

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back enthused with ideas; in several cities this impacted on policing with a far moreprominent police presence on the streets, more attention to street crime and‘nuisance’ offences and a far more assertive stance on crime-related issues. Thepolice were not alone on their way to the Big Apple and elsewhere in the US; thedroves of criminal justice tourists included mayors, judges, prosecutors, politiciansand other officials (de Volkskrant, of September 11, 2004, reported an Amsterdamdelegation of 25 officials returning enthusiastically from New York).

Second, Dutch governments increasingly adopted neo-liberal policies and,taking their example from New Labour and Tony Blair, started to reform publicservices. They went strongly down the road of New Public Management (NPM)with targets, performance contracts and budgetary restraint in policing. Policechiefs adopted the rhetoric of reducing crime, increasing safety, tackling ‘antisocial’behaviour and stimulating their officers to perform with defined quotas forsummonses. This was a sea change from the relaxed, nonchalant and not alwaysproductive style of much Dutch policing.

Third, the political and social climate in the Netherlands inexorably began tomove away from the pillars of the Dutch consensual society based on tolerance,gedogen, laxity in regulatory enforcement, and the ‘polder model’ of negotiation andcompromise (Hoogenboom & Vlek, 2002; Pakes, 2004). Crime and safety becamemajor societal issues, there were increasing interethnic tensions and vocal anti-immigration views, prison sentences increased and the police were being pressuredto tackle crime and the ‘nuisance’ offences on the streets. A crucial factor in thisleaning to the right was pressure from other EU members to be more forceful,particularly on drugs enforcement from the neighbouring French and Germans. TheNetherlands, as a good EU citizen which presided over the EU when treaties weresigned pushing for greater coordination in criminal justice (Maastricht in 1992 andAmsterdam in 1997; Loader, 2004), could hardly remain an oasis of tolerance andrestraint. That Europol went to the Netherlands could only have been bought byfirm promises from the Dutch government.

Without doubt there has been a shift in policies, practices and rhetoric with regardto policing. The traditional pillars of wisdom in the old policing paradigm are in theprocess of redefinition (Hoogenboom, 2005). But compared to other countries thegovernment has not been that directive, the media debate has not been that rabid andthere have, until recently, been no populist moral crusaders pushing law and order.Indeed, it is important to note that the major source of taking on new ideas and ofimplementing innovations has been the police leadership itself (Boin, van de Torre,& ’t Hart, 2003). In 1994 there was a major reorganisation that created 25 newregional forces with one central agency, the National Police Services Agency (Policingin the Netherlands, 2004). There are, then, only 26 leaders and they know one anotherintimately. In 1977 the blueprint for reform came from professionals within the systemand again change is being driven largely internally.

How, then, is this small cadre of senior officers responding to these significantdevelopments in policing and have these led to any abandonment of the dominant‘social’ paradigm?

First of all there is ambivalence. There are hard-liners, who state boldly thatthey are ‘thief-catchers’, who play down the social tasks of the police, maintain thatcommunity policing was bought at the price of neglecting the crime investigation

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function, and support the new national crime units. But there remains a strongambivalence about introducing hard methods. This echoes the situation in Britainwhere the ‘liberal’ elite of senior officers proved lukewarm if not antithetical to zerotolerance policing and bottom-line, crime-fighting rhetoric (Jones & Newburn,2004; and for Australia, Dixon, 2005).

Second, there is an attempt to combine new methods within the existingparadigm. The ‘soft-liners’ not only argue for priorities, targets and reducing crimebut also emphasise the need to continue efforts on safety, legitimacy, relationshipswith the community and an integral safety policy with other partners.

Third, and this is related to the phases of development in the police leadership,there has been something of a ‘circle the wagons’ strategy in a display of unanimityagainst an increasingly demanding environment. This new collectivism is modelledon the role of a management board in a private corporation and part of this style isto bury one’s head in the mantras of NPM. There is a tendency to avoid big issues,to focus on performance and to adopt the fetishism of quantification. This escapeinto managerialism could be interpreted as side-stepping the need to confront theold paradigm. Many Dutch officials do not employ the punitive rhetoric of the USand UK but enthuse about reducing crime, hitting targets, setting priorities and no-nonsense tackling of problems with low leniency and swift sanctions. In decipheringthe jargon there might well be a code indicating underlying punitiveness thatcannot be expressed openly.

Finally, and this is the phase now, there is a realisation that Dutch society andthe wider environment is changing so rapidly that the police cannot rely on aparadigm formulated over 25 years ago in a time of heady radicalism. There is groupwithin the Council of Chief Commissioners working on a new document. Againthis is primarily an initiative of professionals from within, although now from theestablished hierarchy and not from the critical margins as in 1977. Yet there isconsiderable reluctance to abandon the old paradigm and in a number of interviewsin 2004, chiefs insisted that ‘A Changing Police’ still had relevance (Punch, 2005).There was even a feeling that it would not be possible to reproduce a new, compre-hensive blueprint in the modern situation. In 1977 the police lagged behind theradicalisation in the wider society and was seen as a defensive, unwieldy mastodon.Now, and particularly since the rise (and murder) of the populist politician PimFortuyn, and the so-called ‘revolt of the voters’, the police are being seen as a soft,socially oriented service that has lost its cutting edge and authority, as being leftbehind by increasing conservatism in society and as in danger of becomingmarooned in a sea of revulsion at a complacent past of tolerance, gedogen andcompromise (Van Swaaningen, 2004).

Conclusion: ChallengesWe have traced the development of a paradigm of policing which steered the DutchPolice for some 25 years. Its foundations rested on marrying community-orientedpolicing from the US and UK to the socially democratic consensus culture ofnegotiation, compromise and tolerance of the Netherlands. But a constellation ofgeneral external factors and specific domestic factors has put that paradigm under

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stress (Vlek et al., 2004). Reflecting on that process we perceive a number ofgeneral issues related to the challenges of change.

First, neo-liberal governments tend to adopt short-term, productivity-orientedpolicies that limit the role of the police to crime-fighting. They also want morecontrol over the police with increasing centralisation (this is the case in the UKand the Netherlands), are mesmerised by the fetish of auditing and quantification,and insist on micromanaging change processes. These factors can readily distort thebroader police mandate while restricting the professional and even the operationalautonomy of senior officers.

Second, there are pressures to conform and to adopt uniform policies; thesecome from a variety of sources including the EU and Council of Europe, NGOs,individual governments, the successful marketing of American models and thepromotion of these through a global industry of criminal justice entrepreneurs.There is a ‘McDonaldisation’ of policing taking place.

Third, the widespread adoption of NPM has tended to produce a generation ofpolice managers. Part of that shift is that it is almost no longer necessary to thinkparadigmatically. Senior officers have become smarter and are clued up on organisa-tional strategy, but the continuous need to cope with externally enforced change(such as new security measures against fundamentalist terrorism), to achieve perfor-mance targets (one police chief in Britain was expected to report on over 50targets), and to meet escalating public demands and rising expectations, fosters atendency to avoid the big issues and become preoccupied with system maintenancerather than with a philosophy guiding change and practice. There is a tendency topick up swiftly new trends and catchphrases, or to recycle old concepts, with all thegullibility, glibness and lack of reflection that is evident among business executiveswith their addiction to gurus and slogans (Knights & McCabe, 2003). This explainsthe popularity of the diffuse if not vacuous concept of ‘zero tolerance policing’,which was a ‘semantic sponge’ that promised something new while allowing thepractitioner to interpret it any way he or she wished (Manning, 2005).

Fourth, however much forces have gone down the road of COP, POP andpartnerships, there is a residual orientation to having to switch organisationalmodes to cope with large-scale incidents, disasters and emergencies (Punch &Markham, 2004), while the occupational culture of front-line policing has alwaysespoused ‘thief-catching’ as central (Waddington, 1999). The police organisationcan revert to the primal, latent, ‘nonparadigm’ of crime control and order-mainte-nance without soul-searching; the New York model — stripped of the hype,rebranding and jargon — was simply a reversion to good old aggressive policing (theinnovation was computer-aided ass-kicking).

Fifth, a constellation of sociopolitical and economic factors in an increasinglyglobal world have produced a shift to the right (even in previously ‘left’ politicalparties and governments, with New Labour in the UK as the prime example), apreoccupation with threats and security and populist calls for tougher approaches tolaw and order.

Finally, it could be argued that the Dutch island of tolerance was difficult tomaintain when developments in policing elsewhere were pushing in the direction oftougher enforcement and less tolerance, when international political pressuredemanded conformity, and when Dutch sociopolitical culture swung to the right

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(Van Swaaningen, 2004). The Dutch Police are, then, in the middle of a paradigmshift and that process is characterised by ambivalence, reluctance, delay and denial.Perhaps most significantly the Dutch paradigm was also about emancipating thepolice internally to make it a critical, reflective agency of professionals who werecapable of generating their own philosophy of policing. That unique Dutchparadigm came at a specific time and a humane, tolerant and caring societyproduced a humane, tolerant and caring style of policing. But when major externaldevelopments, significant political pressure and, above all, a societal shift to theright within the Netherlands threatened once more to outflank them, the DutchPolice effectively relinquished their paradigm.

In essence, the largest challenge to change is when police refuse to thinkparadigmatically. The alterations in society and in policing are increasingly complexand swift and in the struggle over who controls the police, and who defines polic-ing, the threat is that others will impose their will and there will be a regression to aservile police leadership with ‘Taylorisation’ of the lower ranks. The best defence foran embattled but self-respecting profession is a good, comprehensive paradigm. Ouradvice is, then, to roll your own.

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